An ancient Indonesian mushroom is being used by University of California scientists to create gourmet dishes from food waste, in an attempt to reduce waste and save the planet
Congratulations - you are going on a date. This also happens. The restaurant is magnificent. The smells are wonderful. The waiter sits you down at the table and asks - "As a first course, what would you prefer: toast from moldy bread, or a three-day-old banana peel?"
No, this is not the future. This is the present, at least in two restaurants in the world that collaborated with researchers from the University of California, and tested how a special mold can be used to turn waste into healthy and tasty food.
And all in all, they seem to have succeeded. fact. It tastes good to you on a date.
And all thanks to one ancient Indonesian mushroom.
The disgusting wisdom of the ancients
The people of the island of Java in Indonesia have known for centuries how to turn waste into food. Specifically, for the dose known as Oncom. When eaten plain, it tastes like berry cheese. After frying, it feels more like real meat.
The oncom can be produced in many ways, but in all of them there are two main conditions: You need some waste, and you need the right kind of mushrooms. The waste can come from by-products in the processes for producing soy milk or peanut oil, or even from stale bread. The islanders let the mushrooms grow on their garbage for two days, then can enjoy the meaty berry cheese flavored delicacy. They just have to remember to tear off a small piece of the mushroom food, so they can add it to the next vessel they want to throw their garbage into. And so, the fungus will continue to grow and thrive, and will lead to the creation of the oncome next week as well.
There is no need to explain that this is a method that can reduce the amount of food that is thrown into the garbage every day. Or more precisely, it can turn a significant part of this garbage into food products for humans or animals. We urgently need such methods, because in advanced countries like the United States, about a third of the food is wasted and thrown away. If you look at the entire chain of growth and food consumption, you see that wasted food is responsible for about half of all greenhouse gas emissions in that particular industry. What if we could turn all that wasted food into new, palatable products?
And Io Hill-Maine and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, decided to check whether the wisdom of the ancient Indonesians could help us here. Or in other words, if it is possible to turn all wasted food into oncome.
The researchers obtained oncom samples of different types, and examined the composition of the mushrooms in the dish. They discovered that the most important fungus, which gives oncome its unique taste and texture, is Neurospora intermedia. It is a fungus that breaks down the rigid plant material in the waste, which our human intestines have a hard time dealing with. They examined her more closely, and confirmed that she does not produce toxins of any kind. Then they got really excited when they discovered that it can grow on a wide variety of food waste from the Western world: peels and seeds of fruits and vegetables, breads, by-products from beer brewing processes, vegetable milk and oil, and much more. The super mushroom needed only 72 hours to successfully grow on dozens of different types of Western food waste.
But will the spoiled westerners agree to eat the spoiled-plus-fungus food?
For this a field experiment was needed.
Science marches on its stomach
The researchers collaborated with two restaurants in New York and Copenhagen to design and produce new dishes based on food waste and the Neurospora intermedia fungus. In one of the flagship dishes, the mushroom was grown on cream of rice and wine for sixty hours at thirty degrees Celsius. The result was a dish that was described as impressive in color - because the mushrooms added a bright orange hue to it. The enzymes secreted by the fungus broke down the starch in the rice and enriched it with sweetness, and the fruity-sour flavors it added to the dish complemented the wine well. And if all this is not enough, the mushroom also added to the airiness of the dish, thanks to the shoots it produced. That, at least, is how the researchers described it. And apparently the dish was not too terrible to eat, since it was indeed served in the restaurant successfully.
But what did the diners think? I found no taste research results on the particular dishes served in the restaurants. However, the researchers tried serving sixty-one diners in Denmark the famous Indonesian Onkom for the first time, and it received a consistently high taste score of 6.5 on a scale of taste ranging from one to nine. Diners described its taste as "nutty", "fried", "sweet" and "mushroomy".
And now for the skepticism
So far all the good promises of improving the food waste with the fungus. And they are really good. This particular fungus seems to be able to breathe new life into old foodstuffs. But it also has many limitations. It doesn't kill bacteria or other fungi by itself, so you can't just take old food from the garbage and expect it to sterilize it from all the harmful mold that has already grown on it. It cannot grow on all types of food. It refuses, for example, to grow on leftover grapes and olives, and grows excruciatingly slowly on wheat kernels. So again - there is no magic solution to food waste.
On the other hand, magic solutions only exist in fairy tales. What we have here is an initial solution to the big and world-wide problem of food waste. If it is possible to reduce food waste by even five percent by turning the waste into useful "mushroom" dishes - then this is already an invention that changes the world for the better.
The beauty of the research comes from several parallel directions. First, it relies on historical discoveries in Indonesia. In other words, it is easy to think that ancient nutritional traditions could be re-adopted by the general public. Then scholars take these traditions, dissect and deconstruct them and reassemble them into dishes that are more suited to the modern-Western palate of today.
And what about the future?
In the future, these fungi - or other microorganisms - will be re-engineered so that they can secrete exactly the enzymes we want into the waste on which they will grow. The super fungus that will recycle our spoiled food in the future will also be able to sterilize it for any other micro-organism except itself. It will break down the harmful substances that have already accumulated in it, and turn them into nutritious and healthy substances. She will integrate into the new dishes combinations of flavors and aromas that will add to them, well, taste and aroma as we wish. She will be able to do this for fresh foods as well, of course - and maybe we will see such "live spices" in every kitchen.
or not. It is quite possible that this research is just a small blip in the history of food research and development. Perhaps other developments will quickly eclipse it, allowing us to recycle food waste more efficiently, or create new and unique dishes in other ways. And if it happens - how good! Humanity needs every possible way to improve its production, preservation and food cycle.
Regardless of the exact method we use, humanity continues its journey towards a sustainable future. Whether through orange miracle mushrooms, or thanks to the use of other futuristic technologies, it is clear that the kitchen of tomorrow will be different from what we know. And who knows? Maybe soon we will find ourselves greeting 'with appetite' a dish that only yesterday we would have thrown in the trash.
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