Posted on 01/07/2022 12:14:34 PM PST by Red Badger
Egg white protein produced by precision fermentation has excellent foaming properties. Credit: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
The research by the Future Sustainable Food Systems research group at the University of Helsinki together with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland shows that fungus-produced ovalbumin could have the potential to mitigate part of the environmental burden associated with chicken egg white powder. This is especially true when using low carbon energy sources in the production.
Chicken egg white powder is a commonly used ingredient in the food industry due to the high-quality protein it contains. The yearly consumption of egg proteins in 2020 was around 1.6 million tons and the market is expected to expand further in the coming years.
The growing demand is raising questions about both sustainability and ethics. Parts of the egg white powder production chain, such as rearing chickens for egg production, generate large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and deforestation. Additionally, intensive chicken farming has resulted in outbreaks of zoonotic diseases by serving as an important reservoir for human pathogens.
Searching for sustainable alternatives to animal-based proteins has been of growing interest within the food industry. Cellular agriculture, also called precision fermentation when used for recombinant ingredient production, offers a biotechnology-based solution to decouple the production of animal proteins from animal farming by using a microbial production system to produce the specific proteins instead.
“For example, more than half of the egg white powder protein content is ovalbumin. VTT has succeeded in producing ovalbumin with the help of the filamentous ascomycete fungus Trichoderma reesei. The gene carrying the blueprints for ovalbumin is inserted by modern biotechnological tools into the fungus which then produces and secretes the same protein that chickens produce. The ovalbumin protein is then separated from the cells, concentrated, and dried to create a final functional product,” says Dr. Emilia Nordlund from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
Cell-cultured products generally need more electricity than typical agricultural products, and therefore the type of energy source used affects the level of environmental impact. However, the amount of agricultural inputs needed for ovalbumin production by microbes – such as glucose – is generally substantially lower per kilogram of protein powder.
“According to our research, this means that the fungus-produced ovalbumin reduced land use requirements by almost 90 percent and greenhouse gases by 31–55 percent compared to the production of its chicken-based counterpart. In the future, when production is based on low carbon energy, precision fermentation has the potential to reduce the impact even by up to 72 percent,” says Doctoral Researcher Natasha Järviö from the University of Helsinki.
For the impact of water use on the environment, the results were less conclusive, showing a high degree of dependency on the assumed location of the ovalbumin production site. In general, the study shows the potential of the precision fermentation technology to increase the sustainability of protein production, which can be further increased by the use of low-carbon energy sources.
Reference:
“Ovalbumin production using Trichoderma reesei culture and low-carbon energy could mitigate the environmental impacts of chicken-egg-derived ovalbumin”
by Natasha Järviö, Tuure Parviainen, Netta-Leena Maljanen, Yumi Kobayashi, Lauri Kujanpää, Dilek Ercili-Cura, Christopher P. Landowski, Toni Ryynänen, Emilia Nordlund and Hanna L. Tuomisto, 16 December 2021, Nature Food.
DOI: 10.1038/s43016-021-00418-2
Yessir.
guess what? fat does not make you fat! sugar sure as hell does!
High Fructose Corn Syrup.............................
Navy too :(, but ours were frozen real eggs, the powdered shit is for when yer dying..
I am a rail and need to gain weight, I never cut fat from my diet
These people have clearly never taken an econ class in their lives
Please stop wasting taxpayer money on finding substitutes for food items the consumer finds perfectly satisfactory.
There is no market demand for these meat substitutes, why would a vegan want something that looks and tastes like meat?
why would a vegan want something that looks and tastes like meat?
Because they have mental issues, and I could give a fig, til they tell me what to eat!
Mr mylife, may I offer you a fake egg? or fake meat at a higher price?
We are trying to save the planet..
If you resist, we will call you names...
The lefties are convinced that cow farts are a major contributor to Globull Warming, so they're on a roll. Maybe chickens fart when they lay eggs, so we now need fake ones.
Those on a plant diet are more prone to develop intestinal gas.
Exactly. Somehow I doubt they can explain why eggs from chickens is not “sustainable”.
Are you sure they weren’t yellow crayons?😆😆
My chickens are plenty “sustainable”. And I will continue to have them, and their eggs. Seriously, if they try to take our food, isn’t that a clear justification for deadly force in defense? When will we ever stand up for ourselves?
What could be more sustainable than a chicken?
Domestic chickens are the world's most abundant bird species by far!
Crayons taste different.......................
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