2019 has seen major fast food chains Burger King, McDonalds and KFC roll out new plant-based offerings internationally.
According to Barclays, alternative meats are currently worth $1.4 billion (£1.08 billion). This means fake, mock or meatless products make up 1% of the global meat industry and are projected to make up 10% of the industry by 2029.
As the world gobbles up plant-based food, a Californian start-up is developing another meat-alternative that isn’t crafted from lentils, soy, beans, or pea protein isolate. It’s made from air.
Bay Area-based company Air Protein is using carbon transformation techniques to create proteins to feed the growing population.
The technology has been developed by Kiverdi, a sustainable science company that specialises in pairing advanced biotechnology with carbon recycling to create food, clothing, and personal care items.
Kiverdi has drawn inspiration from NASA’s closed-loop carbon cycle concept which involves converting the carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts into protein during long-journey space missions.
The process, said to take ‘hours not months’, occurs in fermentation tanks supplied with carbon dioxide and various nutrients. The end result is a substance with an ‘amino acid profile comparable to meat protein’ that can be used in burgers, pastas, cereals and even beverages.
Population growth means farmers will need to increase food production by 70% with only a 5% land increase, according to The United Nation Food and Agricultural Foundation. As such, Air Protein is working to supply a much-needed resource in a form that’s more sustainable than plant-based meats.
‘The statistics are clear. Our current resources are under extreme strain as evidenced by the burning Amazon due to deforestation and steadily increasing droughts,’ said Air Protein CEO Dr. Lisa Dyson said in a statement.
‘We need to produce more food with a reduced dependency on land and water resources. Air-based meat addresses these resource issues and more.’
According to Kiverdi, the technology uses 10,000 times less land and 2,000 times less water than existing agricultural processes to produce similar proteins.
Lisa added: ‘The world is embracing plant-based meat and we believe air-based meat is the next evolution of the sustainably-produced food movement that will serve as one of the solutions to feeding a growing population without putting a strain on natural resources.’
Air-based meat will be entirely free from pesticides, herbicides, hormones or antibiotics, and is set to be purchasable next year. No word yet on how it will taste, but we’ll have our hot sauce ready.
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