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from the I-can't-believe-it's-not-bacon dept.
El Reg reports
Months before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared bacon a carcinogen, American boffins may have found a solution: algae that tastes just like bacon, but without the bad bits the Doctors at WHO say could cause your untimely demise.
The eukaryote[1] in question is called Dulse (Palmaria sp.) and, as explained Oregon State University, is already in demand as a tasty addition to various recipes. Boffins at the University had been experimenting with a new strain of the plant designed to boost growth of abalone, a delicious and expensive shellfish. Results were good: abalone grew faster on a diet of modified Dulse than they did on other foodstuffs.
And then one of those things happened that is supposed to happen at Universities: folks from the business school met folks from Marine Science Center and asked if they were working on anything that might be a good project for students.
Thus did Dulse attain the status of a "specialty crop" at Oregon's Food Innovation Center. From that collaboration some of the algae, which apparently resembles "translucent red lettuce", found its way into a frying pan wielded by Chris Langdon, a professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at OSU.
"When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it's a pretty strong bacon flavor", Langdon says.
Those among you who, on WHO's advice, have stopped eating bacon can't start planning a hangover in anticipation of a virtuously restorative fry-up because Dulce production isn't exactly happening in bulk. It's not hard to imagine that will change after WHO's bacon-killer: OSU announced its find in July and now has a potential market it could only dream of at the time.
[1] A eukaryote is any organism whose cells contain a nucleus and other organelles enclosed within membranes.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @05:21AM
Those people eating the Eskimo diet tend to have lives 10 to 15 years shorter than other people living in those areas.
If you eat a grain and a legume, you get all the amino acids you need to build proteins--no animal products needed.
The only reason you might need animal products is to get Vitamin B12.
...and, a long time ago, smart guys figured out how to put B12 in a pill.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Cowherd on Wednesday November 04 2015, @06:09AM
You don't even need a pill. Fortified nutritional yeast has all the vitamin-B that's missing in a plant-based diet.
Humans do not need meat. In fact the healthiest cultures consume very little meat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:08AM
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 04 2015, @04:38PM
I [harvard.edu] won't [livescience.com] make [npr.org] any [washingtonpost.com] value [sciencemag.org] judgements [livescience.com].
Just sayin'.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:11PM
By that logic, cats (obligate carnivores) should be the dominant species on the planet.
Hat tip here to Danny John-Jules for his portrayal of The Cat.
...and to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for the creation of that wonderful character.
"Mine. Mine. Mine."
"Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish."
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:39PM
Hat tip here to Danny John-Jules for his portrayal of The Cat.
...and to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for the creation of that wonderful character.
"Mine. Mine. Mine."
"Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish. Fish."
On that we can certainly agree even if you are a smeghead, Gewg. :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:00PM
You need a bit more than just adding legumes to the rest of the vegetables. People who go totally vegetarian need to be very careful, or they'll become sick. And I mean careful about their diet. E.g., in addition to legumes and other vegetables, you need mushrooms. (In response to another post, yeah, fortified nutritional yeast would work, but so would textured rice protein...that someone else carefully balanced for you.)
That said, in a modern civilization it isn't that difficult, and you don't find many vegetarian in pre-industrial cultures EXCEPT ones where there is a long history of carefully balancing the diets. E.g., the Chinese crusine contains many dishes specifically designed to fit the needs of Buddhist monks. And those tend to include things like black fungus, nuts, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, etc. Things that it wouldn't normally occur to someone to search out. (I'm sure Indian crusine has similar dishes, but I haven't encountered much vegetarian Indian crusine. Probably because the Hindus allow milk in their diet [and I think mutton], so they don't have as creative an approach to vegetarianism as do the Chinese.)
Tofu is a great help in vegetarian diets, but isn't a solution in and of itself, only a component of a solution.
P.S.: I'm not a vegetarian, but I have a sister who is. And I've looked into it a couple of times.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.