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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @06:20AM
Bacon is crunchy and about 1/16 inch thick. Dulse I've had raw in the past, was closer to 1/64 inches thick. Even if frying it makes it crunchy, the difference in thickness means that the mouthfeel will never be the same. Give me bacon and give me death. Some pleasures are worth dying young for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @07:52AM
the difference in thickness means that the mouthfeel will never be the same
Well, it is patented.
How much genetic engineering did they have to do to warrant that?
Would just a bit more effort get it to grow thicker?
Develop a lamination process?
Use it as-is make a bacon sandwich that is 33 percent veggie?
Some pleasures are worth dying young for
What if it doesn't actually kill you but slows you down 80 percent due to clogged arteries?
(The voice of experience speaking here.
Maybe it wasn't bacon specifically, but I did some stuff wrong somewhere.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:23AM
Interesting. They patent a plant replacement for bacon, and shortly after the WHO finds bacon is dangerous. Coincidence?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @03:32AM
— http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc005.htm [inchem.org]