Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Ask meat eaters and most would likely agree that one of the carnivorous delights non-meat-eaters are most missing out on is bacon. Salty, smoky, chewy, delectable on sandwiches, crumbled up in recipes, or eaten by hand—there’s really nothing like it.
Except now there is, according to startup MyForest Foods and its customers in New York and Massachusetts. The clincher? The vegetarian-friendly bacon substitute is made from mushroom roots.
Mushroom roots are technically called mycelium, which isn’t the sort of root you’d see attached to most plants or trees; rather, it’s a root-like structure of fungus composed of a mass of branching, thread-like strands called hyphae. The hyphae absorb nutrients from soil or another substrate so the fungus can grow.
[...] A batch of the mycelium MyForest Foods is using to make its bacon grows in 12 days. Last month the company announced the opening of a vertical farm near Albany, New York where it plans to grow around three million pounds of mycelium a year, enough for a million pounds of imitation bacon.
[...] 12 days after depositing mushroom cells on their wood chip substrate, the mycelia are ready to be “harvested”—they grow in blocks, which are run through slicers to yield strips the same size and shape as bacon. “We sort of trick the mushroom to form these, basically, sheets of mushroom flesh,” Bayer told Axios. “So rather than forming a mushroom, we get a 50-foot-long, 4-foot-wide, 2-inch-thick slab of mushroom meat.”
The strips get salt, sugar, coconut oil, beet juice, and liquid smoke added to them, and presto—they’re ready to be packaged and sold as MyBacon. Consumers can cook the bacon in a pan on the stove, just like the real thing, though possibly with more frequent flipping. [...]
[...] The company’s goal is to serve its meatless product to more than a million consumers by 2024, and not just vegetarians—they hope to entice carnivores to switch over too.
That may be a tall order, but even if mushroom bacon is half as delicious as the real thing, consumers will likely be willing to give it a shot—especially knowing that it’s easier on animals and on the planet.
I like mushrooms and I like bacon: two great tastes that taste good together?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by legont on Friday August 19 2022, @02:00AM (7 children)
I've nothing against mushrooms. Mind that I hate veggie "meat" made of carbs and fat. Having said that, why can't they market it as mushrooms? I'd take it any day, but I'll be always afraid of veggie shit.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hopdevil on Friday August 19 2022, @02:25AM (2 children)
The goal is to convince the meat eaters they should switch to veggie products.. by making imitation products of things they can't live without.
I agree, call it mushroom roots and eliminate the lies
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Opportunist on Friday August 19 2022, @08:59AM (1 child)
If you think tricking people into doing what you want them to do should work, you have no idea about psychology. If you trick people into doing something, rest assured they will go out of their way to do whatever you do NOT want them to do, simply out of spite, even if it is against their very own interests.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Friday August 19 2022, @12:15PM
Or we figure there is something so terrible about it that you'd never voluntarily choose it if you were fully informed. For this 'salt, sugar, coconut oil, beet juice, and liquid smoke added to them' means I have questions. How much sugar and salt, exactly? Is this refined sugar candy with some mushroom as highly processed food or just some seasoning added?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday August 19 2022, @05:04AM
Are they somehow not? Sounds like they're pretty straight-up marketing it as mushroom bacon. And why not? Mushrooms are awesome, bacon is awesome, and mushroom bacon sounds tastier than turkey bacon or tofu bacon to me.
I'll reserve judgment at to how it stacks up to pork bacon, but I could see it comparing quite well. After all pork has a very mild flavor, its contribution to bacon is mostly texture, fat, and the umami of caramelized protein. And mushrooms are champions of umami.
Really, I think it would come down to the texture. It sounded deliciously crispy in the video, if it actually crisps up like real bacon... well I would not mind putting factory-farmed bacon behind me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Friday August 19 2022, @12:05PM (1 child)
Lets turn everyone into a diabetic...
Remove all the proteins that most people do not get enough of and replace it with more processed carbs and fats that we get too much of.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday August 20 2022, @02:21AM
Yep. The infamous food pyramid from the government did exactly that.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Friday August 19 2022, @03:25PM
People have to know what to do with it, or they won't buy it. By marketing it as mushroom bacon, and putting it on the shelf next to regular bacon, they are hoping to get people to buy it as a substitute for bacon. If they marketed it as mushroom strips, and put it on the shelf next to the mushrooms, no one would ever buy any.
(Score: 2) by crm114 on Friday August 19 2022, @02:15AM (3 children)
Radiation makes some fungi grow faster:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-helps-fungi-grow/ [scientificamerican.com]
We have artificial bacon to make us happy while we deal with radiation across the globe.
Die sad, or die happy? I will choose bacon.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 19 2022, @05:09AM (2 children)
How is it any more artificial than pork bacon, turkey bacon, tofu bacon, etc.? (not that pork bacon isn't artificial - it's typically what, 90% salt, artificial seasonings and preservatives?)
Sounds like it's a slice of heavily seasoned mushroom coated in coconut oil.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday August 19 2022, @08:08AM (1 child)
"Sounds like it's a slice of heavily seasoned mushroom coated in coconut oil."
That sounds tasty too.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 19 2022, @03:15PM
Right? There's times where that might actually be an upgrade over pork.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2022, @03:15AM (1 child)
There are already some good Quorn products using mycoprotein. Just don't microwave a freezer burnt chiqin fillet if you don't want to start a fire.
Harvesting mycelium seems like it would be more efficient than harvesting mushrooms.
About the fungi bacon. It only has to be better than "turkey bacon" to have a place in this world.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday August 19 2022, @03:54PM
Quorn is my favourite meat-substitute, at least for chicken. I always have a couple boxes of chik'n nuggets in the freezer for a fast microwave snack; I tried to revert to real chicken but due to the nature of nuggets over processing I can't eat the cheapest chicken nuggets due to taste.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Friday August 19 2022, @03:19AM (3 children)
I have to say, the latest round of veggie substitutes are pretty close to "good enough" for me. My biggest complaint is the price. It's the price of steak for hamburger quality patties. They package it up like prime steak, too. Huge, wasteful, empty packages that scream "this is a premium product!" it's vegetable matter. It should be sold to me in tubes, not single patties. I don't want to pay for all that air. If real hamburger is half the price(sometimes less), I'll just keep buying hamburger.
You want to save the planet, make it affordable.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2022, @03:29AM (1 child)
It's a chicken and egg problem.
New companies making meatless products have to scale up production to lower costs, but they have to initially target the wealthier shoppers who are more likely to buy it in the first place.
The problem will be solved as many of these companies get acquired or go bankrupt, and giants like Cargill, Tyson, and Walmart will dominate the market with lower priced products.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday August 19 2022, @12:39PM
I don't think it's just that. I don't buy the cheapest milk, but still the vegan milk replacements cost about twice of what I pay. If it were just the size of the company, it should be at the same level as small, regional milk producers. Indeed, cheaper, since the milk farmers also have to pay for the food for their cows.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 19 2022, @03:39PM
So much of it is in what you're used to. You can eat turkey bacon all the time and it's pretty good, until you put it side by side with a piece of traditional pork bacon. You can eat that thin sliced microwave precooked pork bacon and it's pretty good, until you put it side by side with a slice of thick market cut bacon freshly fried to optimal crispness in an iron skillet over a gas flame...
100 years in the future, people will be eating stuff that's absolutely nasty to our pallets today, but they'll be used to it and it will "taste great" to them, just like the Amazon tribes that eat flame crisped grubs pulled from rotting deadwood today - sprinkle on a little salt and they're wonderful - if that's what you're used to.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by darkfeline on Friday August 19 2022, @04:13AM (2 children)
> salt, sugar, coconut oil, beet juice, and liquid smoke
So basically a heavily processed and flavored snack. Bacon isn't an especially healthy food, but they've certainly surpassed bacon in that regard.
I suppose someone should also point out that mushroom allergies are quite common, and those allergies often develop with repeated, significant exposure (those allergies are also shared with certain antibiotic allergies, e.g., neomycin (antibiotics produced by bacteria/fungi, naturally)).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Touché) by FatPhil on Friday August 19 2022, @07:02AM (1 child)
> So basically a heavily processed and flavored snack.
Sounds like a craft beer.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 19 2022, @11:27AM
When your only tool is a beer stein, every problem looks like an untapped keg.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday August 19 2022, @11:59AM (3 children)
Half as delicious might be enough to get me to try it.
However, half as good would NEVER get me to give up the real thing.
mmmmmmmm, bacon.... *drool* *drool*
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 19 2022, @03:42PM (2 children)
The best bacon will give you heart disease and shave 20 years off your life, as compared with the "half as good" stuff.... Personally, I'd rather live 60 years enjoying life than 80 constantly worrying about what might not be good for me.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by optotronic on Saturday August 20 2022, @02:46AM (1 child)
I'd rather live 30 more years "worrying about what might not be good for me" than 20 more years dealing with the health and financial consequences of clearly poor decisions.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 20 2022, @12:06PM
Well yeah, the Who summed it up nicely: "I hope I die before I get old." Old isn't a particular number of years, it's a state of being generally characterized by limited capabilities.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday August 19 2022, @06:21PM (1 child)
If you're going to grow mushrooms, I can think of a better use for them than making (*shudder*) fake bacon.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 20 2022, @12:38AM
Agreed. How 'bout some bacon and eggs and hash browns, with some onions, peppers, garlic, and mushrooms stirred in as the hash browns fry in bacon fat?
No, I'll pass on the refried beans. If the cook couldn't get them right the first time, I'm not interested.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2022, @06:52PM
http://www.extremescience.com/biggest-living-thing.htm [extremescience.com]
(Score: 1) by Fuzzums on Saturday August 20 2022, @12:09PM
I'm so done with the names of veggieproducts. Vegetarian meat. No. Just no. Come up with a new name, because it's a new procuct.
Perhaps it's just better to start calling them all Not%1. NotChicken. NotBacon. At least it's clear what it is.