Yeast from fat, protein from sugar: Russians were shown what they would eat

“The time has come for the domestication of microorganisms”

In the last century, faced with impending famine, humanity came up with a green revolution: new technologies in agricultural production, fertilizers, and mechanization helped increase production.

But now we have to reap its consequences – environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity, etc.

The time has come for a new green revolution, scientists say. Experts spoke at a scientific conference about what we will eat in the coming years.

By 2050, the world’s population will increase by another 2 billion – and all of them will have to be fed with something. At the same time, today at least 800 million people in the world are hungry.

As market expert Sergei Ivanov says, today the world does not have enough fertile soil and fresh water to produce enough food. Therefore, scientists are actively searching for new ways to produce food.

The main food trends of the future are personalized nutrition, the active use of microorganisms and the widespread use of biotechnology. “Humanity fed itself first by domesticating cereals, then by domesticating animals, and today the time has come for the domestication of microorganisms,” says Sergei Ivanov.

Thus, scientists are actively working on the creation of cellular meat, synthetic fats, and proteins.

For example, in North America, scientists came up with a startup: they produce fats from microorganisms. It turned out that there are types of yeast cultures that produce fats along with proteins. So from yeast you can make equivalents of cocoa butter, sunflower oil, without growing entire plantations of palm trees, sunflowers or cocoa beans.

In addition to this, today there are 8 types of sources for obtaining synthetic proteins. And one of the most unobvious ones is sugar. By the way, sugar appeared in our diet only some 200 years ago, and today it occupies up to 20% of food volumes. It has become a favorite ingredient of food technologists because it is a cheap filler, an excellent improver, a preservative, and also a source of calories. In Africa, 30 years ago, a protein was discovered that is up to 10 thousand times sweeter than sugar. The sweet protein genome (brazelin, monelin) is found in fruits that grow in the equatorial zone. Our biotechnologists have already learned to synthesize it and cultivate it in yeast. As Ekaterina Zhuravleva, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says, sweet proteins are one of the innovative products, and its widespread use in the food industry will, first of all, help patients with diabetes, and, in addition, will become the basis for a healthy diet for the population in in general. In addition, Ekaterina Zhuravleva talks about the appearance in the near future of test tube meat – it can be grown from both plants and animal fibers in a bioreactor. And it will be a pure product, without growth hormones, antibiotics and veterinary drugs. By the way, 60% of diseases over the past 40 years have developed in humans due to eating meat.

From the food of the future, experts also highlighted cellular nutrition and new probiotics, which will improve metabolism, including in the elderly: and then at 80 years old a person will feel like he was 30 years old.