Instead, the team pivoted to producing heme-binding proteins in yeast
It's cool that they figured out the most important factor they needed for getting the right flavor, especially under just 2 years.
11 Matching Annotations
- Aug 2020
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www.asbmb.org www.asbmb.org
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Chemists working to recreate beef flavors have long focused on two major types of reactions that occur when a piece of meat hits a hot grill: lipid oxidation and Maillard reactions
I've learned of Lipid Oxidation before but not Maillard reactions. Interesting!
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But the most startling team member is Brown’s daughter, Ariel Klapholz–Brown, who studied film in college before starting as an early employee in the labs of the company that would become Impossible Foods. Today she’s a senior research associate on Impossible Foods’ materials and texture team
Talk about a crazy career change. Amazing!
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Currently, alfalfa is mostly grown for animal feed. Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown says he hopes that leaves from alfalfa and similar crops can one day be used to isolate protein, the way wheat and soy are today.
This is such a niche market...this "one day" might take a long time. It would need a lot and lot of convincing and money for big companies to switch their ingredients. I like the optimism though
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when you know where you want to go, but there’s no road map, and you have to figure out how to get there.
Science in a nutshell.
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more of the food industry is beginning to adopt plant-based protein production. This year, Tyson Foods, the largest meat company in the United States, appointed a vice president for alternative proteins and sustainability and announced a new brand that’s set to launch this fall. Even legacy companies like Morningstar Farms, which has been making plant-based protein foods for 40 years, have introduced new faux meats that seek to compete more successfully against Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.
Well good thing Impossible Foods started early, thus they got a head start in marketing.
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In July, the company declared an end to the shortage and announced its plans to open a second production plant in Chicago
Super impressive.
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Brown told The New York Times that the company’s efforts to scale up production had been “like changing the tires while driving down the freeway.”
Understandable. It's a completely new market. It's impressive that the company got a partnership with Burger King.
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But replace the gluconate with a heme protein, and that unappetizing odor is replaced with smells that evoke chicken broth, burnt mushrooms and bread.
I wonder how long it took to figure this out. Like how many trials and error, amount of time etc.
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Maillard reactions, which occur between sugars and amino groups, produce a range of compounds that are important for generating flavor in many types of cooking.
I think that's really cool that they show a diagram of the different molecular structures of flavor. I never really pictured in my head that organic structures had flavor to them, so this really broaden my mindset a bit.
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Impossible Foods explicitly states that its mission is to eliminate all animals from the food production system by 2035.
That's only 15 years from now. Very bold statement. I don't think that's going to happen that soon.
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