First there was animal meat. Then there was plant-based meat. Now a Berkeley company plans to sell air-based meat.
That’s right. A meat alternative, conjured out of thin air.
The company, Air Protein, created what its CEO Lisa Dyson believes is the first air-based meat in the world last month. But other companies are using similar methods to create protein, including Sunnyvale’s NovoNutrients and Finnish startup Solar Foods. They’re part of a nascent, futuristic food category known as microbial fermentation, according to Liz Specht, a science expert with plant-based food advocacy group the Good Food Institute.
“There’s been so little exploration of that sector so far,” she said.
The basic thing these companies do is to feed molecules in the air to microorganisms, which convert the carbon dioxide into protein. Dyson described Air Protein’s technology as a “probiotic production process” that’s similar to brewing beer or making yogurt but not quite the same as fermentation. She relies on microbes called hydrogenotrophs, which can convert carbon dioxide into protein. It comes out as a flavorless powder than can be reconstituted into familiar-looking and tasting foods.
It’s one way that startups are searching for ways to grow foods that use less land, water and other resources as the United Nations predicts that the planet’s population will balloon to 10 billion by 2050. The plant-based meat industry is rapidly growing, and vertical farms are opening around the world. But air-based protein might be even more sustainable, said Dyson.
“The reason why we’re excited about commercializing food products with this is because of all the challenges we’re facing with arable land,” Dyson said, citing deforestation in the Amazon to make room for cattle farming. She believes Air Protein’s process uses 1,000 times less land and water than other protein sources like soybeans.
Finding a use for carbon dioxide, a necessary byproduct of combustion at any energy facility, makes the process a “double win,” Specht said.
Other companies use a similar process. NovoNutrients uses gas-based fermentation, relying on a variety of microbes, hydrogen and carbon dioxide to create a protein-rich meal that the company plans to feed to fish.
Compared to growing crops or raising animals, these processes are fast, said Specht.
“You can see cells double in as short as 20 minutes and up to a few hours,” she said. “That’s much quicker than animal cells divide for cultivated meat or a growing season in the field.”
Dyson started Air Protein earlier this year as a protein-focused spin-off from her other company, Kiverdi, which works on other forms of carbon transformation. Originally, she was inspired by old NASA research from the 1960s that suggested hydrogenotrophs could sustain life abroad a spacecraft. She realized Earth, with its limited resources and need to recycle carbon, is kind of like a spaceship.
The air-based protein she creates looks like a flour and carries a neutral flavor, she said. She declined to elaborate on how Air Protein turns the flour into meat-like products that evoke chicken or beef.
Dyson said the protein flour could also be turned into protein-enriched pastas, cereals, bars and shakes down the line. Next year she’ll announce products and plans for distribution.
NovoNutrients, meanwhile, is tackling depleting resources through aquaculture.
“The aquaculture industry demands billions of small fish be caught and ground up and fed to the fish we like to eat. It’s not sustainable,” said Christopher Oakes, a vice president with the company. “We can tell people not to go fishing, but a better way to do it is provide high-quality alternatives.”
NovoNutrients formed in 2017, branching off from Oakbio, which develops biofuels and biodegradable plastics from captured carbon. The company plans to start selling small samples of meal to feed farmed fish in 2020, but it likely won’t reach commercial scale for another three years or so. It eventually hopes to collect carbon dioxide from industrial waste such as from energy plants, though Oakes said gas fermentation on such a large scale has never been done before.
In the future, NovoNutrients could supply feed for other animals and partner with plant-based food companies interested in other proteins. That collaboration — and all of the other possibilities that could come with microbial fermentation — excites Specht.
“There are potentially a lot of high-value ingredients, functional proteins or flavoring molecules that you could identify and cultivate easily that we aren’t even aware of yet,” she said.
Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker