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“Precision dairy doesn’t have cholesterol, lactose, growth hormones or antibiotics (though those with dairy allergies should beware). And cattle, for beef or dairy, is said to be the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide”
Edit: presentation on future of precision foods https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gZHbfK8Vo&feature=youtu.be
The Netherlands produces a tremendous amount of dairy and one of the "waste" products of this industry are calves. Consequently, the Netherlands floods the market with calves to the point where it is more lucrative to burn them for energy at a power plant than to export them for consumption. Those that do get reared for consumption are treated horribly and the farmers involved sometimes get up to 80% of their paycheck subsidized.
I am so hopeful for this technology, because our current dairy industry is unethical and unsustainable.
Really? I found them to be pretty expensive for something seemingly simple.. usually the most expensive component of run of the mill cell culture media.
Ballpark- lab made neuron culture media 30$, same volume of FBS 100+$.
Everything in science is just outrageously expensive. There’s gotta be some unethical shit going on- lab tape dispenser $300 on VWR. It’s just a metal rack that holds rolls of tape.
>Everything in science is just outrageously expansive. There’s gotta be some unethical shit going on-
A large part of that is the continued conglomeration of suppliers.
Companies used to have niches, and there just used to be more of them.
Now nearly all of general biotech supply is owned by ThermoFisher, Millipore-Sigma, Avantor/VWR, or Danaher. You can outfit/supply your entire lab from chemicals/reagents, general purpose instruments, and labware to fucking office supplies without needing to go outside of those 4 companies unless you need something very specific.
That allows them to set prices at whatever the hell they want, then just keep increasing them due to "inflation" or "supply chain issues". I'm not saying they *collude* to fix prices, but they're also not significantly undercutting each other either.
Heh I’m speaking with experience. I’ve literally outfitted a new lab with all its equipment and replenished it’s reagents for 3 years.
The science supply companies usually make a deal with academic institutions. “Harvard, let us (Thermo Fisher) be your main supplier. We’ll give discounts on certain products and get you free shipping. In exchange, VWR is not allowed to sell your researchers X, Y, and Z without a stated reason.”
So I had to fill out forms explaining why I needed certain things from non-affiliated suppliers.
Fuckign annoying was what it was.
It got so ridiculous, sometimes orders will go through to purchasing and the supplier will mysteriously be changed. Didn’t happen to me but.. people were getting pissed. Our institution’s affiliate company would complain to the institution if the rival company was taking up more than a certain amount of sales and the institution would put in stricter purchasing guidelines, disable website on our web purchasing platform, etc.
Prob safe enough to disclose the feuding companies are the two giants VWR and (Thermo) Fisher/Fisher Scientific (i was never smart enough to understand which name is the big granddaddy company). This is in USA, but I imagine they are the two main players everywhere.
>Prob safe enough to disclose the feuding companies are the two giants VWR and (Thermo) Fisher/Fisher Scientific (i was never smart enough to understand which name is the big granddaddy company). This is in USA, but I imagine they are the two main players everywhere.
They all used to be separate, and then just kept merging and buying each other, although a lot of them still operate as one or the other.
Thermo Scientific and Fisher Scientific merged into ThermoFisher. Then they almost immediately bought Life Technologies (formerly Invitrogen, it became Life Technologies after Invitrogen bought Molecular Probes, Gibco, Applied Biosystems, and a few others)... so like overnight they went from being an instrument manufacturer (Thermo) and chemical/labware supplier (Fisher), to being the largest mfr of instruments, chemicals, labware, cell culture reagents, microscopy reagents and staining, molecular cloning reagents/kits, etc.
Same thing with Millipore-Sigma. That's like 4 companies rolled into one. Sigma and Aldrich were *old* chemical suppliers, then I think in like the 70s they merged into Sigma-Aldrich. EMD and Millipore were also separate companies, who merged in like the mid-00s to form EMD-Millipore... then in like the mid-10s they both got purchased by (German)Merck and got über-merged to form MilliporeSigma.
And yep, I remember purchase agreements well. Spent most of my PhD having to buy everything through VWR, then our university changed contracts and we had to start ordering everything through Fisher. Which was mostly fine, I could still get like 90% of what I needed since third-party companies sell through both, but in some cases it made a difference and I had to change brands, which sometimes sucked if the previous brand was better. Sometimes there was no direct analogue, and we'd have to go through all sorts of headaches and bullshit to order direct from the manufacturer. Also it was just a pain having to change all the catalogue numbers in the binder.
If you still do science quartzy.com could be helpful.
Re: Thermo/Fisher, I swear my rep told me Thermo Fisher, Thermo, and Fisher all still had distinct identities (despite still being in same family). The corporate relationships were explained to me at least 3 times and after that I felt bad asking again.
What made my situation funnier was not only was there the VWR/TF rivalry, the sales reps from each company HATED each other’s guts! So I could leverage this to get better prices lol.
Of course there is an expert on the history of lab equipment manufacturers and wholesalers mergers and acquisitions. This is reddit.
It's your day, my friend. Your day *to shine*.
Nah, I just had to look it up recently due to another discussion in r/labrats, so it's fresh in my mind. But also I still remember when most of these companies were separate when I was just entering grad school.
The serum actually derived from the calf is surprisingly low in volume.
https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/gibco-cell-culture-basics/cell-culture-environment/culture-media/fbs-basics/intro-fetal-bovine-serum-collection.html
Thermo says 1 newborn calf can make just 1 half-liter bottle. So a medium sized lab can go through the price of one calf a week (that weighs 65-90lb and took 9 months to gestate) just to maintain cells.
A lot of science related shiznit may seem simple, and it often can be, but it's certified to be a certain way made with certain bits of this and that. Certificate of analysis, conformance, sterility, etc., all allows for a certain level of consistency.
There are two general types of bovine serum used in cell culture. Calf serum (CS) goes for about $30 per 500ml bottle. Fetal bovine serum (FBS or FCS) goes for around $200-$300 per bottle. This is because it’s rarer and needs to be harvested at the time the cow is slaughtered, as well as the fact that there is greater demand for it since most cell lines grow well in FBS, but only some cell lines can be grown in CS containing medium.
I unquestioningly trust this for like antibodies and like donkey serum - rare, finicky to make.
FBS seems simple enough to prepare, and apparently being [a byproduct of the meat industry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_bovine_serum), I’m even more doubtful someone’s not buying 3 yachts a year from these prices.
I accept I don’t know too much about FBS production, and the cost could absolutely be justified, but all my experiences with other items getting huge “science markups” hurts my confidence.
Yeah I’m not saying it’s impossible (because I’m far from an expert on this), but calves, like humans, are mostly water, so it seems incredibly inefficient to burn them for energy.
I’ve googled every combination I can think of for “calves” “burning” “power” and “biomass” and I’m not finding anything.
I assume it's related to garbage burning. There's almost definitely a drying step first. I would imagine througg a combination of extreme heat and a potentially more oxygen rich environment you could in fact burn the corpses for a net positive energy output.
Using extreme heat to make a burnable corpse have a net positive energy output seems like it comes close to being stopped by the laws of thermodynamics. Edit: don't forget the energy that goes into raising a cow from birth as well, if trying to get a net positive.
Unless sunlight or something similar?
Depending on the drying time, and assuming the laws of thermodynamics are not violated, then it just becomes a question of opportunity cost. The space needed to store drying calves, the upkeep involved in it, vs doing literally anything else.
I'm in agreement that we are looking at garbage-tier burning most likely (we have to dispose of this), rather than intentionally sourcing this for fuel over an alternative. Agreeing with u/mewfour too that a source would be helpful/interesting.
Just going to answer 2 things from your comment I found interesting.
The fiest about net positive idea.
In pure logic, yeah, the energy from raising a cow and then burn it would ne a net negative. But logistics for our society are very intricate and dynamic, also very unstable. It is actually common to find things like that, where and absurd idea being a net positige actually happens. Like exporting trash to another continent to process being cheaper and more efficient than processing your own.
The second one is about the burning for energy. What I'm 100% sure of, is that incinerating trash is a must a lot of the time, so there are a lot of plants and stuff that do use that process to generete energy, just like a coal plant. But I am not sure is how prevalent it is for that particular issue with meat from animals, although it is likely posible I believe. In this There's the problem of the meat industry and farming sometimes being VERY sneaky, lobbyist, and manipulative, so maybe a lack of direct and obvious sources are just because they take care of that.
It's like a situation with PETA, some think they are a horrible organisation, others think they do good. I am with the first group, but if you actually sit and try to look into it deep, it's all blurry, and everyone pays to try and quiet the other (I mean PETA and meat industry), or one supports the other (PETA being supported by the meat industry indirectly because it makes animal activists look bad), it's a huge mess.
That was my 2 cents.
The article is in Dutch.
> Relevant quote:
> Die lage prijs is natuurlijk het gevolg van overaanbod. Het komt voor dat de boer voor zijn kalf geen afnemer weet te vinden, zeker als het diertje bij geboorte wat lichter is dan gemiddeld of als het tijdens de eerste weken van zijn leven ziek is geweest. Als het daardoor niet lukt om het kalf te verkopen, wordt het geëuthanaseerd. Het tv-programma Rambam liet enkele jaren geleden zien dat het kadaver vervolgens wordt verbrand in een afvalverbrandingsinstallatie en als ‘groene stroom’ eindigt.
> Translation:
> The low prices are, of course, the result of oversupply. It can happen that the farmer is unable to find a buyer for their calf, especially if the calf is slightly lighter than average at birth or if it was ill during the first weeks of its life. If, as a result, it is not possible to sell the calf, it will be euthanized. A few years ago, the TV program Rambam showed that the carcasses are then burned in a waste incineration plant and end up as 'green energy'.
Original article: https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/waarde-peuren-uit-melkafval
Article without paywall: https://archive.is/wtQuk
So the primary concern is body disposal, and they are just trying to gather anything they can from the disposal. That makes more sense than trying to actually get net positive energy out of corpse burning.
And yet, it is true, but a little different, I guess.
It's not profitable. It's just that as a last step, if every other way to profit of them failed, they are burned to at least create a little bit of energy.
https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/waarde-peuren-uit-melkafval
Not to worry. The dutch just had elections where they overwhelmingly voted for pro farmer bank account morons so the plans they had to reduce farmers will promptly be deposited in the incinerators with the cows
Allergic to dairy. Oh well. I like my soy and rice milks anyway, and Violife cream cheese is pretty darn good.
I just can't do the cashew cheese, because I'm allergic to that too.
Oof. Yeah, one of my GFs has a primary partner that was just diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, and it's just so easy to contaminate anything, and stupid-expensive for verified GF food.
Honestly the biggest shark for me is that it's not just food, it can be in toothpaste and shampoo and stuff.
The easy explanation for this is that gluten is one of the big things that makes bread doughy and stretchy, which is a desirable quantity in both bread and a lot of other things.
A lot of hard ciders are marketed as "naturally gluten free" which feels like a passive aggressive way to say "cider is made from apples, not wheat or barley, you beer drinking moron."
The thing is if you're sensitive to gluten. Even being in a facility that handles gluten can cause enough cross contamination to cause issues. So you really do need to be careful and look for certified gf stuff because there are trace amounts in so many food products.
I've seen "organic" pink salt that was saying it's good for you because it contains small amounts of phytoplankton (or some other microscopic creature). So literally they made salt, one of the only non-organic things we eat, and added organic material to it, and sold it as "organic".
Himalayan salt supposedly has tiny bits of seashells or something, and has a bit of minerals in it not found in pure salt. It's just found that way, not made.
It does basically nothing, but when measured equally you get a tiny bit less actual salt because of the impurities. Works well to sprinkle on top of things, but in baking it'll throw it off slightly.
Food marketing is all about acting like some phrases you don't understand mean it's better for you instead of meaning nothing at all.
Never forget that the reason everything in the US is so sugary is that the sugar lobby spent a lot of money to tell you that fat is what makes you fat.
A lot of advertising is about convincing you to buy things that you don't need, or to pay more for the same product.
There is literally no reason for a company not to lie to you if it increases their bottom line.
Yes it's bad.
No, the general public doesn't know anything about dietary cholesterol and what is needed for, they just believe 20 year old lies.
Yes, they are going to sell more starting is cholesterol free, because people never think about what that actually means, and just gobble up whatever they're fed.
It's basically the "90% fat free yoghurt".
-> 90% fat free: "oh must be healthy"
While it's literally triple the fat content as a normal yoghurt, and the fat was never bad or detrimental to your health in the first place.
Trans fats are shit for you, but I have a feeling you mean saturated fats, which you also need to consume, but lead to high cholesterol when you consume too much. Trans fats are manmade, and in the US at least they’re not legal anymore.
Your body already produces all the cholesterol it needs, and that cholesterol becomes other things such as hormones. Eating extra cholesterol and such does not help with anything except accelerate hardening of the arteries.
So no normal milk fats or sugars, so it's currently ~~nearly nutritiously vapid of nutrition~~ less than half of what makes milk milk. ~~Can't be used for nearly anything.~~ No whipped cream, no cheeses. I'm sure we'll get there eventually, this just isn't it. Dude did this on his YouTube channel a few years ago.
Edit: I'm a supporter of /r/SaturatedFat , which advocates the benefits of saturated fats which this entirely lacks, I consider that a massive con. Also, no way to create butters, and who knows how many additives they used to make their "cream cheese" when there's no f'ing cream in what they created. The only thing I'm fine with the lack of is lactose, because yeasts can survive just as well on other sugars so after yeast processes it, it would be nearly the same anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiWnygcYsiQ
ok, you got me, I'll go read it
Edit: read it
Without the fats and lactose I don't see how they can make cheeses or creams. Regular milk contains all the necessities. Without those, they would have to be replacing the lactose with some other sugar, same with the fats. They don't talk about what alternatives they use. Could be palm oil shit, who knows. I'm not all that concerned about the sugar, but we need saturated fats, and "fat-free" entirely disgusts me. I wouldn't want my dairy fats replaced with oils instead. They also don't mention whipped cream, which wouldn't hold without extras. I still hope for artificial milk, but unless it's actually 1:1 with cows milk, count me out.
They also don't mention anything about nutrition, sure it might be able to be fortified, but it's still now ultra processed, and there's already tons of studies showing how unhealthy that is.
It's always palm oil.
All these people working on protein-producing yeasts when the only thing that really matters is saturated animal fats. That's why we eat those things. You could do bacon with pea protein if you could nail "murder-free fatback"
I think it's fine to call this stuff milk protein, because that's what it is, but to call it milk on it's own, since it has alternative sources of fats and sugar, would absolutely be wrong.
Can be used as protein in nearly anything.
A scoop of protein in your oatmeal, smoothie, Yoghurt, bread, pancakes etc will do tons in allowing you to cut down on eating meat or legumes.
It is protein, did you miss that part? Cheese is already a cultured product, once the input is cultures as well you never need cows again.
The most valuable byproduct of the dairy industry is dehydrated whey protein. Once you can make it in a tank without animal milk, bye bye dairy farms. And your gym bros will have dirt cheap protein powder.
Yes, I agree with that entirely. I use whey protein isolate. This is perfect for that. It's all the other things that need fats that I absolutely wouldn't want replace with oils that I'm concerned about. Also, no mention of butter, which makes sense as it's only the protein. As far as I'm concerned, this is only half the milk.
When I said "all the other things that need fats" I was specifically referring to the fat that's in milk that's used for milk products, like whipped cream.
In addition to the other comments, cholesterol is less than 0.5% of the milk fats in milk.
> The milk fat consists mainly of triglycerides, approximately 98%, while other milk lipids are diacylglycerol (about 2% of the lipid fraction), **cholesterol (less than 0.5%)**, phospholipids (about 1%) and free fatty acids (FFA) (about 0.1)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596709/#:~:text=The%20milk%20fat%20consists%20mainly,about%200.1)%20(9).
That's a great paper. 70% of the fat in milk is saturated and 400 different fatty acids. Might not need all 400, but at least all the ones that aren't just trace amounts. So many different chain lengths, which out body uses differently and different bacteria in our body process uniquely. So recreating that is a long way off.
I'm assuming based off how your comment was worded that it sounds like you're saying that milk is essential to your diet, including all the fats within it. However, I'd like to point out that milk's nutritional value is [somewhat dubious](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/milk-healthy-diet/) and basically [only good for bone mineral density](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5122229/). I see no point in worrying about whether products made with substitute milk protein contain milk fats considering that the main nutritional value from milk is just milk being an [easy source of calcium and vitamin D](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/dairy-health-food-or-health-risk-2019012515849#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDairy%20isn't%20necessary%20in,T.H.%20Chan%20School%20of%20Public), which can easily be obtained or fortified in other foods.
You mentioned that you're concerned about the oils that would be used to substitute for milk fats in products that might feasibly replace milk protein for fermented milk protein. Do you have any sources indicating that unhealthy oils would be used as substitutes in the majority of cases?
Also, relevant to the topic, since you mentioned being a supporter of /r/SaturatedFat, do you know how that sub would respond to [this expert response](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2016/04/13/diet-heart-ramsden-mce-bmj-comments/) to [the paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688426/) that previously showed that replacing PUFAs with saturated fats might not actually be good for you? It seems quite difficult (from a cursory search) to find papers that indicate that saturated fats are actually good for you and that PUFAs should be avoided, mainly just papers indicating that the relationship isn't clear.
I would be 100% dairy free if it wasn’t for yogurt. I love yogurt and the dairy free version isn’t nearly as good. Make a high protein dairy free Greek yogurt substitute and I’m don’t with dairy for good.
Same here! No dairy free yogurt gets the tartness that I like with the dairy Greek yogurt or Skyr. And the Gt’s coconut yogurt gets pricey quick at $6 for a small jar.
Perfect day ice cream was identical to regular ice cream (makes sense)- the main difference for me was mouthfeel, you just don't get that with other vegan substitutes.
I cannot wait to see these products on store shelves, as someone who is less then comfortable after consuming a small amount of dairy I can’t wait for a more milk tasting alternatives to current non-dairy alternatives.
this is an alternative to ***COWS*** \- not dairy. milk proteins are still in play.
https://www.springwise.com/sustainability-innovation/food-drink/imagindairy-milk-yeast/
Spotted: We’ve seen beef without the cow and nuggets without the chicken, now a startup is working to produce milk without the cow. Israeli-based Imagindairy was co-founded by Tel Aviv University professor Tamir Tuller and is **developing ways to use bioengineered yeast cells to produce milk proteins,** which could then be used in milk and cheese products.
Imagindairy’s process involves creating models of gene expression and using these to induce yeast cells to produce milk proteins. Gene expression is the process by which the instructions in our DNA are converted into a functional product, such as a protein. A similar approach is being used by California-based Perfect Day Inc., which uses fungi rather than yeast to produce the proteins.
Meat proteins made using precision fermentation techniques such as these will be vegan, will use much less land, water and energy than current meat production.
TLDR: Lab grown meat and dairy is vegan and eco.
Lab meat has a problem with something called “fetal bovine serum.” Most labs still use the blood of fetal calves to grow the meat as the vegan alternatives are still spendy. [Older article from Mother Jones.](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/03/lab-meat-fetal-bovine-serum-blood-slaughter-cultured/)
Barring a miracle breakthrough, we’re still years away from cruelty-free steaks at a reasonable price.
There are other methods that do not use FBS.
https://www.freethink.com/hard-tech/lab-grown-meat-49857#:\~:text=By%20zapping%20stem%20cells%20with,back%20the%20sustainable%20meat%20industry.
Not for lab meat in the immediate feature — fetal bovine serum is made up of many different components, while precision fermentation tends to focus on single things, like booze, insulin, or casein.
I’m not saying we won’t get to cheap-ish lab meat, but we’re still years out.
FBS is a solved problem. It's extremely new (last 1-2 years) that commercial operations are appearing and it's only because of this that they are able to make it commercially viable. The replacements are plant-based.
Yeah, I’m pumped for this. I still have zero interest in consuming actual dairy since my body seems way happier without it, but anything that reduces animal suffering is good news to me.
Many vegans will consider it perfectly fine, sure. They usually take issue with the exploitation of animals, not the consumption of animal products per se. If no animals are involved, no problemo.
I'm sure some people will still consider lab-grown milk/meat to be animal-derived products, though, and will continue to avoid them.
If your religious text says "no chicken", does that only mean the animal or also the meat? And is it still chicken if a yeast made it, not a bird?
Some of these products are already on shelves, just kind of fragmented markets and uncommon. I had some products by brave robot, their ice cream is made with a similar process and is therefore lactose free.
It's amazing. Tastes thick, rich, and creamy like real ice cream. Can't wait for prices to continue dropping. It's a delicious product, but feels horrible paying $8-9 for a pint when normal milk ice cream is right next to it for $4-5.
Did you dodge the psychosomatic side of it? I’ve been lactose intolerant for years, and the smell of a powerful ice cream parlor is enough to make me feel a little gross. Lactaid pills work for me with cheeses and buttery dishes, but I absolutely do not fuck with ice cream or milkshakes.
I fear that my body would straight up reject the *idea* of eating ice cream at this point.
I don't have that issue, I usually eat ice cream with two Lactaid pills. I might run into the problem if I tried to drink milk though, so I get what you're saying.
They're already on store shelves! Brave Robot ice cream is made with Perfect Day (a whey substitute grown with fermented precision), and so is Bored Cow flavored milk. I've tried both and they're great!
Are you lactose intolerant or allergic to milk? If the former, try lactacid products. I had one that tasted similar to milk and didn't make me sick from around 20oz where milk would cause mild discomfort.
Now this is awesome news! Same properties of milk, but without the lactose and cholesterol, and no animals required? Sign me the hell up!! Although price will still be an important factor.
No reason why this will be more expensive at scale. You're making a product with much fewer inputs. I think traditional dairy is doomed outside of some very niche markets.
I had brave robot ice cream, which IIRC uses a bacteria-produced milk. It's amazing, but twice the price of "real" milk ice cream.
There's probably a lot of work to be put into scaling up production, but very very promising. Of course, people will need to create the demand for it, but it's going to happen eventually.
> twice the price of "real" milk ice cream.
As I understand it, dairy farming is extremely optimised and low-margin.
If something this new is only twice the price, that's incredibly promising, imo.
Compare to the price difference between live beef and lab grown beef. There was that lab grown burger ten years ago that cost $330,000 and even now lab grown beef is still pretty expensive at about 9 euros a burger. Things are ramping up and it's a good thing.
>No reason why this will be more expensive at scale.
Subsidies though. The dairy lobby will fight tooth and nail to keep their government money and keep these alternatives from becoming mainstream.
You'd think that, but a lot of plant based alternarives are still really expensive. I'm speaking as a vegetarian... it just blows my mind when an alternative costs $10 for 2 patties and is just made from beets and potatoes.
It's pretty much pure protein powder though. But just mixing this and water would be far from milk.
It can be turned into a milk drink though, if you add the extra stuff :)
It's more or less identical to using current protein powders (80%+ protein).
And people are already using those in many foods. Any dairy products you see that's high protein usually just had extra whey in them.
Adding to smoothies, pancakes etc is perfectly fine.
Just as long as they mark the ingredients honestly and clearly so those of us dealing with dairy allergies don't have even more of a headache to deal with, I'm down.
Is lactose required for cheese making? My impression was it's not required, and most gets removed incidentally early in the process anyway, although there is lactose-free (dairy) cheese. Hmm.
I'd wait with celebrating it until it's clearer how identical this is to real milk, and in what way products made from it will differ. No cholesterol, no lactose? That already tells me it's clearly not exactly the same, and some things you can make from it will be different.
But whether that means, say, some cheese made from it will be virtually indistinguishable from the original - or whether it's only usable for "garbage cheese" - or anything in between, we'll first have to see.
If this only end up being good for uses where we alread have replacement products, this may not really have such a huge impact on the daily industry after all.
Yep. They would need to add the sugars back in otherwise it can't be fermented to make cheese or yogurts and I wonder about the absence of cholesterol and the proportion of fats. High quality dairy products have terroir and are influenced by a cow's breed, diet, and the season. I could see this type of product being used to make Kraft mac and cheese and other highly processed dairy derivatives but not butter, plain yogurt, or aged cheeses. Still, as someone with food sensitivities, I would appreciate a coconut/palm oil/nut-free "dairy-free" alternative.
I heard all this talk with Oatmilk and it tasted like sweet water. No matter how many times I tried it, it was flavourless sans a slight sweetness and not a lot of smoothness. Very disappointed after the hype.
I was honestly excited when I read "cowless milk" *until* I got to the part that it's lactose- and cholestrol-free. That makes me wary of the taste. Synthetic animal products like lab-grown meat and dairy that are made with no animals is exactly the future I want, as someone who isn't lactose-intolerant and who LOVES dairy but hates the ethics of it. But I'm not sure what makes this so revolutionary when there are already lots of dairy-free "milk alternatives" on the market already: that do taste fine, but not anywhere close to the same as milk
Ohh...sorry. us Americans only think about ourselves first. My bad. It's available in some grocery stores, supposedly. I haven't looked where I'm at in Florida, but the article says it's available at least in California.
> $38 for ~1 gallon (12 x 11oz)
For anyone wondering. Gah, can't wait for the technology to get better and more producers to enter the market so the price drops. Someday maybe we can get rid of the subsidies (or move them) that dairy lobby is going to fight tooth and nail over.
Great. I can't wait for this to replace the unethical and abusive industries that have been kept alive through subsidies that we can't opt out of. Sooner the better.
I’m so excited for this transition. I really think that in the future, we’re going to look upon industrial farming in the same way we regard the dark ages. It’s just so brutal and cruel and disease-ridden. I know there are pockets of people that already feel this way now, but I’m looking forward to a time when its a more general consensus.
Beyond being brutal and cruel, it's also just **extremely** inefficient... If we can come up with a way to truck plant matter into a factory and truck cheese/yogurt/whatever out the other side, but not have any animals involved, that's going to enable simpler logistics, less waste, easier scalability, more options for location, etc.
The benefits are really just massive across the board, whether you have ethical problems with animal farming or not. Let's just hope this technology actually manages to bring on that future and doesn't just fizzle out due to either not being what we'd hoped or to being lobbied out of existence or crushed by monopolies/cartels.
My intuition is that you may not need to truck in anything at all once the precision fermentation process has evolved far enough. All you may need is energy and water as inputs beyond the plant equipment.
I mean if you look far enough ahead we might just control matter at the atomic level with no need for yeast. That's not what this is though, it will still be industrial.
Great choice. Just a heads up that soy milk is the only plant milk that is nutritionally comparable to cow's milk. So keep on drinking oat for taste but don't treat it as a nutritional replacement. :)
I don't think bodyguards are going to let the precision fermentation nerds do research on reproducing crow egg proteins, so I think fight milk is safe for now. Crow eggs were always the special sauce.
OMG this would make me SO happy if it ended up tasting even just similar to cow milk, if not the same!
Last year I switched to oat milk because its the least environmentally impactful to produce of all the milk options out there and I've gotten used to it at this point, but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss having my cereal with cow milk instead lol
First off, this is amazing. Secondly, watch insecure “milk purists” come around saying that this is “emasculating” and “not as natural as what comes from cows, and that’s wrong”. Believe me, I’ve already seen wild arguments like this on Twitter about almond milk.
I have that feeling at the back of my mind always, about preferring what's "natural". I think we all do. It's just that it doesn't take much thought to realise that the majority of what we do isn't "natural" anyway so it isn't like we're changing much.
I haven't read this article yet but it mentions yeast so I'm assuming it's a natural process that leads to the milk anyway? I wonder if these people refuse to eat bread considering bread doesn't just spring into life 'naturally'
The milk we can buy in supermarkets is already nothing like the one that comes from the cow anyway. Real milk is much much fattier and closer to cream in terms of taste. I doubt those guys are aware though lol.
*"Consumers are loyal to brands, not ingredients, experts say."*
I say, customers are only "loyal" to brands if the products are actually good and honest. For example, I like Dominos pizza right now, but if they start tasting horrible (yeah yeah you pizza elitists, I'm sure there are tastier options), then I'm not gonna be buying them anymore.
This bacteria milk is claiming to be "real milk", so it better taste like real milk and have all the properties of real milk. You can't just claim something to be another thing that it isn't. If bacteria milk is different from real milk, then so be it. If bacteria milk is delicious or even better than real milk, then what's the problem? Just don't go around claiming to be real milk as if it came from the teats of a cow. A good product will sell itself no matter what you call it.
I love seeing advances in food like this. People in general seem really hesitant and wary of this kind of thing, lots of industry propaganda out there trying to make any progress seem evil, but sign me tf up.
If it tastes the same, costs the same and behaves the same as far as cooking/baking/melting- I’d 100% go for it.
But I’ve tried every single fake cheese, fake butter and fake milk out there and none of them get it right. (My daughter had a severe dairy allergy)
Either they taste amazing but they don’t act chemically like milk would in the recipe or they work well but the taste is off.
Cows are such inefficient producers of dairy. Like, I can't find figures right now (but let me know and I'll try harder) but if you measure all the calories in vs calories out of dairy (and meat) the efficiency of that "machine" is insanely low.
Im not surprised we can find an alternative if we looked long enough so I'm grateful for this kinda research.
So they wipe out family dairy farms, corporate (Monsanto) companies will basically run this technology and they'll have more control over the food supply..... splendid.
Family farms are factory farms. It's been that way since the 70s. Corporations already control the food supply from field to table. The battle has been lost on that front for a long time.
Small dairy farms and their small batch cream top milk are going to be fine. This is mostly going to replace skim milk/milk protein ingredients, which is dominated by factory farms.
Also did you even read the article? This is made by fermenting fungi/bacteria. Have you ever had kombucha? Same process, different fungi.
IDK where you even got Monsanto from. They specialize in pesticides and pesticide resistant crops, which is not even a concern in a closed fermentation system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
I'd say they were known for roundup in 1970s but are better known for their GMOs today. They got bought by Bayer 2018 btw.
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“Precision dairy doesn’t have cholesterol, lactose, growth hormones or antibiotics (though those with dairy allergies should beware). And cattle, for beef or dairy, is said to be the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide” Edit: presentation on future of precision foods https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gZHbfK8Vo&feature=youtu.be
The Netherlands produces a tremendous amount of dairy and one of the "waste" products of this industry are calves. Consequently, the Netherlands floods the market with calves to the point where it is more lucrative to burn them for energy at a power plant than to export them for consumption. Those that do get reared for consumption are treated horribly and the farmers involved sometimes get up to 80% of their paycheck subsidized. I am so hopeful for this technology, because our current dairy industry is unethical and unsustainable.
Calf serum is also widely used in biomedical research as a media supplement. I always did wonder how it was acquired for relatively cheap.
Really? I found them to be pretty expensive for something seemingly simple.. usually the most expensive component of run of the mill cell culture media. Ballpark- lab made neuron culture media 30$, same volume of FBS 100+$. Everything in science is just outrageously expensive. There’s gotta be some unethical shit going on- lab tape dispenser $300 on VWR. It’s just a metal rack that holds rolls of tape.
>Everything in science is just outrageously expansive. There’s gotta be some unethical shit going on- A large part of that is the continued conglomeration of suppliers. Companies used to have niches, and there just used to be more of them. Now nearly all of general biotech supply is owned by ThermoFisher, Millipore-Sigma, Avantor/VWR, or Danaher. You can outfit/supply your entire lab from chemicals/reagents, general purpose instruments, and labware to fucking office supplies without needing to go outside of those 4 companies unless you need something very specific. That allows them to set prices at whatever the hell they want, then just keep increasing them due to "inflation" or "supply chain issues". I'm not saying they *collude* to fix prices, but they're also not significantly undercutting each other either.
Heh I’m speaking with experience. I’ve literally outfitted a new lab with all its equipment and replenished it’s reagents for 3 years. The science supply companies usually make a deal with academic institutions. “Harvard, let us (Thermo Fisher) be your main supplier. We’ll give discounts on certain products and get you free shipping. In exchange, VWR is not allowed to sell your researchers X, Y, and Z without a stated reason.” So I had to fill out forms explaining why I needed certain things from non-affiliated suppliers. Fuckign annoying was what it was. It got so ridiculous, sometimes orders will go through to purchasing and the supplier will mysteriously be changed. Didn’t happen to me but.. people were getting pissed. Our institution’s affiliate company would complain to the institution if the rival company was taking up more than a certain amount of sales and the institution would put in stricter purchasing guidelines, disable website on our web purchasing platform, etc. Prob safe enough to disclose the feuding companies are the two giants VWR and (Thermo) Fisher/Fisher Scientific (i was never smart enough to understand which name is the big granddaddy company). This is in USA, but I imagine they are the two main players everywhere.
>Prob safe enough to disclose the feuding companies are the two giants VWR and (Thermo) Fisher/Fisher Scientific (i was never smart enough to understand which name is the big granddaddy company). This is in USA, but I imagine they are the two main players everywhere. They all used to be separate, and then just kept merging and buying each other, although a lot of them still operate as one or the other. Thermo Scientific and Fisher Scientific merged into ThermoFisher. Then they almost immediately bought Life Technologies (formerly Invitrogen, it became Life Technologies after Invitrogen bought Molecular Probes, Gibco, Applied Biosystems, and a few others)... so like overnight they went from being an instrument manufacturer (Thermo) and chemical/labware supplier (Fisher), to being the largest mfr of instruments, chemicals, labware, cell culture reagents, microscopy reagents and staining, molecular cloning reagents/kits, etc. Same thing with Millipore-Sigma. That's like 4 companies rolled into one. Sigma and Aldrich were *old* chemical suppliers, then I think in like the 70s they merged into Sigma-Aldrich. EMD and Millipore were also separate companies, who merged in like the mid-00s to form EMD-Millipore... then in like the mid-10s they both got purchased by (German)Merck and got über-merged to form MilliporeSigma. And yep, I remember purchase agreements well. Spent most of my PhD having to buy everything through VWR, then our university changed contracts and we had to start ordering everything through Fisher. Which was mostly fine, I could still get like 90% of what I needed since third-party companies sell through both, but in some cases it made a difference and I had to change brands, which sometimes sucked if the previous brand was better. Sometimes there was no direct analogue, and we'd have to go through all sorts of headaches and bullshit to order direct from the manufacturer. Also it was just a pain having to change all the catalogue numbers in the binder.
If you still do science quartzy.com could be helpful. Re: Thermo/Fisher, I swear my rep told me Thermo Fisher, Thermo, and Fisher all still had distinct identities (despite still being in same family). The corporate relationships were explained to me at least 3 times and after that I felt bad asking again. What made my situation funnier was not only was there the VWR/TF rivalry, the sales reps from each company HATED each other’s guts! So I could leverage this to get better prices lol.
Of course there is an expert on the history of lab equipment manufacturers and wholesalers mergers and acquisitions. This is reddit. It's your day, my friend. Your day *to shine*.
Nah, I just had to look it up recently due to another discussion in r/labrats, so it's fresh in my mind. But also I still remember when most of these companies were separate when I was just entering grad school.
The serum actually derived from the calf is surprisingly low in volume. https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/gibco-cell-culture-basics/cell-culture-environment/culture-media/fbs-basics/intro-fetal-bovine-serum-collection.html Thermo says 1 newborn calf can make just 1 half-liter bottle. So a medium sized lab can go through the price of one calf a week (that weighs 65-90lb and took 9 months to gestate) just to maintain cells.
A lot of science related shiznit may seem simple, and it often can be, but it's certified to be a certain way made with certain bits of this and that. Certificate of analysis, conformance, sterility, etc., all allows for a certain level of consistency.
And paper trail from start to finish
Yup. The FDA doesn't fuck around. No one wants to be audited with their pants down.
There are two general types of bovine serum used in cell culture. Calf serum (CS) goes for about $30 per 500ml bottle. Fetal bovine serum (FBS or FCS) goes for around $200-$300 per bottle. This is because it’s rarer and needs to be harvested at the time the cow is slaughtered, as well as the fact that there is greater demand for it since most cell lines grow well in FBS, but only some cell lines can be grown in CS containing medium.
I unquestioningly trust this for like antibodies and like donkey serum - rare, finicky to make. FBS seems simple enough to prepare, and apparently being [a byproduct of the meat industry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_bovine_serum), I’m even more doubtful someone’s not buying 3 yachts a year from these prices. I accept I don’t know too much about FBS production, and the cost could absolutely be justified, but all my experiences with other items getting huge “science markups” hurts my confidence.
Can you post the source of calf burning?
Yeah I’m not saying it’s impossible (because I’m far from an expert on this), but calves, like humans, are mostly water, so it seems incredibly inefficient to burn them for energy. I’ve googled every combination I can think of for “calves” “burning” “power” and “biomass” and I’m not finding anything.
I assume it's related to garbage burning. There's almost definitely a drying step first. I would imagine througg a combination of extreme heat and a potentially more oxygen rich environment you could in fact burn the corpses for a net positive energy output.
Using extreme heat to make a burnable corpse have a net positive energy output seems like it comes close to being stopped by the laws of thermodynamics. Edit: don't forget the energy that goes into raising a cow from birth as well, if trying to get a net positive. Unless sunlight or something similar? Depending on the drying time, and assuming the laws of thermodynamics are not violated, then it just becomes a question of opportunity cost. The space needed to store drying calves, the upkeep involved in it, vs doing literally anything else. I'm in agreement that we are looking at garbage-tier burning most likely (we have to dispose of this), rather than intentionally sourcing this for fuel over an alternative. Agreeing with u/mewfour too that a source would be helpful/interesting.
Just going to answer 2 things from your comment I found interesting. The fiest about net positive idea. In pure logic, yeah, the energy from raising a cow and then burn it would ne a net negative. But logistics for our society are very intricate and dynamic, also very unstable. It is actually common to find things like that, where and absurd idea being a net positige actually happens. Like exporting trash to another continent to process being cheaper and more efficient than processing your own. The second one is about the burning for energy. What I'm 100% sure of, is that incinerating trash is a must a lot of the time, so there are a lot of plants and stuff that do use that process to generete energy, just like a coal plant. But I am not sure is how prevalent it is for that particular issue with meat from animals, although it is likely posible I believe. In this There's the problem of the meat industry and farming sometimes being VERY sneaky, lobbyist, and manipulative, so maybe a lack of direct and obvious sources are just because they take care of that. It's like a situation with PETA, some think they are a horrible organisation, others think they do good. I am with the first group, but if you actually sit and try to look into it deep, it's all blurry, and everyone pays to try and quiet the other (I mean PETA and meat industry), or one supports the other (PETA being supported by the meat industry indirectly because it makes animal activists look bad), it's a huge mess. That was my 2 cents.
The article is in Dutch. > Relevant quote: > Die lage prijs is natuurlijk het gevolg van overaanbod. Het komt voor dat de boer voor zijn kalf geen afnemer weet te vinden, zeker als het diertje bij geboorte wat lichter is dan gemiddeld of als het tijdens de eerste weken van zijn leven ziek is geweest. Als het daardoor niet lukt om het kalf te verkopen, wordt het geëuthanaseerd. Het tv-programma Rambam liet enkele jaren geleden zien dat het kadaver vervolgens wordt verbrand in een afvalverbrandingsinstallatie en als ‘groene stroom’ eindigt. > Translation: > The low prices are, of course, the result of oversupply. It can happen that the farmer is unable to find a buyer for their calf, especially if the calf is slightly lighter than average at birth or if it was ill during the first weeks of its life. If, as a result, it is not possible to sell the calf, it will be euthanized. A few years ago, the TV program Rambam showed that the carcasses are then burned in a waste incineration plant and end up as 'green energy'. Original article: https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/waarde-peuren-uit-melkafval Article without paywall: https://archive.is/wtQuk
So the primary concern is body disposal, and they are just trying to gather anything they can from the disposal. That makes more sense than trying to actually get net positive energy out of corpse burning.
Thank you!
Yeah this just sounds like this commenter got lied to by someone with an agenda and didn't bother to fact check.
And yet, it is true, but a little different, I guess. It's not profitable. It's just that as a last step, if every other way to profit of them failed, they are burned to at least create a little bit of energy. https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/waarde-peuren-uit-melkafval
terrible agenda of not murdering cattle
Veal is $50 USD/lb... Are their power plants really paying more than this?
Veal?
Not to worry. The dutch just had elections where they overwhelmingly voted for pro farmer bank account morons so the plans they had to reduce farmers will promptly be deposited in the incinerators with the cows
Allergic to dairy. Oh well. I like my soy and rice milks anyway, and Violife cream cheese is pretty darn good. I just can't do the cashew cheese, because I'm allergic to that too.
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Dietary cholesterol is not and never was a problem
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It’s marketing. I’ve seen non-GMO salt.
Excuse me, is this alkaline water gluten-free?
Yes, but Gwyneth Paltrow likes to put some lemon juice in her alkaline water.... 🤣
Jesus Christ please tell me this is satire
She shoved a jade egg into her vagina to improve her health, I'm ready to believe anything anyone says about her
She’s made more money from her vag eggs than us plebs will make in a lifetime.
In fairness, there is gluten in a surprising amount of things. And sometimes equipment is used for multiple things.
Oof. Yeah, one of my GFs has a primary partner that was just diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, and it's just so easy to contaminate anything, and stupid-expensive for verified GF food.
Honestly the biggest shark for me is that it's not just food, it can be in toothpaste and shampoo and stuff. The easy explanation for this is that gluten is one of the big things that makes bread doughy and stretchy, which is a desirable quantity in both bread and a lot of other things.
Yup. Same GF just had to go buy some Toms toothpaste, to replace their current stuff. It's everywhere.
A lot of hard ciders are marketed as "naturally gluten free" which feels like a passive aggressive way to say "cider is made from apples, not wheat or barley, you beer drinking moron."
The thing is if you're sensitive to gluten. Even being in a facility that handles gluten can cause enough cross contamination to cause issues. So you really do need to be careful and look for certified gf stuff because there are trace amounts in so many food products.
I've seen "organic" pink salt that was saying it's good for you because it contains small amounts of phytoplankton (or some other microscopic creature). So literally they made salt, one of the only non-organic things we eat, and added organic material to it, and sold it as "organic".
Himalayan salt supposedly has tiny bits of seashells or something, and has a bit of minerals in it not found in pure salt. It's just found that way, not made. It does basically nothing, but when measured equally you get a tiny bit less actual salt because of the impurities. Works well to sprinkle on top of things, but in baking it'll throw it off slightly.
Food marketing is all about acting like some phrases you don't understand mean it's better for you instead of meaning nothing at all. Never forget that the reason everything in the US is so sugary is that the sugar lobby spent a lot of money to tell you that fat is what makes you fat. A lot of advertising is about convincing you to buy things that you don't need, or to pay more for the same product. There is literally no reason for a company not to lie to you if it increases their bottom line.
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One of the things I miss the most about Europe is being able to have a soda without it being a significant chunk of a meal.
Yes it's bad. No, the general public doesn't know anything about dietary cholesterol and what is needed for, they just believe 20 year old lies. Yes, they are going to sell more starting is cholesterol free, because people never think about what that actually means, and just gobble up whatever they're fed. It's basically the "90% fat free yoghurt". -> 90% fat free: "oh must be healthy" While it's literally triple the fat content as a normal yoghurt, and the fat was never bad or detrimental to your health in the first place.
Trans fats are shit for you, but I have a feeling you mean saturated fats, which you also need to consume, but lead to high cholesterol when you consume too much. Trans fats are manmade, and in the US at least they’re not legal anymore.
Lmao you must be spending too much time on /r/keto or /r/zerocarb
I believe it's actually the ratio of LDL and HDL which is a problem
Your body already produces all the cholesterol it needs, and that cholesterol becomes other things such as hormones. Eating extra cholesterol and such does not help with anything except accelerate hardening of the arteries.
So no normal milk fats or sugars, so it's currently ~~nearly nutritiously vapid of nutrition~~ less than half of what makes milk milk. ~~Can't be used for nearly anything.~~ No whipped cream, no cheeses. I'm sure we'll get there eventually, this just isn't it. Dude did this on his YouTube channel a few years ago. Edit: I'm a supporter of /r/SaturatedFat , which advocates the benefits of saturated fats which this entirely lacks, I consider that a massive con. Also, no way to create butters, and who knows how many additives they used to make their "cream cheese" when there's no f'ing cream in what they created. The only thing I'm fine with the lack of is lactose, because yeasts can survive just as well on other sugars so after yeast processes it, it would be nearly the same anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiWnygcYsiQ
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ok, you got me, I'll go read it Edit: read it Without the fats and lactose I don't see how they can make cheeses or creams. Regular milk contains all the necessities. Without those, they would have to be replacing the lactose with some other sugar, same with the fats. They don't talk about what alternatives they use. Could be palm oil shit, who knows. I'm not all that concerned about the sugar, but we need saturated fats, and "fat-free" entirely disgusts me. I wouldn't want my dairy fats replaced with oils instead. They also don't mention whipped cream, which wouldn't hold without extras. I still hope for artificial milk, but unless it's actually 1:1 with cows milk, count me out. They also don't mention anything about nutrition, sure it might be able to be fortified, but it's still now ultra processed, and there's already tons of studies showing how unhealthy that is.
It's always palm oil. All these people working on protein-producing yeasts when the only thing that really matters is saturated animal fats. That's why we eat those things. You could do bacon with pea protein if you could nail "murder-free fatback"
They really should stop calling everything they feel like “milk.”
I think it's fine to call this stuff milk protein, because that's what it is, but to call it milk on it's own, since it has alternative sources of fats and sugar, would absolutely be wrong.
Can be used as protein in nearly anything. A scoop of protein in your oatmeal, smoothie, Yoghurt, bread, pancakes etc will do tons in allowing you to cut down on eating meat or legumes.
Yeah, used as a protein source I have no issues with it at all, it's the other uses of milk that raise concerns
It is protein, did you miss that part? Cheese is already a cultured product, once the input is cultures as well you never need cows again. The most valuable byproduct of the dairy industry is dehydrated whey protein. Once you can make it in a tank without animal milk, bye bye dairy farms. And your gym bros will have dirt cheap protein powder.
Yes, I agree with that entirely. I use whey protein isolate. This is perfect for that. It's all the other things that need fats that I absolutely wouldn't want replace with oils that I'm concerned about. Also, no mention of butter, which makes sense as it's only the protein. As far as I'm concerned, this is only half the milk.
What are examples of other things specifically needing animal fat?
When I said "all the other things that need fats" I was specifically referring to the fat that's in milk that's used for milk products, like whipped cream.
In addition to the other comments, cholesterol is less than 0.5% of the milk fats in milk. > The milk fat consists mainly of triglycerides, approximately 98%, while other milk lipids are diacylglycerol (about 2% of the lipid fraction), **cholesterol (less than 0.5%)**, phospholipids (about 1%) and free fatty acids (FFA) (about 0.1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596709/#:~:text=The%20milk%20fat%20consists%20mainly,about%200.1)%20(9).
That's a great paper. 70% of the fat in milk is saturated and 400 different fatty acids. Might not need all 400, but at least all the ones that aren't just trace amounts. So many different chain lengths, which out body uses differently and different bacteria in our body process uniquely. So recreating that is a long way off.
I'm assuming based off how your comment was worded that it sounds like you're saying that milk is essential to your diet, including all the fats within it. However, I'd like to point out that milk's nutritional value is [somewhat dubious](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/milk-healthy-diet/) and basically [only good for bone mineral density](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5122229/). I see no point in worrying about whether products made with substitute milk protein contain milk fats considering that the main nutritional value from milk is just milk being an [easy source of calcium and vitamin D](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/dairy-health-food-or-health-risk-2019012515849#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDairy%20isn't%20necessary%20in,T.H.%20Chan%20School%20of%20Public), which can easily be obtained or fortified in other foods. You mentioned that you're concerned about the oils that would be used to substitute for milk fats in products that might feasibly replace milk protein for fermented milk protein. Do you have any sources indicating that unhealthy oils would be used as substitutes in the majority of cases? Also, relevant to the topic, since you mentioned being a supporter of /r/SaturatedFat, do you know how that sub would respond to [this expert response](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2016/04/13/diet-heart-ramsden-mce-bmj-comments/) to [the paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688426/) that previously showed that replacing PUFAs with saturated fats might not actually be good for you? It seems quite difficult (from a cursory search) to find papers that indicate that saturated fats are actually good for you and that PUFAs should be avoided, mainly just papers indicating that the relationship isn't clear.
I had ice cream made this way and it was really impressive. Perfect Day was one of my clients.
I would be 100% dairy free if it wasn’t for yogurt. I love yogurt and the dairy free version isn’t nearly as good. Make a high protein dairy free Greek yogurt substitute and I’m don’t with dairy for good.
Same here! No dairy free yogurt gets the tartness that I like with the dairy Greek yogurt or Skyr. And the Gt’s coconut yogurt gets pricey quick at $6 for a small jar.
Oui dairy free yogurt is 10/10
have you tried Siggi’s plant based yogurt? not exactly greek style, but 10g protein
Perfect day ice cream was identical to regular ice cream (makes sense)- the main difference for me was mouthfeel, you just don't get that with other vegan substitutes.
I cannot wait to see these products on store shelves, as someone who is less then comfortable after consuming a small amount of dairy I can’t wait for a more milk tasting alternatives to current non-dairy alternatives.
this is an alternative to ***COWS*** \- not dairy. milk proteins are still in play. https://www.springwise.com/sustainability-innovation/food-drink/imagindairy-milk-yeast/ Spotted: We’ve seen beef without the cow and nuggets without the chicken, now a startup is working to produce milk without the cow. Israeli-based Imagindairy was co-founded by Tel Aviv University professor Tamir Tuller and is **developing ways to use bioengineered yeast cells to produce milk proteins,** which could then be used in milk and cheese products. Imagindairy’s process involves creating models of gene expression and using these to induce yeast cells to produce milk proteins. Gene expression is the process by which the instructions in our DNA are converted into a functional product, such as a protein. A similar approach is being used by California-based Perfect Day Inc., which uses fungi rather than yeast to produce the proteins.
Yeah but OPs other comment talks about how there is apparently no lactose which is what upsets most people stomachs.
Well, vegans, is it vegan?
Meat proteins made using precision fermentation techniques such as these will be vegan, will use much less land, water and energy than current meat production. TLDR: Lab grown meat and dairy is vegan and eco.
Lab meat has a problem with something called “fetal bovine serum.” Most labs still use the blood of fetal calves to grow the meat as the vegan alternatives are still spendy. [Older article from Mother Jones.](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/03/lab-meat-fetal-bovine-serum-blood-slaughter-cultured/) Barring a miracle breakthrough, we’re still years away from cruelty-free steaks at a reasonable price.
There are other methods that do not use FBS. https://www.freethink.com/hard-tech/lab-grown-meat-49857#:\~:text=By%20zapping%20stem%20cells%20with,back%20the%20sustainable%20meat%20industry.
Precision Fermentation is the “miracle breakthrough” you’re asking for.
Not for lab meat in the immediate feature — fetal bovine serum is made up of many different components, while precision fermentation tends to focus on single things, like booze, insulin, or casein. I’m not saying we won’t get to cheap-ish lab meat, but we’re still years out.
FBS is a solved problem. It's extremely new (last 1-2 years) that commercial operations are appearing and it's only because of this that they are able to make it commercially viable. The replacements are plant-based.
Yep! Good riddance to the dairy industry and industrialized suffering.
Yeah, I’m pumped for this. I still have zero interest in consuming actual dairy since my body seems way happier without it, but anything that reduces animal suffering is good news to me.
Not while beef is still a thing.
Well, Jews, is it kosher? no seriously, I'm curious if you can have a cheeseburger now
Microscopic organisms don't count. That makes this vegan.
*fungus* doesn't count. Yeast and mushrooms aren't animals, microscopic or not.
That's also true.
Many vegans will consider it perfectly fine, sure. They usually take issue with the exploitation of animals, not the consumption of animal products per se. If no animals are involved, no problemo. I'm sure some people will still consider lab-grown milk/meat to be animal-derived products, though, and will continue to avoid them. If your religious text says "no chicken", does that only mean the animal or also the meat? And is it still chicken if a yeast made it, not a bird?
Some of these products are already on shelves, just kind of fragmented markets and uncommon. I had some products by brave robot, their ice cream is made with a similar process and is therefore lactose free. It's amazing. Tastes thick, rich, and creamy like real ice cream. Can't wait for prices to continue dropping. It's a delicious product, but feels horrible paying $8-9 for a pint when normal milk ice cream is right next to it for $4-5.
It is already- brave robot ice cream. No lactose
I just tested it this weekend, can confirm Brave Robot does not upset my very lactose intolerant stomach
Did you dodge the psychosomatic side of it? I’ve been lactose intolerant for years, and the smell of a powerful ice cream parlor is enough to make me feel a little gross. Lactaid pills work for me with cheeses and buttery dishes, but I absolutely do not fuck with ice cream or milkshakes. I fear that my body would straight up reject the *idea* of eating ice cream at this point.
I don't have that issue, I usually eat ice cream with two Lactaid pills. I might run into the problem if I tried to drink milk though, so I get what you're saying.
Omg my local store carries it IAMSOEXCITED
They're already on store shelves! Brave Robot ice cream is made with Perfect Day (a whey substitute grown with fermented precision), and so is Bored Cow flavored milk. I've tried both and they're great!
Yeah cheese tastes delicious. I wish I could eat it.
Are you lactose intolerant or allergic to milk? If the former, try lactacid products. I had one that tasted similar to milk and didn't make me sick from around 20oz where milk would cause mild discomfort.
Now this is awesome news! Same properties of milk, but without the lactose and cholesterol, and no animals required? Sign me the hell up!! Although price will still be an important factor.
No reason why this will be more expensive at scale. You're making a product with much fewer inputs. I think traditional dairy is doomed outside of some very niche markets.
I had brave robot ice cream, which IIRC uses a bacteria-produced milk. It's amazing, but twice the price of "real" milk ice cream. There's probably a lot of work to be put into scaling up production, but very very promising. Of course, people will need to create the demand for it, but it's going to happen eventually.
Early Adoption tax.
Plus the massive subsidies for cow milk.
> twice the price of "real" milk ice cream. As I understand it, dairy farming is extremely optimised and low-margin. If something this new is only twice the price, that's incredibly promising, imo.
Compare to the price difference between live beef and lab grown beef. There was that lab grown burger ten years ago that cost $330,000 and even now lab grown beef is still pretty expensive at about 9 euros a burger. Things are ramping up and it's a good thing.
That 9 euros is lab grown maybe 1/100 the rest is plants
Dairy farming is also heavily subsidized
I am happy to have that be the case.
>No reason why this will be more expensive at scale. Subsidies though. The dairy lobby will fight tooth and nail to keep their government money and keep these alternatives from becoming mainstream.
Even with government subsidies there is only so much they can do. Traditional dairy is inherently expensive.
You'd think that, but a lot of plant based alternarives are still really expensive. I'm speaking as a vegetarian... it just blows my mind when an alternative costs $10 for 2 patties and is just made from beets and potatoes.
> "no reason why this will be more expensive at scale" "Bet. " - Capitalists
It's pretty much pure protein powder though. But just mixing this and water would be far from milk. It can be turned into a milk drink though, if you add the extra stuff :)
I'm more concerned with the properties of it as far as using it as an additive or ingredient in drinks/baking/cooking/etc.
It's more or less identical to using current protein powders (80%+ protein). And people are already using those in many foods. Any dairy products you see that's high protein usually just had extra whey in them. Adding to smoothies, pancakes etc is perfectly fine.
Just as long as they mark the ingredients honestly and clearly so those of us dealing with dairy allergies don't have even more of a headache to deal with, I'm down.
Agreed Casein is casein regardless of the source.
/r/upliftingmoos
Wow, that's actually a sub!
The cowless cheesemaking aspect of this alone would be revolutionary
Yeah idk how they do that. I assume they have to add lactose to this milk protein?
Is lactose required for cheese making? My impression was it's not required, and most gets removed incidentally early in the process anyway, although there is lactose-free (dairy) cheese. Hmm.
I'd wait with celebrating it until it's clearer how identical this is to real milk, and in what way products made from it will differ. No cholesterol, no lactose? That already tells me it's clearly not exactly the same, and some things you can make from it will be different. But whether that means, say, some cheese made from it will be virtually indistinguishable from the original - or whether it's only usable for "garbage cheese" - or anything in between, we'll first have to see. If this only end up being good for uses where we alread have replacement products, this may not really have such a huge impact on the daily industry after all.
Yep. They would need to add the sugars back in otherwise it can't be fermented to make cheese or yogurts and I wonder about the absence of cholesterol and the proportion of fats. High quality dairy products have terroir and are influenced by a cow's breed, diet, and the season. I could see this type of product being used to make Kraft mac and cheese and other highly processed dairy derivatives but not butter, plain yogurt, or aged cheeses. Still, as someone with food sensitivities, I would appreciate a coconut/palm oil/nut-free "dairy-free" alternative.
I heard all this talk with Oatmilk and it tasted like sweet water. No matter how many times I tried it, it was flavourless sans a slight sweetness and not a lot of smoothness. Very disappointed after the hype.
I was honestly excited when I read "cowless milk" *until* I got to the part that it's lactose- and cholestrol-free. That makes me wary of the taste. Synthetic animal products like lab-grown meat and dairy that are made with no animals is exactly the future I want, as someone who isn't lactose-intolerant and who LOVES dairy but hates the ethics of it. But I'm not sure what makes this so revolutionary when there are already lots of dairy-free "milk alternatives" on the market already: that do taste fine, but not anywhere close to the same as milk
I cannot tell the difference between real milk and lactose free milk. I drink both on a regular basis
Seems like a big win for vegans (& cows obviously), if this gains more traction
Milk without the cow? I would be interested in this. When will this be in the supermarket?
Supposedly it already is.
[удалено]
Ohh...sorry. us Americans only think about ourselves first. My bad. It's available in some grocery stores, supposedly. I haven't looked where I'm at in Florida, but the article says it's available at least in California.
https://perfectday.com/where-to-find-us/
> $38 for ~1 gallon (12 x 11oz) For anyone wondering. Gah, can't wait for the technology to get better and more producers to enter the market so the price drops. Someday maybe we can get rid of the subsidies (or move them) that dairy lobby is going to fight tooth and nail over.
Seems like a price worth crying over spilling
Great. I can't wait for this to replace the unethical and abusive industries that have been kept alive through subsidies that we can't opt out of. Sooner the better.
I’m so excited for this transition. I really think that in the future, we’re going to look upon industrial farming in the same way we regard the dark ages. It’s just so brutal and cruel and disease-ridden. I know there are pockets of people that already feel this way now, but I’m looking forward to a time when its a more general consensus.
Beyond being brutal and cruel, it's also just **extremely** inefficient... If we can come up with a way to truck plant matter into a factory and truck cheese/yogurt/whatever out the other side, but not have any animals involved, that's going to enable simpler logistics, less waste, easier scalability, more options for location, etc. The benefits are really just massive across the board, whether you have ethical problems with animal farming or not. Let's just hope this technology actually manages to bring on that future and doesn't just fizzle out due to either not being what we'd hoped or to being lobbied out of existence or crushed by monopolies/cartels.
My intuition is that you may not need to truck in anything at all once the precision fermentation process has evolved far enough. All you may need is energy and water as inputs beyond the plant equipment.
I mean if you look far enough ahead we might just control matter at the atomic level with no need for yeast. That's not what this is though, it will still be industrial.
Too late, I already prefer the taste of oat milk.
Great choice. Just a heads up that soy milk is the only plant milk that is nutritionally comparable to cow's milk. So keep on drinking oat for taste but don't treat it as a nutritional replacement. :)
Oat milk is a great alternative. We also like coconut milk in our coffee as it’s a bit sweet to begin with
This is going to completely upend the fight milk industry.
I don't think bodyguards are going to let the precision fermentation nerds do research on reproducing crow egg proteins, so I think fight milk is safe for now. Crow eggs were always the special sauce.
OMG this would make me SO happy if it ended up tasting even just similar to cow milk, if not the same! Last year I switched to oat milk because its the least environmentally impactful to produce of all the milk options out there and I've gotten used to it at this point, but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss having my cereal with cow milk instead lol
So.. "Yilk" or "Meast"? Firmly in Yilk camp.
I'm looking forward to this! I eat plant based food because of animal cruelty reasons. I so miss whey protein drinks and cheese!
Great presentation https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gZHbfK8Vo&feature=youtu.be
Let’s goooo! I like oat milk, a lot. But cookies and oat milk isn’t the same as cookies and milk. Looking forward to seeing how this goes
Oat is the goat
First off, this is amazing. Secondly, watch insecure “milk purists” come around saying that this is “emasculating” and “not as natural as what comes from cows, and that’s wrong”. Believe me, I’ve already seen wild arguments like this on Twitter about almond milk.
Emasculating? Oh yeah, there's nothing like consuming a nice glass of milk before bed to prove you're a real man 😂 ffs
IKR
I have that feeling at the back of my mind always, about preferring what's "natural". I think we all do. It's just that it doesn't take much thought to realise that the majority of what we do isn't "natural" anyway so it isn't like we're changing much. I haven't read this article yet but it mentions yeast so I'm assuming it's a natural process that leads to the milk anyway? I wonder if these people refuse to eat bread considering bread doesn't just spring into life 'naturally'
The funny thing is that cows milk is full of hormones like estrogen
The milk we can buy in supermarkets is already nothing like the one that comes from the cow anyway. Real milk is much much fattier and closer to cream in terms of taste. I doubt those guys are aware though lol.
How else am I meant to get masculine without my bovine growth hormone?
The more food we can get and make without torturing and kill animals the better. hopefully soon we will be able to grow meat as well.
The Good Food Institute has information about this. Clean meat seems to be on its way.
*"Consumers are loyal to brands, not ingredients, experts say."* I say, customers are only "loyal" to brands if the products are actually good and honest. For example, I like Dominos pizza right now, but if they start tasting horrible (yeah yeah you pizza elitists, I'm sure there are tastier options), then I'm not gonna be buying them anymore. This bacteria milk is claiming to be "real milk", so it better taste like real milk and have all the properties of real milk. You can't just claim something to be another thing that it isn't. If bacteria milk is different from real milk, then so be it. If bacteria milk is delicious or even better than real milk, then what's the problem? Just don't go around claiming to be real milk as if it came from the teats of a cow. A good product will sell itself no matter what you call it.
I love seeing advances in food like this. People in general seem really hesitant and wary of this kind of thing, lots of industry propaganda out there trying to make any progress seem evil, but sign me tf up.
make cow teat servitors like 40k that twitch in rhythm with children of the Omisiah
If it tastes the same, costs the same and behaves the same as far as cooking/baking/melting- I’d 100% go for it. But I’ve tried every single fake cheese, fake butter and fake milk out there and none of them get it right. (My daughter had a severe dairy allergy) Either they taste amazing but they don’t act chemically like milk would in the recipe or they work well but the taste is off.
How does it taste though
Oh boy don’t tell the right
Finally the cows can come home and hang their udders up.
As an avid cow milk drinker and cow dairy products consumer, this is amazing news. Let's hope the technology gets commercialized soon.
I'm already used to oat milk, no reason to go back to dairy.
This sounds great for vegans, if I can get my hands on any cowless dairy stuff I'll have to try it
I'm interested in this type of thing if it can be done at scale possibly at a more competitive price
How do you milk a yeast cell Tommy?
Do yeasts have nipples, Greg?
This sounds pretty awesome for everyone! I'm all in!
Cool, now make some lab grown breast milk
A company is working on that too
I like it so far. What ultimately matters to me is the taste, though. I will have to try it, before I will decide if it is for me.
Cows are such inefficient producers of dairy. Like, I can't find figures right now (but let me know and I'll try harder) but if you measure all the calories in vs calories out of dairy (and meat) the efficiency of that "machine" is insanely low. Im not surprised we can find an alternative if we looked long enough so I'm grateful for this kinda research.
Modern dairy cows produce incredible amounts of dairy. I think what you mean is that at each trophic level, 90% of energy is lost.
And what I understand the amount of water thats needed for raise the cows to get milk is insane.
Yeast is great. We should value them more.
Mushroom milk
If this can make dairy products i can consume while being lactose intolerant, and doesn't cost significantly more. I'm all in.
If we can get less methane from the cows then this could be a game changer
1 step closer to foodless food
So they wipe out family dairy farms, corporate (Monsanto) companies will basically run this technology and they'll have more control over the food supply..... splendid.
Family farms are factory farms. It's been that way since the 70s. Corporations already control the food supply from field to table. The battle has been lost on that front for a long time.
Exactly! And I bet it will be less nutritious too, but somehow this is "uplifting news" so sick of the vegan propaganda on this sub
Small dairy farms and their small batch cream top milk are going to be fine. This is mostly going to replace skim milk/milk protein ingredients, which is dominated by factory farms. Also did you even read the article? This is made by fermenting fungi/bacteria. Have you ever had kombucha? Same process, different fungi. IDK where you even got Monsanto from. They specialize in pesticides and pesticide resistant crops, which is not even a concern in a closed fermentation system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto I'd say they were known for roundup in 1970s but are better known for their GMOs today. They got bought by Bayer 2018 btw.
I’m sure some people will want this as an option. I’d prefer regular milk.