Making food out of air

[packman]

It's not like you can make food out of thin air. Well…it turns out you can. A company from Finland, Solar Foods, is planning to bring to market a new protein powder, Solein, made out of CO₂, water and electricity. It's a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs. It reportedly looks and tastes like wheat flour, and could become an ingredient in a wide variety of food products after its initial launch in 2021.

...The advent of a promising source of protein derived from two of the most renewable things we have, CO₂ and sunlight, gets us out of the planet-destruction business at the same time as it offers the promise of a stable, long-term solution to one of the world's most fundamental nutritional needs.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/nasas-idea-for-making-food-from-thin-air-just-became-a-reality-it-could-feed-billions/

[underpants]

1. Ooh can't wait until they release the "Green" line

[DetlefK]

2. The article is severly misleading. Something like this works, but not how it's described.

The way I read it, they capture CO2 from air and then feed it to bacteria. The bacteria grow and produce nutrients, and then the bacteria get slaughtered and turned into powder.

I recently heard that a similar process is currently being tested in the Netherlands. They feed fecal matter to bacteria and then turn the bacteria into a food-powder.

[packman]

5. I read the article three times - but,

Couldn't find the part of feeding it to bacteria - unless you are referring to the "yeast" in this part:

Solar Foods makes Solein by extracting CO₂ from air using carbon-capture technology, and then combines it with water, nutrients and vitamins, using 100 percent renewable solar energy from partner Fortum to promote a natural fermentation process similar to the one that produces yeast and lactic acid bacteria

And I interpret that as to the process PRODUCES the yeast and bacteria , not something made and THEN is fed to bacteria.

AND FECAL matter in a food chain -

[ret5hd]

6. You think fecal matter has ever been removed from the food chain?

[packman]

7. Yah, I know -

But I still reserve the right to be naïve about it - just like I don't want to think about all those insect parts in my food or the micro-plastics in my water.

[ret5hd]

8. I'm not talking about accidental contamination.

Do you think that fecal matter is contained in a clay lined pit like a landfill? It is all ---urine, feces, dead bodies, sputum, blood etc--- "in the cycle". I read somewhere something like (now I'm gonna pull some numbers out of my ass) every time you drink a glass of water you are probably consuming 10 atoms of water that went thru the kidneys of Jesus Christ...or Hitler...or Churchill...or Bessie The Cow.

[Sanity Claws]

3. What about its vitamin and mineral composition?

[silverweb]

4. This is exciting!

"It's a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs. It reportedly looks and tastes like wheat flour, and could become an ingredient in a wide variety of food products after its initial launch in 2021."

Wheat production is at risk and is/will be one of the crops impacted the soonest by the climate crisis. It requires huge amounts of land for growing, much of which has become degraded, irrigation with shrinking fresh water resources, and it's doused with glyphosate to dry it before harvest (considered by some to be the true source of "gluten intolerance."

Solar Foods' new process avoids these drawbacks and, as the global climate crisis wreaks havoc on traditional agriculture, will be a lifesaver.

[Codeine]

9. The article leaves out

the “proprietary organism” that the company uses and that is actually providing the protein here.

https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2019/07/15/Solar-Foods-makes-protein-out-of-thin-air-This-is-the-most-environmentally-friendly-food-there-is