The national development and Reform Commission recently issued the "14th five year plan for bioeconomy development", which mentioned "developing synthetic biological technology and exploring and developing new foods such as" artificial protein ". As soon as the news came out, many netizens were curious: "can artificial protein" food be eaten? Was it good? When can I eat it?
Protein is known as the "foundation of life". Where there is life, there is protein. It is the most important nutrient in human food. The existing artificial protein foods are mainly divided into three categories according to their protein sources: plant protein foods, microbial protein foods and animal cell culture meat. The first type is developed with plant proteins such as soybean, pea and wheat as raw materials to make meat, eggs, milk and other products. The second type is the synthesis of protein by fermentation of microorganisms such as yeast, which is thousands of times more efficient than the traditional breeding industry. The third type uses stem cell technology and cell culture of cattle, chickens and other animals to obtain cell cultured meat.
"Can you eat" involves food safety
The food safety risks in the production of traditional meat products mainly include the spread of epidemic diseases in the process of animal breeding, excessive use of antibiotics and so on. The above three kinds of artificial protein foods do not need to breed complete living animals, which avoids these risks from the mode of production. Of course, other risks also need to be vigilant. For example, plant meat is often over processed, the taste is not enough, the sauce is not enough, and the salt is high, which is harmful to cardiovascular health. But generally speaking, as long as the production is carried out in accordance with relevant food standards, the safety of "artificial meat" is controllable.
"Delicious" is related to nutrition and flavor
At present, the "artificial meat" that can be bought in supermarkets is mainly "plant meat". Someone asked, isn't this traditional cuisine? Indeed, Chinese people have a long history of making vegetarian chicken and goose with bean products. However, compared with animal meat, plant meat lacks nutrients such as vitamin B12, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, iron and zinc. Modern industrialized plant meat products will add key substances for quality improvement produced by synthetic biological technology, such as hemoglobin, glutamine aminotransferase and vitamins. They will also change the spherical structure of plant protein through physical processing to produce silk drawing protein similar to real meat fiber, so that plant meat has the texture, chewing feeling and flavor of animal meat. Microbial fermented protein and animal cell culture meat have more advantages in nutrition. For example, yeast protein contains all essential amino acids and belongs to full valent protein, which can meet the nutritional needs of human body.
"When you can eat" depends on the cost of production
The research and development of "artificial protein" new food is mainly for the consideration of sustainable development. Using plant, microorganism and animal cell culture to produce high-quality protein in large quantities in a factory can significantly reduce land resource dependence and carbon emission, and reduce the pressure on environmental resources brought by traditional aquaculture. Theoretically, high output and low resource consumption mean low production cost. Artificial protein food should be of high quality and low price in order to be widely accepted by the public. However, at present, the prices of three kinds of artificial protein foods in the world are more expensive than traditional similar foods, among which cell culture meat is the most expensive. This shows that there is still much room for R & D and improvement of the production technology of artificial protein food.
The research of synthetic biology in China mainly focuses on the fields of medicine and chemical production. The basic and applied research of synthetic biology in the field of food started relatively late, but some gratifying results have also been achieved. Last year, the Chinese scientific research team realized the one-step industrial biosynthesis from carbon monoxide to protein for the first time in the world, and has formed a 10000 ton production capacity. The produced Clostridium ethanol protein can be used as feed raw materials for aquaculture.
In short, we expect China to develop a large-scale, low-cost, sustainable and high-quality protein production mode. We should not only ensure the national food safety in quantity, but also improve the function and nutrition in quality, so as to make the artificial protein food safe, nutritious, delicious and cheap, and meet the people's needs for a better life.