The world’s population is booming at an alarming rate (total growth of around 72 Million people/year). And feeding everyone is a major concern.
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Yes, we are living in a crazy time where more people are dying from obesity than malnutrition. But the “foods” causing the obesity crisis is also having huge environmental impacts.
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Why Is Creating Food From Air Needed?
Mass-produced food comes at a huge cost. Things like palm oil products are made:
- cheaply
- to last on shelves
- to taste good with high levels of calories
They also have a big environmental footprint (not to mention the impact on Orangutang). Around 1/4 of all greenhouse gas emissions currently come from our food production. In order to keep feeding us all at the rate we’re going, we’re going to need multiple earths. This (as hard as we search the galaxy) is not on our radar yet.
So, alternative food production methods are going to be the way forward (not to mention a serious decrease in meat consumption). For example, around 80% of Amazon deforestation is due to the cattle industry.
How Do You Get Food From Air?
This seems like a question made up for a philosophical debate. But sometimes that’s the best way to move technology forward. Air is made up of a lot of different gases like nitrogen, oxygen & carbon dioxide. The key ingredient for “air food” is Carbon Dioxide.
Air food ingredient list:
- Carbon dioxide
- Water
- Renewable Energy
- Protein Cells
- Nutrients
Food from air is called Solein – it’s a protein grown with the help of waste ingredients (Carbon Dioxide) of which there are ever-increasing amounts of.
Solein uses Carbon Dioxide to grow rather than producing it
In one sense it’s quite like plants who absorb Carbon Dioxide in the process of photosynthesis. However, the Solein product grows protein (amino acid).
Who Made Air Food?
The process was inspired by NASA and Soviet Space program findings, then further developed VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd a LUT University.
An Engineered Protein Made in a Sustainable Way
Just how effective is this new “air food”/ Solein? From an environmental impact perspective, very. Not only does it produce relatively the same amounts of amino acids as beef (and soy products), it can be done in a much more sustainable way.
Water conservation is more important than ever before. And we use water for EVERYTHING. Most of it goes into the production process (so that consumers are generally unaware of just how much water is required to make a product).
Solein is a water-saving miracle
In order to produce beef or plant/vegetable products, huge magnitudes of water are used.
For example, this is how much water is needed to produce the following items:
- One typical garden salad = 80litres (21 gallons)
- One hamburger = 2,450 litres (660 gallons)
Solein uses significantly less water per kg of food:
- 100 times less water than plant products
- 500 times less water than beef products
A huge amount of land saved for nature
It’s not only water scarcity that is causing conflicts around the world. The land is a vital commodity, not only financially, but environmentally.
The Solein product states that it can produce its protein:
- 60 time more efficiently than plants
- 1,000 times more efficiently than beef
That’s huge amounts of land that could be saved. All those forests that can stay in the ground and keep producing oxygen!
Solein Used As A Meat Replacement
There’s no telling how where the limit of this new engineered protein could go. As a total meat replacement? It’s likely. The big test will come down to the education of consumers.
Can we as a society afford not to switch to a sustainable protein option? The answer is no.
But do we want to make the switch? Or are people willing to make the switch? That’s another question.
Be willing to change
As we move forward, we need to be willing to change. To update our cultural norms. It is part of survival as a species. Is Solein the answer to all of our problems? No. But it could be an integral part of the solution.
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