Insects, algae, and fungus - Oh My!

摘要

Factors that determine our choice in foods are complex. If we restrict this choice to healthy people with reasonable means and access to food, then one of the key factors is your cultural experience. Furthermore, concerns about individual health and health of the planet are often topics currently weighed into the food choice decision. That is opening the potential for use of, for lack of a better description, nontraditional ingredients. Insects and algae (e.g., Spirulina) are examples of culturally accepted foods in some societies but not on the scale of wheat, corn, rice, dairy, meat, and other mass-produced commodities. Considering them as an alternative ingredient to be used in producing foods normally associated with traditional commodities has two main challenges: 1) generating a food structure that delivers targeted sensory and nutritional properties and 2) consumer acceptance of the product and ingredient. Using any ingredient to produce food structures that deliver desired sensory properties can be approached from a food material science, soft matter physics perspective (Ubbink, Burbidgeab, & Mezzenga, 2008). In short, the hypothesis being that elements of the food that provide form, texture, and other properties reside at the meso length scale. For example, oil droplets in an emulsion and the network forming a gel are mesoscale structures found in many foods. Indeed, a recent review by Cao & Mezzenga (2020) addresses the potential applications of gel structures in foods. Designing food gel structures offers a range of opportunities for innovation in fat replacers, meat substitutes, and salt and sugar reduction strategies, among other applications (Cao and Mezzenga, 2020). Gels could be created that impart unique sensory properties to foods with respect to mouthfeel perceptions and flavor release. In theory, this should be applicable to a wide range of food materials, as long as the desired gel structure can be created. In other words, if we consider proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates as the main building blocks of food structure, then a range of raw materials can be used as the source of those building blocks. However, successful food design depends on another question: if you can make it, will they eat it?