Cowless milk and cheese? Tech-made fermentation process mimics natural dairy
Shoppers look for dairy items at Reams Food Store in Sandy on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. “Animal-free” dairy is hitting supermarket shelves, and companies like Starbucks are getting on board. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Lab-grown dairy is the latest tech innovation in the food realm, no cows required.
When plant-based dairy substitutes like almond milk and sunflower butter hit the shelves, some lives were forever changed. Experts estimate that about 68% of the world population has some type of intolerance to lactose, meaning they struggle to digest the sugar that is found in pasteurized milk products.
But for those who like dairy, but would rather it be “animal-free,” science and tech have combined for that, too. Animal-free dairy products are made from microflora, which is a tiny microorganism. The scientists at one food tech company, Perfect Day, have given the microflora in their animal-free dairy products the “precise DNA sequence that serves as a blueprint for how to make cow whey protein, the thing that makes milk taste, whip, and swirl like milk.”
According to Perfect Day, which became one of the first companies to market lab-grown dairy products, “We place our microflora in a tank filled with broth made of water, nutrients, and sugar. And because they have the blueprints, when our microflora ferment the broth, they make a pure animal protein without ever touching an animal.”
The company adds, “The protein is separated from the microflora, filtered, purified and finally dried. The end product is an extremely pure protein powder ready for use by food makers to make milk (or cheese, or yogurt, or cream cheese…) that’s identical to the classic. We just get there a different way.”
Perfect Day is partnering with Mars, Nestlé, Starbucks, Graeter’s and other companies to provide “animal-free” milk protein for products.
The company said this revolutionary way of creating dairy is better for reasons other than taste and that the…
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