5 Cultivated Fats, Scallion Pancakes & The Nutmeg's Curse
The fat alternatives we need, the best night market snack at home, and the dark history of commodities (#55).
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, your 5-min weekly dose of information to inspire climate action. I’m grateful you’re here.
Happy Lunar New Year to those who celebrate! 🐉
I joined the festivities in Taipei this week. There’s a beautiful expression I overheard and want to share: nián nián yǒu yú (年年有余), meaning “may you have more than enough each year.” I wish you all the same.
💥 Breakthrough: 5 Cultivated Fats
Alternative proteins have been all the rage these past few years. But what about alternative fats?
Fats are key to taste and texture for novel animal-free products, but current plant-based options fall short:
🫒 Olive oil has a low smoke point, and disease & extreme weather affect supply.
🌴 Palm oil continues to drive deforestation from Latin America to SE Asia.
🥥 Coconut oil is around 90% saturated fat, raising cholesterol levels.
🌻 Seed oils are too high in omega-6 and contain toxic by-products.
The fats of the future may not be farmed: they might be “fermed.” Instead coming from vegetables or animals, they may come from microbes.
Microbes ferment feedstocks into novel fats that can be healthier for us and the planet. They’re the “hero organisms” our food system needs.
Here are 5 crucial alternative fats we need and some of the start-ups pioneering them:
1. 🌴 Next-Gen Palm Oil
Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil, featuring in nearly 50% of supermarket products from detergents to peanut butter. But it continues to drive deforestation to make room for plantations.
Start-ups like C16 Biosciences are taking a different route. They bypass agriculture to make palm oil, or palmitic acid, from yeast instead of trees.
By amplifying the baseline palmitic acid production levels of torula yeast in fermentation tanks, they can then extract the fats for use in various applications.
C16 Biosciences is first targeting higher-end cosmetics. Their biodesigned palm oil launched in their Palmless Save the F***ing Rainforest nourishing oil last year
They are now expanding into food applications, with a fresh $3.5M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
2. 🌊 Microalgae Cooking Oil
Most cooking oils globally are seed or vegetable oils, carrying the environmental burdens and health challenges mentioned above. Start-ups are brewing alternatives from fermentation.
Algae Cooking Club uses fat from microalgae, grown in fermentation tanks rather than the wild. The microalgae grow on sugar and reach 80% fat content within a few days. The microalgae are then filtered and expeller pressed, similar to olive oil processing.
Initial LCA results suggest promising sustainability outcomes. Compared to olive oil, microalgae oil boasts:
💨 2X emissions reduction
🌳 12X land usage reduction
💦 250X water usage reduction
At the same time, the oil features “a hint of a buttery note, and a rich, rounded, non-greasy mouthfeel” with appraisal from 3-Michelin chef Daniel Humm.
Zero Acre Farms is using a comparable process to develop their cooking oil, though their hero organism is yeast. Last year, their go-to-market saw momentum from franchises like Shake Shack to fine dining restaurants like Blue Hill and SingleThread.
3.🥛 Superior Fats
The growth of plant-based milks is one for the books. Market penetration in the US grew from 5% to 16% in less than a decade and the trend continues.
But our existing oils are insufficient to displace the whole dairy industry, with highly structural and functional fats needed for products like whipping cream and butter.
Novel fats are needed to give alt dairy products the right functionality, taste, and mouthfeel.
Companies like Cultivated Biosciences are bridging this gap using yeast. Creamy fats are first grown in non-GMO yeast, then extracted and formulated into tasty products.
Ingredients like Cultivated Biosciences’ will take current animal-free milks, creamers, and whipping creams to the next level.
4. 🍔 Better Fats for Meat Alternatives
Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat changed the protein game. But one of the trickier ingredients to formulate isn’t protein – it’s fat.
Both products rely on coconut oil as a key fat source, which fails to fully deliver the taste, mouthfeel, and nutrition consumers are looking for in meat alternatives. But there just aren’t many better options yet.
Start-ups like Australia’s Nourish Ingredients are developing low-inclusion animal-like fats with “authentic animal taste, aroma and natural cooking reactions.”
There are 3 key approaches start-ups are taking to develop such ‘designer fats’ for meat alternatives:
Engineering microbes to produce nature-identical fats, like Circe, Melt&Marble, and Yali Bio.
Growing cell-cultured animal fat cells in bioreactors, like Believer Meats and Mission Barns.
Developing superior structural plant-based alternatives, like Lypid, Motif FoodWorks, and Shiru.
5. 🍼 Lipids for Infant Formula
During COVID’s infant formula shortage in 2020, the industry rallied for solutions. While some companies and governments boosted supply, others began developing alternative ingredients altogether.
These innovations are already reaching the market. Nature-identical sugars like human oligosaccharides (HMOs) are now included in newer formulations of Similac. And a plethora of start-ups – like Harmony Baby Nutrition, Helaina, and TurtleTree – are brewing nature-identical breast milk proteins.
But recently, Checkerspot announced a much-needed breakthrough in human breast milk fat: SN-2 palmitate from microalgae.
Infant milk formula (IMF) powders typically contain 25g of lipids per 100g formula, with around half human analogs and half vegetable oils. Nature-identical alternatives like fermentation-based SN-2 palmitate could replace vegetable oils to better support babies’ growth, all while protecting the planet for their generation.
Did I miss or misinterpret anything? Let me know in the comments.
PS: I first heard the term “hero organism” in a podcast between Lex Fridman and Neri Oxman this week. I’m adding it to my vocabulary.
Their beautiful conversation spans many topics: why we should grow vs. make everything, how to tap into nature’s computational power, the latest on “large molecule models” (LMMs), beauty, love, and everything in between. Listen here:
🥘 Recipe: Scallion Pancakes
This week, I’m grateful to wonder through the famous Taiwanese night markets I dreamed of visiting for years. From the dozens of food stalls, one of my favorites is a humble staple: scallion pancakes (葱油饼).
The combination of the crispy dough and soft egg makes this guilty pleasure so indulgent. Spicy sauce lathered on top is chef’s kiss. Scroll down for the recipe on how I like making mine.
While this scallion pancake was no doubt fried in seed/vegetable oils, I’m hopeful that a decade from now they’ll be prepared from with cooking oil from the start-ups above.
If you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: The Nutmeg’s Curse
In 1621, Dutch colonizers pillaged the Banda Islands in modern-day Indonesia. They were looking for nutmeg, a delicacy at the time worth more than gold.
The tragedy of the Bandanese massacre not an isolated event. It’s a symptom of our dysfunctional relationship with nature, one based on conquest and extraction.
The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh recounts this story amongst others to depict a broader conflict: competing conceptions of nature by European colonizers and indigenous people.
As Oglala Lakota, Standing Bear chief, puts it:
“Only to the white man was Nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people.' To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful ad we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”
European conquest throughout Asia and the Americas didn’t just decimate indigenous populations. It terraformed the world according to new ideals of productive land.
In that vision, nature is subdued to meet humanity’s needs. And this remains the bedrock of today’s agricultural practices and food systems.
The “nutmeg’s curse” paints the dark side of everyday commodities. As trade bloomed and volumes grew, nutmeg became an affordable commodity. Merchants began destroying wild trees to restore scarcity. Entire peoples and places were eradicated to benefit those that sell them. Other commodities have similar stories.
Amitav Ghosh’s storytelling reads like fiction, his analogies are poignant, and his perspectives are lucid. I have read many books characterizing the conflict between humans and nature, but I found this one refreshing.
It makes me want to read more from him, regardless of the topic. I hope you enjoy it.
Some favorite quotes as food for thought:
"Ecological interventions were not just an incidental effect of European settlement in the Americas; they were central to the project, the explicit aim of which was to turn territories that were perceived as wastelands into terrains that fitted a European conception of productive land.”
“It is a grave error to imagine that the world is not preparing for the disrupted planet of the future. It’s just that it’s not preparing by taking mitigatory measures or by reducing emissions: instead, it is preparing for a new geopolitical struggle for dominance.”
“Furious growth of Covid- 19 cases in those parts of the US where many people regarded masking as an infringement of their individual liberties suggests that it is morbid individualism that turns crises into tragedies.”
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Scallion Pancakes
Adapted from Roy Choi in MasterClass.
Ingredients (makes 3-4 servings):
Dough:
400g all-purpose flour
240mL warm water
5mL vegetable oil
4g salt
Filling / toppings:
2 stems of green onions, sliced
60mL hot oil
20g flour
4g salt
1g garlic powder
Optional: other spices
Optional: 1 scrambled egg
Optional: chili sauce
Instructions:
Make the dough. Mix the flour, salt, and oil in a bowl. Add in the warm water and mix to incorporate. Knead for a few minutes if need be until smooth. Coat in a thin layer of oil and let rest for 1h.
Prepare the filling. Mix the sliced scallions, flour, salt, and spices. Heat the oil in a small saucepan until hot and pour on top of the mixed scallions and stir.
Cut the dough ball in 4 and roll out one piece in a rectangular shape until 2-3mm thin. Spread some of the scallion oil throughout, then roll using the longest side.
Roll onto itself until forming the shape of a snail, then flatten until reaching a circular shape.
Heat a pan with a bit of oil on medium-high. Carefully (oil is hot!) add in the dough on one side until golden brown. Optionally, if you want to include an egg, remove the dough and scramble one with more scallions on the pan, then place the uncooked side of the dough back on top. The final result should be crispy and slightly fluffy.
Optionally, lather on some chili oil.
Cut into 6 even pieces, dip in your favorite sauce, and enjoy with your besties :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier – I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
Each Wednesday, you can expect💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate in your inbox.
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