BRB w/ Nathan P – Mycoremediation, Gochujang Pasta & 10X is Easier than 2X
How mushrooms can clean up oil and pollution spills, a spicy and creamy 15-min pasta dish, and how to catapult your productivity with a key mindset shift (#31).
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, your 5-min weekly dose of climate information to inspire climate action.
Each Wednesday, I’ll feature 💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate.
Before we get started, here are highlights of food & climate in the news this week:
‘Gigantic’ power of meat industry blocking green alternatives, study finds (The Guardian).
Mycelium Meat: 8 of the Best Brands Turning Fungi Root into Whole-Cut Steak, Chicken, Bacon & Deli Meats (Green Queen). Check out some tasty 🍄 products already on market.
💥 Breakthrough: Mycoremediation
Chemical pollution may unfortunately be one of humanity’s most enduring legacies on the planet – unless we deploy mushrooms to clean up our mess 🍄
Mushrooms are the recyclers of the planet. Without them, dead trees would pile up in forests; soil would not exist; essential nutrients would be inaccessible.
Fungi’s ability to decompose doesn’t stop at natural carbon sources: they can also clean up oil and pollution spills, including toxic and radioactive waste.
Mycoremediation is the process of using fungi to decontaminate environments.
Diesel and petroleum spills are notoriously dangerous both for land and water environments.
On land, they spread toxic chemicals, interrupt biological processes, and can reach groundwater – turning living environments into dead zones.
In water, even very low concentrations can harm marine life. And for hydrophobic and fat soluble molecules, they accumulate at the surface – more on that in a future BRB.
So to test mushrooms ability to clean up oil spills, Paul Stamets and researchers at Battelle Laboratories set up 4 piles saturated with diesel and other petroleum waste:
❌ 1st pile: nothing is added (the control)
🧬 2nd pile: enzymes are added
🦠 3rd pile: bacteria is added
🍄 4th pile: oyster mycelium is inoculated
When the researchers return 6 weeks later, piles 1-3 are dark, dead, and stinky.
To their surprise, the 4th pile is covered in hundreds of pounds of oyster mushrooms and teeming with life.
And after 8 weeks, while piles 1-3 remained the same, the amount of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the 4th pile dropped from 10,000 to 200 ppm.
Mycelium can absorb oil and producing targeted enzymes (like peroxidases) to break down these hydrocarbons. They transform the diesel and petroleum into carbohydrates they can use as an energy source.
They have also shown to be as effective in treating agricultural and radioactive waste.
But something else happens.
The mushrooms produce spores, which attract insects 🐜 . The insects produce larvae, which attract birds 🦅. The birds spread seeds, which grow plants 🌱.
Soon enough, the mushrooms turn uninhabitable environments into oases of life.
Mushrooms are gateway species: they make uninhabitable and toxic environments livable for other plants, insects, and animals.
As human pollution reaches all corners of the Earth, we may need fungi more than ever to keep our planet livable.
🥘 Recipe: Gochujang Pasta
Gochujang is Korea’s ketchup cousin. But more spicy. And addictive.
Nathan, are you telling me you’re making some sort of ketchup pasta dish? Kind of. And you’re welcome.
Until this recipe, I had only gochujang with Korean fried chicken. Incorporating it in this pasta recipe is a game changer – one of the best pasta dishes I’ve made (and will make again) this year.
The best part? It comes together in just 15 minutes. So go ahead, treat yourself to some gochujang pasta this week. You can thank me later.
Scroll down for the recipe.
If you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: 10X is Easier than 2X
Ask yourself this question often: what is the 20% that if you went all-in on, you’d become 10x more valuable and impactful?
Disclaimer: this section may sound corny and preachy, as is sometimes the case with self-help books. But there are some kernels of truth that you might recognize here, too.
Most of us are trapped in 2X thinking. 2X thinking is the mindset of linear effort, that we will get twice the results with twice the efforts.
10X thinking is non-linear thinking, focusing on essential tasks that yield disproportional results. It’s less familiar to us. And it requires ruthless elimination or delegation of 80% of our current activities to focus on the most impactful 20%.
The good news is that we’re all capable of 10X jumps and have already achieved them in our lives. Learning to read is a 10X jump (and thanks for reading this far) – it’s acquiring a skill that opens new horizons.
10X is Easier than 2X is a guide on how to apply and practice the 10X mindset, by:
building a self-managing company
prioritizing 150+ free days per year
identifying your Unique Ability to go all-in on
It’s catered towards entrepreneurs who dream big and want to accomplish more – something we need more of in climate and food tech.
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Gochujang Pasta
Ingredients:
454g or 1 pack of fusilli corti bucati pasta (or your preferred shape)
2/3 cup heavy cream, or, 1/2 block of silken tofu blended with 1/2 cup oat milk
1/2 cup gochujang
3 cloves of garlic, grated
100g of pecorino, or your favorite vegan cheese
3g thyme
3g paprika
Salt & pepper to taste
Pecorino and chili flakes for garnish
Instructions:
Boil water for the pasta, then cook according to package instruction.
Heat a separate saucepan to medium-high, then add a bit of olive oil and the grated garlic, thyme, and paprika. When fragrant, add the gochujang and heavy cream (or tofu and oat milk blend) and stir to incorporate.
Add in the pecorino (or vegan cheese) and mix.
Drain the pasta, and add into the creamy sauce. Salt and pepper to taste.
Add some pecorino and chili flakes for garnish, and voila :)
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.
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