Scientists Just Made Food From Electricity — and it Could Solve World Hunger While Fighting Climate Change

in #science7 years ago (edited)

A research team from FInland has developed a scientific breakthrough that could change the world. By creating a method for producing food from electricity this tool if able to scale up will fight world hunger and climate change.

The Finnish team has created a single cell protein using only renewable energy that is nutritious enough to be served for dinner. The synthetic food which requires only electricity, water, carbon dioxide, and microbes is part of the Food From Electricity project started by Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Raw materials are first exposed to electrolysis in a bioreactor, forming a powder that is more than 50 percent protein and 25 percent carbohydrates.

Commercial capacity is realistically 10 years away in terms of the necessary legislation and process technology.

Currently it takes about two weeks for a bioreactor about the size of a coffee cup to produce one gram of protein. The next stage is working on improving efficiency and optimize the system to scale up and produce more.

Jero Ahola, a Professor at LUT, said in the press release that it “does not require a location with the conditions for agriculture, such as the right temperature, humidity or a certain soil type.”

A working solution toward solving world hunger. Imagine a world without hunger and reducing carbon emissions at the same time.

The machine could provide food for people constantly since it works independently of environmental factors.

The Food From Electricity technology can be hooked up to renewable power sources providing cleaner and healthier food supply.

Thus decreasing the amount of unsustainable farming needed to feed the world providing us with a smaller, cheaper, and renewable method of getting our nutrients. The team is also working on other solutions to this same problem including lab-grown meat and insect farming to continue producing less waste and require less energy in feeding the world.

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Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

Very interesting. Is the food just protein based sustenance? Did they say if it provided any other nutritional content?

Only states that is a powder that is more than 50 percent protein and 25 percent carbohydrates. The remaining ~25% was not identified.

Wow there are so many novel advances to food these days! Have you heard of Memphis Meats, the company that harvests muscle cells from cows and grows them into meat? This prevents the need to kill so many animals.

Still, even with all these advances, we still need a huge change in how food is distributed to the poorest nations.

Thanks for posting, following you now

Hmmmm, I think it is going to take a little while to educate the public and get them used to eating cow that was grown in a lab. I know I am not entirely open to the idea myself!

Great point, even when the technology exists and is viable the important piece will be distributed to those that need it and not those who can afford it.

Well dono whether I would it GMO or anything fake but I've tried insects like grasshoppers and after the initial disgust, it's all good.

I agree, stay far away from GMO! I can't believe you liked the grasshoppers. Awesome.

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Still this kind of discovery will take way to long to be practical for solving a problem like world hunger, but can be very helpful space travel or project like sending human to others planets.

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