Protein made from air & oil made from microbes.

BY MARY-ELIZABETH HARMON
Founding Mother, Chard & Stripes

Hey folks,

Wanted to quickly pop in to tell you about protein made from air.

Can you believe that mess?

Apparently, NASA developed the technology years ago but it sat on a shelf. Now, an MIT scientist is getting it up and running again. She says that taste testers can’t tell air chicken from real chicken. I’m skeptical but open to trying it.

Learn more about air protein here.

While I’m on the topic of food from odd sources, here’s something I have tasted and been meaning to tell you about for ages:

Cultured oil.

Or the product of oil-producing microbes rather than yogurt-producing ones.

Why make this?

Despite what the marketing machine says, vegetable oils aren’t good for us and are a major driver of chronic disease.

Vegetable oils are also called seed oils—think canola, corn, sunflower, safflower, soy, grapeseed, rice bran and cottonseed. They’re high in inflammatory omega-6 fats and are extracted using toxic chemicals that make their way into our bodies.

They’re also hard on the environment to make, by driving deforestation, soil erosion and carbon emissions.

Olive, avocado and coconut oils are my go-tos, but seed oils—present in almost all processed foods—enter my system thanks to my love of chips. Though chips made in olive and avocado oils are now on the market, they’re hardly healthy.

Frying, we know, isn’t the healthiest of cooking methods. But neither is cooking above an oil’s smoke point, or temperature at which it starts to break down.

Cultured oil has a high smoke point, 10X smaller environmental footprint than seed oils and has more goodness in it.

Zero Acres makes the stuff.

I fell in love with the idea of it and bought a bottle, despite its $30 price tag.

Zero Acres says the taste is light.

I found it non-existent.

If I were rolling in dough, I’d keep buying it.

But I’m not (yet) and am sticking with my staples.

See ya,
Mary-Elizabeth