For a long time, people have incorporated microorganisms into their diets. All products made from yeast dough, cheeses, kefir, and several other foods consistently contain microbial cells involved in their production. By increasing the proportion of microbial protein in our diet, we can significantly enhance the nutritional value of traditional foods without increasing their production, ensuring our diets better meet our bodies’ needs.
The method humans have relied on for centuries—producing food through animal husbandry—is not the most efficient. By feeding animals 60 kilograms of carbohydrates, 8.5 kilograms of protein, and 5 kilograms of fat, we get only one kilogram of protein and one kilogram of fat from meat, while the carbohydrates are lost. Microbes, on the other hand, can convert inputs that we consider nonnutritive into protein, and they do this hundreds of times more efficiently than animals.
In some countries, such as the United States and Japan, yeast protein is already used as an additive in various products. Similar experiments are being conducted here as well. Methods have been developed to produce amino acids (the building blocks of protein) through autolysis of yeast. Trials have shown that adding a mixture of these amino acids—such as a yeast autolysate, for example—to potato grits increases their nutritional value by 1.5 times.
The consensus among nearly all specialists involved in microbial protein synthesis (from those I’ve encountered) is clear: microbial protein can and should be used in human nutrition. They argue that the technology needs refinement (it must be more advanced than the technology used to produce feed protein), that trials should be run, and that production should be established.
