It's good to see this research getting publicity. The comments about economics here are spot on. Fungi are, as far as I’ve seen, the most efficient organisms at converting carbon and nitrogen into protein. And they’re able to handle a wide variety of carbon sources.. in fact this is part of why they produce so much protein - they need to secrete enzymes (proteins) to break down basically all forms of organic matter.. polysaccharides, fats, proteins.. this is literally their job in the world.
Filamentous fungi (featured here) are even more interesting. The filaments are called hyphae, and you can think of them as microtubules for nutrient scavenging. Some filamentous fungi can grow hyphae and penetrate them into the exoskeletons of insects. Hyphae are almost pure fiber and protein, in about a 50/50 ratio. One of the most complete nutritional sources in a single organism. Combined with the fact you can grow them at scale in industrial fermentation processes, they have the potential to be the most economical source of protein in the world.
Fat is missing though, and there is no essential need for fiber.
And what about vitamines? Water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamines? The latter of which are probably totally missing. All of those are found in good meat, however.
> Thinking of food only on its nutritional aspects is reductive
A reductive approach seems to be the problem of artificial meat, in the first place.
> From a health point of view, fiber is a necessity
If there is a healthy microbiome to digest the fiber, you may want to feed that microbiome with fiber so it stays alive, and even improve the population that way. And I see that fiber can mitigate blood sugar spikes. However, fiber also takes up valuable minerals, prohibiting their uptake. I do not think that the situation is as clear cut as you present it.
Fiber is essential fuel for all kinds of microbes that produce immune-modulating molecules and neurotransmitter precursors for us.
>However, fiber also takes up valuable minerals, prohibiting their uptake. I do not think that the situation is as clear cut as you present it.
If this were actually a concern, it would be beneficial to extract all nutrients from whole foods and consume them as a pill (vitamin) instead of eating our nutrition. This has not borne out in extensive research despite billions of dollars invested into developing and marketing nutrient supplements.
In general, I agree that most literature recommends to maintain fiber in the diet. However, this depends and there is research on diets that reduce dietary fiber. Let me refer you to recent articles
> we found that a fiber-free diet ameliorates colitis by altering the intestinal localization of a specific gut pathobiont that is required to trigger CD-like disease in genetically susceptible mice. Mechanistically, fiber-free diet inhibited the ability of mucin-degrading microbes to supply critical molecules that are required for the metabolism and maintenance of the disease-causing pathobiont in the mucus layer.
> Fiber free exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) is an effective steroid-sparing treatment used to induce clinical remission in children with Crohn’s disease (CD).
I hope it becomes apparent that having fiber is not the solution to everything. Above papers administer fiber-free diets for treatment.
Other diets focus on the exclusion of certain fibers, like for example, in the widespread and clinically approved FODMAP diet. Hence, it also depends on the type of fiber.
Your first two examples are for severely abnormal GI function. The latter of the two, EEN, is also a short-term diet that is intended to induce remission of symptoms, at which point presumably whole foods are reintroduced.
Finally, the low FODMAP diet is not intended to eliminate FODMAPs nor is it intended to be used long term. From the inventors of the low FODMAP diet:
"Given the adverse changes in gut microbial populations associated with long-term adherence to a low FODMAP diet, we always encourage people to enter a re-challenge phase and under the guidance of a dietitian, find an acceptable balance between the occasional inclusion of moderate and high FODMAP foods (naturally rich in healthy prebiotics) and adequate symptom control. In the long-term, we advocate people follow the least restrictive diet necessary. Further research into the rechallenge and long-term maintenance phases of the diet is warranted."
There is a big difference between saying "fiber is not the solution to everything" which I never said, and what the OP said which was to recommend no fiber at all, 0%.
You are citing studies on specific narrow medical conditions where a limiting
of fiber had some impact. Yes, you can probably find narrow medical conditions that would benefit from any diet you want to support. You can find medical conditions that support 100% fat, 100% carb, 100% protein. Those are niche cases with specific needs.
That isn't what the general regular human would need.
This is like saying, "we've found that in some specific cases, excess water leads to drowning, thus we recommend a water free diet."
Maybe not you. But it is really awful how many people are really eating unhealthily based on this kind of miss-interpretations, and in some cases out right marketing manipulation.
Yes it is a huge field, and there are a lot of different types of fibers, with hundreds of knock on effects. This is one of those fields where there a lot of variables, it is complex, so super easy to purposely confuse people. To then say, we don't need it?
Also humans already consume many varieties of fungi without needing to cook them. [0] The human digestive-process and immune-system are actually pretty dang successful at erasing would-be colonizers. (We mainly notice the failures.)
Even the dangerous fungi are typically that way because of posthumous revenge-poison stocked up in their tissues, which is not a feature anybody should be permitting in their production process anyway.
I hope this is where sustainable agriculture focuses it's attention in the future. Genetically modifying more energy-efficient organisms to be nutritionally useful to humans, while having free reign to make them taste however we want, seems like the way to go to me, instead of trying to grow beef in a lab. Lab-grown meat solves the ethical issues, but I imagine for a while it will be prohibitively expensive for the people who need nutritious food the most, while also being very energy-intensive to produce.
I've been relatively convinced that, in the absence of some very major tech breakthroughs that are not even yet on the horizon, lab grown meat will not make sense except in extremely niche applications, perhaps even to the extent of it only being a thing where rich people buy lab grown versions of endangered/extinct animals.
Modified plant proteins like Beyond Meat and/or the kinds of organisms you describe seem to be a much closer, easier, and more likely near-to-medium term solutions. And I say that as someone who would love nothing more than for lab grown meat to succeed and someone who has made a variety of sacrifices and to both eat less meat and when I do eat more sustainable and ethical meat (to the satisfaction of my own personal morals).
Vow is a lab grown meat company taking this path. Last year they made a mammoth meatball that used mammoth dna with some elephant dna. I think this is a smart approach, allows them to charge higher prices for a unique experience. [1]
Other types of meat that make sense are high end sushi fish etc. where again the conventional price they compete against is high enough that it makes it economically possible to grow it in a lab.
Firstly, I have read in the past that mushrooms must be boiled before eating to remove toxins. Is this true for the subject of the article, aspergillus oryzae?
Secondly, I have heard that mushrooms are relatively poor for nutritional content, excepting B vitamins. Will there be an enormous amount of nutrition to add to make this viable?
Proof for first point: "Even the cultivated A. bisporus contains small amounts of hydrazines, the most abundant of which is agaritine (a mycotoxin and carcinogen). However, the hydrazines are destroyed by moderate heat when cooking."
Proof for second point: "Riboflavin (B2) 42% 0.5 mg, Pantothenic acid (B5) 30% 1.5 mg" - all other parameters on the wiki under 20%.
> Firstly, I have read in the past that mushrooms must be boiled before eating to remove toxins.
Not sure where you read that. Some mushrooms can be eaten raw. Some should not be eaten raw, but can be eaten cooked. _Many cannot be eaten even cooked, and may kill you if you try._
The article’s generally talking about single-cell fungus, not mushrooms, in any case. As a concept, mycoprotein for food has been around in a while; notably quorn showed up in 1985.
> Although recognized as an experimental carcinogen when used in high laboratory doses, there is inadequate evidence to classify Agaritine as carcinogenic to humans in amounts ingested from consuming mushrooms
I mean, if you wanted to be ultra-cautious you might avoid it, but it’s IARC Group 3. Unless you have a _very_ carefully controlled diet, it’s should probably not be high on your list of concerns, carcinogen-wise.
I don't know about saccharin, but tea is known to block iron absorption substantially, and coffee reduces cerebral blood flow (CBF) by virtue of its high caffeine content. Those are just two negative, non-trivial effects coming from those beverages.
Being in the same "group" doesn't mean it's healthy to eat long term. There need to be randomized double blind controlled trials and warning labels on synthetic foods.
Things get put in this group when the trials (generally on animals; you’re not going to get go ahead for trials of possible carcinogens on humans, generally) show inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity. Next group up is where there’s some, but ambiguous evidence on animals. For reference, agaratine is in group 3; red meat is in 2A, _two_ groups up, and most people are okay with eating that.
> warning labels on synthetic foods.
We’re talking about mushrooms here; mushrooms aren’t synthetic.
This is a good example, albeit a bit sad, of how far detached much of modern society is from our roots. In communities where foraging is common, you learn about these topics as a child and the knowledge is passed down from generation to generation. Many mushrooms are edible, some specifically prepared, some raw, and some are even considered superfoods (!). Mushrooms are very much the trickster though, many of them interchangeably similar in appearance, and for the uninitiated it can be easy to mix up safe ones with dangerous ones.
Foraging is not just done to fend off starvation: it is a fun activity for the family that can net you some absolutely delicious foods, and is massively popular in a lot of developed countries - eg: the Nordic countries.
Nothing beats getting a metric shit tonne of chanterelles or similar for free after a nice days exercise in the outdoors.
As an equally sad counterpoint, if we had 7 billion people out there foraging the countryside would be stripped bare, wild animals driven further from human inhabited areas, and untold habitats would be degraded from all the wandering and poking around.
Don't get me wrong it's a great hobby, but this isn't something that would heal all social ills if we somehow got everybody or near everybody out doing it.
Regarding the nutritional value of mushrooms, a few counterpoints. Firstly, you are only looking at a single variety of mushroom (cremini).
Second, 7% manganese, 17% phosphorus, 15% potassium, and 12% zinc per 3.5oz serving representing 22 calories (or ~1/100 of your daily caloric intake) is nothing to sneeze at.
Go check out 100g servings of various other veggies to get a baseline. It is also likely that these nutrients are far more bioavailable in mushrooms than they are in, for instance, brassica veggies, due to lack of phytates and other uptake inhibiting molecules (so called "anti-nutrients").
FYI, 3.5oz of mushrooms will cook down into less than 1/4 cup, so if you desire, you can eat substantially more than this incorporated into a dish without it necessarily overpowering flavor or texture.
Finally, mushrooms are chock full of other hugely beneficial (but under-studied) dietary compounds such as beta-glycans, triterpenoids, ergosterol, and all manner of immune-modulating tryptophan metabolites such as indole-3-proprionic acid.
This is a fungus, not really a mushroom. It does not need to be boiled to remove toxins. It's widely used in multiple cuisines.
Grocery store mushrooms don't need to be boiled. If you're dealing with mushrooms and don't know whether they should be boiled, play it safe and don't eat them or serve them.
Fungi contain a large amount of nucleic acid (8–25%), most of which is ribonucleic acid (RNA). In order to reduce the damage on human health, fungal proteins must be processed in a certain way to reduce the content of RNA (to less than 2%), and decrease the risk of gout. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10742821/
Aspergillus oryzae (koji) is eaten raw in Japan, every day, since a long time ago. It's used to make miso. When making miso soup from raw miso (which is made using raw koji), you shouldn't bring the soup to a boil after putting in the miso in order to preserve the positive health effects.
Koji is relatively well-known even outside of Japan these days I believe, even Fedora's build system is named after it.
On the second point, if you compare to chicken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_as_food which has nothing above 20% of RDA per 100g, mushrooms suddenly don't look so bad. (Though it does make me wonder how complete the nutrient tables on Wikipedia are.)
Seems like a product that tasted mostly like a burger or was at least "meaty" and "tasty" would also be valuable. Generally I feel like I'm getting more than enough nutrition (i.e. calories and stuff)
> I realize that the subject fungus, aspergillus oryzae, is not a mushroom. They are, however, related.
Brewer's yeast is also related, and it's chock-full of B vitamins (other than B12, which is pretty scarce in anything other than animal tissue). Also protein.
Due to conventional agricultural practices ie pesti/herbicides, animals have to be fed B12 to contain any. After learning that i stopped eating meat and started taking B12.
Gene editing fungi to create quasi-meats. I could see this being an economical(?) food of the future if they manage to get long tight fibers and lipids going.
Data on quorn, which is this thing’s spiritual ancestor (the fungus used in quorn isn’t genetically modified, and the product has been around as an experimental product since the 60s and a commercial one since the 80s): https://www.quornnutrition.com/essential-amino-acids
i used to eat quorn until i read something about it which purported it was dogshit for health. Stuff like this is very cool scientifically - but - cherrypicking stuff and ramming it into a fungus "because meat" doesnt fill me with confidence that this is healthy to eat at all. What it does scream is - selling plant based foods because they will sell to meat eaters. Actual health outcomes be damned. Is this stuff going to be tested for a decade before its deemed safe to eat?
> i used to eat quorn until i read something about it which purported it was dogshit for health.
I mean, you can find negative health claims, albeit often of dubious value, for _literally anything_, so, absent more context, I wouldn't take that at all seriously.
> Stuff like this is very cool scientifically - but - cherrypicking stuff and ramming it into a fungus "because meat" doesnt fill me with confidence that this is healthy to eat at all.
That isn't what quorn was; it's not genetically modified (given that it's from the _early 60s_, it'd be a very good trick if it was).
Monkey head mushrooms work really well as a texture replacement for chicken, and cooked unripe jackfruits work really well as a texture replacement for pulled pork. I'm vegetarian and make use of both.
Unfortunately they both sorely lack in protein content, so for a meal to be balanced, the protein needs to be made up through other parts of a dish. I'm slightly skeptical about how much protein the fungi in TFA produce.
Cooked unripe jackfruit is a very popular ingredient where I come from, but we typically combine it with smoked pork or chicken. It's very very yummy.
I wouldn't say the texture resembles pulled pork though. Maybe visually if you squint a little.
The main challenge with unripe jackfruit is that it's difficult to cut and prepare without making a mess. There's a sort of extremely sticky glue that comes out of it. It will ruin your kitchen if you're unprepared.
It's best to buy it at the market where it has been freshly cut and sliced for you.
"Balanced" meals are not necessary and probably not optimal anyway.
Balanced diets are important, but your digestion and satiety are almost certainly better served by varying what they're tasked with for individual meal.
Various dishes are designed with a meat component, where the texture or flavour works well. Pulled pork for example would have the same flavour blended into a soup but wouldn't work as well for burritos that way.
- You like meat, but don’t want to eat it for ethical reasons.
- You like meat, but don’t want to eat it for religious reasons.
- You like meat, but don’t want to eat it for environmental/sustainability reasons (this is arguably a subset of the ‘ethical reasons’ one)
- You like meat, but it is too expensive (expect this one to get more common as water shortages and emissions reduction initiatives bite; it takes a _hell_ of a lot of water to produce a kilo of beef…)
- You like meat, but it is too high-risk (we keep having these run-ins with zoonotic diseases, you will note; what if cows are an ideal carrier for the next COVID? If we were in the habit of eating mustelids we’d probably already be having that conversation.)
If I order a veg burger, and I can’t tell if it is meat or not, I might be getting meat. And tbh after decades of no meat, I’m not interested. All y’all can eat whatever you want, it’s just not for me.
Other vegetarians/vegans feel differently. It’s not always a logical thing, food is so primal that explanations only go so far.
Protein considerations are largely a myth. You'll get your proteins unless you go out of your way to avoid them, you don't need them in every meal unless you're a bodybuilder or something.
Protein needs are not a myth, and are backed by some of the most extensive research in the nutrition field. See for example examine.com: https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake. The recommended amounts are far higher than most people get.
As mentioned down-thread, gaining and maintaining muscle mass is not just for bodybuilders, it's incredibly important as we age to maintain quality of life. Sarcopenia as a result of disuse is one of the plagues of our modern times, and contributes to huge quality of life declines as we age.
You'll get your proteins without even trying, as long as you're eating a somewhat normal diet. Look at the table in your own link titled "Combining incomplete proteins". Just don't eat only the one thing all the time and you'll be fine.
I’m fairly active, and currently losing some weight, both of which raise my requirements, but it’s not like some sort of niche use case. I track what I eat using an app with a reliable macronutrient database, so the incidental protein is all accounted for. I can assure you that getting anywhere near the recommended amount doesn’t happen by accident, unless I massively blow my calorie budget.
"Cutting" isn't a normal diet. Weight lifters do track their macros more closely to make sure they're getting enough protein on a caloric deficit. It's very easy to starve yourself "the wrong way" while doing it. It's absolutely niche. Of 300 million Americans, during an obesity epidemic, how many do you think are cycling bulking and cutting?
It's ridiculously easy to get your recommended daily averages even as a vegetarian without thinking about it. Rice and beans? Complete amino acid profile. Same with bread and butter. But let's get into statistics and leave the anecdata behind us! Most Americans are consuming double their recommended protein intake, but half the fiber: https://www.deseret.com/2024/1/30/24055585/americans-eating-...
It's not surprising that that article thinks that people are getting twice their daily requirements, if it claims that men need 56g/day. Really? A 50kg man and a 120kg man have the same protein requirements?
Aside from that, there is plenty of evidence that the RDA is woefully insufficient, e.g.:
That second article says in its summary: "Current evidence indicates intakes in the range of at least 1.2 to 1.6 g/(kg·day) of high-quality protein is a more ideal target for achieving optimal health outcomes in adults". That's slightly lower than Examine's figure of 1.2 to 1.6, but whatever. Even assuming the lower figure of 1.2, 56g would be sufficient for a 46.7kg man. I don't know many of them.
That's just after a 30 second search. I can't find the study right now, but if you lock people in a metabolic ward and only give them the RDA of protein, they lose muscle mass. It's not even sufficient for maintenance.
I'm not a bodybuilder, and I'm not "cutting", I'm just losing some weight and want to make sure that what I lose is fat, not muscle. Again, maintaining muscle is about much more than bodybuilding, maintaining basic strength is essential to living a pain- and restriction-free life. I'm more systematic than most because I know that makes it more effective, but wanting to lose weight is not a niche use case. I'm also trying to get my parents to eat more protein because they're older and there's plenty of evidence that their needs are higher, and it's very difficult for them as vegetarians (partly because they resist lifestyle change, admittedly).
If you don't have a habit of eating meat every day, it's pretty easy to eat a low protein diet. So you have to try and keep track of it, especially if you are vegetarian and even more so if you are vegan.
Or unless you care about maintaining muscle mass, which should be either #1 or #2 on your list if you care about lifespan and healthspan (the other one being cardiovascular fitness).
Basically the problem with focusing on protein is people will tend to eat more meat, which has terrible cardiovascular consequences, rather than what they should be doing which is varying their nutrition, not analyzing a single food for its protein content. Don't eat just the one food, people.
Different organisms have different metabolic pathways. Humans are unable to synthesize 9 of the 21 most common amino acids, and must acquire them from food. To learn more, look up "Essential Amino Acid".
Cows do it by having a complicated multiple-chambered stomach full of specialized bacteria that can digest cellulose -- basically a natural chemical engineering facility.
for me at least, healthy sources of fat are the bigger problem. I'm pretty intolerant to carbs and processed food in general. So I ended up on a high fat diet. I'm sure I could survive on protein powder and butter.
So I think, Protein taste isn't the problem, getting the fat right in this mold-patty is probably going to be an issue.
If that's the case you should really eat a mostly meat from ruminants ( beef / goat, etc) contrary to chicken & pigs transform a large part of the less stable fats of plants.
In most countries you can find cows that graze in national parks and order ground beef & organs in bulk. But even with a bad diet those animals will be "healthier" to consume.
I found switching from regular grocery meats and eggs to ‘organic’ made a world of difference not just in taste for me but digestion. I don’t see any issue in getting my proteins from eggs since they are cage free. Eggs are high in fat and protein.
This seems rather unlikely to stand up to court scrutiny, I'd have thought. And realistically, ultimately this sort of protectionism almost never lasts. I'm sure Ron DeSantis, had he been around early last century, would've banned cars to appease the horse lobby, too (and protectionist bans on cars were absolutely a thing in the early days), but there's no future to it.
In any case, this appears to only cover cultured meat, which is not commercially available in significant quantity anywhere, and likely won't be for some time. It doesn't cover quorn and the like (the koji mold product is very much in the quorn category, not the cultured meat category).
> First, Hill-Maini focused on boosting the mold’s production of heme – an iron-based molecule which is found in many lifeforms but is most abundant in animal tissue, giving meat its color and distinctive flavor.
I think this is the main practical difference; more aesthetics than anything else. Of course, for food, aesthetics are all-important; realistically, people will only accept a meat substitute if it tastes as they expect.
I've tried some mushroom-based meats and they make me ill. I think that's true of a double-digit percentage of the population. Hopefully this stuff doesn't suffer the same fate.
Given your use of "soy shit" there's a non-trivial chance I'm feeding the trolls, but FWIW Beyond is made with pea protein, not soy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Meat#Ingredients (Ripple Milk similarly, although regrettably the pea protein gives Ripple a "grassy" aftertaste). Perhaps you're thinking of Impossible Foods, which AFAIK are made with soy
there's nothing wrong with soy itself but growing it at the scale we do is bad for the environment. most soy grown globally is used to feed livestock though so if we would just stop that and grow it for ourselves, it wouldn't be so much of an issue.
There's really nothing _inherent_ to soy that makes it bad for the environment; in fact as a nitrogen fixing plant it's, all else being equal, on the environmentally friendly side (you don't need as much fertiliser). However, for practical purposes, a lot of soy production is environmentally unfriendly, due to deforestation largely in Brazil.
Soy produced in the US and China (the major non-former-forest-oriented producers) is pretty environmentally friendly, certainly moreso than any animal protein production. However, as you say, it mostly goes to livestock feed anyway.
2. it is an androgen disrupter. there's a lot of denialism about it from the food industry (soybean oil and soy protein are everywhere in processed foods) and a few very vocal groups, but most normal men would think twice about consuming it if they were told what we currently know about phytoestrogens and their effect.
I'm a normal man and don't think twice about consuming soy, as humans have done for centuries. In 2018-2019, it was estimated that 1.9 million Americans are considered allergic to soy, compared to 8.2 million for shellfish or 6.1 million for milk. https://www.foodallergy.org/sites/default/files/2020-06/FARE...
Phytoestrogens are a fun bogeyman for mostly conservative "macho men". The Harvard School for Public Health has a decent springboard of research to start from: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/
This is, of course, a concern if you're allergic to soy. However, if you avoid everything that anyone's allergic to, you're not going to be eating much. Even avoiding the EU's 14 notifiable allergens, say, would leave you able to eat very little.
> but most normal men would think twice about consuming it if they were told what we currently know about phytoestrogens and their effect.
Does "what we currently know", here, refer to what conspiracy theorists currently know? General consensus is no known effect (from phytoestrogens; some other substances in soy do have known health effects, particularly in terms of drug interactions).
Interestingly, people rarely have the same concern about _cow's milk_, which of course actually does contain mammalian estrogen (there's some evidence that this may be carcinogenic, but I don't think it's particularly strong). One assumes the milk lobby have a bigger advertising budget...
(and I could find ten more studies like that in 15 minutes if you wish to engage in this argument further)
>The serum levels of sex hormone-binding globulin significantly increased, and the serum levels of free testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) decreased significantly after 3-month supplementation. Among the 10 equol non-producers, equol became detectable in the serum of two healthy volunteers after 3-month supplementation. This study revealed that short-term administration of soy isoflavones stimulated the production of serum equol and decreased the serum DHT level in Japanese healthy volunteers. These results suggest the possibility of converting equol non-producers to producers by prolonged and consistent soy isoflavones consumption.
now feel free to pivot and say that it doesn't matter and/or it is a good thing, "dude".
I don't buy the efficiency argument that is so often espoused by proponents of things like this.
It feels very much like saying that a car would be more efficient if it had no wheels or if it ran on rails. It's true but also misses the point entirely.
I don't live purely to breathe, good food is up there in the top tier of delights in life, along with family, travel, etc. Those are the motivating factors that get me up in the morning.
It all just feels like a huge psychological operation. Consume less, so that someone else can consume more. Why would I willingly give up on everything I enjoy and make myself depressed?
> Why would I willingly give up on everything I enjoy and make myself depressed?
This is a very dramatic take. Where in the article is anything even remotely approaching that implied?
This is just another form of protein that could be good, tasty, and healthy, and doesn't require animals to produce. There are many reasons this is a good alternative to have.
You could eat this for one meal a week, while still eating "real" meat the rest of the time, and help reduce the pressure on our ecosystem just a tiny bit.
The “natural way” would be perfectly fine. But, almost all protein is created on factory farms that are unsustainable. Nothing about the way we consume meat is natural.
Calling a specific diet the "natural way of eating" is either very egotistical or just plain naive.
There are groups around the world that eat vastly different diets than a typical westerner diet. Including ones that are vegetarian, and have been for a lot longer than you might expect.
Filamentous fungi (featured here) are even more interesting. The filaments are called hyphae, and you can think of them as microtubules for nutrient scavenging. Some filamentous fungi can grow hyphae and penetrate them into the exoskeletons of insects. Hyphae are almost pure fiber and protein, in about a 50/50 ratio. One of the most complete nutritional sources in a single organism. Combined with the fact you can grow them at scale in industrial fermentation processes, they have the potential to be the most economical source of protein in the world.