A vegan cheese that tastes really good? Thanks to this ancient fungus

London
CNN
—

It’s a problem as unsolvable as the riddle of the Sphinx: how do you make a vegan cheese that people actually want to eat?

Formo, a Berlin-based biotech company, believes it has found the answer in a tiny fungus, Koji, which has given soy sauce, miso and other Japanese cuisine its distinctive umami flavor for thousands of years. Formo ferments Koji to create a protein that forms the basis of dairy-free cheeses.

Raffael Wohlgensinger, Formo’s co-founder and CEO, started the company five years ago to create cheese in a sustainable way, using less land, water and producing less emissions than traditional dairy farming for dairy-based youth. It also grew out of his frustration with the range of vegan cheese products available in stores.

“Being Swiss, and a big cheese fan, (I) was disappointed with the whole thing,” he told CNN.

He is not alone. In recent years, consumers have gathered to dairy-free substitutes for cow’s milk, such as eating its oat- and almond-based cousins, and to plant- and mushroom-based meats. hamburgers.

But shoppers haven’t taken to vegan cheese with the same enthusiasm, according to Carmen Masiá, an application scientist at Novonesis, a Danish biotech company that produces the bacteria and enzymes needed to make fermented foods like yogurts and cheeses.

US sales of plant-based milks rose more than 1% In 2023, according to the Plant-Based Foods Association of San Francisco, sales of plant-based juices fell 9%.

Masiá, who has researched consumer trends in vegan cheese as part of his PhD, said that the most common bases of these cheeses, such as coconut fat, do not provide that familiar “cheesy” flavor or texture. “It’s a block of fat… It feels rubbery. It doesn’t feel like a milk cheese in the mouth.’

“If you talk to vegans or vegetarians or flexitarians, most of them say, ‘I can’t give up cheese,’ because it’s so hard to replicate that taste,” he added. “The code hasn’t been cracked yet.”

Masiá said today’s crop of vegan cheeses, in general, “doesn’t deliver” what consumers want. “If you go to a coffee shop, you can always find oat milk and even people who aren’t really vegan, often choose oat milk because it’s tasty.”

He can’t imagine shoppers’ preference for milk-based cheese changing anytime soon, but fermentation does. the process using bacteria, yeast, or other microorganisms to break down and transform foods, such as turning milk into yogurt, offers a way to improve vegan cheeses.

“Ultimately, if you develop something that’s really sustainable, really nutritious but doesn’t taste good, people aren’t really going to buy it.”

Looks like Formo’s cheese has finally tickled some flavors. In September, the company secured $61 million in its latest funding round and announced it would begin selling some of its products — three flavors of cream cheese — in more than 2,000 stores in Germany and Austria.

Wohlgensinger said the cooperation with REWE, BILLA and METRO supermarkets It was a “massive” moment for the company. Formo is preparing to roll out its products in Europe next year and in the US in 2026.

So what’s the secret sauce?

Formo has put its own twist on fermentation to make its cheeses: it puts a strain of Koji fungus in a tank, adds oxygen and mixes sugars and nutrients to work up proteins in large quantities. He calls this process “micro-fermentation”.

The proteins are siphoned and dried to create a powder that forms the basis of Formo’s products, which also include blue and feta-style cheeses.

Koji protein gives Formo cheeses a “creaminess” that’s hard to replicate using plant proteins, which are structured differently and can often feel “lumpy” in the mouth, Wohlgensinger said, adding that the flavor is closer to milk-based cheese. .

“In all cashew or soy-based (cheese) products, you taste cashew or soy, (and) in potato-based products, you taste potato starch,” he said.

Wohlgensinger said Formo is the first to ferment Koji cheese. He hopes the method will eventually become the default among food producers.

It is also testing a process called form precision fermentation, which uses genetically engineered microorganisms to produce proteins identical to the casein proteins found in animal milk. These cloned proteins can help give Formo’s vegan cheeses the flavor, texture and “meltability” of traditional cheese, according to the company..

“If you think about the extensibility of a mozzarella on your pizza, that’s really coming down to the protein structure of the casein,” Wohlgensinger said. Cheeses produced by precision form fermentation are in the process of being approved for sale by food regulators in the US and Europe. Securing approval for these cheeses is a complex process, in part because the production process is new, Wohlgensinger added.

“We’re not here to put small-scale dairy farmers out of business – they’re always going to be part of a very valuable, diverse and resilient food system – but at the same time I think there’s a very large part of the market… that a more efficient technology will replace it,” he said.

Livestock farming is in charge about 12% Among the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, it is a significant contributor to climate change. Cows are particularly influential because they produce methanea powerful planet-warming gas.

Formo hopes that as it scales its production, retail prices will drop below those of milk-based cheeses. Now, 100 grams of Formo’s cream cheese product costs €1.59 ($1.68), which is €0.32 ($0.34) more expensive than the average price of milk-based cheese, Wohlgensinger said.

However, the company has to deal with deep-rooted preferences among cheese lovers.

Dairy-based cheeses have a unique “mindfulness,” says Julie Emmett, vice president of market development for the Plant-Based Foods Association, which has made it difficult for dairy-free alternatives to really compete, unlike plant-based milks. .

“You can’t say that he necessarily likes milk. You can say that the meat is the mind. But with cheese, it’s unique in that respect, (it’s) something sweet,” Emmett said.

However, Novonesis’ Masiá said fermentation could be the answer for dairy-free cheesemakers, infusing their products with the “cheesy notes” that consumers seek. Increasingly, food manufacturers are ordering batches of Novonesis’s bacterial cultures to produce cheese through this process, he added.

“People are opening their eyes and thinking, ‘OK, microbes can help us,'” he said.

CNN’s Laura Paddison contributed reporting.