Better Meat’s drying process will increase demand for its fermented meat fungus, CEO says

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Dive Brief:

• Better Meat on Tuesday received a patent for its process of producing mycoprotein, an alternative protein made from fermentating a fungus called Neurospora crassa. It will help the company produce its products at a lower cost, according to CEO Paul Shapiro.
• Due to its shelf stability, Shapiro said Better Meat has an advantage in the market over its competitors. The patent expands protection to cover the company’s method for drying mycelium into a powder for additional applications. Most other mycelium makers have a frozen or refrigerated product that can affect quality and create an undesirable texture, Shapiro said.
• “Essentially this means that we can now place the product anywhere very inexpensively,” Shapiro said in an interview with Food Dive. “Any company will be able to store our product at ambient room temperature without having to have expensive early storage.”

Dive Insight:

The key difference with the new patent compared to others Better Meat has received is that it covers the company’s shelf-stable mycelium. This gives the company an immediate advantage over its competitors.

“If you think about a product like a texturized vegetable protein, typically those products, while shelf stable, have to be hydrated 15 to 30 minutes before they can be utilized,” Shapiro said. “In our case, the product is ready for use one second after hydration.” 

This allows the Rhiza mycoprotein to maintain a meat-like texture even though it’s gone through a drying and milling process, he said.

Mycoproteins are increasing in popularity in the alternative protein space. They are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.9% through 2033, according to Precedence Research. The increasing popularity of sustainable protein sources has driven demand for these products. 

Shapiro said he believes Better Meat’s offering is the only commercialized shelf-stable mycoprotein product available to consumers. “There might be a pre-revenue, small startup trying to do it, but there’s nobody on the market offering self-stable, granular product that is commercialized,” he said.

The company has other patent pending applications tied to a new species of mycoprotein it hopes to cultivate for new products.

“In the same way that animal proteins differ, from beef to chicken and pork, fungi proteins differ greatly as well. There are thousands of species of fungi that you can harness to achieve a number of goals — dairy, egg and even wheat replacement are all options,” Shapiro said.