Israeli Food Tech Startup Launches ‘Hybrid Meat’ Revolution in Tel Aviv

Mycelium-centered solution is animal-free and can be included to meat for leaner, healthier alternate

An Israeli meals tech startup is getting ready to launch a “hybrid meat” revolution in Tel Aviv dining places up coming thirty day period.

Mush Food items, a startup that was founded previous yr, leverages food waste to mature an edible mushroom regarded as mycelium.

The corporation grows 14 mycelium species that can be blended with a extensive wide variety of animal proteins, which includes beef, rooster, fish, pork, and seafood.

In accordance to Shalom Daniel, Mush Foods’ founder and CEO, the ingredient is not only vegan and value-productive but also more healthy than consuming pure meat.

Compared with other vegan products, the startup is not targeting vegetarians or vegans, but meat-enthusiasts.

“I imagine we now have sufficient alternatives for vegan people,” Daniel instructed The Media Line. “The meat market place is $1.5 trillion/yr and only a small, modest fraction of this – considerably less than 1.5% – is meat alternatives. If you request me why: I like meat and I’m not heading to be vegan. If you talk to most of the folks right here, they’re not vegan, and to inform you the real truth, they are not likely to be.”

The startup was founded with each other with the Migal Galilee Exploration Institute’s Professor Dan Levanon and Dr. Idan Pereman, as properly as Strauss’ The Kitchen area FoodTech Hub.

Cooking the mycelium is uncomplicated: Soon after the mushroom is dried and chopped up, it is blended with an animal protein to generate a hybrid item that is 50 percent meat, 50 percent mycelium. No binders or fats are extra.

Soon after the mushroom is dried and chopped up, it is combined with an animal protein to build a hybrid product that is 50 percent meat, fifty percent mycelium. (Courtesy)

The target is to dramatically reduce the world-wide consumption of animal proteins, meals squander, and the ecological footprint of the meat field.

“Whether it’s beef, rooster, fish, seafood, or pork – we know how to blend these proteins alongside one another with the mycelium to make a 50/50 mixture,” Or Shapira, chef at Mush Food items, informed The Media Line. “This not only cuts down on meat intake and expenses but also helps make the ultimate item more healthy and much more flavorful.”

Mush Food items is preparing to start this new food items product in pick out Tel Aviv dining establishments come August, which includes the Margoza Bar and Café Dizengoff.

According to them, the mycelium grows speedily and is ready for use in a make a difference of times.

“It’s far better for you in conditions of nutritional worth due to the fact when I minimize 50% of the meat, I also reduce 50% of the cholesterol from saturated excess fat and approximately 20% of the calories when protecting a superior level of protein, fiber, vitamin D and other [nutrients],” Daniel reported.

Mush Foodstuff is not the only food tech enterprise that sees mycelium as the meals of the future.

Hamburg-based mostly company Mushlabs is also cultivating the impressive component and collaborating with Bitburger Brewery team – 1 of Germany’s major personal breweries – to produce it. On leading of this, Danish scientists are doing work with each other with a Michelin-starred restaurant recognized as Alchemist to ferment seaweed and mycelium in purchase to create a seafood substitute.

Nonetheless, Shalom Daniel asserts that the Israeli startup’s technologies is unlike any of its competitors. For just one, Mush Meals grows the mycelium higher than ground working with a process recognised as reliable-point out fermentation, a cultivation process in which microorganisms develop on good components in the absence or near absence of water.

“Most of the organizations that are escalating mycelium right now are applying bio-reactors and liquid fermentation,” he discussed.

However, in the environment of food style is king.

At this week’s pilot in the Margoza Bar, chef Shapira served up gourmet hybrid hamburgers, pasta Bolognese, and arais – a crispy pita crammed with spiced ground beef.

Chef Or Shapira prepares hybrid hamburgers at the Margoza Bar in Jaffa, Israel, Jul. 18, 2022. (Maya Margit/The Media Line)

Diners seemed impressed.

“The meals was excellent,” reported Sharon, a resident of the metropolis of Rehovot who attempted an array of dishes. “I couldn’t taste the variance amongst this and regular meat.”

“I’ve tried many distinctive meat solutions and they normally have a unusual style,” connected Omer, who life in Petah Tikva. “I didn’t individually like Beyond Meat at all simply because I didn’t sense that it tasted like meat. But this tastes like actual foods, like meat.”

For now, Mush Meals is relying on a organization-to-company design to progress its solution. In other words, it will in the beginning not be marketed instantly to consumers but
alternatively promoted to meat distributors and foodstuff company enterprises.

In addition to their impending Tel Aviv launch, Mush Foodstuff is also hoping to discover results in the United States this fall, when they will be serving up mycelium to countless numbers of New Yorkers.

“We’re really going to feed 6,000 folks with our product or service as a pilot, and following the following spherical of funding, the seed round, we’ll start [scaling] up,” Daniel relevant.