How difficult would it be to make a super food?

[Cory J. Geesaman]

This is more just mental masturbation than anything, but does anyone have an ideas on how much work would be required to make a food that hits all the appropriate daily values of everything (essential vitamins included) for a Human from a single source, say a mushroom?  Are all the metabolic pathways and associated enzymes and genes known already for the synthesis of each of the essential vitamins?  Would those pathways compete with each other negatively, or would they more or less work in parallel without stepping on eachother's toes?  Mushrooms are kind of arbitrary, and I know I've heard potatoes are close, but are there other things that don't require direct sunlight and aren't animals?  (Again, this is just a curiosity, I don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan.)

[Skyler Gordon]

Magnificent idea!

Does it need to have sufficient calories to support the human system? As in - do you want to design it to be the only thing a person has to eat or merely an addition to some calorie-heavy meal?

-SG

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 11:30 AM, Cory J. Geesaman <co...@geesaman.com> wrote:

This is more just mental masturbation than anything, but does anyone have an ideas on how much work would be required to make a food that hits all the appropriate daily values of everything (essential vitamins included) for a Human from a single source, say a mushroom?  Are all the metabolic pathways and associated enzymes and genes known already for the synthesis of each of the essential vitamins?  Would those pathways compete with each other negatively, or would they more or less work in parallel without stepping on eachother's toes?  Mushrooms are kind of arbitrary, and I know I've heard potatoes are close, but are there other things that don't require direct sunlight and aren't animals?  (Again, this is just a curiosity, I don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan.)

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[Dakota Hamill]

Isn't that Soylent? 

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 2:45 PM Skyler Gordon <skg...@gmail.com> wrote:

Magnificent idea!

Does it need to have sufficient calories to support the human system? As in - do you want to design it to be the only thing a person has to eat or merely an addition to some calorie-heavy meal?

-SG

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 11:30 AM, Cory J. Geesaman <co...@geesaman.com> wrote:

This is more just mental masturbation than anything, but does anyone have an ideas on how much work would be required to make a food that hits all the appropriate daily values of everything (essential vitamins included) for a Human from a single source, say a mushroom?  Are all the metabolic pathways and associated enzymes and genes known already for the synthesis of each of the essential vitamins?  Would those pathways compete with each other negatively, or would they more or less work in parallel without stepping on eachother's toes?  Mushrooms are kind of arbitrary, and I know I've heard potatoes are close, but are there other things that don't require direct sunlight and aren't animals?  (Again, this is just a curiosity, I don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan.)

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[Skyler Gordon]

Supposing you didn't need it to be your calorie source as well as your vitamin/protein/micro-nutrient source, you could. If you needed to use it as a calorie source, you may run into toxicity issues from eating the same thing over and over.

Take for instance, Soylent (^). In Beta testing of the product, the creator of Soylent overdoes himself on Potassium due to an imbalance in the formula. If you wanted to eat just one thing for the rest of your life, you would have to get the micro-nutrient and vitamin levels spot on to avoid poisoning yourself with, say, arsenic or cyanide. 

An idea like this is great for space travel - providing a nutrient source that can be made by consuming light weight materials that are cheap and easy to use as "padding" like hay or grass or blue-corn meal if you want to use mushrooms. And at the same time avoiding the "just add water" idea - when water is going to be the most difficult thing to get up there. 

Ideally, you could make something like a fungi that would consume high density polymers (like oil) that may be found on distant planet that can then convert previously un-usable materials (Mars dirt, oil, rocket fuel, etc.) into food. 

*See - The Martian

-SG

[Jordan]

It is plausible, but I see two problems that would be very difficult to overcome at present. One individual metabolism, activity, and microbiome would likely make it impossible for a single source to provide ideal nutrition for any given individual. Especially considering that nutritional requirements change over time. The second thing is that the mineral values of a food source are dependent on the environment they are grown in, so you would need to craft a very specific growth media. If you grow this perfect food on something that is iron poor, then in turn your food would be iron deficient. Interesting idea!  

[Cory J. Geesaman]

Ideally the only thing.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 2:45:19 PM UTC-4, Skyler Gordon wrote:

Magnificent idea!

Does it need to have sufficient calories to support the human system? As in - do you want to design it to be the only thing a person has to eat or merely an addition to some calorie-heavy meal?

-SG

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 11:30 AM, Cory J. Geesaman <co...@geesaman.com> wrote:

This is more just mental masturbation than anything, but does anyone have an ideas on how much work would be required to make a food that hits all the appropriate daily values of everything (essential vitamins included) for a Human from a single source, say a mushroom?  Are all the metabolic pathways and associated enzymes and genes known already for the synthesis of each of the essential vitamins?  Would those pathways compete with each other negatively, or would they more or less work in parallel without stepping on eachother's toes?  Mushrooms are kind of arbitrary, and I know I've heard potatoes are close, but are there other things that don't require direct sunlight and aren't animals?  (Again, this is just a curiosity, I don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan.)

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[Cory J. Geesaman]

The oil one, there's a thought in combination with space...Imagine launching an oil-eating bacteria that doesn't run on light and makes all the food a Human needs onto Titan and just using it as a food depot for deep-solar-system colonization.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 2:57:05 PM UTC-4, Skyler Gordon wrote:

Supposing you didn't need it to be your calorie source as well as your vitamin/protein/micro-nutrient source, you could. If you needed to use it as a calorie source, you may run into toxicity issues from eating the same thing over and over.

Take for instance, Soylent (^). In Beta testing of the product, the creator of Soylent overdoes himself on Potassium due to an imbalance in the formula. If you wanted to eat just one thing for the rest of your life, you would have to get the micro-nutrient and vitamin levels spot on to avoid poisoning yourself with, say, arsenic or cyanide. 

An idea like this is great for space travel - providing a nutrient source that can be made by consuming light weight materials that are cheap and easy to use as "padding" like hay or grass or blue-corn meal if you want to use mushrooms. And at the same time avoiding the "just add water" idea - when water is going to be the most difficult thing to get up there. 

Ideally, you could make something like a fungi that would consume high density polymers (like oil) that may be found on distant planet that can then convert previously un-usable materials (Mars dirt, oil, rocket fuel, etc.) into food. 

*See - The Martian

-SG

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 11:45 AM, Skyler Gordon <skg...@gmail.com> wrote:

Magnificent idea!

Does it need to have sufficient calories to support the human system? As in - do you want to design it to be the only thing a person has to eat or merely an addition to some calorie-heavy meal?

-SG

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 11:30 AM, Cory J. Geesaman <co...@geesaman.com> wrote:

This is more just mental masturbation than anything, but does anyone have an ideas on how much work would be required to make a food that hits all the appropriate daily values of everything (essential vitamins included) for a Human from a single source, say a mushroom?  Are all the metabolic pathways and associated enzymes and genes known already for the synthesis of each of the essential vitamins?  Would those pathways compete with each other negatively, or would they more or less work in parallel without stepping on eachother's toes?  Mushrooms are kind of arbitrary, and I know I've heard potatoes are close, but are there other things that don't require direct sunlight and aren't animals?  (Again, this is just a curiosity, I don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan.)

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[Cory J. Geesaman]

I was thinking just bags of sawdust like they use for growing mushrooms commercially.

[Skyler Gordon]

Commercial medical fungus are grown using blue corn mash, or something similar in nutrient density. The mycelium grow in autoclave bags, then the bags are cut and the ‘mushrooms’ grow out of the slits in the bag.

If it’s the only thing you want to have in the diet, you’re absolutely going to run into toxicity issues. Something you would have to determine based on the uptake of different minerals and vitamins from your substrate (see above).

So, something that might be too tricky to accomplish.

-SG

[Abizar Lakdawalla]

What is commercial medical fungusfungus and what is blue corn mash

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[Skyler Gordon]

Medicinal mushrooms, grown for a variety of purposes. You should find most of what you need here.

http://www.goba.eu/en/

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAND8PcP9BmG1C4EM-F1jpxA_kfyfkzJLOKFkfdEUtufw8Kqd-w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Skyler Gordon]

-SG

[Cory J. Geesaman]

What about multiple strains of GE mushrooms?  Or is it simply not possible to make a fungus grow that many carbs without increasing other components to toxic amounts?

[Daniel C.]

If you've got a substrate that mushrooms can eat, particularly if it's made of corn, why not just eat the substrate directly?  Especially if we're talking about mushrooms in space, where everything has to be launched in the first place, why bother converting it from X to Y via a biological system when you could just launch Y?

-Dan

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[Skyler Gordon]

Ideally you could use a very dense or very light substrate (hydrocarbons / cellulose) that something like a fungus could break down over a long period of time that a human couldn’t digest. That way you can avoid storage and possible send a ‘multi-use’ item into space.

I haven’t figured out if it’s best to launch more light things or less heavy things (in the mass balance equation), but I’m assuming launching less quantity heavier things is better than more lighter things. I believe the new rockets have become so powerful that payload is less of an issue than actual volume limits.

The circular logic gets even more outstanding when you consider using something like rocket fuel as your substrate. Launching rocket fuel into space takes rocket fuel. The more rocket fuel you send, the more you need to get it there... not sure how it ends up working out, but the smaller the volume (more dense) the better.

-SG

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 8:24 PM Daniel C. <dcroo...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you've got a substrate that mushrooms can eat, particularly if it's made of corn, why not just eat the substrate directly?  Especially if we're talking about mushrooms in space, where everything has to be launched in the first place, why bother converting it from X to Y via a biological system when you could just launch Y?

-Dan

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 12:08 AM, Skyler Gordon <skg...@gmail.com> wrote:

Commercial medical fungus are grown using blue corn mash, or something similar in nutrient density. The mycelium grow in autoclave bags, then the bags are cut and the ‘mushrooms’ grow out of the slits in the bag.

If it’s the only thing you want to have in the diet, you’re absolutely going to run into toxicity issues. Something you would have to determine based on the uptake of different minerals and vitamins from your substrate (see above).

So, something that might be too tricky to accomplish.

-SG

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 8:59 PM Cory J. Geesaman <co...@geesaman.com> wrote:

I was thinking just bags of sawdust like they use for growing mushrooms commercially.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 7:51:54 PM UTC-4, Jordan wrote:

It is plausible, but I see two problems that would be very difficult to overcome at present. One individual metabolism, activity, and microbiome would likely make it impossible for a single source to provide ideal nutrition for any given individual. Especially considering that nutritional requirements change over time. The second thing is that the mineral values of a food source are dependent on the environment they are grown in, so you would need to craft a very specific growth media. If you grow this perfect food on something that is iron poor, then in turn your food would be iron deficient. Interesting idea!  

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[John Griessen]

On 04/11/2018 10:24 PM, Daniel C. wrote:
> where everything has to be launched in the first place, why bother converting it from X to Y via a biological system when you
> could just launch Y?

There's always the case of being in a limited closed system for the near term. So in that setting you have many byproducts
available as growing media that have degraded from their "new state" to some used condition after already having the launch energy
spent.
They are free by comparison to restocking anything not yet launched. The fraction of weight left over after a launch to orbit is
something like .2%. Another way to look at it is to price things by weight -- launched to orbit costs:

Atlas V $20.2k/kg as of 2015
Falcon Heavy $17k/kg as of 2016
Soyuz FG $7.2k/kg as of ?
SpaceX Falcon-9 $2.7k/kg as of 2016
SpaceX Falcon-9 re-used $1.9k/kg as of 2017
SpaceX planned BFR $75/kg future ??

[Cory J. Geesaman]

The original question was more in the context of "an ice age sets in and you only have frozen trees you dig out to use for fuel" (though that wasn't stated in any way, that's why I picked mushrooms.)  The space aspect is interesting though - maybe start making wooden cargo rockets so that nearly everything which makes it to space can be turned into food?  Any idea of the average percentage of weight of the vessel itself in orbit?  (That is, not the cargo weight?)

[Skyler Gordon]

Again, this is ideally, but you could create a closed loop system where bacteria feed on high density polymers, then the bacteria are used to feed humans and plants, the plants are then used to feed humans and fungi, and then the fungi are finally eaten and the feces from the humans can be used to supplement the growth of the bacteria.

I haven’t done all the mass balance equations, but the theory is there.

-SG

[Jonathan Cline]

wouldn't it be best to start the brainstorming with an existing superfood (i.e. not mushroom). 

most likely the solution would be easier reached if fermented.  such as natto.

there were already some groups working on synbio biofactory for B-12 so that could be added to the ferment culture. 

not sure what point you are trying to imply with the comment "don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan" which sounds like it could be with disparaging intent. 

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 11:30:33 AM UTC-7, Cory J. Geesaman wrote:

This is more just mental masturbation than anything, but does anyone have an ideas on how much work would be required to make a food that hits all the appropriate daily values of everything (essential vitamins included) for a Human from a single source, say a mushroom?  Are all the metabolic pathways and associated enzymes and genes known already for the synthesis of each of the essential vitamins?  Would those pathways compete with each other negatively, or would they more or less work in parallel without stepping on eachother's toes?  Mushrooms are kind of arbitrary, and I know I've heard potatoes are close, but are there other things that don't require direct sunlight and aren't animals?  (Again, this is just a curiosity, I don't want to paint myself as some kind of vegan.)

-- 

## Jonathan Cline

## jcl...@ieee.org

## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223

########################

 

[Cory J. Geesaman]

The vegan line was a joke, no offense actually meant.

[Skyler Gordon]

If anyone is actually serious about this idea I would suggest starting with something high in either protein, calories, or both. Rice?

-SG

[Jonathan Cline]

Consider insects.

[Abizar Lakdawalla]

An energy bar or cubes from insects ...

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[Jonathan Cline]

--quote--
UN urges people to eat insects to fight world hunger
BBC News 13 May 2013

Eating more insects could help fight world hunger, according to a new
UN report. The report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says
that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution.
It notes than over 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their
diet with insects.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e00.htm

Wasps, beetles and other insects are currently "underutilised" as food
for people and livestock, the report says. Insect farming is "one of
the many ways to address food and feed security". "Insects are
everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and
feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint," according to
the report.

Nutritional value

The authors point out that insects are nutritious, with *high protein,
fat and mineral content*. They are "particularly important as a food
supplement for undernourished children".

Insects are also "extremely efficient" in converting feed into edible
meat. *Crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle to
produce the same amount of protein, according to the report*. Most
insects are are likely to produce fewer environmentally harmful
greenhouse gases than other livestock. The ammonia emissions
associated with insect-rearing are far lower than those linked to
conventional livestock such as pigs, says the report.

The report suggests that the food industry could help in "raising the
status of insects" by including them in new recipes and adding them to
restaurant menus. It goes on to note that in some places, certain
insects are considered delicacies. For example some caterpillars in
southern Africa are seen as luxuries and command high prices.

Most edible insects are gathered in forests and serve niche markets,
the report states. It calls for improved regulation and production for
using insects as feed. "The use of insects on a large scale as a feed
ingredient is technically feasible, and established companies in
various parts of the world are already leading the way," it adds.

--end quote--
--quote--

Edible insects: Do insects actually taste any good?
By Charlotte Payne University of Cambridge
BBC NEWS 18 January 2018

Returning home later that day, the men have hundreds of hornets
swimming in liquor - and a 7kg (1st 1lb) nest.

Over bottles of beer, they pick the remaining hornets from the nest
with tweezers, while their wives simmer the larvae - which taste like
a gamey clotted cream when eaten raw, but like sweet mussels when
cooked - with ginger, soy sauce, and mirin. They fry any semi-adult
hornets until their exoskeletons are crispy coverings for the soft
meat within. Neighbours drop by and toast their bounty with a glass
of aged liquor made on a similar adventure, the hornet's venom having
turned the ordinary white alcohol into a dark, smoky brew. As they
enjoy the feast, they joke about how none of them will sleep much that
night - hornets are considered a powerful aphrodisiac.


Different agave species contain different worms. The red worms are
especially prized: even raw they have a distinct smoky taste. They
are in such demand that harvesting is strictly regulated, though visit
a provincial Oaxacan market out of the official season and you may be
approached with an offer of some illicit wriggling red worms.

The vast majority of edible insects, however, are easy to harvest,
with many of them quite literally falling from the sky. Take termites,
which are eaten across sub-Saharan Africa. ...Children are
particularly keen collectors, since the process involves scrabbling
around on all fours in the dirt before pulling the wings off each
termite in turn. They are then boiled and sauteed with a little salt.


Edible insects

Entomophagy is the name for eating insects

Most insects are 100% edible, compared with about 40% of a cow

Mealworms produce only between 1% and 10% of the greenhouse gas per
kilogram produced by pigs

*Many insects are high in calcium, zinc, iron and protein*

Beetles make up 40% of all recorded edible insect species


Other edible insects grow on trees, in vast quantities. Visit
southern Burkina Faso in the rainy season, and you'll find the trees
stripped of their leaves and the ground covered in shea caterpillars.
Villagers wake as early as 02:00 to collect the juiciest specimens,
which they cook into a stew for a hearty meal or fry as a snack.
They've been described as tasting like meaty vegetables.


Others grow inside trees, such as palm weevil larvae. These plump
white grubs are popular in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where
forest-dwellers take an axe to rotting palm trees to find the insects
living inside. The larvae are wrapped in leaves and cooked in an open
fire. They taste like small parcels of buttery pate. Many of the most
widely eaten insects worldwide are grasshoppers, crickets and locusts.


In Asia, farmers trail nets through fields of rice to catch
grasshoppers. In Mexico, they sweep through fields of maize and
alfalfa with large buckets for the very popular chapulines - the
colloquial name for a pleasingly lemony species of grasshopper.
Locusts are mentioned in the Old Testament because they were and still
are a common edible crop pest in the Fertile Crescent region of the
Middle East. Lighter than meat and heavier than seafood, they're
delicious. Each one of these plant-loving insects absorbs the taste
of your chosen seasoning and adds a satisfyingly crunchy texture.

Like other crops, most edible insects are highly seasonal, with many
celebrations of the coming harvest held around the world - including
wasp festivals in Japan and caterpillar festivals in Burkina Faso and
the Democratic Republic of Congo. So, while there's been a lot of
recent interest in farming insects for food, we've been doing it
non-intensively for millennia. The movement towards bringing edible
insects to more dinner tables worldwide has been driven by the belief
that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution.
There has been interest in the possibility that bugs - already eaten
by two billion people - may have a lighter environmental footprint
than livestock. Enthusiastic "ento-preneurs" - or bug businesses -
are looking for new ways to appeal to the discerning consumer, with
powdered insects now appearing in bread, pasta, and protein shakes. It
could be that such powder-pushing is what introduces more consumers to
the pleasures of bug eating.

--end quote--

On 4/29/18, Jonathan Cline <jcl...@ieee.org> wrote:
> Consider insects.
>

[Skyler Gordon]

It’s said that John the Baptist lived solely on honey and dried locust.

That being said, energy retention drops by 1/10 every time you go up a trophic level. Insects are great for converting unusable energy (most plants) into food, but wouldn’t really hold up with the conservation of energy idea.

Going back to the original idea (post apocalyptic mushroom consumption - I believe), you’d want to save as much of the energy as possible.

-SG

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[Ravasz]

Dunno if it has been stated earlier but algae tend to provide almost everything we need, except they contain them in suboptimal amounts. So currently any alga based diet needs to be supplemented with other stuff. However, in the last few years genetic engineering has developed so rapidly that it would be more-or-less possible to create a super alga that could serve as a single food source.
As a bonus, algae are about 50x more efficient at creating edible biomass than the best land plants we have out there.

[Skyler Gordon]

CO2 conversion to biomass using photosynthesis, then biomass to CO2 conversion using cellular respiration. You could even feed the algae feces and completely recycle every carbon atom that doesn’t get incorporated into the human body.

Supposing you’re into closed loop systems.

-SG

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