Niall’s Weblog

I came across Quorn today. It has a pretty interesting history - it was created initially to address the supposedly imminent global shortage in protein-rich foods. That shortage hasn’t occurred (yet) so its been targeted at vegetarians as a meat substitute. Also the fungus (actually a type of mold) itself is quite interesting. It was apparently found in soil in a field in Buckinghamshire, England in the 1960s. It can be efficiently grown in in large fermentation tanks, essentially converting glucose (which the mold feed on) into a high-protein, humanly edible substance. They mix this fungus with egg white to bind it. It is very popular in the UK and Ireland among vegetarians, however has met some resistance in the USA.

I find it interesting that twice as many people will eat Quorn if it is described as a mushroom, than will eat it if it is described as a fungus. People have an irrational distaste for the term ‘fungus’ it would seem. Of course, this is not really surprising - people are well-known to be irrational about foods. Just look at objections to drinking milk based on the argument “no other animals drink another species’ milk, therefore we shouldn’t”. No other animals cook their food nor make bread, beer nor wine - yet few people argue against consuming these things on the same grounds.

It seems to be this issue which has sparked objections from mushroom producers, Gardenburger etc over Quorn being marketed as ‘mushroom in origin’. Quorn clearly isn’t mushroom in origin. Mushrooms are much more socially acceptable as food than non-mushroom fungus is. The objectors argue that Quorn’s marketers are deceptively trying to cash in on the acceptance of mushrooms, which I think is likely the case. Gardenburger management make the point that they have invested significant amount of money in making mushrooms more palatable, and Quorn are in essence trying to get a free ride on the back of this to market their industrially-produced mycoprotein. I can see how potentially there could be a backlash against mushrooms, should something happen with Quorn - perhaps a health scare or simply anger at being deceived. The most interesting part of all this is the comparison with yoghurt - that the yoghurt industry apparently had to do considerable work to get people past the fact that it contained bacteria. Seeing that yoghurt has been accepted in many cultures for a very long time (just like cheese), indeed its been around much longer than we’ve even been aware that bacteria existed, makes me wonder why today’s consuming public is so easy to scare simply with the spectre of bacteria. Presumably, these are the same as the usual suspects in FUD cases - competing industries or publicity hungry journalists, or whatever.

In the course of my fungus foray, I was also reading a bit about truffles. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a truffle, but I’ve certainly been aware of their status as a delicacy. Frankly I didn’t see what the fuss was all about, I’m sure they taste nice but I rather doubt they are worth their insane price. I figure its more a status issue than a true taste issue. Anyway, this is all just rambling. Whats really interesting is the fact that we learned to cultivate truffles in the mid-19th century, were able to produce them in such quantities that in 1900 just about everyone could cook with them. Today however, truffle production is far lower than a hundred years ago. Why? According to Wikipedia’s truffle page factors such as industrialisation, along with its rural exodus - along with WWI - resulted in many of France’s truffle fields returning to wilderness, and the recently developed techniques of truffle cultivation were also lost. This is a fascinating example of an exception from the doctrine of progress, and also of the failure of economic incentives. We aren’t supposed to be able to lose knowledge, we’re supposed to know more today than we ever did in the past! Of course, there are plenty of other things the ancients could do better than we can. For example, arts of shipbuilding and jewelery making, weapons smithing etc - all gone. Additionally, one would think that, since truffles fetch such a high price, people would be trying frantically to re-discover the methods of truffle cultivation. With all our great inventions, we can’t even grow some stupid fungus? Of course, I’m sure there were many barriers. Perhaps truffles require very specific growing conditions, on which land is prohibitively expensive. According to the wikipedia article, some farmers are opposed to mass cultivation of truffles because it would obviously drive them out of business. It probably takes a long time - maybe thirty years or more - to gain enough experience to be able to grow tasty truffles reliably. The wikipedia article seems to hint that this is the case, since it states that numerous attempts at mass production of truffles have been started over the past thirty years. So perhaps we are only a few years away from having cheap, widely available truffles after all. This would be nice, because then maybe I’d finally get the chance to try them!