Synthetic and artificial food products. Artificial food

ARTIFICIAL FOOD PRODUCTS (artificial food), food products produced technically from natural food ingredients; the latter are obtained mainly from by-products of the processing of plant materials. Soy protein preparations (concentrates and isolates), as well as whey concentrates, are most often used as raw materials for the production of artificial food products. Soy protein concentrates are obtained by removing undesirable components of soy flour (a by-product of soybean oil production) by hydroalcoholic extraction; isolates are obtained by alkaline extraction of defatted soy flour followed by precipitation of the protein with acid. As a result, the protein concentration increases from 40-55% (by weight) to 70-72% and 90-95%, respectively. Whey concentrates are obtained by ultrafiltration. The composition of artificial food products also includes food additives: thickeners, gelling agents and other food hydrocolloids, flavorings, dyes and other components that make it possible to give the product the required technological and consumer properties. Vitamins, antioxidants, pre- and probiotics, dietary fiber and other ingredients are added to increase nutritional value. The main technological operations used in the manufacture of artificial food products are thermoplastic extrusion, emulsification, and gelation.

In the United States, research into the production of artificial foods has been carried out since the 1950s; The main objectives are to expand the scope of application and increase the market value of defatted soy flour. In the USSR, similar work began in the 1960s on the initiative of Academician A. N. Nesmeyanov with the goal of creating fundamentally new industrial technologies for food production, including those that make it possible to shorten the food chain. Partial replacement of meat products with plant products in the diet and the use of proteins from green biomass, plankton, microbial biomass, etc. for human nutrition lead to a significant economic effect and allow a sharp increase in food resources, since reducing the food chain by one link causes a decrease in the consumption of nutrients and energy approximately 10 times. Another important task is to obtain products with specified composition and properties, including for the prevention of chronic diseases (so-called functional foods), for dietary and therapeutic nutrition.

There are two types of artificial food products - combined products and analogues. The former are natural products containing artificially obtained ingredients. The most common minced meat products contain at least 20-25% (by weight) soy protein texture, obtained by thermoplastic extrusion of defatted soy flour, soy protein concentrates or mixtures thereof with isolates. Analogs imitate natural food products (for example, protein granular caviar is an analogue of sturgeon caviar). The most common analogues of dairy and meat products. The first, in particular, are intended for people with an allergy to cow's milk (for example, about 10% of children in the United States suffer from it). As analogues, both traditional soy milk and emulsions, including dry ones, based on soy protein isolate are used.

Lit.: Tolstoguzov V.B. Artificial food products. M., 1978; aka. Economics of new forms of food production. M., 1986; aka. New forms of protein food. M., 1987; Messina M., Messina V., Setchell K. Ordinary soybeans and your health. Maykop, 1995; Plant protein: new perspectives / Edited by E. E. Braudo. M., 2000; Lishchenko V.F. World food problem: protein resources (1960-2005). M., 2006.

Remember the stories of science fiction writers about plastic porridge, and so we have lived to see this joyful day - now artificial products are everywhere.

In the USSR, extensive research on the problem of protein PPIs began in the 60-70s. on the initiative of Academician A.N. Nesmeyanov at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds (INEOS) of the USSR Academy of Sciences and developed in three main directions:
— development of economically feasible methods for obtaining isolated proteins, as well as individual amino acids and their mixtures from plant, animal and microbial raw materials;
— creation of methods for structuring from proteins and their complexes with polysaccharides IPP, imitating the structure and appearance of traditional food products;
— research of natural food odors and artificial recreation of their compositions.

The developed methods for obtaining purified proteins and mixtures of amino acids turned out to be universal for all types of raw materials.

With modern technology, odors are studied using gas-liquid chromatography methods and are artificially recreated from the same components as in natural food products.

1. Synthetic or artificial caviar
The product is surrogate. It is designed to replace an expensive and rare delicacy. The very first synthetic caviar was produced in the Soviet Union. In the 70s, products disappeared sharply from shelves, and those that could be obtained were obscenely expensive. At that time, modeling various protein compounds was considered a promising branch of science.
It was proposed to the organic chemist Academician A.N. to develop artificial caviar. Nesmeyanov. At first, caviar was produced only on the basis of gelatin and chicken eggs. Later, they began producing caviar based on gelling agents, such as algae.

2. Artificial eggs
As the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported, employees of the department of commerce and industry arrived to check after receiving a signal from a wholesale egg seller who said that he purchased eggs from Liaoning province.
The inspectors reported that the raw yolk and white of these eggs can be taken separately by hand and they do not spread, they have increased elasticity and firmness. When eating these eggs, you may experience a strange taste.
One of the representatives of the egg business, on condition of anonymity, told the correspondent that the shells of artificial eggs are made from calcium carbonate, and the yolk and white from other chemical components. If you eat them for a long time, you may develop sclerosis, dementia and other diseases.

3 Artificial meat.
In the USSR, artificial meat, suitable for any type of culinary processing, is produced by extrusion (pressing through molding devices) and wet spinning of protein to transform it into fibers, which are then collected into bundles, washed, impregnated with an adhesive mass (gelling agent), pressed and cut into pieces.
For the first time, Dutch scientists from the University of Eindhoven managed to grow artificial meat. Geneticists are confident that a piece of test tube pork will lead to a food revolution: people will start breeding pigs and calves for aesthetic reasons, and growing meat for cutlets in layers in laboratory conditions from a single cell.
It is quite possible that in a century or two a high school student will read in a history textbook: “In those distant times, when potatoes grew straight from the ground and meat grew on the sides of cows, more than a billion people on earth suffered from hunger.” Today, all scientists - geneticists, farmers, and food technologists - admit that hunger cannot be overcome with the help of classical crop and livestock farming.


Ideally, the surimi production technology looks like this. The fish meat is finely chopped and washed thoroughly in cold water. Then sorbitol, salt and polyphosphates are added to the mass (this is done to obtain a jelly-like consistency of minced fish). Next, surimi is steamed, resulting in a dense white mass, devoid of the specific smell and taste characteristic of raw fish. After this, surimi is mixed with other components (starch, sugar, crab extract, spices, flavorings and dyes) and crab sticks are formed from the resulting mass. This is ideal. But how does everything really happen?



The most common way to replace meat in sausage is to add soy protein instead. Soy is a regular white powder. You mix it with water, and it turns into porridge, which can be salted, peppered, colored and added to sausage instead of meat. The main property of soy protein is to absorb water, swell and increase product yield. The more water a protein can absorb, the better it is. Based on the degree of hydration (moisture absorption), soy protein is divided into three types: soy flour, soy isolate and soy concentrate. Now almost all meat processing plants have switched to concentrate; although it costs more, it absorbs more water.

Many enterprises use so-called MDM instead of meat - a kind of substance made from bones with meat residues. Under pressure, it is turned into something similar to puree and used instead of meat.

Some companies use one interesting German additive - carrot fiber. This fiber, like soybean, has the ability to absorb moisture, which is beneficial for sausage producers. It is boldly poured into minced sausage, water is poured in and it swells, increasing the weight of the final product several times. At the same time, fiber does not have any color or smell. And unlike genetically modified soybeans, it does not cause any harm to health: in fact, it is not absorbed by the body at all, but, as its manufacturers assure, it is necessary for the good functioning of the large intestine.

6. Fried potatoes,
vermicelli, rice, egg and other non-meat products are obtained from mixtures of proteins with natural nutrients and gelling agents (alginates, pectins, starch). Not inferior in organoleptic properties to the corresponding natural products, these PPIs are 5-10 times higher in protein content and have improved technological qualities.

7. Artificial milk
In Great Britain, experiments have begun on the production of artificial milk and cheeses from green plant leaves.
8. Artificial honey is produced in factories from beet or cane sugar, corn, watermelon juice, melon and other sugary substances. Artificial honey does not have enzymes and does not have the aroma characteristic of natural honey. When even a small amount of natural bee honey is added to artificial honey, it will have a weak aroma and contain a small amount of enzymes.

Sometimes manufacturers add chemical dyes, thickeners, flavors, etc. to juices. For example, there are known cases when some “chemists” in the food industry added wallpaper glue or starch to the juice for thickness. As domestic juice producers admit, today not a single company makes real juice with pulp. At best, grated dried fruits are added to it, at worst - chemical imitators.

10. Greenhouse tomatoes
In modern greenhouses, tomatoes are grown not on the ground, but on mineral wool, into which a liquid solution containing all the mineral substances necessary for the plant is added dropwise, which in ordinary life plants take from the ground.
Thus, a modern greenhouse tomato is formed by an artificial liquid that is fed to its roots.

It is possible to calculate exactly how much protein, fat, water and salt a person needs. But if so, is it possible to prepare artificial food from a mixture of these substances: artificial milk, artificial bread, artificial meat?

About fifty years ago, the Russian scientist Lunin tried to prepare artificial milk. He sculpted exactly as much fat, protein, carbohydrates, salts and water as was contained in milk, and made a mixture from them. The result was milk that looked and tasted no different from the real thing. To test it, Lunin tried feeding it to mice. And what happened?

The mice that ate only the artificial milk died, every single one of them, while the mice that ate the real milk remained alive and well.

It was clear that, in addition to fats, carbohydrates, proteins and salts, there was something very important in real milk that was not in artificial milk.
They began to catch this “something” by chemical analysis. But there was no way to catch it: apparently there was very little of it in the milk.

Similar experiments were done in other countries. Scientists prepared all kinds of artificial mixtures and fed them to animals. But all the experiments ended the same way: the animals died from artificial food, which lacked some substances necessary for life.

Then they remembered that people often die from lack of food, something without which life is impossible.
For a long time they knew, for example, that people get sick and die from a lack of fresh vegetables and fruits. This happened especially often during long journeys.

Sailing to overseas countries once lasted for many months. The sailors on the ships had to eat only corned beef and crackers.
And so it happened that it was not a storm or pirates, but scurvy that stopped the ships of the seafarers. Scurvy almost prevented the famous traveler Vasco da Gama from completing his voyage: out of one hundred and sixty crew members, one hundred people died from scurvy.

But another traveler - Cook - saved his team by landing on the shore at every opportunity and replenishing the provisions with fresh herbs. Onions and cabbage, oranges and lemons helped Cook travel around the world. From this they concluded that vegetables and fruits also contain “something” that is necessary for life.

It's hard to talk about something that doesn't have a name. Often half the work is done when we give the mysterious and unexplored something a hint. It was the same here. While scientists were talking about the mysterious healing properties of fresh milk or fresh vegetables, things did not move forward. But then one of the scientists suggested calling “something” found in milk and vegetables vitamins, and things moved forward. All over the world, scientists began experiments. Over the course of three decades, tens of thousands of experiments were carried out.

Several vitamins have now been found.
One of them - vitamin A - helps us grow; another - vitamin D - saves us from rickets; the third - vitamin C - prevents us from getting scurvy.
When you drink fish oil, remember that every spoonful of it makes your bones stronger, your muscles stronger: after all, fish oil contains vitamin D.
When you drink milk, remember that in every glass there is something that accelerates your growth - vitamin A. And an apple or orange relieves you of scurvy, from lethargy, from weakness.

Not only scientists, but also food workers are now interested in vitamins. Tables have been compiled that show how many times cabbage is richer in vitamins than lettuce, or how many times milk is poorer in vitamins than butter. Some vitamins have been produced artificially. There is already artificial vitamin D, one gram of which replaces half a ton of fish oil. Vitamin C has been prepared, which is better than the real thing and does not deteriorate from cooking and frying.

I think that in time we will have factories for artificial food, just as we now have factories for artificial silk or artificial rubber.
At the restaurant you can order a cutlet made from meat made in a laboratory and a glass of milk made without the help of a cow.
However, artificial food is unlikely to be similar to milk or meat.
For food, nutritional mixtures will be prepared containing everything a person needs.
It will be enough to look at the label to find out how much protein, fat, carbohydrates, salts, vitamins and flavoring substances are contained in one gram of food. And, looking at this label, you will remember with a smile those times when people ate without knowing what they were eating.

This statement by D.I. Mendeleev, who deeply believed in the possibilities of science, was perceived by his contemporaries as nothing more than the fantasy of a scientist. But less than half a century has passed since chemists have learned to make artificial fats from coal processing products, yeast from oil, meat from vegetable fats and even animal stem cells. All this allows us to look at modern food differently and think about the likelihood of a real revolution in the food industry with a complete replacement of traditional food sources.
The production of synthetic food products (SFP) from chemical elements and artificial food products (APP) from lower organisms was thought about back in the late 19th century. However, in practice this began to be applied only in the other half of the 20th century. The first patents for the production of artificial meat and meat-like products from isolated soybean, peanut and casein proteins were obtained in the USA by Anson, Peder and Boer in 1956-1963. Then a new industry arose in the USA, Japan, and Great Britain, producing a wide variety of food products (various types of meat, cutlets, sausages, sausages, bread, pasta and cereals, milk, cheeses, candies, berries, drinks, ice cream, etc.).

Modern food products receive about 2,500 non-food additives, most of which come from the chemical industry - flavorings, thickeners, foaming agents, preservatives, esters, acids, salts. Without nitrates, sausage will look gray and unappetizing, phenylacetic acid gives the product a cheese smell, bluing turns sugar white, sorbic acid is used to sterilize canned food, oils are purified with alkalis, and even gasoline is used to extract oil from seeds. Of course, all these measures
At this stage of life, a person directly receives his main food from the plant and animal world. But it is likely that in a few decades, synthetic food may completely replace the original. Its introduction has already been observed in the food market, but often the consumer treats it very conservatively and only the fact of its complete safety can convince him to accept such substitutes.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

The idea of ​​synthetic food seemed to be a solution to the severe food shortages during the Soviet Union. Then scientist A.N. Nesmeyanov worked on artificial protein foods. Its substitute for black granular game, so rare at that time, was prepared on the basis of the milk protein casein, an aqueous solution of which was introduced together with gelatin into chilled vegetable oil, resulting in the formation of “eggs”. The taste and smell were provided by herring extract and fish oil. The resulting product was a delicious protein product, almost indistinguishable from the natural one. The installation for the production of caviar substitute was called “CHIBIS”, which stood for “artificial black protein caviar”.

In 1963, Donetsk chemists under the leadership of Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR R.V. Kucher began research on the industrial production of yeast protein from microorganisms grown on petroleum hydrocarbons. Yeast organisms grow very quickly, doubling their weight every five hours or so, which means they synthesize protein several thousand times faster than animals. A kilogram of oil can produce a kilogram of yeast.

Soon, scientists decided to repeat a similar experiment by synthesizing yeast protein from coal. The resulting product was also intended for livestock farming. By adding it to animal feed, livestock specialists noted an acceleration in the growth of live weight of pigs, calves, and poultry by 25%.

However, according to scientists, this technology does not exhaust itself. If yeast protein is hydrolyzed in the presence of special enzymes, the resulting hydrolyzate, containing a mixture of amino acids, can serve as a basis for cooking. In addition, amino acids can now be obtained even from methane.

Soon they learned to make artificial meat, pasta, and cheese from synthetic protein. Yeast obtained microbiologically from petroleum hydrocarbons has already been tested in the baking of bread and the production of sausages. Synthetic rice and buckwheat cereals have been created that contain three times more protein than natural cereals. What unites all these products is the method of their preparation. The protein is crushed, the resulting fibers are rolled in a special solution, then mixed with animal or vegetable fat, given the desired taste and color, and finally, at elevated temperatures, combined into a lump together with egg white. In this case, they get not raw, but already cooked “beef”, “pork”, “poultry” and even “fish”. Artificial meat can be cut, dried, canned.

Soybeans have been an effective replacement for traditional human food sources over the past decade. The now popular soy “meat,” or soy textured protein, is produced by extrusion-cooking a dough of defatted soy flour or white flakes with water. The resulting mass is crushed and then dried, forming minced meat, flakes, goulash, chops, cubic or oblong pieces as needed. Soybean oil, in turn, is widely used to make artificial creamer for coffee and tea.
In addition, scientists note the benefits of soy not only in its rich protein component (approximately 50-70% protein), but also in the presence of a huge amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, including linoleic acid, which is not synthesized by the human body and can only be obtained through food. At the same time, fatty acids prevent the deposition of harmful cholesterol on the walls of blood vessels. Plus, soy contains a number of vitamins: β-carotene, vitamins E, PP, group B, folic acid, choline and thiamine.

But in 2009, the famous French chef Pierre Gagnaire created the world's first completely synthetic dish. Together with the chemist and founder of molecular gastronomy Hervé Thies, he prepared an artificial dessert “le note à note”, which includes glucose, maltitol, ascorbic and citric acids. Essentially, the dish looked like a snack made of apple and lemon flavored jelly balls, with a creamy filling on the inside and a crust on the outside.

CUTLETS FROM STEM CELLS

And the most “freshly prepared” dish of artificial origin, served on August 5 at a press conference in London, was a hamburger. Scientists at a research institute in the Netherlands grew muscle mass from cow stem cells and then made a cutlet out of it. 380 thousand dollars were spent on the creation of such “meat”. The project was financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, covering 87% of its total cost.

Already today, many institutes are working on artificially growing tissues that can be used to replace damaged muscles and cartilage. A similar experiment was carried out by the author of the “hamburger”, Professor Post, who used cells of potential “beef” as a building material.

The process of growing such “meat” occurs a little faster than growing a real cow. Stem cells have the ability to quickly multiply and develop - so that after just three weeks their number exceeded a million. Next, the cells were transferred into small test tubes, in which they fused, forming pieces of muscle tissue 1 centimeter long and several millimeters thick. The finished strips were folded into small briquettes and frozen. When a sufficient number of briquettes were collected, they were combined into a single piece immediately before cooking.

The “meat” obtained for the hamburger was white, but in order for the product to be as close to the traditional one as possible, it was colored red using beet juice. In the future, scientists plan to use muscle myoglobin as a dye, the use of which is still being studied. For taste, the cutlet was also seasoned with saffron, and for an appetizing appearance, it was rolled in breadcrumbs.

The “meat” was fried in a frying pan and included in a hamburger, which was tasted by two restaurant critics. Despite the fact that its taste was considered quite “pleasant,” experts noted that it lacked the juiciness usually characteristic of “live” meat. Otherwise, its taste was practically no different from usual.

HOW TO FEED EVERYONE FROM THE LABORATORY

According to the authors of the “cutlet”, such technology could help solve the global problem of growing demand for meat food products. The head of the Center for the Study of Food Programs at Oxford University, Professor Tara Gamet, noted in this regard that the solution to the problem lies not only in the production of large volumes of food, but also in revising the supply system - the general availability of products; After all, as you know, about 1.4 billion of the world's population is obese or overweight, while a billion others go to bed on an empty stomach. But critics of the experiment, on the contrary, believe that reducing meat consumption will help in the fight against food shortages, which are already observed in many regions of the world and, according to forecasts, will only get worse.

An independent study conducted during the experiment also found that, compared to raising livestock in stalls, raising beef in a laboratory uses 45% less energy, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 96%, and requires 99% less pasture and farm land.

According to Professor Post himself, the widespread introduction of technology for producing meat from animal stem cells will save humanity not only from additional material costs and long-term care for animals, but also from the need for mass slaughter of livestock. In his theory, the professor sees a world where people breed farm animals not for food, but only for aesthetic purposes, such as dogs and cats.

Food adulteration

When resorting to replacing traditional food with artificial food, it is important not to allow false surrogates in its composition. So, in particular, to reduce the cost of alcoholic beverages, unscrupulous producers sometimes added technical alcohol instead of ethyl alcohol.
A clear example of such falsification occurred at the end of World War II, when German chemists managed to obtain a butter substitute from coal, water and air. In appearance, smell and taste it was similar to real oil and did not spoil at all. But it turned out to be harmful, since scientists were unable to synthesize fatty acids absolutely pure, without impurities. This is where the genetic danger of using such imperfect products arose.
Similar side components can be observed in genetically modified products, although, in contrast to the warnings of doctors, scientists argue that it is impossible to generalize all GMOs as the only harmful ones, and it all depends on how exactly a particular organism was modified. However, will such an argument convince the mass consumer?

ECONOMY

In the USA, which accounts for almost 75% of world soybean production, the production of IPPs based on soy proteins reaches hundreds of thousands. tons Plant proteins are used in the production of PPIs in Japan and the UK. The latter even conducts experiments on making artificial milk and cheeses from green plant leaves.

Belarus also grows soybeans in its fields. Moreover, according to the Committee on Agriculture and Food of the Gomel Regional Executive Committee, Belarusian soybean varieties are not genetically modified and, unlike their foreign counterparts, are able to grow in conditions of long summer days and lack of heat. The potential yield of Belarusian varieties is up to 45 centners per hectare and, as a rule, is 3 thousand tons per year. Part of the soybean land falls on the domestic needs of the country, and the other is intended for sale to the markets of neighboring countries.

As we see, artificial food has been conquering the market for a long time, even despite consumer conservatism. Ultimately, chemical products imperceptibly penetrate into every food product, so that even sugar cannot escape their intervention. But creating food from stem cells is a new and original idea. And if the chemical industry can bypass it, such an experiment will probably prove to be quite effective and efficient in the future.

For the magazine “Director”, section “New Technologies”