Instant Genius - Food science: Why fermentation is the future of food

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Humans have been fermenting foods for millennia, due to the process’s ability to enhance the flavours of what we eat and preserve it for when times are lean. Now, new science is uncovering how eating fermented food is beneficial for both our physical and mental health and how it may possibly play a key role in the food of the future by creating a source of alternative protein. In this episode we speak to Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein and the Microbial Food Hub at Imperial College London. He tells us how we all eat more fermented food than we may think, why it’s so good for our guts and how cutting-edge science can help us to create tasty fermented food that is also kind to the environment. This episode is brought to you in association with EIT Food https://www.eitfood.eu/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, BBC Science Focus. Humans have been fermenting food for millennia due to the process ability to enhance the flavors of what we eat and preserve it for when times are lean. Now, new science is uncovering how,

eating fermented food is beneficial for both our physical and mental health, and how it may possibly play a key role in the food of the future by creating a source of alternative protein. In this episode, brought to you in association with EIT food, we speak to Rodrigo Lidesma Amoro, director of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein and the Microbial Food Hub at Imperial College London. He tells us how we all eat more fermented food than we think,

why it's so good for our guts, and how cutting-edge science can help us to create tasty fermented food that's also kind to the environment. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you very much for inviting me. So today we're talking about fermentation. So this has gained a real lot of popularity amongst the general public recently.

So let's start with the basic question. What is fermentation? fermentation? Fermintation is when microorganisms or microbes transform an input, like a raw material, into an output, in this case a food. And one example is when we do yogurt or cheese, we use milk as a raw material, then microorganisms convert that milk into the final product, the yogurt or the cheese. So there are several different types, aren't they? Like people talk about lacto fermentation, acetic acid fermentation. And of course, the fermentation of course the fermentation of the fermentation of the fermentation of the fermentation of, of ethanol or alcohol. So how do they work? Well, that's the kind of traditional division of fermentation. They are named like that based on one of the main components of this final output. So in the acetic, they produce acetic acid, in the lactic, they produce lactic acid. And in the ethanol, they produce ethanol.

So depending on the organism that are used and depending on the raw material that are used, one of these products is going to be more abundant. But there's another definition of or classification of microbial foods that's gaining popularity, and we have the traditional fermentation that include those fermentations we are mentioning. But we also have the precision fermentation, which is when we produce a specific food ingredient rather than a whole food, and also the biomass fermentation,

when we produce something that look like meat and what we eat is the final biomass. So we'll get on to that in a bit, because it's absolutely fascinating. But let's sort of stick with the basics for a while, if you'll indulge me. So what are some common fermented foods, you know, and where do they come from? And how long have we been making them? We've been making fermented food for millennia.

So there are reports like 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt, where they were already doing things like beer, wine, dairy, or bread. So it thought to be something accidental. So when early humans were collecting like fruits or grains or milk, and they were forgetting about it, that was fermented by some organisms, and then when they took it back and they ate it, they kind of liked the new texture, the new flavors,

and that was taken to the point that to one-third of our diet today is made by fermented food. So we eat more fermented food that we think, bread, yogurt, cheese, wine, butter, soy sauce, kimchi, etc. And I think something that is also very interesting about the use of fermented food is a theory that connects the fermented food in humans and development of the brain. So this theory says that it's an inverse correlation between the brain size and the gut size. So animals with bigger brain, they have shorter guts. And that's about balancing the energy we get.

So if we need less energy in our gut, because we eat fermented food, that kind of predigest the food for us, we have more energy available for our brain functions. And that's thought to be kind of the development of the human brain. That's fascinating. So a lot of people these days talk about the microbiome. And this is all absolutely tied up together, isn't it, with fermented foods? Can we just sort of give an overview of that, please? The microbiome is all the microorganisms that live in the human body. More generally we talked about the gut microbiome, because it's where we have a higher variety of organisms and more abundance of microorganism.

And what happened in our gut? It happened to affect the whole brain as well through the connection of our brain to the gut, through nervous systems, etc. So it's very important to have a healthy microbiome that allow us to not only digest for better, but also have better immune system or even better mental health. Yeah, so we'll get into the sort of more recent research in a bit. But first off, I think often sticking with this, people talk about prebiotics and probiotics. So what is the difference between those and why are they so important?

Prebiotics are different to probiotics. Now, the probiotics are alive. So when we talked about probiotics, we are eating a bacteria. or a yeast that is still alive and can perform certain function. Prebiotics, we're talking more about a specific type of food that doesn't need to be necessarily alive. Like, fibers could be considered a probiotic, while a specific lactococcus could be a probiotic.

And they are alive, they can colonize our gut, and they can impact our health. So they have all sorts of different effects on the way that we actually digest, if that's the right word, the food that we eat when it's fermented. So something called bioavailability. So what can we say about that? So fermented food is more bioavailable

and that's because they has already had this fermentation process. So the bacteria or yeast has already broken down some of the nutrients to smaller pieces that are easier for us to digest. And that makes also more available things like iron, certain vitamins, etc. So you said, there like this has been going on for thousands of years, you know, before we knew Louis Pasteur

or whatever and the science of these things. But it was used to preserve food. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. So the transformation process that happened during fermentation has different effect. Preservation is one that is linked to food safety as well, but also it can change the flavors, the textures, the nutrients. So sticking with that until we move on to your research. So a lot of people say, oh, fermented food smells. So does it have more volatile compounds or something like that in it? Yeah, exactly. So during this transformation process, the microorganists, they do their own chemistry and they are going to generate the specific molecules. And those are a molecule that contribute to this favorable effect, but some of them has smell. So some of them can be

a good smell and some are not so good smell. So microbes can produce these esters, it's a type of molecules that can smell like fruits, and this is, for example, the fruity smell in some wines come from that. Acids can also create some sour smells, like we can see in kimchi and yogurt that come from things like acetic acid, or even the cheesy smell. It comes from butyric acid, which is another product of the fermentation. So you're involved in something called precision fermentation. So what exactly is that? I bet a lot of people will never have heard of It's precision fermentation is just following the same process that I mentioned before of a raw material that is transformed by the microbes into a product.

But instead of using as raw materials already, something that comes from animals or plants, so in traditional fermentation this is meat or milk, for example, or some soybeans, and this has fermented to make something like the kimchi or the tempe that we eat fully, in precision fermentation, we kind of simplify the system. We use a specific feedstock that can be sugar or can be agricultural waste or industrial waste. And then we use a specific organism that we're selected that is going to do a transformation into a specific product. So instead of just whatever happened at the end, we just eat it, this process is designed to make a specific food ingredients, that then we can separate from the rest and use it to enhance the properties of other food.

So an example of this is, for example, making milk without cows. So we can take the proteins from the milk, produce it into a yeast, and then at the end of the fermentation, what we have is the milk protein, that is taste exactly the same way, have the same nutritional properties as the milk protein, but it doesn't involve any cow in the process. So is this the notion of, I've read about this, and they say single-cell protein methods?

I mean, what does that mean? So single-set proteins usually is linked to the other type of fermentation. I was mentioned in the beginning, the biomass fermentation. So the difference is in precision fermentation, we make, we can make a protein, but it's more like an ingredient protein, while in biomass fermentation, we want to just make a food sort that is reaching proteins. And these are usually made to substitute meat that you can find in every supermarket and that's made by a microorganism.

Well, how is it made? So it's a filamentous fungus called fusarium venenatum. And the great property it has is like create these filaments. So if you look at the microscope, you see kind of a lot of fibers intertrying together. And when you compare how fuzarium looks in the microscope and how meat beef look in the microscope, you can see the fibers just meat looks exactly the same. That's why it has the same texture that the real meat.

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So obviously a lot of people now are saying for climate reasons or for ethical reasons as well, we should all be eating less meat, you know, they're not perhaps happy with the farming practices and things like this. And this sort of research can perhaps provide a solution and give us alternative proteins. So can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, and I'm very happy to tell you about that. That's my daily job. So I'm the director of the microbial food hub, which is funded by the UK government and also

the basis of center for sustainable protein. Both of them are intended to design the new foods that are healthier, more reliable, more sustainable, more affordable, and tasty. So there is a lot of interest on this so-called alternative proteins. How can we make better food, basically, and reduce greenhouse emissions, land use, water use, and we can enhance human health as well. So I think microbial food play a big role on that transition or that development. Because we can combine the things I just mentioned.

So we can, with biomass fermentation, that can give you kind of the texture that you need. And with precision fermentation, we can create specific arroids. specific taste, specific vitamins and micronutrients that can make the food better in the end. Some of the challenges in the development of these alternative proteins are still making them in a way that they are affordable. So with cost is important, traditional meat is heavily subsidized, and it's difficult to get to a price that is comparable. So we are doing a lot of research in that area. How can we make the process more efficient so we can reduce the cost? So let's have a look at flavors then, because I think this is a bit of a barrier for a lot of people. So I remember once going back a few years, I made some food for my wife's family using alternative proteins.

And my father-in-law was eating it saying, oh, this is delicious. I said, well, there's no meat in it. And he says, oh, I wish you hadn't told me that. So, you know, how can we convince these people? Yeah. I think there are two points in your question. One is how can we make the taste good? And that's still a challenge,

because many people just want the taste they are used to have. And so there's a lot of research in trying to mimic exactly the same flavors. But we also have the opportunity to create new flavors. And it's about presenting options to the consumers. So we don't want to tell anyone what to eat. We want to give consumer options that are really delicious and good for the planet, so they will choose them. So there's a lot of work to be done in this.

consumer acceptance side of things, and that involves, like, talking to the people, presenting these options, creating high-quality product as well. Because I guess very often, we find products even in the supermarket that maybe doesn't taste as good. And just having them there is like not making any good to people that might come and go and try again on the things. So what's the sort of current state of your research, you know, what are you working on, and what can we expect to see in the next year or so? So in my particular research, I'm interesting in precision fermentation

and how can we create what we call these microbial cell factories, so converting the organisms in really a very efficient and sustainable factory that can make food and food ingredients. So part of my research is in this biomass fermentation, can we make things like taste and look and have the nutritional properties of meat? Another part of my research is about the precision fermentation. Can we make specific aromas? Can we make colerans?

Can we make antioxidants? Can we make antioxidants? Can we make these micronutrients that are going to enhance the healthiness of this new food? So that's probably a bit complicated. But can you give us a sort of a few bits of information about how you go about that? Yes, so I can give you one example that one of our current. projects where we are trying to produce human milk. So the goal is to try to make an infant formula

that it looks as close as possible to human breast milk. So for that, we are manipulating these organisms so they can express the proteins that is usually found in the human milk. So we just synthesize the DNA that we know from the genome sequence of our body is exactly what it is, and we introduce this DNA into the yeast that we work with, so the yeast is able to express the protein, as the same way it's expressed its own proteins. And then we take this microorganism that contain this DNA and produce this protein,

we put it in a fermenter, and at the end of the fermentation in two, three days, we can collect the results, we can separate the cells and the liquid, and in the liquid, we have the milk protein that we can separate and use. So let's go back to sort of meat substitutes, if you want to call them that. So a lot of these days there's things like lab-grown meat and things like this. I mean, that's different from what you're doing, isn't it? It's different and complementary. So in my role as the director of the Bezos Center, we don't only work in microbial food.

We also work in cultivated meat. and plant-based meat. So cultivated meat is when you take the animal cells and you grow them in a fermenter as well, and then you get kind of the meat, the cells, without involving killing the animal. So let's look forward then. What can we expect in the next five, 10 years

from this sort of research? Will we all be eating these sort of alternative proteins? The things are moving really fast, and we are already eating quite a lot of fermented food and alternative proteins. They are more and more in our supermarket shelves. Consumers are more and more conscious that they are better for the health of the planet and their own health.

So more people choose them. And I think the next few years is about we're going to see a lot of new life foods coming up, hopefully with better taste, with better nutritional properties. And all of them are, I think, I'm going to combine this new technology in a different way. For example, I mean, we have a lot of plant-based alternatives already in supermarket, but maybe sometimes they suffer from this texture or taste that we want. And precision fermentation can help but creating some of the ingredients that are missing to get this taste elements.

And then we're going to see more biomass fermentation products. It will enhance properties, and in the end we will see this cultivated meat coming up. I think that where we are at the moment is mainly plant-based, a little bit of microbial. We're going to see more microbial in the next five years, and after five years, we're going to start seeing the cultivated meat coming up. So what's sort of, by way of summary, what's your kind of prediction for the future? Are you optimistic? This is going to solve, because the food production causes so many problems at the moment. You know, it's probably just one element, but, you know, how big an impact can it make?

So you're right. It's just one of the elements, but I think it's a critical element. There are a lot of things that need to be done in our agricultural system, our farming system, from consumer point of view, from the regulation point of view. But I think the alternative proteins is a way to make food that use 90% less land, 90% less resources, pollute 19% less produce less greenhouse emission gases. So I strongly believe that if they are supported by the public and the government, they are a big part of the solution.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our presenters and guests in person, then please also check out our YouTube channel,

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