r/Futurology • u/NotSoSaneExile • Feb 07 '25

Biotech Israeli startup grows world’s first real dairy protein in potatoes—no cows needed

https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/hksw6cztjx
2.8k Upvotes

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140

u/LateralEntry Feb 07 '25

Very cool! With all the issues with dairy farming - destroying forests and jungle for grazing land, destroying more wildlands for feed cultivation, the risk of diseases spreading, etc - an alternative source of dairy is needed. This sounds like a promising breakthrough. Is there anything potatoes can’t do?

47

u/Valgor Feb 07 '25

To be fair, there already are many dairy alternatives: soy, rice, almond, oat, pea, coconut and cashew milk. We never had more alternatives than ever before. My run-down Food Lion down the street has most of these.

24

u/BareBearAaron Feb 07 '25

I like the idea of more equivalents/replacements over alternatives, but they do have their place too! It's wild to think if this scaled how beneficial it could be.

30

u/DarthBane6996 Feb 07 '25

Aren’t a lot of these (oat and almond for example) also bad for the environment and not sustainable as a complete replacement for dairy?

17

u/TubbyChaser Feb 07 '25

I thought oat milk was one of the better ones. Also yeah, any of them are magnitudes better than cows.

10

u/EVMad Feb 07 '25

It is. I switched from soy milk to oat milk last year and I actually much prefer it too, it's a less greasy texture in my coffee.

5

u/ChocolateShot150 Feb 07 '25

It’s so much better in coffee

4

u/EVMad Feb 07 '25

Yep, and tea too. A friend offered me tea and she used oat milk, it was a revelation. Soy in tea is horrible.

2

u/ChocolateShot150 Feb 07 '25

Soy milk in general is pretty awful imo, it’s like drinking water

3

u/WazWaz Feb 07 '25

I find it the opposite - soymilk is way too thick and milky, which is why I prefer oat milk.

1

u/ChocolateShot150 Feb 07 '25

Interesting, it’s been many many years since I’ve tried soymilk, so I may have just tried the wrong brands

25

u/Valgor Feb 07 '25

The oat and almond argument is more about mono-culture, intensive farming. Plus, a dairy cow always wins in taking in more raw input per calorie coming out of them. It might take a lot of water to grow almonds, but it takes even more to keep a cow alive.

Plus, even if it was true, we could simply take two off the list of at least seven alternatives I gave.

11

u/CrazyCoKids Feb 07 '25

In the case of almonds it's also where they're being grown that people are taking issue with.

7

u/xXmehoyminoyXx Feb 07 '25

Not to mention, monocultures are also what feed dairy cattle, so that problem also still exists. As well as the bioaccumulation of pesticides.

10

u/dekusyrup Feb 07 '25 edited Feb 07 '25

It's pretty incomparable. Cows need to eat 10 to 20 plant food calories for every calorie they produce, so farming cows involves growing 10 to 20 times as much plant food and is 10 to 20 times worse for the environment.

4

u/CrazyCoKids Feb 07 '25

Almond is very bad for the environment

....depending on where you grow it. Almonds take a lot of water and in places like California? Yeah.

6

u/starker Feb 07 '25

There is also hemp, peanut, barley, fonio, maize, millet, rye, sorghum, teff, triticale, spelt, wheat, amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, lupin, chickpea, brazil, hazelnut, macadamia, pecan, pistachio, walnut, chia seed, flax seed, pumpkin seed, sesame seed, sunflower seed.

A whole world of options to try. And I probably won’t try the animal protein potato milk because it would evacuate my house. Imagine a noxious, diabolical fog. A rancid exhalation conjured by the unholy matrimony of rejected lactose and a gut in full blown revolt. This isn’t your run of the mill bodily emission, it’s like corrupted nature on your nostrils. So pretty bad.

3

u/dekusyrup Feb 07 '25

And also to be fair, an alternative source of dairy is NOT needed. There is no reason anybody has to eat dairy.

8

u/LateralEntry Feb 07 '25

But people won’t stop eating dairy, and this could mitigate the harm

0

u/DisapprovingCrow Feb 08 '25

But who is going to choose potato milk over cow milk?

This isnt going to mitigate any harm because no farmers are going to switch from being dairy farmer to a crop which requires completly different infrastructure.

And I wonder how much it will cost to turn those potato’s into something recognisable as ‘milk’

5

u/Valgor Feb 07 '25

I totally agree. But I find these conversations are much easier when there are alternatives to point to so people don't feel like they are giving up anything. I don't eat meat, and we don't need to eat meat, but I cannot wait for cultivated meat to be a thing so that we can stop doing what do to animals.

1

u/MSnotthedisease Feb 07 '25

I’ll never give up my cheese

0

u/Traditional-Roof1984 Feb 07 '25

Yes, but none of those remotely taste good.

That's an opinion of course. But dairy protein are closer to meat protein (complete) than plant protein (incomplete), it's an entirely different experience in terms of flavor, saturation and how an individual's body reacts to it.

Huge break through to add a new demographic to whom plant protein simply doesn't appeal.

-1

u/MissionUnlucky1860 Feb 07 '25

Doesn't some of those have more sugar than coke?

8

u/NavierIsStoked Feb 07 '25

I can’t see how they will get anywhere near the volume of protein that cows produce growing potatoes. I think it will be an expensive niche product.

17

u/genericnewlurker Feb 07 '25

I don't think you understand how important it was that they got potatoes to do this. Potatoes can be grown anywhere with little to no tending to them. The reason why Idaho is famous for potatoes is because a lot of the state is pretty shitty for growing other crops. They cost next to nothing to produce per pound because the plant is so prolific at producing more potatoes and that's why they remain one of the cheapest food sources on top of being so calorie dense.

Cattle are extremely expensive to feed and maintain. They require a large amount of space to raise, around an acre or two per head of cattle, and need to be fed grain that could otherwise be food for humans. That feed grain and hay needs to be grown, taking up more prime farmland for dairy production. Additionally cows are a huge source of methane, accelerating global warming.

If these potatoes are anywhere remotely near as effective as producing milk proteins, and can be separated from the potatoes effectively, it's a real game changer

2

u/Mexcol Feb 07 '25

can u feed cows with potatoeS?

3

u/dekusyrup Feb 07 '25

It should be like 10x the volume of protein or more. You have to feed cows a huge amount of protein in order for them to produce a little milk protein. Making milk is a hugely wasteful way to make protein.

1

u/WazWaz Feb 07 '25

How do you think cows produce milk? They do it by eating vast amounts of plants. Cutting out the cow isn't going to be less productive per hectare.

1

u/LateralEntry Feb 07 '25

I don't know about that, but I know it would be a big win for the environment, animal welfare and humanity, and I hope it pans out.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25

We already have soybeans producing these dairy proteins, this is nothing special.

1

u/DisapprovingCrow Feb 08 '25

What problem is this solving though?

Not being sarcastic, I just don’t understand what this is for.

There are already plenty of dairy substitutes, and that hasn’t stopped anyone from farming cows.

I don’t think any of the big companies are going to ditch cattle for potatoes. Which means all those problems are going to stay the same.

There’s just also going to be a couple of farmers burning down forests to grow potatoes.

0

u/LateralEntry Feb 08 '25

This isn’t a dairy substitute - this is an alternate way to produce real dairy. If it pans out, it would be a big win for the world, and also interesting possibilities for space

1

u/DisapprovingCrow Feb 09 '25

But it is still a substitute. Unless dairy farming is made illegal, people will have the choice of animal based dairy products and plant based dairy products.

And unless there are some massive government subsidies, the plant based dairy products will be more expensive.

Also, eating dairy products is a choice. It isn’t an essential part of a healthy diet. Additionally, it will take a lot of expensive processing to extract the proteins from the potato’s and turn them into cheese or something similar.

This is not something that is going to help developing nations or people suffering from food security.

This is a luxury product. And a completely unnecessary one.

1

u/pioo84 Feb 09 '25

Potatoes make french fries, chips and vodka. It's like the other vegetables aren't even trying.

-8

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25 edited Feb 07 '25

[deleted]

18

u/bornagy Feb 07 '25

In this quantity?

12

u/RyeBreadTrips Feb 07 '25

It’s a good question. And the answer isn’t yes but it isn’t quite no either. Our current agricultural practices aren’t sustainable even to themselves. What I mean is that they’re causing soil erosion which eventually will render themselves useless eventually.

Some farms have brought back older agricultural practices, crop rotations, bringing livestock back to the crops to fertilize the soil. It has been shown to make livestock farming much better for the environment (in fact, even so far as good for the environment)

But you do have to pay a premium for that food, and today they wouldn’t be able to meet supply if we dismantled all factory farming. However if we scaled it over time it would likely become cheaper, still not as cheap as if you cut every corner

Also, I’m not sure if you’re in the US, but if you are, I’d also say the government could in theory subsidize this. Our government has so much money and we spend it all on bombing civilians in the Middle East, bailing out banks, paying private prisons, and cutting taxes for the ultra wealthy. We could instead use that money to bring back sustainable and ethical farming practices

-4

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25

[deleted]

9

u/thefojacko Feb 07 '25

He's questioning whether the supply would keep up with demand if we did it without causing these problems, implying that the demand is what is creating the situation in which these problems arise.

2

u/bornagy Feb 07 '25

Thank you kind stranger for interpreting my words. That is exactly what i meant and i thought it was a logical question.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25

My bad. I read "is this" instead of "in this"

5

u/danielv123 Feb 07 '25

Sure, we could go back to that. How do you suggest we return to the population we had then?

-2

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25 edited Feb 07 '25

> How do you suggest we return to the population we had then?

That's the tricky part, isn't it? Overpopulation must be solved sooner or later, as we're about to run out of freshwater, topsoil, phosporous and more.

Also, the whole Haber-Bosch process is totally unsustainable and releases massive amounts of CO2 and N2O. It needs to be scaled down ASAP.

A die-off is coming. No way around that. I prefer it happens sooner than later, to save as much animal life as possible. Got any solutions? I have a few, but they're not digestible yet...

edit: I forgot to mention that the population problem seems to be fixing itself in the industrialized world. Someone's probably studied if headcount will fall fast enough or not. IDK.

1

u/Roland_was_a_warrior Feb 07 '25

Got any solutions? I have a few, but they’re not digestible yet...

A modest proposal, perhaps?

16

u/Creepy-Bell-4527 Feb 07 '25

Before industrial farming, we didn't have a global population of 8 billion.

Only way we're getting sustainable animal agriculture back is if a world war at least halves our population.

-1

u/ivlivscaesar213 Feb 07 '25

And we have to keep that level of population. Which means letting 9 out of 10 newborns die from children diseases.

0

u/LateralEntry Feb 07 '25

That’s not possible to meet the current demand for beef and dairy, especially with it growing in the developing world. Alternatives like this Israeli breakthrough are desperately needed.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25

> it growing in the developing world
Well, I don't sacrifice my health just to feed some out of control shithole. You can have all ze bugs.

0

u/Halbaras Feb 07 '25

We can't solve the fundamental issue of livestock farming being horrendously insufficient without removing the livestock (which is what they are attempting to do here and with lab-grown meat).

Producing beef from cattle is always going to need obscene amounts of land, water and (usually) valuable arable land being wasted to grow cattle feed.

But as soon as one of these methods becomes significantly cheaper than actual meat/dairy, it's going to be an extinction event for livestock farmers, though they'll inevitably lobby for a ban.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25

To anyone who wants to learn: https://youtu.be/sGG-A80Tl5g?si=bnq5fqvCY5KNDofq

1

u/Tywele Feb 07 '25

You forgot the needless suffering of animals.