3D printing delicious, living, edible snacks

not really sure its safe to eat raw mushrooms of any kind- always best to cook mushrooms believe it or not.

not really sure you get more health from the sprout of a plant cause it has natural defenses to ward of animals from eating it. so the plant can grown. and have a chance to provide way more nutrition than could be possible in the tiny immature plant.

i listen to my gut reaction about foods, and my gut says NO to raw mushrooms and to uncooked sprouts.

Wow. Just wow. Where did your gut get this information? As far as I’m aware the only risks associated sprouts is the same risk of bacterial contamination as any other produce when eaten raw (last I heard the largest outbreaks of food board illness in the US have been from cantaloupe and spinach, both mature). There’s not a mysterious “natural defense” that all immature plants have to prevent animals from eating them (otherwise I wouldn’t have such a problem with Rabbits poaching my garden). Save plants that are generally poison at all maturity levels as a natural defense. As for mushrooms I’m not aware of anything other than the same contamination issues that are an issue with any food item. IIRC there are a few wild mushroom varieties that are at least mildly poisonous and can be rendered safe to eat with heavy cooking or processing. But cultivated mushroom varieties are just not poisonous, that’s why we cultivate them. Any toxic varieties they might be confused with (incredibly unlikely) are just not going to be suddenly rendered safe by cooking. I know certain beans are actively poisonous before being cooked, and casava needs to be processed before eating. But these are toxic plants, known to be dangerous to consume, that we’ve figured out how to render safe.

Frankly the only thing I’m aware of as a genuine risk here is contamination with your typical food borne illnesses. And any produce you might consume is going to have the same risks, some varieties much more so than sprouts or mushrooms. Oddly enough organic produce tends to have an increased risk. Due to the types of fertilizer used (poopies).

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3D printing is awesome, and I love me some agar jelly - just not after it’s sat around for 30+ days.
Basically, what I’m saying is, I’d much rather have the 3D printed bug protein than the real-world version of this fantasy dish, thankyouverymuch. Mmmmm, bug protein.

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Depends on the mushroom:

(I thought the Dutch had outlawed Psilocybe, though).

Funny, but that looks nothing like agar.

It’s agar covered with mycelial growth. To the best of my knowledge, this is P. mexicana from Roger Heim’s lab. Heim supplied the fungal material from which Albert Hofmann first isolated psilocybin. They actually patented the process of growing P. mexicana on agar and extracting the alkaloids.

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Apologies for the lazy self quote, but this remains relevant.

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Whats wrong with insect protein?


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And yet, if you part the herbs growing wild on the forest floor, you might be lucky enough to find mushrooms ready for picking. While you’re explaining how it’s all impossible, wild things are growing in the woods all by themselves!

Read the article you linked a bit closer. You will find the agar is only a very small percentage of the weight of the medium which also contains dry malt extract and other substances depending on the method (aka example). The agar is added to the medium mix. It is not itself the growth or inoculation media. It is simply the nutrient portion of the media.

[quote=“oncebce, post:20, topic:52942”]
What’s wrong with insect protein?[/quote]

Nothing, but to Western ears it still reeks of desperation and lowered standards. And because of that bug meat will likely first get used for cheap, shabby foods aimed at folks who don’t read labels.

I think bugmeat could go a long way to feeding the world, not only directly but by using it to feed fish and chicken and other more-familiar-to-us livestock.

And heck, why not use it for dog and cat food?

From the patent:

On an agar medium containing 1.5% by weight of agar, a concentration of 0.2 to 0.7% by weight of dry substance of malt extract is the optimum for the formation of fruit bodies

That’s a normal malt extract agar preparation for growing fungi- the unmentioned 98% is water. The agar is just a support matrix, with the malt extract providing nutrients (at a low concentration in this case, to encourage fruiting instead of mycelial growth). Agar only ever needs to be a very small percentage in microbial media, as it’s such an effective gelling agent.

Microbial culture media never contain just agar- they always have added nutrients targeted towards the organism groups they’re intended to feed.

P. cubensis will also fruit on malt extract agar plates- I have seen this for myself (back when it was still legal here) though they were nowhere near as pretty as Heim’s P. mexicana.

But are they growing at the same rate, on the same edible and tasty substrate, during the same season (or at the same temperature and light exposure), and in close enough proximity that I can take a bite and get all of this in my mouth at once? And nothing else?

And if try to make this all happen on a piece of pastry will that pastry magically not grow anything I don’t want to or can’t eat? I’ll put it this way: It’d be easy enough to assemble this without the 3d printer to try it out.

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Which is what I was saying in the first place…

Not!..

“The mycochitin composition of mushroom cell walls, as opposed to cellulose walls of plant cells, is difficult for humans to digest. Our stomachs resent indigestible items, and often forcibly reject them without further ado. The cooking process helps break down fungal cell walls, rendering mushroom flesh not only more readily digestible, but also releasing significant nutritional value contained within the cells.”

http://www.mykoweb.com/articles/EatingRawMushrooms.html

Generally I also ask myself: what is more tasty? Raw or cooked? My tastebuds say cooked. I guess its sort of an opinion, which I am fine with.

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“The mycochitin composition of mushroom cell walls, as opposed to cellulose walls of plant cells, is difficult for humans to digest. Our stomachs resent indigestible items, and often forcibly reject them without further ado. The cooking process helps break down fungal cell walls, rendering mushroom flesh not only more readily digestible, but also releasing significant nutritional value contained within the cells.”

http://www.mykoweb.com/articles/EatingRawMushrooms.html

Hey, please show some respect! If you have a question, ask nicely. I am happy to learn and to share, and it makes me want to engage more if I feel like people respond respectfully, even when they are initially baffled.

As I responded to someone else below, I tend to ask myself: what is more tasty? Raw or cooked? My tastebuds say cooked. I guess its sort of an opinion, which I am fine with. myself
Cheers :smile:

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I, for one, welcome our new 3D-printed schandahoovian cheez-doodle overlords.

“There’s not a mysterious “natural defense” that all immature plants have to prevent animals from eating them” - Ryuthrowsstuff

Yes, yes there is:

“Some seeds have evolved strong anti-herbivore chemical compounds. In contrast to physical defenses, chemical defenses in seeds to deter consumption by seed predators by using chemicals that are toxic to granivores or inhibit the digestibility of the seed. These chemicals include non-protein amino acids, cyanogenic-glycosides, protease and amylase inhibitors, phytohaemaglutinins” - Wikipedia for Seed Predation

If you think about it, there has got to be some sort of safety mechanism that helps the plant grow to some level of maturity before it is possibly eaten.

Take a look at the ‘Plant defense against herbivory’ on wikipedia:

I tend to think it makes perfect sense that sprouting plants have much higher levels of herbivore-repelling chemicals so that they can get a foot in the door!

What do you think?

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