Divinely Inspired Cheese Conquest or Desecration of Fine Taste Buds?
$61 Million Hacked to Make Animal-Free "Cheese" with Flawed Formula
As the Berlin-based startup, Formo, cashed in on its dubious honor, Roman Plewka, co-founder, uttered words that will send tremors through the world’s most discerning palates: "We want to bring delicious products with no downsides, no negative externalities, and full pleasure and joy to consumers at no cost for the environment or for the animals or for society as general."
A dubious quest if you’ll let yours be tantalized by the notion. How does Formo promise to deliver such bliss on a silver platter – by creating cheese with microbial fungi? Koji-based protein? Is this sacrilegious act too bold, or too insane?
This supposed revolution’s base, a "traditional" food source from thousands of years ago, still bears no resemblance to conventional cheese, yet its unapologetic fan-boy Plewka declares war on plant-based cheeses because "they are simply not functioning in cheese making. So we have turned to precision fermentation in order to create functional and bio-identical proteins for the production of real cheese".
Functionality aside, where lie the parameters for such creative liberty in defining ‘good cheese’? In an area where ancient fermentation traditions intersect with novel technologies? An abyss where authenticity falters under the pressure to revolutionize an already contested concept? Are consumers sufficiently convinced that these products serve inestimable ‘environmental, animals, and social benefits’
What if these micro-manusia in an engineered substrate – these microbial agents and Koji, if manipulated by Plewka can also conjure new food items beyond dairy or that so drastically compromise both senses… Would Formo dare so boldly claim an omnipotence?
Or maybe formo simply desires the coveted position among a crowded shelf in retail markets as sole player for their unpolished offerings
Can taste buds adapt? The war of wits raged.
