Tiny Energy
May 25, 20205 stars for “Find Dining”
May 25, 2020
A New Food Economy
How a humble student experiment
spurred a sustainable food movement
When you enter Culina Gastro-Lab, you must leave everything you know about the world outside the door.
It redefines the idea of customers, transactions and supply chains. Patrons are not just “consumers” but “producers” as well, and every one of them is a member of the immediate community. There is a menu, but you don’t really “order”; you gather your food yourself. And here’s the kicker – nothing here is sold. Everything is shared, because what is consumed is replenished through community cultivation.
The reason Culina does not operate in the usual profit model is that it is built on the principle of abundance, while the rest of the capitalist world is based on scarcity. Profit is made when demand exceeds supply. But food security is possible with the opposite – when supply exceeds demand. More precisely – when supply keeps replenishing to meet the recurring demand.
Some would call Culina a happy accident, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a confluence of favorable conditions. Before the gastro-lab concept, there were already pockets of culinary innovation happening all over the world. Plant-based meat first hit grocery stores in the early 2010s, the same time that cellular agriculture was rising in popularity. In 2017, the trend combined with a growing makers’ movement, resulting in DIY meat culturing in Japan and beyond, thanks to Shijonmeat’s open source approach. But it took the 2020 pandemic to reach a tipping point.
The reason Culina does not operate in the usual profit model is that it is built on the principle of abundance, while the rest of the capitalist world is based on scarcity. Profit is made when demand exceeds supply. But food security is possible with the opposite – when supply exceeds demand. More precisely – when supply keeps replenishing to meet the recurring demand.
Some would call Culina a happy accident, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a confluence of favorable conditions. Before the gastro-lab concept, there were already pockets of culinary innovation happening all over the world. Plant-based meat first hit grocery stores in the early 2010s, the same time that cellular agriculture was rising in popularity. In 2017, the trend combined with a growing makers’ movement, resulting in DIY meat culturing in Japan and beyond, thanks to Shijonmeat’s open source approach. But it took the 2020 pandemic to reach a tipping point.
A viral idea
Covid-19 was an unprecedented global crisis that pushed the food industry to its limits. Nationwide lockdowns forced people to stay in their homes and rely on deliveries and the occasional grocery trips. But as the virus mutated and spread unchecked, the quarantine period kept extending indefinitely and it got increasingly dangerous to leave the home. Grocery supply chains were disrupted; stocks were scarce. Food security was no longer assured, leaving millions worried about where they would get their next meal.
Four classmates from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne came together one evening to address that concern, in the confines of their student dormitory. Emma Riley, then a PhD candidate for biology, was genetically modifying yeast to produce animal proteins. On that fateful night, she had managed to successfully produce “pork” fillets from a crude tabletop bioreactor, using solvent casting to hold the shape. Her flat mate Adrienne Dy, who was completing a Master’s degree in Multidisciplinary Innovation, was also experimenting. As a prototype for a project on improving yield on farmland, she had created a rooftop hydroponic system, and given some of her harvested cabbage to her classmate, Dawoon Jeong, who used fermented kimchi with it. Using Emma’s cultured meat, Dawoon prepared a dae jee kimchi chim – a traditional Korean meal – for their small group of friends, which included Pippa Macleod-Brown, an architecture masteral student, who was intrigued by the new kitchen setup.
That meal was the start of a new tradition. Students from their block tower started joining in, bringing ingredients of their own to share. Some helped to expand Adrienne’s hydroponic farm; others learned Dawoon’s fermenting technique, and started experimenting with “new kimchi” using all sorts of vegetables and spices. Emma’s fellow biologists began growing new meat using their own DIY bioreactors, and soon they had a whole range of clean meat – from “traditional” pork, beef, fish and chicken, to more experimental types, which they dubbed “unicorn fillets”, “dinosaur steak” and “dodo poultry”. They also cultured milk from casein and whey protein – later making cheese and ice cream. The feast kept growing in flavor, quantity and variety. The four original classmates decided it was time to expand their kitchen to serve more people. From Pippa’s visionary design, Culina Gastro-Lab was born.
Covid-19 was an unprecedented global crisis that pushed the food industry to its limits. Nationwide lockdowns forced people to stay in their homes and rely on deliveries and the occasional grocery trips. But as the virus mutated and spread unchecked, the quarantine period kept extending indefinitely and it got increasingly dangerous to leave the home. Grocery supply chains were disrupted; stocks were scarce. Food security was no longer assured, leaving millions worried about where they would get their next meal.
Four classmates from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne came together one evening to address that concern, in the confines of their student dormitory. Emma Riley, then a PhD candidate for biology, was genetically modifying yeast to produce animal proteins. On that fateful night, she had managed to successfully produce “pork” fillets from a crude tabletop bioreactor, using solvent casting to hold the shape. Her flat mate Adrienne Dy, who was completing a Master’s degree in Multidisciplinary Innovation, was also experimenting. As a prototype for a project on improving yield on farmland, she had created a rooftop hydroponic system, and given some of her harvested cabbage to her classmate, Dawoon Jeong, who used fermented kimchi with it. Using Emma’s cultured meat, Dawoon prepared a dae jee kimchi chim – a traditional Korean meal – for their small group of friends, which included Pippa Macleod-Brown, an architecture masteral student, who was intrigued by the new kitchen setup.
That meal was the start of a new tradition. Students from their block tower started joining in, bringing ingredients of their own to share. Some helped to expand Adrienne’s hydroponic farm; others learned Dawoon’s fermenting technique, and started experimenting with “new kimchi” using all sorts of vegetables and spices. Emma’s fellow biologists began growing new meat using their own DIY bioreactors, and soon they had a whole range of clean meat – from “traditional” pork, beef, fish and chicken, to more experimental types, which they dubbed “unicorn fillets”, “dinosaur steak” and “dodo poultry”. They also cultured milk from casein and whey protein – later making cheese and ice cream. The feast kept growing in flavor, quantity and variety. The four original classmates decided it was time to expand their kitchen to serve more people. From Pippa’s visionary design, Culina Gastro-Lab was born.
Soon they had a whole range of clean meat – from “traditional” pork, beef, fish and chicken, to more experimental types, which they dubbed “unicorn fillets”, “dinosaur steak” and “dodo poultry”.
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- Saccharomyces cerevisiae -bakers yeast
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- Hydroponic system
In Culina, many of the processes are circular and self-sustaining. Cooking processes exploit “tiny energy”, or microbes that work their magic with minimal energy requirements.
Sustainable sustenance
In Culina, many of the processes are circular and self-sustaining. Plants grown in the hydroponic rooftop farm get eaten, but they also provide the seedlings for new plants. Meat cultured in the bioreactor room is taken from proteins provided by yeast, which in turn takes nutrients from the hydroponic waste. The yeast itself reproduces, producing unlimited quantities of proteins for consumption.
The other cooking processes exploit “tiny energy”, or microbes that work their magic with minimal energy requirements. For instance, fermentation, an age-old way of transforming and preserving food using yeast, is used extensively. Similarly, slow cooking in sous vide baths creates ideal humidity levels for growing tropical plants, adding to culinary variety. Humidity levels are monitored by hygromorphic sensors, harnessing nature’s hydro-reactive shape changing materials which use no electrical energy.
Heating and cooling processes employ low-energy technology. At the heart of the system is a main oven that heats adjacent linked ovens with progressively reducing temperatures; it also powers the sous vide bath and smoke rooms. For refrigeration, naturally fortified insulation and evaporative cooling are used, with the cold air trickling into the storage and fermentation cellar underground.
In Culina, many of the processes are circular and self-sustaining. Plants grown in the hydroponic rooftop farm get eaten, but they also provide the seedlings for new plants. Meat cultured in the bioreactor room is taken from proteins provided by yeast, which in turn takes nutrients from the hydroponic waste. The yeast itself reproduces, producing unlimited quantities of proteins for consumption.
The other cooking processes exploit “tiny energy”, or microbes that work their magic with minimal energy requirements. For instance, fermentation, an age-old way of transforming and preserving food using yeast, is used extensively. Similarly, slow cooking in sous vide baths creates ideal humidity levels for growing tropical plants, adding to culinary variety. Humidity levels are monitored by hygromorphic sensors, harnessing nature’s hydro-reactive shape changing materials which use no electrical energy.
Heating and cooling processes employ low-energy technology. At the heart of the system is a main oven that heats adjacent linked ovens with progressively reducing temperatures; it also powers the sous vide bath and smoke rooms. For refrigeration, naturally fortified insulation and evaporative cooling are used, with the cold air trickling into the storage and fermentation cellar underground.
With so much of the resources and energy renewed and reused, the whole gastro-lab gives more than it takes. And in turn, so do the people.
