Food of the future
Biotechnologies will help Russian scientists create food products of the future
Alexey Ivanov, Rossiyskaya Gazeta
Innovative biotechnologies for the creation of specialized food products have become one of the key topics of the 17th All-Russian Congress of Nutritionists and Nutritionists. Microbes and fungi come to the aid of scientists in developing the food of the future, and experts told about the latest innovations in this field at the forum.
In this case, specialized food is understood as the one that is developed for certain categories of citizens, based on the needs of their body. These are hospital patients, athletes, military personnel, and many others. That is, we are talking again one way or another about a personalized approach, the need to switch to which is discussed at almost every section of the congress – the topic is overdue.
As the head of the department of the All-Russian Research Institute of Food Biotechnology (VNIIPBT) Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lyubov Rimareva noted, today Russia lags behind other developed countries in terms of the implementation of modern biotechnologies in food production. At the same time, there is scientific potential in the country, but for a number of reasons it is poorly demanded by our industry.
– At the present stage, the problem of ensuring the nutritional needs of the population can be solved on the basis of new methods of food production with the involvement of microbial biomass, – the scientist explained. – They, in particular yeast, contain a full-fledged protein, the amino acid code of which corresponds to, and in many respects exceeds, WHO standards. There are also valuable polysaccharides and vitamins, which shows the prospects of using such biomass as a substrate for obtaining food and biologically active ingredients.
According to Lyubov Rimareva, thanks to a number of chemical reactions with fungal biomass, domestic biologists managed to activate the mechanisms responsible for insulin production. And this indicates the possibility of producing specialized products for insulin-dependent people.
The results of tests of microbial biomass have shown that its use in food has a positive effect on the organisms of mice, birds, bees, increases their viability and productivity. For example, the body weight of mice increased by 1.3 times, motor activity – by 1.5. In poultry farming, the egg production of chickens and the content of biologically active additives in eggs increased. The testing of a new feed carried out at the Research Institute of Freshwater Fisheries led to an increase in the intensity of growth of fry, their weight increased by 20 percent.
At the same time, it is necessary to improve the control of food products obtained by microbial synthesis, said Olga Bagryantseva, a leading researcher at FITZ Nutrition and Biotechnology.
She recalled that microorganisms were used in the food "industry" even before our era: the Egyptians prepared wine, beer, cheese and bread with their help. In 1982, with the help of a genetically modified strain of a microorganism, alpha-amylase (an enzyme that breaks down complex carbohydrates) was first obtained, after that products based on microbial synthesis began to spread more and more actively, in the West they were allowed to use them in the manufacture of food.
However, even if the active substance obtained in the process of microbial synthesis has passed all safety tests, the final food products should also be checked, and this does not always happen today. The fact is that when creating the final product, further mutation of the microorganism, the appearance of new phenotypes is possible, and it is quite difficult to predict the result of this process.
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