New Brand Debuts Vegan Chicken Breasts and Steaks Made from Mushrooms

Colorado-based startup Emergy Foods recently launched revolutionary new vegan brand Meati Foods. While many companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods focus on producing ground vegan meat, Emergy is creating whole cuts of steak and chicken using a technology that relies on mycelium—the fast-growing root structure of mushrooms. The company brews mycelium inside fermentation tanks then blends the high-protein fibers—which resemble those found inside chicken breasts and steaks—with other vegetable-based ingredients and spices before forming them into vegan meat. “At scale, we could produce the meat equivalent of nearly 4,500 cows overnight using a process that’s over a thousand times more efficient per acre as far as resource use,” Emergy CEO Tyler Huggins told Fast Company. “And even compared to something like soy, which has had tons of money and time to develop the most efficient process they can, we’re well over 20 times more efficient at producing protein per acre using significantly less land, water, and energy in the process.” Emergy is planning to debut Meati Foods’ first products on Colorado restaurant menus—with a focus on steakhouses—in early 2020 with the goal of reducing production costs to reach price parity with wholesale animal-based meat products in the near future.