GREAT NEWS FOR all those disgusted at the idea of eating a chicken’s egg.
Whole Foods supermarkets in California have begun selling Beyond Eggs, an ‘artificial egg’ made from plants.
The eggs are created with absolutely no input from a chicken, and are designed to replace everything that eggs are a stable ingredient in, such as cakes and mayo.
The eggs are mainly plant-based and consist of ground-up peas, sorghum, “a few other ingredients“.
Created by Hampton Creek, the initiative has already received prolific backing from Bill Gates.
While it apparently tastes fine now, founder Josh Tetrick told the Daily Mail that the process wasn’t always pleasant.
Our first attempts weren’t great, we tried to make a muffin using a mix of plants. Ours tasted really gummy, and didn’t have the ‘bounce’ we wanted. Our mayonnaise would not hold the oil and egg together, so had what looked like liquid syrup. Scrambled eggs were even worse – they just wouldn’t congeal at all, and had a really bad aftertaste.
Tetrick says that they’re still having a problem with the scrambling, due to the fact that the plant they use just isn’t made for scrambling. He told Techcrunch that
We’re just using one plant to make it happen… and this one plant has awesome coagulation, texture, and springiness properties.
They’re not wrong. Here’s a quick demonstration for evidence.
The firm hopes to eventually use their ingenious food product to help developing countries to produce their own eggs.
In developing countries, we can also add in things missing from the local diet, helping nutrient deficiencies, and we have had initial discussion with the world food programme about this.
