MyForest Grows Its Plant-Based Meat Textures With Mycelium

Hi, I’m Aaron Hand, editor in chief at ProFood World Magazine. We’re actually out in Albany, New York, today, visiting MyForest Foods, which is one of this year’s Manufacturing Innovation Award winners.

Behind me, you’ll see the Swersey Silos. Inside, there is a growth medium for mycelium. It’s typically made of wood chips, and then the mycelium can grow on top of it in a slab, that ultimately gets processed to become an alternative to bacon.

The AirMycelium process mimics the conditions of a dark forest, growing the mycelium in as little as 12 days. The resulting meat-like texture looks more like pork belly than mushrooms, and the slabs are easily processed into the brand’s flagship MyBacon.

With plans to scale, MyForest expects to serve more than a million consumers by 2024.

Production innovations like this could be a future-focused solution as the food industry contends with climate change and rising population.