Somewhere in a Stanford lab, there’s a jar with something that looks like aged Parmesan. You can grate it. It has a salty taste. It is textured. It also tastes really good, depending on who you ask. The peculiar aspect is that it began as food waste, was given to a mold, and emerged as something a home cook might carelessly add to pasta.
This is the work of Vayu Hill-Maini, whose biography alone makes the cheese seem almost predictable. He was raised in a multicultural home in Stockholm, developed a passion for cooking as a child, relocated to the US to work in restaurants, and then, somewhere between the stove and the bench, realized that science offered an alternative perspective on food. He later earned a PhD, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and is currently an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford. In his lab building, he also has a kitchen. Although the two areas are kept apart for security purposes, the thought processes that take place there are purposefully linked.
Because of its past, Hill-Maini’s lab has been experimenting with a mold called Neurospora, which is responsible for the cheese’s fermentation. In Indonesia, soy milk waste was traditionally fermented using Neurospora intermedia to create a dish known as oncom. Through repeated human use over centuries, the fungus was effectively domesticated and encouraged to grow on substrates that most organisms would overlook. Today, Hill-Maini and his group are using cutting-edge gene-editing technology to speed up what used to take generations. The DBTL cycle—design, build, taste, learn—sounds almost too tidy for something involving mold and leftover food, but the outcomes seem to support the optimism, at least in this instance.
Because the term “fermentation” is used so widely that it occasionally loses its meaning, it is worthwhile to consider what fermentation actually accomplishes in this context. In contrast to a compost pile, fungi do more than just break down waste. They are transforming complex plant matter, such as cellulose, fiber, and molecules that the human digestive system is unable to digest, into protein, flavor compounds, and culinary and nutritional substances. A Neurospora mold, a few other ingredients, and whatever waste was used as the substrate were used to make the cheese that was produced in the lab. Hill-Maini won’t reveal what that waste was just yet, but a paper is on the way. However, the outcome is reported to have a flavor and texture similar to Pecorino or Parmigiano, which is a serious assertion.
Hill-Maini’s insistence that significant changes in the food system are not the same as scientific success in a lab is part of what makes his work worthwhile. He has publicly discussed the GMO backlash as a warning example, pointing out that technology that is developed without considering public opinion will eventually clash with it. His lab’s choice to retain a chef on staff, including one from Spain’s two Michelin-starred Mugaritz restaurant, demonstrates a sincere conviction that chefs have a deeper understanding of desire and trust than scientists do. He has observed that people are unlikely to alter their diet just because it is better for the environment. Taste must be prioritized.
Watching this work gives me the impression that, for once, the philosophy and the science are in harmony. Approximately one-third of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted before it reaches a plate, and the consequences for emissions are substantial, so food waste is not a specialized environmental issue. For thousands of years, filamentous fungi have been quietly contributing to human kitchens with products like blue cheese, miso, sake, and soy sauce by working on substrates that humans did not directly consume. Hill-Maini’s contribution is to use modern biotechnology to address the question of what else those same organisms might be doing more quickly than has ever been possible.
It’s still unclear if the leftover cheese will eventually find its way to consumers through a startup, a licensing agreement, or some other route. Publication of the science and process improvement are the lab’s current priorities. However, there is at least one compelling new answer to the question of what food could be made from, as evidenced by something grat-able, salty, and seemingly delicious sitting in a jar at Stanford.
