Space<\/a> Food Challenge, which invited scientists to develop new food technologies to solve the problems of feeding astronauts on long voyages.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen an astronaut goes to Mars, they have to survive in extreme conditions,\u201d said Jayakody. \u201cThe round-trip is three years. You have to use everything you have.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this case, the researchers took one of the most common forms of plastic, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is often the sole ingredient in single-use water bottles. First the PET is \u201cdigested\u201d using a process involving water and oxygen at high temperature and pressure to break down tough material into smaller carbon-rich molecules. These are then fed to yeast, which have been genetically reprogrammed to use the plastic-derived molecules as food.<\/p>\n
The yeast converts the carbon from plastic into new biological molecules, including proteins, fats and other nutrients, which can be mixed with starch and shaped into edible products. A different strain was used to produce vanilla flavouring from plant biomass.<\/p>\n
Currently the cookies cost $60 a kilogram to produce but improving the yeast\u2019s efficiency and scaling up production are expected to reduce the cost in future.<\/p>\n
The team suggest that, besides long-distance space travel, the concept might be useful in extreme environments on Earth, such as on submarines or in disaster zones \u2013 or even as a mainstream ecological solution to the dual challenges of plastic waste and food production. \u201cGlobal food demand is expected to rise 35% to 56% by the year 2050, and about 30% of the world population will be at risk of hunger in the future,\u201d said Jayakody. \u201cThe way to address that, I believe, is by using microbes.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the team acknowledge that before the cookies gain widespread acceptance the public may need to get used to the concept of eating plastic-derived food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cookies produced from upcycled plastic may sound like something straight out of a dystopian sci-fi plot. But researchers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-603000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}