一种由“稀薄空气”制成的新食物可能会改变我们的星球

一种由“稀薄空气”制成的新食物可能会改变我们的星球

Someday, meals may not so much be cooked, as generated.

总有一天，饭菜可能不再像以前那样煮熟了。

As in, take a little water, add a dash of carbon dioxide, and give it an electrical jolt.

比如，取一点水，加一点二氧化碳，然后电击一下。

Dinner is … materialized. But you're probably going to want fries with that.

晚餐……物质化了。但你可能会想要薯条。

After all, Solein — a meal that's essentially zapped into existence from thin air — is essentially protein-rich dust, with all the flavorless possibilities that would suggest.

毕竟，Solein——一种从稀薄的空气中迅速形成的食物——本质上是富含蛋白质的粉末，有各种可能会让人觉得索然无味。

When the dust settles, a powder than can be produced anywhere — and made into anything — could be a game-changer. (Photo: bonder.olka/Shutterstock)

But if Solar Foods, the Finnish company behind this single-cell protein, can back its claim of being able to produce food that's "free from agricultural limitations," we may finally know an end to hunger.

但是，如果生产这种单细胞蛋白质的芬兰太阳能食品公司能够支持其能够生产“不受农业限制”的食品的主张，我们可能最终会知道饥饿的终结。

That's pretty revolutionary stuff — especially in a world where, according to a 2018 United Nations report, one in nine people go hungry.

这是相当具有革命性的东西——尤其是在一个世界上，根据2018年联合国的一份报告，九分之一的人挨饿。

Let them eat protein cake. Or whatever form the highly adaptable Solein may take at the grocery store. In fact, Solar Foods says it will most likely launch as a supplement for protein shakes and smoothies, as early as 2021.

让他们吃蛋白质蛋糕。或者任何形式的高度适应性的Solein可能在杂货店买到。事实上，太阳能食品公司表示，它最早可能在2021年作为蛋白奶昔和奶昔的补充产品推出。

From there, the sky is literally the limit. Because if there's one thing we currently have a surplus of in our emissions-addled atmosphere, it's carbon monoxide.

从那里开始，天空就是极限。因为如果我们目前在排放混乱的大气中有一种物质过剩，那就是一氧化碳。

Guess what Solein's chief ingredient happens to be?

猜猜Solein的主要成分是什么?

The company churns out the stuff by extracting CO₂ from the air. Then it blends it with water, vitamins and nutrients. The entire process, including a lengthy fermentation, relies fully on renewable solar energy. And there's no need to worry about increasingly precious arable land.

该公司生产的东西从空气中提取二氧化碳。然后将其与水、维生素和营养物质混合。整个过程，包括一个漫长的发酵过程，完全依赖于可再生太阳能。而且没有必要担心日益珍贵的可耕地。

Livestock farming eats up room on our planet — room we're slowly realizing we simply don't have. (Photo: Fedorov Oleksiy/Shutterstock)

"It can be produced anywhere around the world, even in areas where conventional protein production has never been possible," the company noted in a statement to Dezeen magazine.

该公司在给Dezeen杂志的一份声明中指出:“它可以在世界任何地方生产，甚至在传统的蛋白质生产从未实现的地区也可以。”

If it sounds like the only thing Solar Foods is baking is a great big pie-in-the-sky dream, consider that it's already well under development. The seeds for Solein were originally planted at NASA, as a not-particularly-yummy form of sustenance for space travelers and future colonists.

如果听起来太阳能食品的唯一用途就是烘焙一个巨大的“空中馅饼”，那就想想它已经在开发中了。Solein的种子最初是在美国宇航局种植的，作为太空旅行者和未来殖民者的一种不太好吃的食物。

After all, Mars is still a long way from being able to grow potatoes. The success of long-term missions to the Red Planet could hinge on a scalable food product that's generated rather than grown.

毕竟，火星距离能够种植土豆还有很长的路要走。对这颗红色星球的长期任务能否成功，可能取决于生产而不是种植的可扩展的粮食产品。

But the potential is even more tantalizing here on Earth, where more and more people want to know what's for dinner — and scientists are increasingly mum.

但在地球上，这种可能性更加诱人，因为越来越多的人想知道晚餐吃什么，科学家们也越来越沉默。

Do the math for meat production — and the 7 billion people expecting to eat it — and the numbers don't add up.

计算一下肉类生产——以及预计将食用肉类的70亿人——这些数字加起来是不可能的。

Again, Solein could fill that gap. While the surging popularity of beef-free burgers like Beyond Meat could dramatically ease our reliance on animal agriculture, their production is still resource-intensive. As with anything plant-based, you need space for those beets, peas and even pomegranates to grow.

同样，Solein可以填补这个空白。虽然像“超越肉类”这样的无牛肉汉堡的迅速流行可以极大地减轻我们对畜牧业的依赖，但它们的生产仍然是资源密集型的。和任何植物一样，你需要空间来种植甜菜、豌豆甚至石榴。

Not so much for Solein, which is not only carbon-neutral, but neutral enough in every other way to form the chief ingredient for those meatless burgers we can't seem to get enough of.

但对Solein就没那么多了，Solein不仅是碳中性的，而且在其他所有方面都是中性的，足以构成我们似乎无法得到足够多的无肉汉堡的主要成分。

Now, we're cooking.

现在,我们做饭吧。