Sustainable by Nature
Qing Qing, MyForest Foods Director of Sustainability
In a sea of sustainability claims, here’s how mycelium stacks up!
If your grocery shopping goals include eco-conscious products, you know there’s a lot of hype to weed through in the aisle. Buzzwords like “all-natural” and “sustainable” can mean so many different things.
Unfortunately, as awareness of the importance of sustainability has increased, so has misuse of the word. Greenwashing—the tactic used to lure customers by using Earth-friendly words and visuals that don’t hold any weight— is not only dishonest, but it also creates skepticism for companies who are genuinely sustainable.
To elaborate, we’re looping in our Director of Sustainability, Qing Qing (pronounced ‘Ching Ching’) Miao:
Before we get into it, Qing Qing, how did your journey lead you to MyForest Foods?
QQM: I often joke that Snoop Dogg got me interested in sustainable food. After my first year of college, I managed a project in partnership with Snoop’s non-profit, which built up community gardens in Los Angeles to increase healthy food accessibility for inner-city residents.
The experience planted a seed in my heart; every work experience led me back to food-related issues of access and equity. After what felt like too many years in consulting, I returned to school to study sustainable food in a business setting. I focused all my energy to learn about the “sustainable food sector.” That’s when I fatefully stumbled onto a blog about Mycelium Innovation Platforms (1). Mycelium — the root structure of mushrooms — is a beneficial, crucial component to the health of our ecosystem, and it’s full of untapped potential. I was so excited, I actually didn’t sleep that night thinking about mycelium and what it could do to transform our wasteful, material world to be more earth-compatible.
As fate would have it, MyForest Foods was featured in that blog… and the rest is history!
What makes MyForest Foods’ products more sustainable than other plant-based alternatives to meat?
QQM: MyBacon is the only plant-based product I know of that uses so few ingredients to produce such a delicious meat alternative.
That was a big motivator to join MyForest, as opposed to other plant-based companies that use many ingredients and long chemical words on their labels. As it turns out, having a shorter ingredient list can impact sustainability positively – you rely on fewer suppliers and can better monitor where your ingredients come from. This differentiates us from a sustainability standpoint.
But the bigger (sustainability) motivator is the obvious one: mycelium. Specifically, our vertical farming set-up allows us to cultivate mycelium using a teensy fraction of water and land compared to what is required to raise a pig. Our internal estimates suggest that choosing 1 lb of MyBacon over 1 lb of pork bacon saves over 200 gallons of water and over 5 acres of land. That’s enough land to plant 700 avocado trees —all for a single pound of pork!
When it comes to sustainability, there’s always room for improvement. What is MyForest Foods aiming to do better?
QQM: Every food company produces waste streams, and at first glance, we might be no different. However, we are very different in that our largest waste stream – the soil-like substrate used to grow our mycelium – is a valuable resource. We call this resource “spent mushroom substrate,” and we treat it like brown gold.
You can use spent substrate to grow the same mushrooms for your spicy stir-fry. You can also use it as a nutritious input for compost, which helps bind soil together due to the properties of the mycelium itself. You can also use it for bioremediation, due to the talent of our fungal species for breaking down complex chemicals in contaminated soils and waterways. Crazy, right?
One of my projects is to find the right partners who understand the value and power of our spent substrate and will put it to its best possible use.
We’re in an environmental crisis. Despite a deep desire to make a difference, it can be hard to stay positive, right? What keeps you motivated?
QQM: Seeing the love, motivation, and hope that my friends put into their own work keeps me going. There are always bad things happening in the world, which create problems that are important for different individuals to address. Perhaps you care more about issues of social justice, K-12 education, or infectious diseases more than you do about the environmental crisis. That is great and important.
We each find meaning in our lives by doing things that are important to us. I believe we can create positive change; no matter how grim the outlook is, we must have hope. If the work we choose to do with our lives can make things even marginally better, then it is work worth doing.
Before we go, what’s your best advice for “one small, daily change” that can shift our impact on the planet for the better?
QQM: We know from one of the leading scientific authorities on climate change that eating less meat is the single biggest behavior change to leave a smaller carbon footprint. (2)
I used to be fanatic about completing each dinner with a piece of meat. This was as recent as 2019, but I slowly started eating less meat until I realized my body didn’t miss it. I don’t call myself vegetarian because I recognize that meat is an important part of many people’s cultures, and I don’t turn it down if my host puts their love into a meat dish for me. But I don’t cook it myself, and this is my personal “small change.”
From the forest, for the future
At MyForest Foods, sustainability is not an afterthought. It’s our purpose. The farm we operate, and the technology we use, were created in order to carry out our mission to feed the future for generations to come. Mycelium itself IS the sustainable solution to reducing our reliance on traditional factory farming and all the resources it requires. As Qing Qing expressed, our dietary choices add up.
Earth month is a popular time to explore new ways of thinking… and eating! If you’re intrigued by mycelium, pick up a pack of our wildly delicious MyBacon at your closest retailer.
And if you’re in the New York City area, we’ve got lots of sampling opportunities on the calendar! Come try the future of food; we’d love to meet you.
Citations:
Crosser, Nate. “Mycelium Innovation Platforms.” By Nate Crosser, January 2, 2021. - https://ecotech.substack.com/p/mycelium-innovation-platforms.
Staff, Carbon Brief. “In-Depth Q&A: The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment on How to Tackle Climate Change.” Carbon Brief, April 11, 2022. https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-the-ipccs-sixth-assessment-on-how-to-tackle-climate-change/