Why hasn’t algae cracked the mainstream?
To think about the future, often we have to look back to understand change. By doing so, we come to realize that only a couple of hundred years ago, what sat on our ancestors' tables was really different from what sits on ours, so the ideas we hold about tradition are actually the living testimony of change itself. In that regard, it only seems logical that a remarkable source of nutrition (and flavor!) such as microalgae, which takes little from the environment, might become a bastion of resilience in face of a strained food supply chain; that as recent as the past months, has faced several disruptions from COVID local halts in operations with global repercussions; to the ongoing war directly affecting global grain stocks.
When thinking about the obstacles to the broad adoption of microalgae, we often hear two arguments: taste is difficult and the price point is high. We believe though, that with the mandatory transition we will have to do as a civilization, paired with the uncertainty of food sources in the future; the script might flip dramatically. There is some plausible evidence, looking into the direction of large investments, that price structures of food in the future will shift into factoring in the so-called externalities, meaning the environmental and human costs of food production. This will directly impact shifts in the affordability of different food items. Not to mention that transitions are far from perfect; and as we figure out how to shift land use currently used for animal feed, reduce our consumption of animal protein, and reintroduce some more familiar sources of protein that have been displaced, microalgae can play a role in filling that nutritional gap.
As for flavor, to fathom the future of microalgae’s likeability and adoption, it might be pertinent to assess, where are we now. Today, the food industry’s perception of “difficult taste” actually comes quite often from fragmented products of microalgae, like PUFA-rich oils, that are highly unstable and with a great tendency to become rancid (which is not the case for microalgae as a whole). As per consumers, the most known microalgae is Spirulina, a product that has its limitations in terms of flavor, and can hardly represent the wide range of tastes that the universe of microalgae has to offer. So we think that as we broaden our knowledge about different microalgae varieties, we work on developing applications that highlight its best qualities and as consumers, and we become more conscious about nutrition, a natural evolution towards an increased likeability of products or dishes developed with microalgae will arise.
Because, at the end, tradition is just a testimony of the changing nature of human desires and possibilities.
