Looking at Mycelium Through a Different Lens

Food Is More Than an Ingredient List

When developing new food ingredients, we often focus on composition, nutrition and functionality. However, understanding why an ingredient behaves the way it does can require looking much deeper.

Many foods are considered soft matter, meaning that their structure changes depending on factors such as temperature, pH and processing conditions. This is particularly relevant for emerging ingredients such as mycelial biomass or filamentantus fungi. The biomass has been used over 50 years, for example in the well-known product Qourn. However the relationship between this ingridient, structure and functionality is still not fully understood.

Within the Horizon Europe project PLANTOMYC, we are working to improve the use of mycelium-based ingredients in sustainable and nutritious food products. As new ingredients emerge, so do new questions. How does mycelial biomass interact with plant proteins? How does processing affect its structure? And how do these changes influence texture and functionality?

Learning Beyond Food Science

These questions were one of the reasons I attended the Young Researcher Workshop on the Use of Large-Scale Research Facilities for Soft Matter Investigation in Lund.

The workshop brought together researchers from fields including materials science, medicine and polymer research. Although the materials being studied differed greatly, the scientific questions felt surprisingly familiar: how do we characterize complex structures, follow changes over time and connect structure to function?

Perhaps the most valuable aspect was the opportunity to discuss these challenges with both researchers from other disciplines and scientists working directly at large-scale research facilities.

What Could These Facilities Reveal?

Large-scale research infrastructures such as synchrotrons and neutron facilities are widely used in materials science to study structures at very small length scales and to follow changes as they happen. In food research, however, they remain relatively underutilized, particularly for mycelium-based ingredients.

For PLANTOMYC, these approaches could provide new insights into how mycelial biomass is organised, and how it interacts with other ingredients in food systems. They may also help us better understand the links between structure and functionality, which are often difficult to capture using conventional food analysis alone.

Combined with techniques such as microscopy and rheology, these methods could contribute to a more complete understanding of how mycelium-based ingredients behave in complex food products.

Looking Ahead

My biggest takeaway from the workshop was not a specific technique, but the value of looking beyond our own field. Researchers working with polymers, pharmaceuticals and other soft materials often face challenges remarkably similar to those encountered in food science.

As PLANTOMYC continues to develop new mycelium-based ingredients, it will be exciting to explore how these advanced research infrastructures can help us better understand the relationship between structure, processing and functionality, and ultimately support the development of the next generation of mycelium-based foods.

Interested to hear more?
Contact Astrid or Joshua