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TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

GOOD GRIEF
SYNTHETIC COFFEE
BY DAVE TRECKER

Another approach is fermentation. That involves genetically
engineering cells from coffee plants, a better bet for nailing both
taste and caffeine content. But it’s not cheap. A big drawback is
separating mycelial waste before recovery, a costly proposition.

Less complex is plant breeding to produce coffee trees that can
withstand global warming, an approach that would expand the
geography for coffee groves. As a high-value crop, the trees
would be a welcome addition to northern farms. Starbucks is
looking into it.

Not surprisingly, coffee is but one of many food items being
replaced by synthetics. Margarine has been around for 80 years,
What’s the one thing we can never do without? If you answered and fake peanut butter, a la Nutella, is almost a staple.
“coffee,” you’d be among the addicts around the world that
quaff down 2 billion cups of it every day. Americans are the Meat substitutes have also been pursued in an effort to cut
biggest consumers, with 34% of us having at least one cup of joe greenhouse emissions from farm animals. FDA approval last
on a daily basis. Overall, average consumption is two cups per year opened the door for fake chicken produced from cultured
person per day. animal cells. Fake pork is next in line.

Coffee is essential. It wakes us up in the morning and keeps the If that sounds easy, it’s not. It’s taken years of trial and error to
wheels of commerce turning. find the right combination of cells and nutrients, then scaling up
the process in large bioreactors to generate a product with
Almost as bad as banning it would be replacing it with a muscle, fat and connective tissue – a slab that looks and tastes
synthetic – something made in the laboratory. What a terrible like meat from a slaughtered animal.
idea. Why replace this God-given elixir?
Earlier versions were comprised of ground-up vegetables –
It turns out there are a lot of reasons. According to the Wall Veggie Burgers – which tasted terrible. Then came a
Street Journal, the average Arabica tree produces one to two mycoprotein from fermented yeast combined with other plant
pounds of coffee via roasted beans. That means every two-cup- ingredients, still a poor substitute for the real thing.
a-day coffee drinker requires continuous production from some
20 coffee trees. The current cultured-cell product must be pretty good, because
the Florida legislature, egged on by Gov. DeSantis, recently
The environmental impact is horrendous. Vast forests of trees banned it, apparently to protect the state’s farming industry.
are needed to feed the habit of java drinkers. Harvesting and
processing pour huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and, But while fake meat gets a lot of attention, the real cause
even with judicious fertilization, half of the coffee-tree land will celebre is coffee. People are scrambling to boost the value of the
become unusable by 2050. In Brazil, the biggest producer of real thing.
coffee, the unusable land will reach 88%. The land shrinkage has
already affected prices, which rose over 25% in the past year. For example, the Aussies have found that pyrolyzed coffee
waste can replace up to 15% of the sand used in concrete, a
What’s the answer? One possibility is synthetic coffee made contributor of 7% of greenhouse emissions. Not bad.
from agricultural waste. The raw materials are cheap, but
duplicating the taste is a challenge. Atomo Coffee apparently Even better is the discovery that beer-extracted coffee grounds
got it right with a mix of ingredients featuring roasted date can spur sexual performance. Or so says a report.
seeds – what’s left after mechanically pitting dates. Synthetic
caffeine, which is plentiful, can be added as needed. Sorry, no clinical trials are planned.