Ice Cream From Algae
By tony leather, 13th Aug 2012 | Follow this author
| RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/3xex0ebf/
Posted in WikinutNewsScience
They claim to be able to convert any plant-based sugar on the planet into different kinds of oils, via a very basic process, feeding various types of plant sugar to get the algae producing many different kinds of oil.
Ice Cream From Algae
Founded in 2003, the company Solazyme had, in the beginning, the singular goal of creating bio-fuel from algae, achieving some big results in that area in the past few years, such as supplying the first passenger carrier plane ever to fly with engines running on an algae-based bio-fuel and becoming the largest advanced to the US Navy supplier of this type of fuel.
However, it quickly became clear to company scientists that fuel production was far from the only option open to them. Since they make triglyceride oils, of which there are three global sources - petroleum, plant oil, and animal fat, first two all triglycerides, What the company creates is the same stuff algae make, literally producing a new source of oil.
They claim to be able to convert any plant-based sugar on the planet into different kinds of oils, via a very basic process, feeding various types of plant sugar to get the algae producing many different kinds of oil, with equally many applications. Oil varieties produced include jet fuel oil, dielectric fluid - used in transformers - a pork lard mimetic and palm oil, but there are many more.
Solazyme has also branched out and found success in the cosmetics industry. The best-selling Algenist line of beauty products - biotechnology from San Francisco - rely on a compound produced by microalgae - dubbed alguronic acid - that can protect human skin--from the environment.
The company have teamed up with Roquette Nutritionals, a company converting vegetables into raw materials for food manufacturers, to create new versions of famous foods using Solazyme’s algae-derived flour - a similar lipid profile to olive oil - and used to create amazingly tasty foods.
Crackers, vanilla-tinged milk, pretzels with a honey mustard sauce, ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies - containing algae, and with significantly less fat, cholesterol or calories than the traditional counterparts - are perfectly feasible, often just as good as, or even tastier than the same foods created from regular ingredients that people are familiar with.
With this particular line of food products, it will be possible for people to eat just what they like but have significantly healthier diets. Almagin flour is in fact a yellowish powder, which contains algae oil, and can substitute for any meal components in which oil are used.
Ice cream containing algae flour, for example, is far more nutritionally healthy than traditional ice cream, containing more protein and dietary fibre. The comparison figures are startling , algae ice-cream having only one third of the fat and half the calories of regular ice-cream, yet tastes every bit as good.
The company is currently conducting tests into whether algae flour use can extend shelf life, something that seems possible since bread baked using the flour has already proved to remain fresher for longer. It is hoped that, in the USA at least, products containing algae flour will feature on store shelves by the end of this year, algae protein products having already been available for some time.
Comments