Mycoprotein: when the mycelium is the product

Every story so far about fungi in the kitchen shares a pattern: the fungus transforms something. A mould turns milk into Roquefort, yeast turns wort into beer, koji mould turns rice into flavour. In each case what we eat is the product of a transformation, not the fungus itself.

Mycoprotein breaks the pattern. Here the mycelium is the product: it is grown, harvested, dewatered and formed into something meant to replace meat. The change looks slight and reorganises the entire list of questions that have to be asked, because the fungus is promoted from a technological aid to the principal nutrient.

The reason anyone took this up is arithmetic. The review of single cell protein published in 2017 in Frontiers in Microbiology by Anna Ritala and colleagues opens with a calculation: by 2050 the world would need to produce 1,250 million tonnes of meat and dairy per year to meet global demand for animal-derived protein at current consumption levels. The authors state plainly that growing demand will not be met sustainably by increasing meat and dairy production, because converting feed into those products is inefficient.

Single cell protein, that is protein produced by microorganisms, is one answer to that equation. In the fungal version the species used is Fusarium venenatum, grown in a fermenter, and the harvested biomass is a mat of hyphae.

Here comes the first thing that distinguishes a fungus from single-celled organisms: a hypha has a shape. Bacterial or yeast biomass is a suspension of cells and has to be given structure afterwards. Mycelium consists by nature of long, parallel filaments, so once harvested its texture resembles muscle fibre. The producer does not have to build a meat-like structure. It arrives with the biology of the organism.

The second thing is a problem, and it is worth stating openly, because it often goes unmentioned. Fungal biomass contains a great deal of nucleic acid. A paper published in 2026 in Bioresource Technology gives the RNA content as five to six per cent and describes its removal as an energy-intensive production step that also costs biomass. The reason for removing it is health: an excess of purines from nucleic acids raises uric acid. Mycoprotein therefore requires processing that soy does not, and that is a genuine cost of the technology.

The third thing concerns the cell wall. A 2026 paper in Food Hydrocolloids describes the wall architecture of Fusarium venenatum as a chitin-glucan system and notes that it restricts the interfacial migration of intracellular proteins. Put more simply: part of the protein sits enclosed in a chitin tube, which affects how such a product behaves in an emulsion. The same chitin that in a forest decides whether a fruit body holds its shape decides, in a fermenter, the processing.

The question of nutritional value has by now attracted proper discussion rather than only marketing. A paper published in 2026 in Current Research in Food Science describes mycoprotein as a protein-rich fungal biomass with a favourable amino acid profile, and examines the digestibility and colonic fermentation of meat analogues. Separately, in 2025, Nutrition Bulletin published the record of a roundtable on where fungal protein should sit in dietary guidance. The panel's consensus was that there is no reason to exclude fungal-derived proteins from food-based dietary guidelines, and its recommendations concerned building better databases of mycoprotein intake across countries and running long-term studies comparing fungal, plant and meat protein for health and sustainability outcomes.

It is worth noticing how carefully that is phrased. The panel did not find mycoprotein better. It found no reason to exclude it, and set out what is not yet known. That is the correct state of knowledge in 2026 and should be read as such.

The wider context was set out in 2020 by a large group in a white paper on fungal biotechnology, published in Fungal Biology and Biotechnology. The argument there is pitched at the level of the system: fungi transform organic materials into a rich and diverse set of useful products and can support the transition from a petroleum-based economy to a bio-based circular one, supplying among other things food and feed.

The direction of further work is clearly visible, and worth describing without enthusiasm but also without dismissal. A group publishing in 2026 in Trends in Biotechnology describes using CRISPR/Cas9 for scarless gene knockout in Fusarium venenatum, in order to improve the nutritional profile and the production efficiency at once. Another paper from the same year, in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, goes further and describes expressing ovalbumin — the protein of hen egg white — in cells of the species, to raise the level of essential amino acids, which mycoprotein is short of.

This is the point at which a conversation about a fungus in food stops resembling a conversation about cheese and begins to resemble one about a bioreactor. Roquefort ripens in a cave nobody designed. Mycoprotein is made in a vessel every parameter of which is set, and lately the organism itself is being designed too. That is not an accusation. It is a description of a difference worth holding in mind while reading the marketing for either product.

From the point of view of culture, though, something else is the most interesting. For thousands of years the role of a fungus in food was to give flavour to something else — to milk, to rice, to a soy cake, to barley wort. Mycoprotein reverses the arrangement: the fungus stops seasoning the process and becomes the dish. Whether it becomes everyday food will be settled not by mycology but by price, by habit, and by what happens to the price of meat.

“Single-cell” protein from multicellular hyphae

Ritala and colleagues explain that single-cell protein is an industrial label for protein-rich microbial and algal biomass, even though some producers—including filamentous fungi—are multicellular. Their table identifies Fusarium venenatum grown on glucose as the source of Quorn mycoprotein; the brand entered the market in 1985. The review places fungal biomass broadly at 30–50% protein, but also notes 7–10% nucleic acids and the need for processing before human consumption. In the Quorn process, heat activates ribonucleases that reduce RNA, while production conditions are monitored for mycotoxins. “Edible mycelium” is therefore a controlled process-specific product, not arbitrary fermenter biomass. Published in 2017, the paper surveys companies and patents from 2001–2016; it is not a current market report, clinical trial or life-cycle assessment. Its 1.25-billion-tonne meat-and-dairy figure for 2050 comes from a cited demand scenario, not a forecast of mycoprotein production. Product-specific approval must not be generalised to homemade fungal biomass or other species.