“It gives a deep umami flavour without excessive processing or additives.”
In 2021, Morten Sommer, a microbiology researcher at the Danish Technical University, began to wonder if microbes could be harnessed to produce healthier, more environmentally friendly food. With his colleague, Leonie Jahn, he brought microbes’ potential to the attention of Rasmus Toft-Kehler, a well-known entrepreneur with whom he has started several biotech companies.
The three of them knew a lot about microbes and their potential, but none of them knew how to create tasty food. They reached out to storied chef and restaurateur, Claus Meyer, the co-founder of Noma, a three-star Michelin restaurant considered to be one of the best in the world.
“They basically said, ‘Food is such a beautiful thing, but it’s one of the biggest problems we have on the planet,’” recalls Randi Wahlsten, chief executive of Matr Foods, the company they founded. “It is aggravating inequality, it is damaging nature, and it is causing a health crisis as well.”
Wahlsten joined Matr Foods a few months after it was founded in 2021. She had spent more than ten years in the food industry, but wanted a more sustainable approach to food production. Wahlsten immediately thought of the limited commercial meat alternatives that existed at that time. “I thought we could come at this problem of sustainability by replacing meat in a better way than the not-very-attractive options available,” she says. “Options that were over-processed and not very exciting gastronomically.”
The team set out to develop a new kind of alternative meat. It wouldn’t mimic meat, as products on the market then did. Instead, it would try to provide the same deep taste and juicy texture – without compromising human health or the environment. Three years later, Matr’s substitute meat uses ingredients that are locally available in Europe, such as beets, potatoes, beans and oats, then grows them into a burger or mince using ancient fungi fermentation techniques.
“It gives a deep umami flavour without excessive processing or additives,” Wahlsten says, adding that the taste resembles a mushroom or deep tomato reduction. “And the fungi create a texture that releases liquids when you bite into it, like when you bite into a really juicy piece of meat.”
Evolving meat substitutes
The company, which is based in Copenhagen, started producing patties by hand in an industrial kitchen. It supplied the meat substitutes to two high-end restaurants in Denmark and a popular burger chain called Gasoline Grill. Chefs and customers were excited about the product.
The company is now investing about €40 million to expand its research and development, and to build and operate a new facility capable of producing 3 500 tonnes of plant-based meat alternatives – about a hundred times more than it produces now. The European Investment Bank signed an agreement in September to provide Matr Foods with €20 million in venture debt financing, backed by InvestEU.
Meat substitutes have evolved considerably over the last decade. First-generation substitutes largely consisted of tofu or tempeh – soy-based products that don’t fit easily into a European diet. “Most of us couldn’t really use those products in recipes we make at home,” says Stephan Mitrakas, a cleantech investment officer at the European Investment Bank. Think spaghetti Bolognese with tofu chunks.
Second-generation meat substitutes made more of an effort to resemble meat, and they had quite a bit of success. Impossible Foods, the maker of the plant-based Impossible Burger, planned an initial public offering that would have valued it at around $10 billion, although that valuation has since sunk a bit.
Some of those substitutes contained a lot of additives and “quite a bit of fat,” often through the addition of plant-based oils, says Carmine Marzano, a senior engineer in the European Investment Bank’s bioeconomy division. Those products include a relatively long-list of ingredients, and several additives, that are then mixed and pushed through a die to create the burger shape. “It’s kind of like a pasta maker,” Marzano says. “Makers of these products do something very similar, but the ingredients are mixed with vegan protein extracts.”
A dollop of mushroom spores
Matr’s product is part of the third generation of meat substitutes, which look and feel more like meat and can be mixed into classic Western dishes, like a Bolognese sauce or a shepherd’s pie.
Instead of gluing ingredients together with additives or fats, the company simply chops up and cooks potatoes, beets, beans and oats, and then mixes the vegetables with selected fungi spores. It puts the combined ingredients in a burger-shaped mould and exposes it to a controlled fermentation process.
That’s where the magic happens:
- The mushroom spores germinate and form mycelium, a root-like structure made of threadlike fibres or filaments
- Those tiny roots break down the nutrients in the vegetable mix, releasing flavourful amino acids and starches that, like meat, brown when cooked
- The mycelium binds everything together, giving the burgers their structure and juicy texture.
“It’s a little bit like baking,” Wahlsten says. If you simply combined water, flour and salt and put that mixture in the oven, absolutely nothing would happen, “but if you add your sour dough or yeast, then the activation of these little microbes will eat into the nutrients of the flour and they will add flavour and texture – and you’ll end up with a beautiful bread. That’s what we’re doing.”
That simplified approach makes the end-product more natural.
“What we liked about Matr is that the process is ultra clean,” Mitrakas says. “We didn’t find anything else in the market with such a short list of ingredients and no additives.”
For more than vegans
Wahlsten says that Matr Foods is eyeing a larger market than just vegans or vegetarians. The company is aiming for a more general market of people who simply want to reduce their meat consumption.
“I think all the scientific reports are pretty clear that the amount of meat we’re eating in the Western World is not sustainable,” she says. “We cannot keep eating 60 to 70 kilos of meat a year. The planet can’t support that, and it’s not fantastic for our health, either.”
Right now, the company can’t make enough of its fungi burger and mince to meet demand. The new production facility should change that, and the company hopes to then partner with more restaurants and cafeteria operators. Ideally, it would break into supermarkets and even other European countries. (Matr currently sells its product through one online supermarket in Denmark.) Greater volume would enable the company to sell its meat substitute at prices that are just a little below high-grade or organic meat.
A change of habit
Changing food habits is always hard, but Wahlsten is optimistic. She says she is encouraged by how food has evolved in Europe in recent decades. She points to the example of sushi, which 25 years ago barely existed in Europe. Now, she says, almost every 11-year-old knows their favourite sushi – or at least Japanese – dish.
“Sushi, which was the most unlikely of foods, at least in Europe, became an exciting, attractive and super-common food,” she says. “And to me, that sort of proves how much we can change.”
