Today, nothing could be closer to that truth. In 1981, it was Faith Popcorn and her TrendBank who first coined the interior design term “cocooning.” She defined it as, “the need to protect oneself from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world.” What's next: MyBacon, which was first available at an Albany grocery co-op, is now coming to two Massachusetts stores as the company scales up production and the broader alt-meat wars rage on.– Words by Laura Goldstein Photography by Lia Crowe Yes, but: Despite lots of marketing and industry partnerships with big brands like McDonald's and Starbucks, consumer interest in alt-meats may be waning. Ecovative was one of the earliest commercial mycelium ventures, a category that has since grown to include a number of other startups, such as the San Francisco-based MycoWorks, Colorado-based Meati, and Israel's Mush Foods.The big picture: MyForest Foods was spun off from Ecovative, a company Bayer co-founded to explore business opportunities in mycelium-based clothing, packaging, and more. And all we do is slice it off, slice it into bacon strips, salt it, smoke it, put a little coconut fat on it." "They've got this umami flavor, which sort of mimics flesh."The organism does a self-assembly of something that's like a piece of animal flesh, and we just harvest it, like harvesting an animal," he adds, referencing the fungal mycelium.So rather than forming a mushroom, we get a 50-foot-long, four-foot-wide, two inches thick slab of mushroom meat." "And we sort of trick the mushroom to form these, basically, sheets of mushroom flesh. What they're saying: "We basically build these cyborg buildings that replicate the environment you find in a forest," MyForest Foods co-founder and CEO Eben Bayer tells Axios. (For those interested in cooking some at home, the chef recommended medium-to-high temperatures, adding that "you can't flip often enough.") MyBacon samples offered at Monday's event were delicious, if not exactly like the real deal.Each batch is grown for 12 days and harvested in a single day. With seven rooms, it'll have 1.75 acres of growing space - about the same as a smallish conventional mushroom farm. Axios got to tour the 78,000 square-foot vertical farming facility, where mycelium will be grown in substrate on racks reaching 16 feet tall.A company rep said that would be enough for about one million pounds of MyBacon per year. The Swersey Silos are expected to annually produce nearly three million pounds of mycelium - the root-like fungal structure from which mushrooms grow - for making the company's MyBacon pork alternative.The details: MyForest Foods' new facility, called the Swersey Silos, is located in Green Island, N.Y., a short drive up the Hudson River from Albany. Why it matters: Animal farming is a major greenhouse gas emitter, and wide-scale adoption of alternative meats could help curb climate change - assuming they're produced cleanly. Alternative meat startup MyForest Foods unveiled Monday what it calls the world's largest aerial mycelium farm, a high-tech facility meant to crank up production of its mushroom-based imitation bacon - one of many products making it easier for meat lovers to give up the real thing.
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