Collagen's dirty secret — and its clean future | Fei Luo

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What do you think when you hear collagen? It is the most abundant protein in our bodies. And even though it's advertised as a key ingredient to youthful looking skin, which is why I always hear about it, we need it far more than just for our outsides. In her 2024 talk, collagen chemist Fei Luo asks us to reconsider the source of the collagen we all need and offers a more ethical and sustainable way to get it. That's coming up.

0:47Last month, 40 people in Los Angeles tasted a rich and hearty bone broth. It was a special broth, one that involved no slaughter of any animals. The secret ingredient was collagen, brewed like a beer using a special yeast and entire animal-free. Do you consume collagen in your daily life? Well, collagen is the most abundant protein in our body. Any animal's body accounts for 30 % of our total proteins. So if you're not a vegetarian, chances are you're already consuming collagen. Or even if you think you don't consume any animal product, but not super careful in checking the labels, collagen may still sneak in as a capsule in your medicine or fillers in your facial cream.

1:38Today, let's talk about food. Imagine biting into a perfectly marbled steak. That intricate balance of muscle and fat owes its structure to collagen. Collagen is nature's scaffold, holding everything together in a seamless harmony of nutrition and texture. Without it, we'll be left with mere minced fat and muscle. Doesn't seem as appealing, is it? In fact, an average piece of meat we eat contains anywhere between 0.5 to 3 % of collagen. And collectively, we consume at least a million metric tons of collagen every year through meat. Collagen's influence extends far beyond the dinner table. Behind the scenes, an entire industry extracts collagen from animal carcasses to produce a myriad of ingredients for food, nutrition, and more.

2:39To get all that collagen, animal carcasses are boiled in strong acid to yield gelatin, a magic substance behind the squishiness of gummies that we love, and a velvety texture of jello. The industry then further processing gelatin into smaller pieces to make collagen hydrolysis. Millions of health-conscious consumers stir this ingredient in their morning coffees or daily smoothie in order to achieve supple skin, strong bones, or other wellness goals. Because collagen is so versatile in food, a food industry without it is certainly not the same. Looking at alternative protein ingredients products in the market we can buy today, meat and seafood amulets are largely in minced form, lacking whole-cut options.

3:30Vegan gummies are lacking the squishiness texture in order to attract mainstream snackers. And for millions of consumers, stir collagen powder in their drinks every day. There's no comparable alternatives, so they will be consuming collagen diligently, one that is from the livestock industry. Looking into the future, it is clear that we need to find the irreplaceable functionality of collagen. The challenge lies in finding effective, ethical, and affordable solution. This is where I come in. Three years ago, I founded a company called liven, aims to produce the next generation of collagen with our animals.

4:15How do we do it? We produce a special yeast by changing its genetics of providing instruction how to produce collagen just like animals. We feed this yeast with sugar or glycerol in bowel reactors, such like big vats in beer brewing. And we harvest collagen from the fermentation broth for different kind of applications. Well, I did not start out as a collagen brewer. I'm actually a chemical engineer with my previous profession growing microorganisms to eat up toxic chemicals in soil and groundwater. My journey in food started with simple quest of looking for clean, nutritious, and delicious diet for my family.

5:03I walked through every single aisle in the grocery store, just looking for plant-based proteins that will not fail my family's taste buds, especially my meat-eater's husband and my three-year-old. And also, I was looking for something that does not come with a laundry list of mysterious ingredients that I have no idea what they are. Thanks for the parental policy in Canada, I got a one-year-off work when my daughter was born. Always believing microbes can save the world, I decided to use this break to try to create ingredients that will enable better foods for my daughter's generation, using microbes as a manufacturing.

5:47And collagen quickly emerged as our focus, because we could see how to brew it easily, and it was also held with health benefits and food functionalities. Now, don't get me wrong, it is not an easy journey, but we have been making strides. We have been collaborating with colleges and universities to produce collagen in order to do early formulation testing to understand its value for alternative proteins before raising millions of dollars. As you may have guessed, our applications start with bone broth. But if we can make this work, we will be able to scale up to meet the collagen demand without raising more kettles by clearing out the Amazon rainforest and sacrificing these animals to source this important ingredient.

6:41If it works, the supermarket in five to ten years will be completely transformed. There you will see slaughter-free steaks adorned with perfect marbling meticulously arranged around collagen fibers. Bone broth, beaconed with their richness and offering velvety texture thanks to abundance of gelatin. And there are snacks, proudly showcasing the health benefits of collagen peptides, meticulously engineered to make the signature of our own body. Gone are the days of questioning what comes from animals and what doesn't. In this future, every bite you take is not only delectable, healthy, but also sustainable and ethical in this production.

7:34Thank you.

7:42That was Fei Luo at TED's Countdown Dilemma series on the future of food in 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmanivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.