this white powder could transform the
dairy industry it is real dairy protein
just not from an animal
scientists make it in a lab and it's
already being used as an ingredient in
cream cheese ice cream and milk
unlike plant-based alternatives this
protein promises to match the taste and
texture of the real deal and without the
environmental cost the sort of target
audience isn't people that are perfectly
happy with soy milk or almond milk or
oat milk it's people that just want
dairy but has dairy grown in a lab too
good to be true or have scientists crack
the code of a cow-free future
the average american consumes an
incredible 655 pounds of dairy in a year
it takes 9.4 million cows to fuel that
craving which is bad news for the
environment
livestock are the largest producers of
methane in the u.s
dairy cattle alone make up a quarter of
those emissions and animal rights
activists say these large farms offer
cows only a lifetime of misery
for years this was the only source of
ice cream milk or cheese
alternatives started to take off in the
80s with soy milk leading the charge
sales exploded to 550 million dollars in
two decades this opened the door for
almonded oat milks that would soon
dominate the dairy free market
but these come with their own
environmental problems
almond milk production is notorious for
its high water usage
it takes 23 gallons of water to make
just one glass of almond milk
that's still less than cow's milk but
far more than oat or soy
it felt like the only kinds of solutions
that people were talking about were yet
another plant and so until someone came
along and found a way to make that
functional protein without cows nothing
was going to change and that's exactly
what perfect day does in this california
lab
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we're in our bioanalytics lab this is
one of the most important teams in the
entire company what we're doing is
making sure that the protein doesn't
have any other sort of behavior that we
might not want
we're actually testing the the
functionality of the protein in the
actual chemistry the protein comes from
a process called precision fermentation
and everyone's familiar with
fermentation at least in the context of
making beer or wine like you've got
these little microflora and they're
eating something like sugar and they're
producing something of value for people
in this case the thing of value is whey
protein and it's the exact same kind
found in cows
but this version doesn't come from an
animal
the dna sequence for whey is available
online so scientists can just download
it and they 3d print it using vials of
synthetic nucleotides the chemical
compounds that form all genetic material
it's then mixed with microflora like
fungi
these microflora adopt the whey dna and
start to multiply
next they go into a fermentation tank
full of sugar vitamins and minerals and
once you add some sugar it's just that
simple they eat the sugar and convert it
into the protein that we care about
after a couple of days the protein is
filtered out and dry
the science ends when you make the
protein and from there it's an
ingredient like any other that culinary
experts are used to working with
this is where perfect day tests out new
recipes we started off in ireland in the
summer of 2014 where it was like just us
using glass beakers and trying to do
whatever we could to having actual
culinary experts who really know their
art and science
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ice cream was the first product the
company launched
technicians combine the protein powder
with water oil sugar and the desired
flavor
they pour the liquid into the same
machines that make regular ice cream
which means companies that use the
protein don't need any special equipment
the team is also experimenting with
other uses for the protein like this
milk
that creates the perfect foam layer for
coffee something dairy alternatives have
always struggled to mimic
perfect day doesn't sell products under
its own name
instead it partners with a number of
different brands some of which the
company owns
like this cream cheese sold under the
name modern kitchen that's already
available at a bagel shop just down the
street oh no not even anymore
i had heard about perfect day a few
years ago at some foodie event i went
into it being pretty skeptical and tried
it and was just
wowed i'm like this tastes like cream
cheese you know we've had it on the
special today and it's been flying
there's been a ton of people buying it
before you pay if you'll check the
screen
but it's not the easiest product to
market
i'm calling it animal free and vegan but
then when we say it has dairy protein it
does cause some confusion the spread is
technically vegan since it's made
without animals it's also free of the
lactose cholesterol and hormones that
are found in cows
modern kitchens cream cheese costs
around five dollars
roughly two dollars more than
philadelphia's it's not really a profit
center i would say for us now but that's
okay to use it as a base cream cheese to
replace the conventional that price
would need to come down really far but
hopefully it will as it takes off and
the technology scales
investments in fermentation-based
proteins tripled from 2019 to 2020 by
the end of that year perfect day alone
raised 361 million dollars but it's hard
to predict how much lab-grown options
will disrupt the traditional dairy
industry disruption is a big word right
so
at the moment plant-based dairy is only
about 10 of the market and it's taken
them decades to get there
in 2020 perfect day's animal-free whey
protein was the first in the u.s to be
recognized as safe by the fda
the only other places it's currently
sold are singapore and hong kong
the challenge is bringing down the price
point
for them to get to price parity they
have to scale they're going to need
access to manufacturing facilities that
are as big as dairy is already using
when perfect day's ice cream was first
released in 2019 it went for 20 a pint
and sold out in less than half a day
data does show that people want to be
more sustainable and that they are
willing to spend more money to be
climate conscious but now that the
company has scaled up its ice cream
falls under the brand brave robot and
costs around five dollars
and ryan feels their opportunities even
beyond dairy there might be different
food ingredients they might be in
materials or even outside of what you
and i might think of and that's really
where we want to start to move our focus
so that we can do a lot more in the
future than than just this
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you