In the 1960s, among fears of the so-called 'protein gap' — the idea that a growing global population would need an unsustainable amount of protein production to avoid malnutrition — researchers at British Petroleum made a remarkable discovery.
A byproduct of the refinery process, waxy n-paraffins, could be fed to a certain type of yeast, and produce single-cell proteins (SCP). The discovery was dubbed 'food from oil', unappetising as that may sound for us now, and was hailed by UNESCO ...
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Alejandro Tauber is Publisher of EUobserver. He is Ecuadorian, German, and American, but lives in Amsterdam. His background is in tech and science reporting, and was previously editor at VICE's Motherboard and publisher of TNW.