What if, instead of eating crickets or cell-cultured meat, we relied on an everyday raw material to put food on our plates?

That raw material is wood or, rather, a waste product from paper manufacturing.

Italian researchers have set themselves the task of extracting amino acids, the basic components of proteins, from a by-product called lignin, with the aim of designing a new form of meat-free meat.

The name of the “meat from wood” project leaves little doubt as to its aim. At first glance, the concept seems futuristic, the idea being to produce meat from trees. But rather than using up more forests to put food on our plates in the future, the goal is to make better use of waste from the paper industry. To be precise, the project focuses on lignin, a by-product of paper production that manufacturers generally don’t know what to do with. In fact, this material is often burnt.

By recovering and adding value to the by-products of the paper industry and wheat bran, it could also be useful in the manufacture of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even medicines. According to researcher Elena Rosini, new additives and flavour enhancers could even be developed.

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