Cell Based Tech Weekly – Perfect Day Announces Plan to Engineer Cell Based Fats

Perfect Day, the cell based milk company that has a partnership with Archer Daniels Midland to scale the production of milk proteins announced an expansion to their portfolio: cell based fats. https://cellbased.link/94c7f 

Fat Pop Quiz: What are some of the binders that hold your juicy impossible or beyond burger together? Plant based fats. In fact, coconut oil is the third ingredient on the Impossible Burger ingredient label and expeller-pressed canola oil and refined coconut oil are the third and fourth ingredients on the Beyond Burger ingredient label. 

Enter Perfect Day: According to the company announcement, Perfect Day plans to use their microbial engineering and cellular fermentation platform to engineer cell based fats that could become ingredient replacements for plant based fats such as coconut oil and palm oil which according to Perfect Day require, “intensive supply chains reliant on a small number of tropical countries.”

In addition to the inefficiencies in growing, harvesting, and shipping plant based fats from tropical rainforests, the function of these fats is not the same as fats from animals sources. Plant based fats do not have the same meltability and solidifying properties, but most importantly the flavor profiles are not as robust as animal based fats. 

2020 Outlook: Perfect Day plans to focus on commercializing their milk protein whilst working to develop cell based fat prototypes.