As the 19th-century French chef and culinary writer Auguste Escoffier once said, “Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.” And for many, that good food is bacon. The smell, the crisp, the taste—that perfect mix of sweet, smoky, and salty flavors is pure comfort, nostalgia, and overall good vibes. Even the sound of the sizzle in the pan evokes happy memories of lazy Sunday mornings at home.
Despite the American love affair with bacon, the processed meat product is associated with some pretty serious health consequences including a higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. But one company seems to have found a way to give people everything they love about bacon, without the major health risks associated with ultra-processed conventional bacon. Are they sorcerors? Nope, they’re mushroom growers.
Mycelium bacon has the same texture and taste as pork bacon. | MyForest Foods
The company making crispy bacon made from mushroom roots
New York-based MyForest Foods has created MyBacon, a type of pork-free bacon that is not only healthier than conventional bacon but also manages to hit all the right taste and texture notes die-hard bacon lovers crave. It’s not the first vegan brand to achieve such a feat, but it is one of the first to do so without being ultra-processed.
The secret is oyster mushroom mycelium—the vegetative part of fungus, which consists of a network of fine, thread-like structures. It’s basically like mushroom roots, and it’s full of tantalizing, meaty potential. According to some early high-profile MyBacon investors, “It’s amazing what mushrooms can do—and this is just the beginning.”
MyForest Foods grows mycelium in cloud-like large pieces. | MyForest Foods
Since its launch in 2020, MyForest Foods has opened the largest mycelium vertical farm in the world to make its bacon. There, it uses indoor growing methods inspired by traditional mushroom farming practices to grow its mycelium into large cloud-like pieces, which mimic slabs of meat. Using whole farmed mushrooms means this bacon is not just healthier, but better for the planet, too. And the possibilities for other products using sustainably farmed mushrooms are endless.
“Because we grow the mycelium as large ‘whole’ pieces, it almost looks like fused threads, which ultimately creates an amazingly ‘similar to meat’ texture experience,” explains MyForest Foods’ chief marketing officer Sarah-Marie Cole. “The amazing texture helps amplify the taste. It is part of delivering the ‘all senses’ experience that you would expect when eating bacon.”
After they are grown, the mycelium pieces are sliced, marinated, and packaged. The whole process takes less than two weeks. For comparison, the process of raising pigs for bacon is the exact opposite of farming mushrooms, causing needless animal deaths (in the billions) and massive environmental destruction.
Why choose mycelium bacon over regular bacon?
Aside from taste and sustainability, there are plenty of other reasons to choose mycelium bacon. For many Americans, health is one of the biggest.
Unlike many packaged foods on the market, including rival plant-based meats, MyBacon is not ultra-processed. As the brand frequently touts, MyBacon “is farmed, not fake”, in reference to the fact that it is the way the fungus intertwines when it grows that gives it the meaty succulent texture—not a laundry list of excessive ingredients.
MyBacon is made with just a handful of natural ingredients. | MyForest Foods
Plant-based MyBacon is made with just mycelium, organic coconut oil, organic sugar, natural flavors, and salt. There is no single accepted definition of ultra-processed foods, but they tend to include more than five ingredients, many of which are chemical additives and colorings.
Food writer Michael Pollan defines an ultra-processed food as one that contains ingredients “no normal person has at home and requires equipment you could only find in a factory.” All ultra-processed foods aren’t inherently bad for you, but recent studies have advised the public to move away from eating too many of them as, like bacon, some could increase the risk of chronic disease.
This lack of complicated ingredients and excessive processing was a big reason why MyBacon bagged a highly-coveted spot on Time’s Best Inventions of 2022. The publication hailed it as a “better fakin’ bacon.” At this year’s Expo West, the world’s largest natural food trade show, VegNews awarded MyBacon with the title of “Best New Vegan Product” because of flavor, texture, and revolutionary farming process.
Another major benefit of MyBacon is that, like all plant-based products, it is cholesterol-free. Animal bacon, of course, is associated with raising cholesterol levels, which, in turn, raises the risk of heart disease. According to the University of Oxford, eating around three slices per day of bacon (or the equivalent of any other processed meat) may increase the risk of heart disease by nearly 20 percent.
Each serving of MyBacon also contains three grams of protein and nearly 10 percent of the RDI for fiber, a nutrient seriously lacking in American diets. In fact, research suggests that 95 percent of Americans simply aren’t getting enough of it. “You get the benefits of fiber and protein in each bite of MyBacon,” adds Cole. “Our ingredient panel is very simple, which keeps it allergen-free and very clean.”
Cultivating a whole new mycelium meat industry
To MyForest Foods, the 45 million Americans who eat around three to four pounds of bacon every year are mycelium fans-in-waiting. Many of them just don’t know yet that the fungi can give them all the same feels as conventional bacon. Cole, however, has watched the conversion in real time.
“The ‘I’m a meat-eater’ consumers tell us upfront they won’t like it,” she says. “We convince them to try it anyway, and boom. Lo and behold, they do love it. They usually say something along the lines of ‘if you put that on a BLT, I would have no clue it isn’t pork.’”
“The joy on people’s faces when they try MyBacon really lights up the room,” she added. “It’s wonderful to watch people try their first taste. The possibilities for innovation and creativity are endless, and we are just getting started.”
MyBacon sizzles in the pan just like conventional bacon. | MyForest Foods
The brand has even bigger goals than just replacing the world’s bacon. It’s going for gold on many more meat products that can be replicated with fungi. “Think of a chicken product made from ‘chicken-of-the-woods mycelium or a steak made from a beef-steak-polypore,” says Cole. “We would love to see ‘mycelium’ as an entirely new food category, with lots of different food options made from different types of mushroom strains.”
To put MyForest Foods’ MyBacon to the taste test for yourself, MyBacon is currently available in select stores across the northeast of the US, as well as Good Egg locations on the West Coast.
Thank you to MyForest Foods for partnering with VegNews on this story.
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Charlotte is a VegNews editor and writer based in sunny Southsea on England's southern coast.
