To get it out of the whey (lol), I’m not a vegan. Nor a vegetarian. Though I respect the conviction and choices of people who choose those paths.
I drink milk. I use protein powder that was extracted from milk, as whey happens to be the perfect protein. It is complete, fast-absorbing and highly bioavailable. It’s the gold standard of protein sources.
Most people don’t get enough protein, particularly high quality proteins like leucine. Carbs and fats are our fuel sources, while protein is the essential building blocks.
Meats are extremely resource intensive and have some attached moral issues, and you can’t supplement some meats in your drinks or processed foods. I mean, I guess you could, but that probably wouldn’t taste very good. It would probably be weird if your high protein sliced bread has chunks of chicken in it.
Milk is similarly resource intensive, requiring a whole process that most people would rather not think about.
Occasionally I take a look to see if there has been any progress in synthetic or engineered whey. Turns out there actually has been progress.
Some groups (for instance Verley) have used the genes responsible for whey production in cows and encoded them in fungi (e.g. aspergillus oryzae). They let the fungus loose in a vat, feeding it a supply of sugars, and the fungi ferments that into whey proteins. When extracted and purified it is indistinguishable from milk-sourced whey proteins.
Fascinating stuff. I doubt it is economically competitive, but once perfected and scaled up who knows. One day we might have Fungi Farms keeping society healthy and nourished. I guess we already have mushroom farms, of course, but expanding on that.
Found this all very interesting.