Experts: we're not gonna be eating plastic cookies.
Sounds a lot like: we can't make profits of plastic cookies so don't get your hopes up.
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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I want all the scientists working on this to eat about 20 of these cookies every week and report back in 6 months after they've had their doctors do a physical on them and tell us how they're doing.
soylent yellow then
Fuck micro plastics, we got macro plastics
Ask your doctor if Plastic is right for you.
How much actual plastic will be left in your body after consuming...this?
100%
What's the marketing for this. Eat enough plastic, become plastic, be immortal? Eat enough plastic to override the effects of climate change, live long enough to see the billionaires in their bunkers rot because they don't know how to open food packaging themselves? Eat enough plastic you can now perform your own plastic surgery, with the free companion microwave app?
It was created for a NASA deep space food contest. Context makes the development a lot more understandable
there was a study during WW2 germany whether factories could produce synthetic food from petroleum ... i'm not entirely sure what the outcome of this was, actually, i should read up on it some day.
"They [university students] haven’t actually eaten one of their µBites yet, as they wait for university approval."
LOL yeah right - same reason I never drank beer in college. Waiting for approval!
Before the yeast can start feasting, the PET plastics are subjected to a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution to break them down into smaller bits that the microbes can digest.
Sensationalism aside, this could actually be a big deal. We use a lot of PET (polyethylene). Plastic drink bottles, plastic bags, plastic wrap, tape, fabrics, even some car parts. PET is a huge market segment of consumer products that are difficult to replace with environmentally friendly alternatives.
If we can boil it and then feed it to a vat of yeast to break down, that would be fantastic. Even better, it could remove some of the difficulty of plastic sorting which is a major part of the recycling problem. Basically, if you dump some plastic into the vat that the yeast can't eat, well it just won't eat it, so just sift it out of the vat later for a different disposal process, no big deal.
Even if humans can't directly consume the byproduct, I'm sure we can use it for something else.
My biggest question is how long this takes, which they don't address in the article. How long do you have to boil the material (how much energy, how much water, how much oxygen, how big a facility to process X volume of waste), and how long does it take the yeast to break it down? If it can be done in hours or days that's well worth spending some resources to build a processing center. If it takes months or years it will require more planning and analysis.
These "food cookies" could be used as compost or animal feed no? Just transforming it into something that can return to nature is really cool.
Also opens up the door to possibly finding a way to remove microplastics from people or animals. If it was possible to safely get those yeast into people, would break them down.
Absolutely. Nothing can break down those polymers naturally, so just getting that process started makes a big difference. The very worst case is that the output material ends up in landfill - if it's just a sugar molecule at that point, it will break down relatively quickly. Way, way better than letting the plastic break down in the environment.
My biggest question is how long this takes, which they don't address in the article. How long do you have to boil the material (how much energy, how much water, how much oxygen, how big a facility to process X volume of waste), and how long does it take the yeast to break it down? If it can be done in hours or days that's well worth spending some resources to build a processing center. If it takes months or years it will require more planning and analysis.
They don't put in a direct answer, but there is an indirect one: $60 per kilo. That needs to come down A LOT before there is a real future for this. I heard of projects that try and turn plastics into fuels. Sooner or later somebody will figure it out.
$60 per kilo
That's not bad for a prototype! With lab-growth meat, the initial cost was $2.3 million / kg. It's come down since then because of process and scale improvements, but when it starts off that high, it's going to be a while for it to become affordable.
A quick non-AI figure is $0.60 per kilo to recycle plastic... so we just need improvement by a factor of 100 which is quite realistic.
Yes, I'm assuming that this is being done in a lab environment without purpose-built equipment, and also that developing the specialized yeast strain was part of the cost.
Assuming that the genetic change is stable and that the yeast is self-propagating like normal yeast, then engineering the rest of it into an assembly line shouldn't be too difficult and should bring the cost down by orders of magnitude.
Plus, if we can turn the output hydrocarbons into a viable market product then the recycler can offset the operating cost, which would make this even more interesting. Right now plastic recycling is just losses.
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Polyethylene Terephthalate and Polyethylene are not the same.
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I was gonna say piss beer, but we already have heineken.
(Boomer joke I know, I know!
Tbh I drink almost no more alcohol in general)
Idk if it's an unpopular opinion here, but I'm totally cool with bugs as protein. I actually ate a roach that was raised in a clean environment and fed nothing but apples. It wasn't bad, actually kinda good. Tasted vaguely of apple to boot.
Entomophagy isn't even uncommon, globally speaking. And I can vouch for chapulines and escamoles being tasty. I'd happily try more invertebrate foods.
just eat a dang beans
I'm cool with it. I fuckin hate roaches, but that aside, I think people misrepresent the concept for their own goals. The point isn't to eat bugs for protein (even if humans have at various points in history as a cultural norm). The point is modern meat production is killing us, and we should find other ways to supplement our nutritional intake. But the same people who bitch about vegans not getting the right macros or whatever also shit on bugs, so
Hakuna matata
First it was bugs as protein .
Which has nothing wrong...?
Then it was poo burgers .
I mean, i really doubt it's meant to be taken as serious consideration and not just "why don't wr just try for the funnies?"
Now it's trash cookies.
Seems like you did not even try to understand the article lmao, they just want to showcase their modified yeast that can "eat" PET and produce other stuff with it
I was trying to be funny though.
From the sounds of it, some kind of genetic treatment to turn everyone into raccoons?
Wait I'm kinda down to be a raccoon tho
i know people that ate raccoon, i would never try it. apparently some people in my city caught wild raccon and cooked it and ate it. the meat is like pitch black.
So that's why he cut off and took the roadkill penis....
If you like this, you should watch: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14549466/
I was hoping someone would post this lol
the article:
The David Cronenberg film “Crimes of the Future” may prove to be a prophecy after all.
Sounds sort of like a prion cookie
just gotta get alot offal from sheep and cows.
While this could be good, I think about this much older article that talks about somewhat similar things, specifically
turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores
but they ended up only doing (what I remember being) the turkey offal. The article mentioned here says
plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings
and while it has been 20+ years, my concern is that it will end up doing much less than promised. But I can hope for more.
Wait they haven’t even tasted it? If I was a scientist turning plastic into food I would be at least licking it.
Probably concerned about worst case scenarios. This is a bioengineered yeast that eats PET. What if it populates your gut and fucks up your gut fauna and hurts you?
What if you shit it out and it gets into some waste area with lots of plastic and starts multiplying uncontrollably?
What if it evolved to eat other plastic and now all our current plastic starts literally molding?
There's a lot of weird shit that you can be concerned about. Might be low risk but low risk of extreme new scenario.
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This is basically the plot of the the body horror movie "Crimes of the Future" where humans modify themselves to be able to eat the "new food" that is readily available, plastic waste. It is not meant to be hopeful.
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This should be the diet of oil oligarchs and politicians who continue to suppress efforts to reduce fossil fuel use
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