Your musty interests us

Emmanuelle Ducros 08:44, 05 April 2023

A scientific experiment as interesting as it is intriguing this morning, conducted by the University of Western Brittany, in Brest. A project that everyone is invited to join. It's a bit disgusting, but it's for science: a food mold collection.

Listen up, it's not every day that you will have the opportunity to advance knowledge by opening your closet to hunt down moldy stuff. An old piece of mossy cheese, a blue orange, a cake full of suspicious filaments. Perfect, above all, do not throw away.

It is the newspaper 20 minutes that tells: The University of Western Brittany has embarked on a project that bears its name badly, since it is called Mynion.

The researchers want to "fill the gap in scientific knowledge about mold" by collecting at least 500 mold samples, thanks to you. You have to register, answer a questionnaire. We receive a collection kit and ship to the lab.

What are they going to do with all this mold, Breton scientists?

They will study it for 4 years. Distinguish mold from each other, there are thousands of kinds, from aspergilus to penicillium to botrytis.

Researchers want to understand how these microscopic fungi spread, what foods they attack, what effects they produce on food.

Some are used on purpose, such as cheese molds, others are at risk because they produce mycotoxins.

Will this work serve something, concretely?

To several things. First, to enlighten the general public on the dangerousness of some of these molds and the harmlessness of others.

Second, reduce food waste by preventing consumers from systematically throwing away moldy food. To do this, we will establish simple recommendations: Can we eat them? What should be cut? And when do we have to throw everything away?

Behind the work of this Breton university, there is a whole emerging part of science that is interested in the biodiversity of microorganisms.

There, we talk about mold, but it goes beyond that. The France has just launched a research program of a hundred million euros, called "Ferments of the future".

We want to get to know millions of bacteria, molds, yeasts, which give food taste, texture, acidity, shelf life.

We know they are there, we use them intuitively; We owe them the holes of the bread, the texture of the yogurts, the flavor of the beer, the preservation of the sausage, but we know little about them.

And it opens up fascinating avenues.

We will try to domesticate bacteria to take advantage of their properties. Alone, or in combination.

The applications are likely to be very varied. We can imagine very consistent vegetable cheeses, products that, thanks to the natural flavors given by bacteria, will no longer need salt or sugar. It will also be possible to make vegetable proteins more digestible.

It will be of interest to change diets.

We can also imagine foods that will keep better, without artificial preservatives.

And then there's a whole health component... This micro biodiversity also interacts with our microbiota, our personal bacterial landscape, which is as unique as DNA. We could, thanks to tailor-made foods, prevent diseases, improve metabolism.

It took us far, our mold story.... You'll never look at the rest of the peas forgotten from the fridge in the same way again.

You may even pretend that it is out of love for science that you let it mold.