Word: yeasting
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Crossbreeding Tells. Three years ago, however, a British chemist named A. C. Thaysen began to explore yeast's possibilities as a straight food. He developed a new strain (from a variety called Torula utilis) with a pleasant, nutty flavor, so cheap to produce (10? a lb.) that the British Government has started building a plant in Jamaica to make 2,000 tons of Thaysen's "food yeast" a year.* Chemist Thaysen at most expected to serve his yeast in concentrated doses to supplement a poor diet; despite its pleasant flavor, he did not conceive of Torula utilis...
...that idea did occur to a young research geneticist named Carl Lindegren at St. Louis' Washington University. He thought of developing yeast in a variety of flavors resembling staple food tastes. He and Mrs. Lindegren began to crossbreed yeast cells...
...students of Nobel Prize Geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan at Caltech, the Lindegrens had long crossbred fruit flies, which breed a new generation every three weeks. Yeast can produce a new generation in as little as 20 minutes. Yeast cells, usually having no sex, reproduce simply by splitting in two. Under certain conditions yeast develops sexual characteristics and, like other plants, reproduces by means of spores. The Lindegrens cultivated yeast with spores, opened the spore sacs and cross-fertilized them, in this way bred thousands of new varieties of yeast. Finally, they got some to the king's taste...
...Powder for the Future. Anheuser-Busch is now geared to produce millions of pounds a year. The process: 125 lb. of yeast is planted in a vat containing 7,000 gal. of water, a ton and a half of molasses (on whose sugar the yeast feeds) and ammonia (which provides nitrogen that the yeast converts into protein). The mixture is kept warm, stirred by 1,000 cu. ft. of air a minute (without air the yeast would ferment the sugar). After twelve hours the prodigiously growing yeast, having multiplied its original weight 16 times, is a ton of flavorsome food...
...food (actually a vegetable-meat) has not been named; it will not be offered under the unappetizing title of "yeast." The Army and Lend-Lease are already buying millions of pounds. Postwar possibilities are obviously enormous, and the product's wildest enthusiasts stop at nothing: observing that a 10-ft. vat can produce as much meat in a year as 1,000 acres of pasture, they fancy that the world's cattle may be heading for the last roundup...