Electric ice cream? A taste of a planet-friendly future

How doesn't like an ice cream in the summer? But did you know that making one demands a bit of effort for planet Earth?

Ice cream's made with milk, which comes from cows, right? Now, to feed all those cows (there are about 1.5 billion of them or nearly one cow for every five people), you need a lot of grass and other plants, such as soy. To grow all of that needs a lot of space, and to make that space we cut down an awful lot of trees.. This "deforestation" not only destroys the homes of animals that live in the woods but losing trees adds to global warming.

Now, obviously, one thing we could do is stop eating ice cream and other foods that come from cows, like meat and burgers. But it would be a bit sad to have to completely give up what we like, wouldn't it.

Solar Foods

That's where Pasi comes into our story. He's a scientist and he has come up with a way to help us keep on enjoying the flavours and foods that we love while still looking after the environment.

Pasi is one of the founders of Solar Foods. The company is building it's first factory, in Finland, to produce large amounts of what they call "solein". It's a protein powder. Proteins are the building blocks of our bodies. We can get them from plants, but we've grown used to getting a lot of our protein from meat and milk products, which are very rich in protein.

Coming soon to a plate near you!

Pasi has developed a way of producing lots of protein that hardly needs any land or farming at all. He starts with tiny microbes that are a bit special - they don't eat the same things that most other organisms need to grow. Pasi feeds them on just air and water and adds a shot of electricity (clean, solar electricity, of course!). That gets the microbes feeding on elements in the air and water, like hydrogen and carbon.

At the end of the process in the factory, out comes solein, a rich, yellow powder full of proteins. This can then be whipped into all sorts of good stuff from plants to recreate the foods we know and love - even the ice cream in the picture!

Solein has just been approved as safe to eat by the government in Singapore. Other countries are taking a bit longer to let it go on sale. But Pasi is sure that we'll all be able to eat foods made with solein soon.

And, he reminds us, it's not just scientists like himself who can change the world. We can all choose already to eat foods that do less damage to the planet - less meat and more vegetables, for example. "We make about 200 food-related choices every day," says Pasi. "Through those choices you can have a huge impact!"