Building Better Microbial Foods: Essential Development Steps and Stakeholders

The food sector is under pressure to reduce its negative environmental impact. Microbial foods are an emerging opportunity to improve human and planetary health. This Insight offers a roadmap for developing microbial foods and an introduction to key stakeholders and resources in the field. We will introduce the differences between precision fermentation, traditional fermentation, and biomass fermentation and explain the essential steps of microbial food development, namely: strain selection, strain optimisation, process development, downstream processing, product formulation, and regulatory approval. Special emphasis is placed on existing global institutions, infrastructure, and stakeholders that can accelerate the development and improvement of microbial foods and alternative proteins. The future directions of microbial food development are outlined, including artificial intelligence, microbial biodiversity, and regulatory changes.