Quorn

Quorn ... is ... people!

No. Not really. But Charleton Heston's memorable lines are bound to come to mind when reading about the early history of Quorn, a British meat alternative recently approved by the FDA:

The chairman, Lord Rank, directed his research scientists to identify a "new" food that he hoped could eliminate a potential world food shortage, which many worried about at the time. After an extensive search, the fusarium species of fungi was discovered in the soil next to wheat fields in Marlow in the UK.

That's right. Quorn, which sits unassumingly in your grocer's freezer, is mostly wheat fungus. Fusarium attacks the roots of wheat plants, and until Quorn came along it wasn't exactly the farmer's friend. But now it's a big-business crop: It's fermented in a vat, mixed with egg and shaped into a variety of meat-approximating forms: Quorn patties, Quorn tenders, Quorn links. There's even Quorn lasagna.

European supermarkets have sold Quorn for years, but the FDA was understandably wary of allowing new, foreign fungal products into the country. Nevertheless, the stuff has done incredibly well overseas; in Britain it's more popular than soy burgers, and in 2001 it made its producer, Marlow Foods, more than $150 million. Driven by mad-cow-induced meat anxiety, European consumers have stuck with Quorn for its long list of health stats: two-thirds less fat than chicken, with zero cholesterol. A serving of Quorn has as much protein as an egg.

And Quorn is pretty tasty, too. The chicken version could pass as an upscale McNugget. Thanks to the stringy mycoproteins left by the fermentation process, Quorn has a fibrous texture, with a surprisingly meat-like chewiness.

That said, what are the chances of Quorn finding a home on the American kitchen table? No one can say for sure — Americans eat a lot of strange crap — but Quorn's misleading happy-sun packaging betrays a load of nervousness on the part of Marlow Foods.

First, the name. Quorn. Pronounced, by the way, "kuh-worn." It looks and sounds like "corn," a connection you are, in all likelihood, supposed to make. But there's no corn in Quorn. Not a kernel. It's not even yellow. Other than its bright yellow packaging, there's nothing remotely corn-like about Quorn. But "Quorn" recalls corn, the all-American crop. (Who knows, maybe someday Quorn will be the all-American mycoprotein). The idea is clearly to get you thinking of Quorn as just another wholesome food, forgetting the fact that it comes from a crop-destroying, parasitic fungus.

Which brings up Marlow's second bit of marketing chicanery. Actually, it's less misleading than an outright lie. The box claims that Quorn comes from "a small, unassuming member of the mushroom family." But fusarium graminearium is not a mushroom, it's a mold. Both are fungi, though in the same way that rats and manatees are both mammals. But mushroom sounds so yummy, so delicious. Mold sounds so, well, infectious.

Of course, it's not like we don't eat bacteria-derived foods already. Yogurt, for example. Cheese. Wine. All delicious items derived from, or by, bacteria and molds, organisms usually found at the opposite end of the spectrum from edible.

Nevertheless, there's something exceedingly unnatural about the life cycle of Quorn. It's meant to be a meat substitute, but, like beef, it's one of those things consumers are better off not knowing too much about. Meat producers, afraid to let on too much about their mass-slaughtering ways, have hidden their abbatoirs behind dancing barbecue pigs and fat, happy turkeys. And in the same way, Marlow Foods has designed a package that steers us away from Quorn's not-too-appetizing reality. Meat substitutes are supposed to be alternatives to the meat-production process as well — they should be organic, wholesome. Foods derived from wheat-munching molds do not fit that bill.

— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)