At the beginning of the semester, Notre Dame’s campus dining debuted a new dish: meatloaf that is made of 30% mushroom and 70% beef. The "mushroom meat" can also be found in the dining hall’s "Texas Chili."
Representatives from Campus Dining shared that they attended a conference called Menus of Change, where a group of universities met to collectively reduce their environmental impact.
"We understand that in order for things to change, they have to taste good, and they have to have the right nutritional impact. We can’t bring them in just because," sustainable kitchen manager Karim Tinoco said.
At the conference, Tinoco and a campus dining chef were impressed by the idea of using mushrooms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and land use. Campus Dining partnered with 50Cut, a company based in New York working to promote mushroom based meat products.
"Beef is one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases when it comes to food," Tinoco said. "The more we can reduce the intake of beef, the better. Beef is also very important because it has a lot of iron and benefits. It’s not about taking away beef, it’s just about making it different … mushrooms use 96% percent less land than beef and 96% less soy."
After the conference, Tinoco and his team worked to get the product approved. “We go through a vetting process, we let everybody within our department try the product, and we bring specialists in form all over. We talked about our nutritions and we talked to our chefs to see how they can use it. The decision is made collectively in the end,” he said.
The Campus Dining team wanted to incorporate mushrooms into meats because of their unique taste. "Mushrooms are considered one of the sensory tests that we can perceive, called umami, and it adds an extra layer of a glutamate that makes everything you’re eating with it taste that much richer," director of supply chain and sustainability Cheryl Bauer said.
Tinoco shared that when dining hall staff asked students if they could tell the difference between traditional meatloaf and the mushroom mix, most were unable to.
"The feedback we’ve gotten has been mostly positive … as far as tasting, most couldn't tell which was which. It was really funny watching them debate about it and seeing them. The majority of people just couldn’t tell," she said.
Campus Dining nutritionist Alexandra Krager shared that mushrooms are excellent sources of fiber and make the meat more nutritious.
Krager shared that while some students worry that adding mushrooms will reduce the protein content of the meat, this is not the case.
"[Mushrooms are] considered a complete protein because [they] contain all nine essential amino acids, so the protein intake does not suffer," Krager said. "Adding mushrooms into the product also helps to reduce different things like saturated fat cholesterol that comes with eating meat products … [which] helps to cut back on things like cardiovascular disease risk."
Campus Dining hopes that students will try the mushroom meat before forming opinions about it. "I just want to encourage the students to try the recipes the chefs work really hard on and keep an open mind," Tinoco said.
