Gene-Edited Fungi: Feeding the Future or Funding Control?

At first glance, the new genetically engineered fungal “meat” recently highlighted by Cell Press looks like classic future-food bait. Fast-growing. Protein-dense. CRISPR-tweaked so it digests easier, costs less, and mimics the texture of meat—all without the animal. No feathers, no fur, no heartbeat. Just vat-grown muscle mimicry via their altered Fusarium fungal strain. The scientists behind it say it tastes like meat. As expected, they say it’s the answer to industrial livestock. Fewer emissions. Less land. Lower water use. And above all, less guilt—a kind of eco-absolution served sizzling, no questions asked. But here’s the thing: whenever a solution shows up looking this sleek, this frictionless, there’s usually something beneath it that we’re not being told.

The presumption behind Fusarium relies on two deleted genes. One gene stiffens the cell walls of the fungus, and the other regulates how hungry it gets. Once they are stripped out, the organism (fungi) softens, fattens up faster, and needs a lot less sugar to bulk into something chewable that is then tinkered with to resemble meat. In the lab, it sure sounds clever. But inside the body? That’s a different and frightening experiment altogether. We’re meant to believe that a gene-edited life form—one reprogrammed at the blueprint level—will fold neatly into our human digestion, with no strange repercussions and no metabolic pushback. Forgive me if I’m quite skeptical.

Importantly, we’ve seen this pattern before. It goes like this: researchers engineer something novel, then scale it fast, wrap it in the lingo of sustainability and the doom of climate change, and ship it to market before the biological consequences have been meaningfully studied. Food becomes data—quantified, purified, abstracted. Indeed, the metrics are familiar: lower carbon footprint, reduced land use, minimal water waste. But those numbers don’t tell us what this new protein actually does when it enters a living system such as the human body (or animals, etc.). How does a reprogrammed fungus interact with the ever-crucial gut microbiome? What does it do to the immune system over time? How does it behave hormonally, enzymatically, neurologically?

These are foundational questions. And yet they’re rarely asked—at least not before the rollout of the next greatest fake meat concoction to save the planet. The assumption is that if it breaks down into amino acids, it’s safe. But human physiology is not a linear processor. It’s an intricate body of interdependence. And food is more than fuel—it’s information, and it’s instruction. We don’t just digest food; we incorporate it into the structure of our bodies. When those instructions and data are genetically altered for speed and scalability (and let’s not forget a hefty profit for someone), the margin of error grows, not shrinks.

On top of that, there is the ownership problem, which is conveniently glossed over in these techno-optimistic, save-the-world press releases. If our food is genetically engineered, grown in closed-system fermentation tanks, and licensed by biotech firms, who really controls the food supply? It is undoubtedly not farmers, or local producers, or natural ecosystems. Make no mistake, a genetically altered fungus doesn’t grow in soil, doesn’t rely on weather, and doesn’t require stewardship over the land. It grows in steel vats in laboratories nestled within facilities owned and operated by those who hold intellectual property rights over the fungus at hand.

But here we must pause, because the notion of protein-packed, genetically engineered, meaty-tasting fungi is not just a different food system. It’s a different civilization model. One where nourishment is no longer cultivated, but manufactured and distributed under corporate terms. It’s efficient, yes—for the supplier. For the rest of us, it looks less like food security and more like complete dependency under someone else’s control.

And to be clear, this isn’t a small speculative side project taking up temporary space in Cell Press. The 2025 study at hand was published in Trends in Biotechnology and supported by China’s National Key Research and Development Program. In other words, it is CCP state-backed research, with ambitions on a national scale. When public funds move into gene-edited food systems, it most definitely signals intent—not just novel curiosity. The goal for the future of food, especially meat, isn’t just to explore the potential of fungi. The broader goal is to industrialize, scale, and normalize it.

Taking a step back into reality, it is important to realize that there is no shortage of actual food on this planet. There is, however, a growing shortage of sustainable systems that honor how real, nutrient-dense food grows. The soil still knows how to feed us. So do herbivorous mammals, if managed regeneratively and with love and care. Remember, crops, fungi, roots, and wild things—these are the original technologies. They’ve been running metabolic intelligence operations with the human body for millennia and they don’t need to be genetically edited. Instead, they need to be nurtured and respected.

This latest rush to reinvent food from a sterile lab betrays a deeper discomfort—not with climate risk or land scarcity, but with nature itself. The lab is clean, patented and profitable for those pushing these synthetic foods. The open pasture is entirely different. And yet only one of these environments can regenerate the Earth while nourishing the human body the way it needs to be nourished. And it’s not the one in partnership with CRISPR. The human body isn’t a platform that needs lab-generated synthetic patches or updates. It needs what it’s always needed: clean water, real soil, living ecosystems, and food that remembers where it came from.