Three paths

Protein that does not come from an animal arrives by three paths.

Plants. Beans, peas, lentils, and the protein pressed out of them. You cook them like other dry goods, and Paz already knows how.

Fermentation, in two kinds. Biomass fermentation grows a fungus or a microbe and the microbe itself is the food; mycoprotein is the common name for the fungus kind. Precision fermentation uses microbes as tiny factories to make one ingredient, such as a milk protein or an enzyme. The plate may never say the word.

Cultivated meat. Animal cells grown in tanks into something like meat. Real in 2026 in a few places, expensive, and not Lowbridge’s default.

The family exists because trucks skip and herds are slow, not because a lab promised forever.

The tempting mistake is to think there is one kind of new protein.

That is what lets you ask which path a kitchen can cook this week.