The Plant Lab
Going further

Resources

Twelve modules can only scratch the surface. These are the books, papers, courses, and organizations the course was built on — and where to look next.

Foundational books

  • Harold McGee — On Food and Cooking. The single most important reference for any cook who thinks chemically. Indispensable.
  • Nathan Myhrvold et al. — Modernist Cuisine & Modernist Bread. Five-volume engineering treatments of cooking. Most plant-based moves are scattered throughout.
  • Sandor Katz — The Art of Fermentation. The encyclopedia of microbial food transformation, with deep coverage of plant-based traditions worldwide.
  • Rich Shih & Jeremy Umansky — Koji Alchemy. The English-language reference for koji's modern uses, including extensive plant-based applications.
  • Eyal Shimoni & co. — Plant-Based Meat Analogs. Academic but readable; the technical reference for HMMA, shear cell, and plant-meat formulation.

Open-access scientific literature

  • Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360(6392): 987–992. The landmark food-LCA meta-analysis.
  • Schreuders, F. K. G. et al. (2019). Comparing structuring potential of pea and soy protein with gluten for meat analogue production. Journal of Food Engineering 261: 32–39.
  • Ismail, B. P. et al. (2020). Protein demand: review of plant and animal proteins used in alternative protein product development and production. Animal Frontiers 10(4): 53–63.
  • Mertens, E. et al. (2017). Operationalising the health aspects of sustainable diets: a review. Public Health Nutrition 20(4): 739–757.
  • Mariotti, F. & Gardner, C. D. (2019). Dietary protein and amino acids in vegetarian diets — a review. Nutrients 11(11): 2661.

Organizations doing important work

  • The Good Food Institute (gfi.org) — open library of formulation reports and scientific reviews; runs an active community of researchers and entrepreneurs.
  • EAT Foundation (eatforum.org) — home of the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet framework.
  • Wageningen University & Research — global leader in plant-protein research; publishes openly.
  • UMass Amherst Food Science — strong plant-protein and hydrocolloid programs; many open lecture notes.
  • Our World in Data — Food (ourworldindata.org/food-and-agriculture) — clean, well-cited data visualizations for sustainability arguments.

Online courses worth your time

  • Stanford's "Food Sustainability, Mindful Eating" (free on Coursera).
  • Wageningen's "Sustainable Food Security" series (free on edX).
  • Harvard's "Science & Cooking" series — broader than vegan, but excellent foundation.
  • The American Vegan Society for community, recipes, and applied advocacy.

Equipment for the serious home lab

  • A digital scale that reads to 0.1 g (not 1 g) — about $25.
  • An instant-read thermometer with a fast probe.
  • A pH paper roll covering 3–10, or a cheap digital pH meter.
  • Cheesecloth, fine-mesh sieves, glass jars in multiple sizes.
  • An immersion blender with a tall narrow cup (transformative for emulsions).
  • A high-speed blender (Vitamix-class) if you can justify it. A regular blender works for everything in this course; a high-speed one is just faster.
  • A few small specialty hydrocolloids: agar, kappa-carrageenan, sodium alginate, calcium lactate, methylcellulose, xanthan, soy lecithin. Modernist Pantry and many online retailers ship small bags inexpensively.

Active communities

  • r/VeganFoodScience and r/ifyoulikeblank on Reddit.
  • The Vegan Society's research blog.
  • Discord servers for plant-based formulation (search "GFI community" for current invites).

Found a great resource we should add? Open an issue or PR on the course repository. This curriculum is open and meant to keep growing.