Are there any foods derived from protists/protozoa

[Bohandas]

Are there any foods that are derived from protists?

I know there are foods from the other four traditional kingdoms of organisms; There's the meat and dairy from animals, fruit and veggies from plants, mushrooms are fungi, and xanthan gum and msg are IIRC bacterially derived.

Is there anything from protists

[halfeye]

Some fish eat plankton, and we eat fish.

Archea, I don't know about.

[Brother Oni]

Yeast and other things used for brewing are protists, so pretty much anything fermented derives in part from protists (eg bread, beer and other alcohol, yogurt, miso, kimchi, etc).

Seaweed is classed as an algae, so is a protist. It's a food staple in Japan whether it's just pickled or dried and processed into nori.

[hamishspence]

Protist is a paraphyletic term that excludes yeasts (as yeasts are fungi):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protist

It's also worth noting that green algae are considered plants under some definitions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant

Brown algae (which includes many seaweeds) aren't though - they qualify as protists under some definitions - but one definition of protist excludes anything that forms tissues - which seaweeds often do.

[Brother Oni]

There's some things made with SCOBY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY)s, which sort of qualify, but further digging indicates vinegars are made by fermentation of sugar or ethanol by acetic acid bacteria which definitely count.

[hamishspence]

Protists are always prokaryotes eukaryotes, whereas bacteria are eukaryotes prokaryotes.

[Eldan]

Uh, no, no they are not. You have those terms the wrong way around. Prokaryote means Bacteria and Archaea.

[hamishspence]

You have those terms the wrong way around. Prokaryote means Bacteria and Archaea.



Good point - I got distracted and was looking at the "pro" bit - thought for a moment that the two terms were related and that one word was derived from the other.

The important part is that bacteria are not considered protists, so vinegar can't qualify for the OP's purpose.

[Brother Oni]

The important part is that bacteria are not considered protists, so vinegar can't qualify for the OP's purpose.

Welp, you can tell who failed taxonomy during his degree. :smallbiggrin:

While there's been a fair amount of work into single cell protein methods of manufacturing foodstuffs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-cell_protein), I can't find anything that's a protist.

There's plenty of other prokaryotes though, some of which date back surprisingly far; Spirulina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement)) was used as a whole food, supposedly as far back as the Aztecs in the 16th Century.

Edit: Do medicines count as food? I wouldn't be surprised if there's a manufacturing process for monoclonal antibodies that use some critter that counts as a protist.
Edit2: Flipping autocorrect.

[Eldan]

Any medicines produced in yeasts, maybe?

[hamishspence]

Aren't yeasts mostly classed with fungi?



Currently, edible brown algae seaweed seems to be the most notable "protist food".