In a world inching its way toward sustainability, the market for meat substitutes is a lucrative one. From tofu to tempeh — and Beyond Burgers to those still humbly made of beans — vegetarians, vegans and people simply trying to eat less meat have more options than ever.

One of the strongest contenders in meat-like replacements is the mushroom — and researchers from China and the Netherlands are applying gene-editing technology to amplify what we can do with it.

In this case, we’re talking about a fungus whose genes have been “edited” to taste like meat (seasonings aside). They were also changed to make its digestion easier on the stomach than the original strain of fungi it originated from, which has thick cell walls.

Perhaps most importantly, though, they used the gene-editing tool to tinker with how much protein the fungus produces. Originally a resource-heavy mushroom to grow, researchers made an “edit” to how much nutrition is needed for the fungus to create protein in itself. This, along with other changes, lowered the environmental cost of the meat substitute’s production by 61%.

They modeled production across six countries, each with a different energy system. Examples included Finland, which relies on renewable energy, and China, which tends to run on coal.

Foods like this fungus could help meet growing food demand less expensively by limiting the environmental footprint associated with producing it.

Now, for those of us who hate mushrooms, it’s possible knowing where your meat substitute came from might lessen your interest in plucking it off the plate. But for now, it seems like we might not notice it’s mushroom to begin with.