ALGAE have been infesting the ether of late. One television commercial features a buff faux boffin strolling around a virtual lab, waxing eloquent about their promise for greener energy. "Fuel", a documentary, hails them as a biotech alternative to ethanol and traditional fuel sources. Even the American Navy has been in the news for commissioning Solazyme, a producer of algae-based biofules, to provide the juice for some of its ships.

The company initially focused on algae-based biodiesel but has since diversified into jet fuel and cosmetics—and food. In 2009 its chemists began a series of experiments to see how algal derivatives fare in the kitchen. Not bad, it turns out. Algae flour—something of a misnomer given its mushy, moist texture—can be used to make cookies, honey mustard and even a milk substitute, replacing butter, vegetable oils and eggs and removing the need for processed sugar and preservatives. Nutritionally, this translates into fewer calories, a healthy dose of the ever popular antioxidants, some salubrious micronutrients, as well as oodles of dietary fibre which makes these easier for the body to absorb.

Crucially, cookies still taste like cookies and not, as some may fret, sushi—at least to Babbage's tastebuds. (He does not know whether the sentiment was shared by Barbara Boxer, a Democratic Senator pictured right cagily sampling an algal flour cookie.) Little wonder, then, that in November 2010 Solazyme teamed up with Roquette, the second largest starch supplier in Europe and the fourth largest in the world, to bring this new superfood to the market.

This may yet prove a tough sell. For a start, consumers will need some convincing before they nibble on the stuff that many associate with the muck on the walls of fish tanks. Pitching algae as an alternative cooking ingredient or health food will doubtless appeal to some foodie fashionistas, for a while at least. But this strategy may deter more discerning types who dismiss any such notions as passing fancies.

In fact, algae might be easier to deploy at an earlier stage of the food-production cycle. Nick Baily of the Belgrave Trust, a New York-based firm that helps individuals and companies to offset their carbon footprints, estimates that as much as 40% of food-related footprints (which account for about a fifth of the total in Britain) is attributable to the petrochemical fertilisers used in producing foodstuffs. Replacing such dirty fertilisers with the lighter-footed algae-derived sort may make a sizeable dent in carbon emissions, and spur environmentally conscious consumers to plump for foods grown using the technology. The cost of such algal alternatives will need to drop before they become widely used in agriculture. But at least farmers are more inured to dealing with muck than are food faddists.