The Pacific Northwest gives us lots of great consumables: Harry and David pears and wine that'll help you burn fat among them. And now scientists at Oregon State University have developed an algae that reportedly tastes like pork belly.

Portland's Fox affiliate KPTV reported on Tuesday that Chris Langdon, a researcher at OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center, has worked with colleagues to create a strain of a red algae called dulse that has "a pretty strong bacon flavor" when it's fried. But instead of the artery-clogging cholesterol that comes with eating crispy pork fat, dulse has nearly twice the nutritional value of kale.

Faculty and students at OSU's business school realize they're sitting on a goldmine (the stuff grows off the Oregon coast, and Langdon says he can produce up to 100 pounds of dulse per week in a lab with the right resources), so they're working on ways to market it. The university's food-innovation center has already worked the stuff into recipes for salad dressing and a rice cracker.

Until those products hit the American market (dulse has been grown and eaten in Iceland and other parts of Europe for over a millennium), you can order some online here. This strain doesn't taste like bacon, but we hear it still makes a pretty great snack.

Watch Kitchen Lab hosts Jimmy Wong and Ashley Adams Try Three Ways to Eat Crickets, which are packed with protein: