Are you talking about Animal free “meat”, like impossible burgers, or are you talking about actual lab grown meat? I’m not aware of lab grown meat being on the shelves yet, and animal free meat options isn’t the same thing as lab grown meat.
From what I’ve read in a few places, and this really does make sense, it’s one thing to grow a vat of animal derived proteins, but all you have at that point is basically goo. That has to be processed into “muscles”, which is a process of creating long chains of these proteins and bundling them. Then there’s the question of fat: what is that process? You can’t just add some oil and think it’s going to actually be analogous to fatty layers, and lipid cells have to be arranged into, I dunno, rinds? Blobs for “ground beef”, I guess, but you see what I mean.
I think this is as neat an idea as anyone does. And I can ask you the same question: any data to support the idea that I’m wrong? Everything I’ve read about this that goes into any amount of detail talks about the difficulties of actually processing this into something that resembles meat as we know it. I have seen absolutely nothing, and I’ve looked, to suggest that there’s been any kind of meaningful success in making these protein slurries into anything we’d call meat. I’d imagine that ground meats would be the obvious first thing to come to market, that’s gonna be the easiest thing to do. But a steak? Boy, color me skeptical. The other thing that I would imagine would be a difficult thing to replicate is going to be flavor. The animals we eat get their flavors in large part from how they’re fed and raised. Chickens in the US haven’t got the flavor of chickens in Europe, for example. Or a domesticated turkey vs a wild one. There are high grade steaks that you can get and when you see the fat caps, you can see a difference in color due to the cow’s diet. How do they control for that? How do they create these proteins and make them flavorful? Will simple nutrient baths do that? Is there more to it than that? What will the B vitamin content be, and where will that come from? Will it be more bioavailable to the eater? Will it be premethylated, or will people with methylation problems in their livers not be able to effectively get those B vitamins from these meats? How will all of that effect cost?
Everything I understand about this is that while they can grow the proteins, the food engineering that it takes to make a piece of meat that will be able to compete with meat from the hoof is a way off, and that we’re a long way from this being cheap.
I’d bet that the first lab meats we see coming to market are going to be gooey and bland. I’m imagining ground turkey but worse. And I’d be happy to be wrong, but I don’t expect that making meats that are actually analogous to “real” meat is going to be a process of fast iteration. I was around for the beginning of the meat substitutes that came along in the 80s and they were DIRE. And there’s nothing to suggest that the processes they’ve discovered for texturing plant based mock meats can be applied to this lab grown meat goo. Everything I’ve read, and it all makes logical sense to me, suggests that this is going to take a long time to become actually appealing to the masses just because of the pretty substantial food engineering problems that it presents.
My guess is that it’s going to end up being its own thing, more like the “mock duck” and things you can get in cans. Bite sized pieces. I’ll be happily surprised if they can grow a steak in a lab within my lifetime.
Any data to support that? I’ve noticed that the animal free meat options at the grocery stores near me are growing.
Are you talking about Animal free “meat”, like impossible burgers, or are you talking about actual lab grown meat? I’m not aware of lab grown meat being on the shelves yet, and animal free meat options isn’t the same thing as lab grown meat.
From what I’ve read in a few places, and this really does make sense, it’s one thing to grow a vat of animal derived proteins, but all you have at that point is basically goo. That has to be processed into “muscles”, which is a process of creating long chains of these proteins and bundling them. Then there’s the question of fat: what is that process? You can’t just add some oil and think it’s going to actually be analogous to fatty layers, and lipid cells have to be arranged into, I dunno, rinds? Blobs for “ground beef”, I guess, but you see what I mean.
I think this is as neat an idea as anyone does. And I can ask you the same question: any data to support the idea that I’m wrong? Everything I’ve read about this that goes into any amount of detail talks about the difficulties of actually processing this into something that resembles meat as we know it. I have seen absolutely nothing, and I’ve looked, to suggest that there’s been any kind of meaningful success in making these protein slurries into anything we’d call meat. I’d imagine that ground meats would be the obvious first thing to come to market, that’s gonna be the easiest thing to do. But a steak? Boy, color me skeptical. The other thing that I would imagine would be a difficult thing to replicate is going to be flavor. The animals we eat get their flavors in large part from how they’re fed and raised. Chickens in the US haven’t got the flavor of chickens in Europe, for example. Or a domesticated turkey vs a wild one. There are high grade steaks that you can get and when you see the fat caps, you can see a difference in color due to the cow’s diet. How do they control for that? How do they create these proteins and make them flavorful? Will simple nutrient baths do that? Is there more to it than that? What will the B vitamin content be, and where will that come from? Will it be more bioavailable to the eater? Will it be premethylated, or will people with methylation problems in their livers not be able to effectively get those B vitamins from these meats? How will all of that effect cost?
Everything I understand about this is that while they can grow the proteins, the food engineering that it takes to make a piece of meat that will be able to compete with meat from the hoof is a way off, and that we’re a long way from this being cheap.
I’d bet that the first lab meats we see coming to market are going to be gooey and bland. I’m imagining ground turkey but worse. And I’d be happy to be wrong, but I don’t expect that making meats that are actually analogous to “real” meat is going to be a process of fast iteration. I was around for the beginning of the meat substitutes that came along in the 80s and they were DIRE. And there’s nothing to suggest that the processes they’ve discovered for texturing plant based mock meats can be applied to this lab grown meat goo. Everything I’ve read, and it all makes logical sense to me, suggests that this is going to take a long time to become actually appealing to the masses just because of the pretty substantial food engineering problems that it presents.
My guess is that it’s going to end up being its own thing, more like the “mock duck” and things you can get in cans. Bite sized pieces. I’ll be happily surprised if they can grow a steak in a lab within my lifetime.
Impossible burgers and similar. Sorry the rest of this post is too long.