Just lately, a photograph of rice left me confused. The rice itself appeared tasty sufficient—fluffy, properly fashioned—however its oddly fleshy hue gave me the creeps. In line with the scientists who’d developed it, every pink-tinged grain was seeded with muscle and fats cells from a cow, imparting a nutty, umami taste.
In a single sense, this “beef rice” was simply one other instance of lab-grown meat, touted as a approach to eat animals with out the moral and environmental impacts. Although not but commercially obtainable, the rice was developed by researchers in Korea as a nutrition-dense meals that may be produced sustainably, not less than extra so than beef itself. Though it has a extra brittle texture than regular rice, it may be cooked and served in the identical manner. But in one other sense, this rice was fully completely different. Lab-grown meat goals to duplicate standard meat in each dimension, together with style, diet, and look. Beef rice doesn’t even attempt.
Perhaps that’s a superb factor. Lab-grown meat, additionally extensively often known as cultivated meat, has lengthy been heralded as the future of food. However to date, the purpose of completely replicating meat as we all know it—toothy, sinewy, and generally bloody—has proved impractical and costly. As soon as-abundant funding has dried up, and this week, Florida moved towards changing into the first state to ban sales of cultivated meat. It appears unlikely that entire cuts of cultivated meat might be displaying up on individuals’s plates anytime quickly—however perhaps one thing like beef rice might. Probably the most promising way forward for lab-grown meat might not appear like meat in any respect, not less than as we’ve all the time identified it.
The promise of cultivated meat is that you would be able to have your steak and eat it too. Not like the meatless choices at your grocery retailer, cultivated meat is meat—simply created with out killing any animals. However the science simply isn’t there but. Corporations have kind of found out step one, taking a pattern of cells from a stay animal or egg and propagating them in a tank stuffed with a nutrient-rich broth. Although not cheaply: By one estimate, making a slurry of cultivated cells prices $17 a pound or more to produce.
The subsequent step has proved prohibitively difficult: coaxing that sludge of cells to mature into differing types—fats, muscle, connective tissue—and arranging them in a construction resembling a strong lower of meat. Often, the cells want a three-dimensional platform to information their development, often known as a scaffold. “It’s one thing that could be very straightforward to get unsuitable and arduous to get proper,” Claire Bomkamp, a senior scientist on the Good Meals Institute, a nonprofit supporting meat alternate options, informed me. Thus far, just a few firms have served up proofs of idea: In June, the USA approved the sale of cultivated chicken from Upside Meals and Good Meat. Nonetheless it’s virtually impossible to come by now.
The essential science of lab-grown meat can be utilized for extra than simply succulent rooster breasts and medium-rare steaks. Cells grown in a tank operate primarily like floor meat, imparting a meaty flavor and mouthfeel to no matter they’re added to, behaving extra like an ingredient or a seasoning than a meals product. Hybrid meat merchandise, made by mixing a small quantity of cultivated-meat cells with different elements, are promising as a result of they’d be more cost-effective than whole lab-grown steaks or rooster breasts however meatier than purely plant-based meat.
Already, the start-up SciFi Meals is producing what has been described as a “fatty meat paste” that’s meant to be blended with plant-based elements to make burgers. Solely small quantities are wanted to make the burgers beefy; every costs less than $10 to make, in line with the corporate—nonetheless significantly greater than a traditional beef patty, however the costs ought to come down over time. Perhaps it sounds bizarre, however that’s not so completely different from imitation crab—which doesn’t comprise a lot or any crab in any respect. An analogous premise underlies the plant-based bacon laced with cultivated pork fat that I attempted final yr. Was it meat? I’m unsure. Did it style prefer it? Completely.
Meat may be a lot greater than what we’ve all the time identified. “We don’t must make meat the identical manner that it’s all the time come out of an animal,” Bomkamp mentioned. “We generally is a little bit extra expansive in what our definition of meat is.” Beef rice, which primarily makes use of rice as a miniature scaffold to develop cow cells, falls into this class. It isn’t significantly meaty—solely 0.5 p.c of every grain is cow—however the scientists who developed it say the proportion might change in future iterations. It’s framed as a approach to feed individuals in “underdeveloped international locations, throughout warfare, and in house.”
Finally, cultivated meat might impart a whiff of meatiness to blander meals, creating new, meat-ish merchandise within the course of which can be extra sustainable than common meat and extra nutritious than vegetation. Beef rice is one possibility; meat grown on mushroom roots is in growth. Even stranger meals are potential. Bomkamp envisions utilizing the expertise to make skinny sheets of seafood—combining parts of salmon, tuna, and shrimp—to wrap round a rainbow roll of sushi. On this situation, cultivated meat most likely received’t save the planet from local weather change and animal struggling. “It wouldn’t serve its unique operate of being a direct substitute for business meat,” Daniel Rosenfeld, who research perceptions of cultivated meat at UCLA, informed me. However on the very least, it might present one other dinner possibility.
In fact, it’s within the curiosity of the cultivated-meat business to counsel that cultivated meat isn’t simply outright doomed. Little doubt some vegetarians would cringe on the thought, as would some devoted carnivores. However contemplating how a lot meat Individuals eat, it’s not arduous to think about a future through which cultivated cells fulfill individuals trying to find a brand new form of meat product. Think about the salad you possibly can make with rooster cells grown inside arugula, or bread baked with bacon-infused wheat. However ought to these show too troublesome to supply, I’d fortunately take a bowl of beef rice, in all its flesh-tinged glory.
