First lab-grown hamburger gets full marks for ''mouth feel''
A little pale, lacking in juiciness and seasoning, but close your eyes and the synthetic hamburger was ''defitely meat''. All it took was a little butter and sunflower oil and, in less than 10 minutes, the world's most expensive burger, grown from muscle stem cells in a lab, was ready to eat.
"I was expecting the texture to be more soft," said Hanni Rützler of the Future Food Studio, who researches food trends and was the first to get a taste of the synthetic beef hamburger. The lack of fat was noticeable, she added, which meant a lack of juiciness in the centre of the burger. If she had closed her eyes, however, she would have thought the cultured beef was definitely meat rather than a vegetable-based substitute. The objective is to create meat that is biologically identical to beef but grown in a lab rather than in a field as part of a cow.
Cultured meat or clean meat (or also synthetic, artificial or in vitro meat) is a product of animal meat that has never been part of a live animal.
In the XXI century, several research projects have succeeded in the production of in vitro meat in laboratories. The first in vitro burger, created by a Dutch team, was eaten at a press demonstration in London in August 2013. Several difficulties remain to be overcome before in vitro meat becomes commercially available. Cultured meat is extremely expensive, although it is expected that the cost can be reduced to compete with that of conventionally obtained meat thanks to improved technologies. Some people argue that a substantial change is needed in the meat industry: compared to traditionally obtained meat, cultured meat is preferable both from an ethical point of view, since it does not require killing and reduces the risks of cruelty to animals, but above all from an economic one, since it drastically reduces both the monetary and environmental impact of the meat industry. Others, on the other hand, do not share the idea of eating meat that has not developed naturally.
The theoretical possibility of growing meat in an industrial setting has long captured the public's imagination. In his 1931 essay Fifty Years Then, Winston Churchill wrote, "We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken to eat breast or wing, by cultivating these parts separately in a suitable medium."
In the 50s, Dutch scientist Willem van Eelen came up with the idea of cultured meat. As a child during World War II, Van Eelen went hungry, leading him to become passionate about food production and food security as an adult. He attended the University of Amsterdam. At one point, he attended a lecture on the prospects of preserved meat. Along with the discovery of cell lines at the turn of the century, this spurred the idea of cultured meat.
In vitro cultivation of muscle fibers was first performed in 1971 by Russell Ross. Specifically, the result was smooth muscle tissue derived from pigs, and grown in cell culture. In-vitro cultivation has been possible since the nineties using animal stem cells, including small amounts of tissue that could theoretically be cooked and eaten.
In 1998 Jon F. Vein applied for and obtained a patent in the United States for the production of artificial meat tissues for human consumption, where muscle and fat cells would be grown in an integrated production system to create food products such as steaks, meatballs, and fish.
NASA has been conducting experiments since 2001, producing cultured meat from turkey cells.
In 2003, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, of the Tissue Culture and Art Project and Harvard Medical School, exhibited a "steak" in Nantes, a few centimeters wide, produced from frog stem cells, which was cooked and eaten.
In 2012, 30 labs around the world announced that they are working on cultured meat.
The English nickname given to meat created in the laboratory by culturing animal tissues is "Shmeat" from the combination of "sheet" and "meat".
On August 5, 2013, the world's first lab-produced burger was cooked and eaten at a press conference in London. Scientists at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, led by Prof. Mark Post, took stem cells from a cow and grew them into muscle strips that they combined to produce a hamburger. The meat was cooked by chef Richard McGeown of Couch's Great House Restaurant in Polperro, Cornwall, and tasted by food critic Hanni Ruetzler, a food scholar from the Future Food Studio, and Josh Schonwald. Ruetzler found that since there is no fat, it is not juicy, and therefore the taste is not the best possible, but it has an intense flavor. He added that it is close to meat, although less flavorful, but he judges its texture to be perfect. In conclusion: "For me it's meat, it's something I can chew and I think it looks very similar." He also stated that in a test with his eyes closed, he would take the product for meat rather than a soy derivative.
On December 2, 2020, the Singapore Food Agency approved for commercial sale the "chicken nuggets" produced by Eat Just. It marked the first time a cultured meat product passed a food regulator's safety review (which took 2 years) and was widely regarded as a milestone for the industry.
In the European Union, novel foods such as cultured meat products must go through a trial period of about 18 months during which a company must prove to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that their product is safe.
With that, it simply remains is for me to wish you a very happy holidays, and a splendid new year. Goodness knows you’ve earned it.
Cultured meat or clean meat (or also synthetic, artificial or in vitro meat) is a product of animal meat that has never been part of a live animal.
In the XXI century, several research projects have succeeded in the production of in vitro meat in laboratories. The first in vitro burger, created by a Dutch team, was eaten at a press demonstration in London in August 2013. Several difficulties remain to be overcome before in vitro meat becomes commercially available. Cultured meat is extremely expensive, although it is expected that the cost can be reduced to compete with that of conventionally obtained meat thanks to improved technologies. Some people argue that a substantial change is needed in the meat industry: compared to traditionally obtained meat, cultured meat is preferable both from an ethical point of view, since it does not require killing and reduces the risks of cruelty to animals, but above all from an economic one, since it drastically reduces both the monetary and environmental impact of the meat industry. Others, on the other hand, do not share the idea of eating meat that has not developed naturally.
The theoretical possibility of growing meat in an industrial setting has long captured the public's imagination. In his 1931 essay Fifty Years Then, Winston Churchill wrote, "We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken to eat breast or wing, by cultivating these parts separately in a suitable medium."
In the 50s, Dutch scientist Willem van Eelen came up with the idea of cultured meat. As a child during World War II, Van Eelen went hungry, leading him to become passionate about food production and food security as an adult. He attended the University of Amsterdam. At one point, he attended a lecture on the prospects of preserved meat. Along with the discovery of cell lines at the turn of the century, this spurred the idea of cultured meat.
In vitro cultivation of muscle fibers was first performed in 1971 by Russell Ross. Specifically, the result was smooth muscle tissue derived from pigs, and grown in cell culture. In-vitro cultivation has been possible since the nineties using animal stem cells, including small amounts of tissue that could theoretically be cooked and eaten.
In 1998 Jon F. Vein applied for and obtained a patent in the United States for the production of artificial meat tissues for human consumption, where muscle and fat cells would be grown in an integrated production system to create food products such as steaks, meatballs, and fish.
NASA has been conducting experiments since 2001, producing cultured meat from turkey cells.
In 2003, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, of the Tissue Culture and Art Project and Harvard Medical School, exhibited a "steak" in Nantes, a few centimeters wide, produced from frog stem cells, which was cooked and eaten.
In 2012, 30 labs around the world announced that they are working on cultured meat.
The English nickname given to meat created in the laboratory by culturing animal tissues is "Shmeat" from the combination of "sheet" and "meat".
On August 5, 2013, the world's first lab-produced burger was cooked and eaten at a press conference in London. Scientists at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, led by Prof. Mark Post, took stem cells from a cow and grew them into muscle strips that they combined to produce a hamburger. The meat was cooked by chef Richard McGeown of Couch's Great House Restaurant in Polperro, Cornwall, and tasted by food critic Hanni Ruetzler, a food scholar from the Future Food Studio, and Josh Schonwald. Ruetzler found that since there is no fat, it is not juicy, and therefore the taste is not the best possible, but it has an intense flavor. He added that it is close to meat, although less flavorful, but he judges its texture to be perfect. In conclusion: "For me it's meat, it's something I can chew and I think it looks very similar." He also stated that in a test with his eyes closed, he would take the product for meat rather than a soy derivative.
On December 2, 2020, the Singapore Food Agency approved for commercial sale the "chicken nuggets" produced by Eat Just. It marked the first time a cultured meat product passed a food regulator's safety review (which took 2 years) and was widely regarded as a milestone for the industry.
In the European Union, novel foods such as cultured meat products must go through a trial period of about 18 months during which a company must prove to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that their product is safe.
With that, it simply remains is for me to wish you a very happy holidays, and a splendid new year. Goodness knows you’ve earned it.
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