Canadian researchers are celebrating a new recipe they’ve cooked up for creating fake meat in a lab. Promising it adds more flavor and texture than other meat alternatives, the scientists say they adapted the process from one used to grow human tissue for transplantation.
“The sheets of living cells, each about the thickness of a sheet of printer paper, are first grown in culture and then concentrated on growth plates before being peeled off and stacked or folded together. The sheets naturally bond to one another before the cells die,” Newswise reported.
One striking difference between this layered lab meat product and other meat substitutes already on the market is that this one can be “tuned” to produce whatever fat content and marbeling is desired. “We are creating slabs of meat,” the creators said in a Newswise press release. “Consumers will be able to buy meat with whatever percentage of fat they like — just like they do with milk.”
The new cultured meat research — which used mouse cells for their study — is featured in the journal Cells Tissues Organs. While they didn’t eat the mouse meat, they did follow up with meat made from rabbit cells, and cooked and ate that.
SOURCES:
Newswise January 19, 2020
Cells Tissues Organs 2021