The world's first laboratory-grown beef burger was flipped out of a petri dish and into a frying pan on Monday, with food tasters declaring it tasted "close to meat".
Grown in-vitro from cattle stem cells at a cost of 250,000 euros ($332,000), the burger was cooked and eaten in front of television cameras to gain the greatest media coverage for the culmination of a five-year science experiment.
Resembling a standard circular-shaped red meat patty, it was created by knitting together 20,000 strands of laboratory-grown protein, combined with other ingredients normally used in burgers, such as salt, breadcrumbs and egg powder. Red beet juice and saffron were added to give it color.
The two food tasters were reserved in their judgment, perhaps keen not to offend their host at the London event, noting the burger's "absence of fat".
Pressed for a more detailed description of the flavor, food writer Josh Schonwald said the cultured beef had an "animal protein cake" like quality to it, adding that he would like to try it with some of the extras often served with traditional burgers - salt, pepper, ketchup and jalapenos.
Even the scientist behind the burger's creation, vascular biologist Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, was relatively muted in his praise of its flavor.
"It's a very good start," he told the hundreds of reporters who had gathered to watch the meat being cooked and served.
At some point if we can just get the process down to, you know, not costing several hundred thousand dollars, maybe we can dispense with the whole "slaughtering of animals for their tasty, tasty meat" part and go straight to the good stuff.
But hey, even McDonald's had to start somewhere. I'm betting in your lifetime we'll have commercially available grown meat (hopefully without the obscene amounts of anti-biotics, steroids, growth hormone, and small crates for animals.)
Thank the stars for rooster sauce and pickles, that'll work on anything. Even lab meat.
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