HAMILTON, Ontario – Usually when you go to a steakhouse, the waiter asks how you would like meat cooked. Researchers at McMaster University say they may soon be asking how you want your steak to “tune in”. The team has developed a new form of meat in the laboratory that they say has a more natural taste and texture than other alternative meats.
Not only does creation give more of that ‘real meat’ experience, but the study finds that this new approach also enables the eater to have the exact amount of fat content and marbling they want in the specific cut of ‘meat’ ‘.
McMaster University)
“We are creating meat plates,” said researcher Ravi Selvaganapathy in a media statement. “Consumers can buy meat with the percentage of fat they want – just like milk.”
How exactly does meat work in laboratories?
Selvaganapathy and Alireza Shahin-Shamsabadi, both at McMaster’s School of Biomedical Engineering, have developed a way to create meat in laboratories by stacking thin sheets of cultured muscle and fat cells together. This technique is a new idea for the method that scientists use to grow tissue for human transplants.
These sheets of living cells are about as thin as a sheet of printing paper. They are first grown in a laboratory culture and then concentrated on growth plates. From there, researchers pull them down and stack them all together. Selvaganapathy says that these sheets naturally bind together before the cells begin to die.
The team says that their tuning process also gives their meat substitute an advantage over other products.
‘Feel and taste just like meat’
Researchers tested their meat-making process using cells from mice. Although they did not cook and taste any mouse meat, the team eventually cooked a sample of meat that came from rabbit cells.
“It feels and tastes just like meat,” Selvaganapathy reports.
Study authors say there is no reason to doubt that their process will not work with the cultivation of beef, pork or chicken in the future. The team adds that their stacking model will also work in a large-scale production environment.
Viable alternative to prevent shortages
Selvaganapathy and Shahin-Shamsabadi say the global meat supply crisis has inspired them to explore alternative food sources. The duo notes that the current demand for meat is putting land and water resources under pressure and also contributing to greenhouse gases.
“Meat production is currently unsustainable,” Selvaganapathy claims. “There has to be an alternative way of creating meat.”
The McMaster team has already set up a start-up business so they can commercialize the meat-making process. They argue that their new product has the best chance of acceptance among carnivores; as they promise meat and fat to order.
The study appears in the journal Cell Tissue Organs.