I still cant believe its not butter!
But lab-grown meat isnt just about hamburgers and chicken nuggets.
Its also about milk, cheese, and eggs.
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Fake meat is so hot right now.
Environmentally its way, way cleaner than growing cows, pigs, and chickens.
It will also end up cheaper.
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It could up-end the entire food industry, and youll be happy about it.
But its not ready for the mainstream just yet.
This sounds disgusting, but way less disgusting than what goes into a cheap hot dog.
There are several problems with making meat this way.
One is that the animal serum is very expensive.
“While non-animal serum replacements are available, they usually have proprietary formulations and are even more expensive.”
Thats one reasons that lab meat is still around 4x the price of meat from animals.
The other big problem is structure.
These scaffolds are not yet edible, which makes things even harder.
And the growing also takes time.
On the other hand, theres way less waste, pollution, and carbon emissions with lab meat.
Lab-grown meat isnt just about hamburgers and chicken nuggets.
Its also about milk, cheese, and eggs.
This is one reason why early lab meat results have been used to make hamburger.
And its also a reason why lab-grown animal proteins are perfect for milk products, and eggs.
Perfect Day
Milk is as structure-free as you could want.
It is fat suspended in water, with proteins and other bits mixed in.
That means it sidesteps all the structural problems of clean meat.
The result is ice-cream, cream, milk, and cheese that is vegan, Kosher-certified, and lactose-free.
Crucially, though, this is still actual milk protein, just grown without a cow.
The main barrier, then, will be customer acceptance.
Will we end up grilling lab-cultured steaks in our backyards?
Maybe, or maybe not.
Or rather it is already expensive.
Its just that we arent the ones paying for it.
