Can Humans Create High-priced Ingredients Like Steak

      Some "vegetarian meat" looks like meat, but these plant-based alternatives don't taste like meat, so should researchers focus on replicating meat, or try to create new, tasty alternatives?

　　Given the meat industry's environmental impact and growing consumer demand for plant-based foods, one might wonder if we'll soon have vegetarian alternatives for all animal meat products, and in recent years, researchers have spent a lot of effort trying to explore them, from "blood burgers" to vegan fish skins, with some new products trying to mimic the real experience of eating meat.

　　But artificial meat is not just slightly less tasty and textured, what else needs to be perfected? Is there any meat product that can never be replaced by a vegetarian diet?

　　Perhaps the most realistic and non-carbon footprint approach to vegetarian meat is to grow "artificial meat" from cells in a laboratory, which would use less energy, land and water and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional meat, and is also an international research project in which many scientists and research institutions are involved.

      Many scientists and research institutions are involved in this field. However, even meat raised in captivity is a long way from being a real meat product, let alone achieving a commercial AAV industry supply chain. '

　　The first artificially grown meat products were "unstructured" tissues grown in gel, which lacked the fibrous structure of whole meat (they even lacked the blood red color of raw meat, which required the addition of certain dyes).

      After all, whole meat contains not only protein but also fat, blood vessels and connective tissue, and the bundles of fat and muscle cells produced in early cell cultures were more suitable for burgers than the slightly less palatable steaks made from artificial meat.

      In 2021, researchers at Osaka University in Japan 3D printed muscle, fat, and blood vessel cells in a gel and then assembled them by hand to produce a "Wagyu steak," a complete steak 5 mm long and 10 mm wide. 10 mm wide.

　　Japanese Wagyu beef is prized by diners for its marbled texture and high fat content. Under normal conditions Wagyu cattle need to be raised under less physical exertion and fed longer than other breeds of cattle in order to achieve the desired high density of fatty tissue in the meat, which gives a special buttery flavor when tasted.

      This slow growth process, as well as the protected environment in which Wagyu cattle live, has resulted in high prices for Wagyu cattle. Although researchers have grown Wagyu beef in the laboratory, artificial meat production is too small and current manufacturing costs are too high for mass production.

　　Despite the advantages of artificial meat in terms of ecological sustainability, it is not usually seen as a vegan food.

      There are two methods of manufacturing artificial meat: first, muscle tissue is extracted from animal carcasses, which is then separated into muscle satellite cells, adult stem cells, and pluripotent stem cells;

       Second, animal cells are induced to transform into pluripotent stem cells and new cells are cultured from them, and the medium used to culture the cells also contains horse serum (an immune substance derived from horse blood).

　　Even if artificial meat is considered vegan, it may be too offensive for those who have given up meat or want to eat less of it. For 35% of meat eaters and 55% of vegetarians, the "unnaturalness" of artificial meat makes people afraid to even try it.

      The percentage of meat eaters willing to try artificial meat increases when it is perceived as similar to meat, but vegetarians remain unchanged and reject all "meat products".