Two volunteers (an Australian researcher and a critic of gastronomic Chicago) have been given good account of the patty, whose meat is derived from 20,000 fibers of protein of beef completely cultivated in the laboratory. The verdict is not very surprising: it tastes bad, but it needs to be improved.
The BBC correspondent reporting was provided by Dr Pallab Gnosh, via Twitter, the outcome of the tasting. Both test subjects called for ketchup to meet the challenge, but that’s not served to hide certain aspects of the rare synthetic meat. For a start, it does not make nothing of fat, which makes it less juicy than expected. The cultivation of fat cells in the laboratory is still a dead-end for the scientists.
On the other hand, the tasters also found the meat more dry and hard, and with a peculiar flavor, not unpleasant, but it’s definitely different from the natural meat.
The burger has been developed thanks to the work of Dr. Mark Post and his team at the University of Maastricht. The project has taken years of research and $325,000 in investment. Virtually all of that money has been donated by the Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Post recognizes that they will still have to spend 10 or 20 years before the synthetic meat reaching the market. Right now it is too expensive to produce and there are still more research on their effects on consumption. The researcher adds that, in any case, the development of an alternative is necessary. The demand for meat has increased dramatically due to the increase in population, and the productive system of cattle are already at the limit.
