The technological challenge of the day is these real-fake food products that look like meat or fish and come straight out of ultra-modern laboratories.
How to feed nine billion human beings by 2050 knowing that Americans alone gobble up 50 billion burgers a year, or as many hamburgers, with real beef? This will not be possible for very long, if only because of the environmental impact. And it is no coincidence that minced meatless steaks first appeared in the United States, 15 years ago, with Beyond and Impossible: without meat and yet, we find the taste, the juicy side and the smell of grilled meat “seared in the flame”. Immediate success.
Then come the nuggets without chicken, first based on a mixture of plants. A start-up, Eat Just, then released nuggets grown in the laboratory: chicken breast cells reproduced from a feather of a chicken, the most beautiful in the barnyard. His name was Ian! On the day of the tasting, Ian frolicked on the lawn while the team feasted. Spectacular demonstration. And then, two years ago, pork without pork arrived with – obviously – a whole new market: Muslim countries, nearly two billion potential customers.
Several weeks for a slice of beef
For each of these products, the taste is rather convincing but we do not find the texture of real meat. In the case of nuggets made from cultured cells, the texture of this real fake chicken is still too elastic. And in the case of steaks without beef, the illusion only works with ground meat. In contrast, an Israeli start-up has managed to reproduce the stringy side of beef after several weeks of culture in the laboratory to obtain a single small slice. Same principle as yogurts! But to get to a steak, you really have to be patient. Question price, count 1,000 € per kilo. We are therefore even closer to caviar than to flank steak.
As for the fish, a little over two months ago, another Israeli start-up succeeded in manufacturing a fish fillet larger than life, from cells produced in the laboratory and with a 3D printer. The taster was called… Benyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister has – at least – pretended to appreciate. And then, since we were talking about caviar, CellMEAT, a South Korean start-up succeeded, at the beginning of May, in manufacturing it in the laboratory: grains similar to oscietre with a new texture and a less strong fish taste. No wonder since they are the combination of shrimp cells and algae extracts!