Lab-grown meat (probably) won't save us

Is meat grown in a lab the future of food - and is it actually any good?? I took a road trip to find out.

**A HUGE thanks to GOOD Meat for letting me visit their facility and try their product, and to Finless Foods for providing a quick visit and some very helpful information.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆-𝗴𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆:
-Allan, S. J., De Bank, P. A., & Ellis, M. J. (2019). Bioprocess design considerations for cultured meat production with a focus on the expansion bioreactor. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 3, 44. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2019.00044
-Circus, V.E. and Robison, R. (2019) Exploring perceptions of sustainable proteins and meat attachment. British Food Journal, 121 (2). Doi: 10.1108/BFJ-01-2018-0025
-Derrick Risner et al, Environmental impacts of cultured meat: A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment, bioRxiv (2023). DOI: 10.1101/2023.04.21.537778
-Humbird D. Scale-up economics for cultured meat. Biotechnol Bioeng. 2021 Aug;118(8):3239-3250. doi: 10.1002/bit.27848.
-Kim S, Beier A, Schreyer HB, Bakshi BR. Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of a Novel Cultivated Meat Burger Patty in the United States. Sustainability. 2022; 14(23):16133. doi: 10.3390/su142316133

𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 (𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲) 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀:

𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝗹𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀:
-GOOD Meat
-Finless Foods

MinuteFood is created by Kate Yoshida, Arcadi Garcia & Bill Mead, and produced by Neptune Studios LLC.

[MinuteFood]

A big thanks to our amazing Patrons, who suggested some great questions to look into for this video. To join us and help shape the future of MinuteFood, check out our Patreon community at patreon.com/MinuteFood!

[besmart]

Being one of the few people that has also tried this stuff… people are going to be shocked when they see how close the whole-breast texture is to the real thing. Incredible feat of tissue engineering!

[kelpsie]

"Don't count your chickens before they're extruded" is an idiom that sounds right out of a YA novel about saving a cyberpunk world by finding the mythical last patch of real nature.

[AmandaOrigo]

Important side note, conventional meat is also heavily subsidized.

[harmonicaveronica]

What I'm equally excited about is lab cultivated dairy! It's already on the market in the form of a few ice creams and it's much easier and cheaper because they're growing microbes that produce casein, not growing animal cells. And our demand for dairy is massive, and the dairy industry also isn't great even though animals don't die to produce milk

[LENZ]

For some vague context: early commercial solar power cost 100s of USD per W, now it's measured in 10s of cents per watt; and that was just in the 3ish decades that I have been alive.
I don't know if any of these lab meat ventures will work but the fact that there are so many different possible methods; does suggests that there is a lot of room for advancement.

[dabundis]

If it turns out that the process doesn't work in larger bioreactors (scaled-up), then it can still be scaled out with multiple smaller bioreactors (scaled-out). That would, however, mean more land dedicated to meat cultivation, more up-front cost associated with building the facilities to cultivate, and other effects cascading from the need to scale out

[nadamson]

I really like these longer form videos! Sometimes a 'minute' isn't enough for these topics

[enginerd]

My biggest confusion is how the manufacturers might replicate fat distributions within the tissues. It's all well and good to have lots of protein, but fat is a core component of flavor in meat. Without it, the meat comes across as dry and fairly tasteless, or burns really easily. If the fat is added as shortening or just by mixing vegetable oils, it will taste markedly different.

[DariusBaktash]

From former quality assurance/regulatory affairs experience in clinical trials, this video is ***on point*** in regards to a summary of the issues we're facing regarding scaling from prototyping to mass manufacturing. I've been looking forward to cell cultured "meat substitutes" for over a decade, but we're still in no way close to that future. In fact, the whole of the meat substitute market has these issues, because we cannot ignore the root industries necessary to build these supply chains. Monocrops, steel production, chemical sourcing and manufacturing, and the fact we still have to use petroproducts in so many of these, is a huge hurdle.

I'm absolutely rooting for it, but I have no illusions about the huge leaps in technology and regulations that will be necessary to get there.

[ezay]

If cultivated chicken were to become mainstream, would how we perceive chicken doneness change since we no longer have to worry about salmonella? Would medium rare chicken be a thing?

[imcojrl]

The cost is probably calculated without subsidies. Fair enough, but killed meat (at least in the US) is massively subsidized by the government. If cell cultured meat had access to that level of money, I’m sure it could be comparable to killed meat in price.

[IcyMidnight]

Assuming the environmental and taste/texture stuff ends up in the right place, I'm super on board with lab meat!

[pokegaming]

This year, I did an essay about environmental issues and used an article talking about cultured meat. Fun to see MinuteFood talk about it.

[therealmelone]

Using ithkuil for the vats is a stroke of genius

I am not a crazy person so i don’t know what the symbols mean, but props for using such an interesting conlang for an equally interesting topic!

[legendarybanditmb]

I'd like to see lab-grown fruits and vegetables too. You always hear about how much land and water it takes to grow almonds, for example, maybe cultured vats of almond milk is a better way to go.

[timothydavis]

Small typo, I think you meant FBS or Fetal Bovine Serum. It's used a lot in cell cultures both for industry and research because of the growth hormones it contains. It's a byproduct of a slaughter house but they sell it to labs for hundreds and thousands of dollars. Notoriously different batches often have slightly different concentrations of hormones so labs will often buy an entire batch in bulk so the variability doesn't mess with their experiments.

[DeconvertedMan]

I for one would be all for 3d printing my own food on demand, ala food replacator from star trek. Good times.

[BrowncoatGofAZ]

Personal belief: this alone won’t save us. No single solution will. This will be one of many solutions needed to save us.

[play]

I'm a cultivated meat researcher and this video is so well made, capturing the process of making it and the caveats of its sustainability aspect so well, wonderful! I think that hybrid products (think impossible burger but with 10-20% cell cultured fat) is a very compelling alternative that really elevate the flavor of existing plant based meat alternatives, while helping greatly to attenuate the economic infeasibility and potential sustainability weakpoints of full-blown cultivated meats. (Happy to talk about it more)