Lab-grown meat. The future of a sustainable meat industry or another fad food?

Meat is much more of a social food that can be assembled in a lab with artificially constructed proteins and fats, humans have probably been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years and that experience is not likely to be broken by cultured meats any time soon. A major issue with lab-grown meat will always be the additives needed to make them, a 2017 review of 72 studies conducted on 85,348 consumers in 32 countries found that food naturalness is crucial to the vast majority of consumers. The price will also be another major hurdle, the first cultured burger was 250,000 euro, and although this would likely get cheaper, it is unlikely to be affordable to most in the immediate future. Finally the taste is never likely to get that close to actual meat, as lab-grown meat has severe limitations with scientists only being able to recreate high protein meats such as lean chicken or fish. Also if we look at the current animosity toward GMO foods it is clear, there will be a long way to go until cultured meats are accepted in any way.

slate.com/technology/2013/08/lab-grown-meat-will-never-taste-right-its-a-waste-of-time.html sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422441730122X forbes.com/sites/johnmcquaid/2015/05/04/the-science-of-why-people-prefer-organic-natural-and-non-gmo-foods/?sh=22a27dea43f5 foodprocessing.com/articles/2018/what-do-consumers-think-of-gmos

Without doubt cultured meat represents the future of the meat and fish industries, as it will eventually be more equitable, cleaner, greener and safer. Cultured meat is clearly more sustainable moving forward, as animal agriculture and fishing have hugely negative environmental impacts. But especially when it comes to fish lab-grown fish is much cleaner, being free from dangerous contaminants that often find their way into out food chain, for example mercury contained in Tuna. Likewise cultured meats will be the best step forward for a post-COVID world, the safety improvements over natural meat are two fold, cultured meat is less likely to carry contaminants and will not cause the encroachment into natural habitats that is known to lead to viral transfer from animals to humans.

forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/06/28/the-future-of-food-amazing-lab-grown-and-3d-printed-meat-and-fish/?sh=4e02ab8746f6 cnet.com/news/beyond-the-impossible-meat-grown-from-cells-better-for-planet-if-you-will-eat-it theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/29/meat-poultry-sustainable-affordable-solution-lab-grown