The immediate future of cultivated meat is hybrid, but will companies convince enough people to eat it?
meat poses a philosophical conundrum. Some things we can unequivocally call a beef burger. A 100 percent beef patty, for example. Take out some of that ground mince and add in a little water, onion, some salt and pepper. Now you’ve a burgerMost people would say so. But what if we push things even further? Say we dialed the animal component way down and chucked some other stuff in there—soy or pea protein, for example.
These are the questions the cultivated meat industry is grappling with right now. Two companies in the US have the Food and Drug Administration’s nod that their cultivated meat is safe for human consumption, and are awaiting further sign-off from the Department of Agriculture before they can sell their meat in restaurants and stores. But the economics of growing animal cells in bioreactors are still eye-watering.
In Oakland, California, Upside Foods is experimenting with a couple of blended chicken products. When I visited in May 2022 I tried a breakfast sausage made with 35 percent chicken cells, a chicken paté that was two-thirds chicken cells, as well as a chicken filet that was 100 percent chicken cells. Both of the hybrid meats had the kind of well-seasoned, umami heft that belied their ingredient list.
“Even at the 5 to 10 percent inclusion rate, you do see some pretty big dramatic improvements in flavor,” says Marsh. The idea is that the plant protein—soy, in SciFi’s case—gives structure and texture, while the beef cells mask the earthy flavors sometimes associated with plant proteins and add a beefy aroma and taste. Fat cells are particularly crucial for giving mostly plant-based burgers a meaty mouthfeel, says Marsh. Just a small amount of fat cells boosts the flavor dramatically.
Taste aside, the real attractiveness of hybrid burgers for cultivated meat companies is that mixing plant and animal proteins brings the cost of their products way down. Growing animal cells in factories is still extremely expensive. Cultivated meat is grown in big facilities full of bioreactors that are expensive to build and run.
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