Would you eat lab-grown beef rice?

Researchers in South Korea have created a hybrid rice from lab-grown beef cells. He says his ‘beef rice’ could become a sustainable source of protein. Protein is essential for a healthy diet. And you can get your protein from plants and animals — beans, peas, nuts and whole grain seeds, and fish, poultry and other livestock. Nutritionists at the Harvard School of Public Health recommend getting most of your protein from plant-based sources. Consumption of red meat such as beef “should be done on a more limited basis,” he says.

Meat production is considered environmentally unsustainable. But too much meat can also cause health problems, including bowel cancer. Often, it’s more about the way the meat is cooked than the meat itself, but it’s still worth keeping in mind: as the saying goes, you are what you eat.

But many people enjoy eating meat. So the idea of ​​combining rice – a plant-based protein – with sustainable, lab-grown beef should be welcome news. Scientists in South Korea say they’ve created it, and they’re calling it “beef rice.”

What is beef rice?

Researchers in Seoul, South Korea, took meat and fat cells from cows, coated them with fish gelatin, and inserted them into rice grains, where they grew. The gelatin coating helped the rice grow and enrich the nutrients from the animal material – beef muscles and fat stem cells. It was grown in a culture for about ten days, allowing the protein and fat to grow from the animal cells. And what developed was a pinkish-white pimple.

But does it taste good?

“The initial flavor is primarily that of rice. However, several complex flavors are intertwined. There was a somewhat chalky but nutty protein flavor, followed by a slightly creamy, buttery flavor,” said Jinqi Hong, lead author of the study. Said beef rice at Yonsei University.

How nutritious is beef rice?

Hong said his beef rice has 8% more protein and 7% more fat than conventional rice. This will make it a rich source of essential amino acids, which produce proteins. “th[is] Show[s] It also has potential as a future superfood[s] Ideas for developing new forms of hybrid food products,” Hong said. But some food experts have questioned the nutritional value of Hong’s beef rice.

“The final product contains 4.8 grams (1.7 oz) of cultivated bovine cells per 1 kg (35 oz) of rice. This means that 0.5% of the final product is cultivated meat and 99.5% is rice. Meat replacement To pick up, the percentage of protein in the final product must be high, said Hanna Tuomisto, a professor of sustainable food systems at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Beef rice is one of several experiments in modifying rice aimed at getting more nutrients into people’s staple diets. For example, Golden Rice has been genetically engineered to contain a form of vitamin A, which was found to be deficient in the diets of some people in parts of Asia and Africa.

How ‘green’ is beef rice?

Hong and his team said that farming their hybrid rice will produce fewer greenhouse gases than producing conventional beef protein. They say that producing 100 grams of beef protein releases about 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide (a number corroborated by previous studies), while producing 100 grams of protein from hybrid rice releases less than 6.27 kilograms of carbon dioxide.

“Farmed meat is an extremely promising area because of the potential benefits for the environment, food safety, sustainability and animal ethics,” Hong said. The team is also not the first to work on lab-grown meat products. The first lab-grown meat burger was unveiled in 2013 by Dutch scientist Mark Post.

Less than a decade later, the lab-meat industry had grown to more than 150 companies worldwide. Most companies have focused on producing alternatives to common meats like pork, beef, and chicken.

Why is it hard to buy lab-grown meat?

Hong said lab-grown meat is still too expensive for mass production and that means it’s hard to get it to supermarket shelves. One of the main challenges is that lab-grown meat depends on animal products to grow the cells. In Hong’s study, researchers obtained initial batches of muscle and fat cells from cattle slaughtered at a local slaughterhouse.

“All lab-based meat growth supplements rely on bovine serum, cow blood. That’s the best way we can grow cells in large enough quantities that you can make something. But that brings up issues with ecological logic, animals Cruelty, and it’s expensive,” said Alfredo Franco-Obregon at the National University of Singapore. Franco-Obregon has also worked on lab-grown meat.

But producers still have a way to convince people to eat lab-grown, cultured meat. A UK-based survey by the Food Standards Agency found that only a third of participants were willing to taste lab-grown meat. About half of the participants reported that nothing would encourage them to eat lab-grown meat, but more than a quarter said they could be persuaded if they knew it was safe to eat.