Plant-based meat could soon have lab-grown fat added to it to help make it taste better. Meat like bacon makes for a tasty meal, but if humans ever hope to move away from eating animals like pigs, cows, and chickens, scientists will need to find a way to make plant-based options taste better. Lab-grown fat could be one way to enhance the flavor.
According to a new essay featured in The Atlantic, the option of adding lab-grown fat to plant-based bacon (often referred to as fake bacon since it isn’t actually made from meat) is a saving grace for the industry that is currently swinging towards meatless meat. Yasmin Tayag wrote that the bacon tasted just like the real deal.
Not only was the plant-based bacon crunchy, as you’d expect from the tasty strips, but it also had a “satisfying chew” that was created by the lab-grown fat that was woven into it. Tayag’s bacon strips were made by Mission Barns biotech company. Mission Barns grew pork fat in a bioreactor and created plant-based bacon.
Animal fat has proven to be a pivotal item for many industries, including how it helps to cook food. Plant-based options, while useful, just don’t always offer the same fidelity as meat-based alternatives. That’s why being able to produce lab-grown fat could literally change that part of the market forever.
Drizzling lab-grown fat into plant-based meat does not solve the entire problem. In fact, it doesn’t address the lack of nutritional value that these plant-based options offer. For example, real meat has a high level of protein while plant-based alternatives lack a significant amount. It is also expensive to produce lab-grown fat.
Putting it in every plant-based food is not feasible. This is especially true if you are trying to lower the cost of production. But, with the industry slowly looking for ways to create meat in labs, including even making 3D-printed steaks, having lab-grown fat to help the process out could at least get innovators thinking of new ways to press plant-based meat forward.
Unfortunately, all we can really do is wait and see where this kind of development goes, and whether it proves worthwhile or not.
The post Scientists are making lab-grown fat to mix into plant-based meat appeared first on BGR.
