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Meat and potatoes are the stars of Thanksgiving, even if plant-based meat is on your table this year.

We'll use a 3D printer to print like the fat-rich regions and the protein-rich regions.

So it looks something like real meat.

It's Thursday, November 28th.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You're listening to Science Friday.

I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum. To improve plant-based meat products, food scientists are

getting creative with how to add a more realistic texture to the eating experience. One big

challenge is marbling, how to get irregular fatty bits into a product that's made to be uniform.

We'll get to that story in just a bit, but first, the humble potato and how it gets from

the farm to your dinner plate. Here's guest host Kathleen Davis.

We're talking about meat and potatoes. First, the humble potato, a versatile vegetable, baked, roasted, fried, mashed,

what can't they do? But how exactly do these tasty tubers end up on our tables? Joining me now to

give us a crash course in the science of potatoes is my guest, Dr. Rett Speer, assistant professor in the plant sciences

department at the University of Idaho, based in Aberdeen, Idaho. Dr. Speer, welcome to Science Friday.

Hi, Kathleen. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you so much for being here. I want to start

with a little bit of potato 101. Can you tell us a little bit about how they grow?

Absolutely. So unlike a lot of plants that grow from an actual little seed that you plant in the

ground, most potatoes are what they call vegetatively propagated. So what that means is if you take a potato and you cut it into pieces

and throw it in the ground, that it will grow another plant. And that new plant will be

genetically identical to the parent plant. Okay. So let's back up here. So if I have like a pile of

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