Where's the Beef? Lab-Grown Meat is Finally on the Menu

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can we really have our burger, eat it—and never need to kill a cow? Growing meat outside of animals—in a lab or, these days, in shiny steel bioreactors—promises to deliver a future in which we can enjoy sausages and sushi without guilt, and maybe even without sending our planet up in smoke. For years, it's seemed like science fiction, but it's finally a reality: this month, Americans will get their first chance to buy cultivated meat in a restaurant. But how exactly do you get chicken nuggets, BLTs, and bluefin sashimi from a bunch of cells growing in large metal vats? Does this new cultivated meat taste any good? Can enough be grown to replace industrial meat? And, if so, is this new technology actually an improvement on industrial animal agriculture and fishing? Gastropod is on the case! Join us this episode as we sink our teeth into a whole lot of lab-grown lunches, uncover the science behind the sci-fi, and investigate whether the companies making cultivated meat can actually fulfill the lofty promises they make. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	US regulators have given the green light to the sale of lab-grown chicken products at
0:08.6	selected restaurants. Two companies, good meat and upside foods have received approval.
0:14.5	For the first time, US regulators approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells.
0:19.9	It allows two California companies to offer lab-grown meat to restaurants.
0:25.6	So all new tonight, lab-grown chicken is coming to DC this summer.
0:30.1	Yeah, right. The US Department of Agriculture just gave it the green light and we're now
0:34.1	learning celebrity chef Jose Andres will serve it in one of his restaurants.
0:39.0	That meat, the chicken that's being grown in vats in California, it might be coming to
0:43.7	restaurants, but we went straight to the source.
0:46.4	So this is what it looks like when it comes out of our extrusion process. Pretty simple.
0:50.9	This is more like our whole muscle type.
0:52.9	It's getting the grill marks. It photographs very well.
1:04.2	Hashtag no filter. I mean, we all know Instagram performance is key for a 21st century food.
1:10.9	Instagram aside, the promise of being able to eat meat that is not from an animal that
1:15.0	can be grown in a vat using animal cells, it's been imagined in science fiction. It's
1:19.7	been promised by scientists for decades. And now finally, it seems like it might be
1:23.6	real.
1:24.6	Add chicken in a butter glaze looked pretty real for sure. But would it really taste like
1:29.4	real chicken? That's what we wanted to find out.
1:32.3	We of course are guest robot. The podcast that looks at food through the lens of science
1:35.4	in history. I'm Cynthia Grieber.
1:36.9	And I'm Nicola Twilley. And this episode, we're exploring the weird and wonderful world
	...

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