First lab-grown burger gets a taste test

Dutch scientists have unveiled their most recent experiment: beef grown in a lab from cattle stem cells. Known as "cultured beef," the meat was ground into hamburger and cooked up into burgers for a group of lucky (and intrepid) taste testers.

Considering each burger cost $330,000, the tasters thought the flavor was a little bit bland. This is because the lab cultured beef lacks fat, being a cube of pure protein built up by the stem cells in the lab. True ground beef is blended with fat from the cattle, and (as anyone who has eaten bacon knows) it's the fat that really gives meat its flavor.

The cultured beef was made by taking muscle stem cells from two cows in the Netherlands. These cells were combined in a nutrient solution, where they grew into long threads of meat. Gather up 20,000 of those cellular strands, and you've got yourself five ounces of meat.

I know a lot of people are turned off by the idea of lab grown meat. But frankly, I find the thought of America's industrialized feed lot and slaughterhouse industry to be a lot more off-putting. Cattle are incredibly inefficient ways to make protein, wasting huge amounts of water and grain in order to make each pound of beef. And don't even get me started on the way that we feed cattle corn because it's cheap, but it makes them sick, so then we have to feed them antibiotics. The toll on the planet and of animal suffering is vast.

And frankly let's face it, 95% of the meat we eat in everyday life could easily be replaced with lab meat and no one would be the wiser. If you want a nice steak or some high-quality ribs, the slaughter industry will always be available for premium cuts. And they will probably be even better than they are today, because without the pressure of providing for our crazy amounts of consumption, producers will be able to raise their cattle right.

Basically what I'm saying is, all hail the lab meat!

Image courtesy Flickr/wader