A hamburger made from bovine stem cells will soon be entering the diet of Londoners.
This culinary miracle is the result of years of research by Dr. Mark Post from the Netherlands, who hopes to show the world that so-called "test tube meat" can be a reliable food source. However, while the hamburger will cost the connoisseur $ 325,000. Let's see why it is so expensive.
According to The Verge, the hamburger was created from cells from the neck of a cow using an organ-making technique. Stem cells, as you know, have the ability to convert into many other cells, including muscle cells, which are essential for meat in a burger.
Dr. Post's team used tens of billions of muscle cells to create 20,000 thin strips of muscle tissue weighing approximately one hundred grams. And although there is no fat in the "test tube hamburger", the doctor assures that the meat tastes "quite tasty."
In the future, according to Dr. Post, the cost of growing meat from a test tube will decrease significantly, but there are serious obstacles in the scientific community that will have to be bypassed before the production of such meat becomes available. There is another question, not so much scientific as cultural: how to convince society that meat grown in the laboratory can be eaten?
Dr. Post isn't the only one studying how to grow meat from a test tube. Dr. Andras Forgax, for example, the founder of Modern Meadow, believes that "test tube skin" can solve a lot of problems:
"If we can convince the universe that we can create the skin ourselves, it will be much easier to convince the universe that we can create meat as well."