the meat of the future will likely be
lab-grown compared to our conventional
methods of getting meat on the table
lab-grown meat which debuted in 2013
doesn't involve slaughtering of animals
nor does it require as many
environmental resources compared to
other livestock raising cows required 28
times more land and 11 times more water
the World Wildlife Fund adds that beef
production drives 25% of global land use
and forestry emissions and in the near
future lab-grown meat is going to be
cheaper faster and more environmentally
friendly to produce for a growing
population but how exactly does one grow
meat in a lab the process isn't as weird
as you might think
currently the most successful method
involves harvesting stem cells from cows
stem cells are the building blocks of
essentially everything from muscles to
organs from which muscle tissue is
harvested from the live animal in what
is said to be a harmless painless
procedure the tissue is made up of
muscle and fat cells which the
scientists separate from one another
what we need are the muscles which are
then dissected and cultured cell
culturing is where a cell is removed
from a plant or animal and then put into
a favorable artificial environment
usually some type of substrate that
supplies essential nutrients like amino
acids and carbohydrates to grow all it
takes is just one singular muscle stem
cell to grow up to 1 trillion muscle
cells the newly grown muscle cells
naturally merge together to form tiny
Myo tubes which are then placed in a
ring the muscle cells tendency to
contract frequently it causes them to
grow into a small strand of muscle
tissue the muscle tissue tubes are then
layered together to form a hamburger
shape one muscle cell has potential to
turn into one trillion muscle tissue
strands which is a lot of burgers the
lab drone hamburgers don't quite look
like normal hamburgers and are much
paler in color and blander in taste but
as scientists point out that blander
taste is a fair trade for an efficient
way to create protein and feed the
world's growing population the price of
lab-grown hamburgers has already dropped
from three hundred and twenty five
thousand dollars to just over eleven
dollars
paty while it is still pricey compared
to a Big Mac which costs four dollars
and 79 cents on average the price will
likely drop in the future as production
methods are streamlined meaning that
more likely than not lab-grown meat will
be on your dinner plate in the near
future