Lab-grown meat: the science of turning cells into steaks and nuggets

Recent advances in scaffolding biomaterials for cultivated meat

The emergence of cultivated meat provides a sustainable and ethical alternative to traditional animal agriculture, highlighting its increasing importance in the food industry. Biomaterial scaffolds are critical components in cultivated meat production for enabling cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, and orientation. While there's extensive research on scaffolding biomaterials, applying them to cultivated meat production poses distinct challenges, with each material offering its own set of advantages and disadvantages. This review summarizes the most recent scaffolding biomaterials used in the last five years for cell-cultured meat, detailing their respective advantages and disadvantages. We suggest future research directions and provide recommendations for scaffolds that support scalable, cost-effective, and safe high-quality meat production. Additionally, we highlight commercial challenges cultivated meat faces, encompassing bioreactor design, cell culture mediums, and regulatory and food safety issues. In summary, this review provides a comprehensive guide and valuable insights for researchers and companies in the field of cultivated meat production.

Improving Human Diets and Welfare through Using Herbivore-Based Foods: 1. Human and Animal Perspectives

Human health and diet are closely linked. The diversity of diets consumed by humans is remarkable, and most often incorporates both animal and plant-based foods. However, there has been a recent call for a reduced intake of animal-based foods due to concerns associated with human health in developed countries and perceived impacts on the environment. Yet, evidence for the superior nutritional quality of animal-sourced food such as meat, milk, and eggs, compared with plant-based foods, indicates that consumption of animal-sourced food should and will continue. This being the case, the aim here is to examine issues associated with animal-sourced foods in terms of both the quantification and mitigation of unintended consequences associated with environment, animal health, and herd management. Therefore, we examined the role of animal proteins in human societies with reference to the UN-FAO issues associated with animal-sourced foods. The emphasis is on dominant grazed pastoral-based systems, as used in New Zealand and Ireland, both with temperate moist climates and a similar reliance on global markets for generating net wealth from pastoral agricultural products. In conclusion, animal-sourced foods are shown to be an important part of the human diet. Production systems can result in unintended consequences associated with environment, animal health, and herd management, and there are technologies and systems to provide solutions to these that are available or under refinement.

Reducing meat consumption in Central Asia through 3D printing of plant-based protein-enhanced alternatives-a mini review

3D food printing (3DFP) is emerging as a vital innovation in the food industry's pursuit of sustainability. 3DFP has evolved to significantly impact food production, offering the capability to create customized, nutritionally balanced foods. Central Asia has a higher than global average level of meat consumption per capita, which might be influenced by its historical and cultural background of nomadism. This dietary trend might potentially result in negative impacts on both the environment and human health outcomes, as it leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions and increased risk of chronic diseases. Reducing meat consumption holds the potential to address these sustainability and health issues. A possible strategy to reduce meat consumption and promote plant-based foods is 3D Food Printing (3DFP), which can rely on plant-protein sources from the region to create appealing and tasty alternatives for these populations. This review summarizes recent studies on plant protein-rich materials for 3DFP as a substitute to meet the growing global demand for meat as well as the 3DFP printing parameters associated with the different plant-based proteins currently used (e.g., lentils, soybeans, peas, and buckwheat). The findings revealed that buckwheat, a dietary staple in Central Asia, can be a promising choice for 3DFP technology due to its widespread consumption in the region, gluten-free nature, and highly nutritious profile.