WIRED: Lab-Grown Burgers Have a Secret Ingredient: Plants
By Ivy Farm
on Mon Jan 29 2024
April 3rd, 2023
The first cultivated beef burger you eat will probably contain only a small amount of animals cells—and a whole lot of green stuff.
The future of meat poses a philosophical conundrum. Some things we can unequivocally call a beef burger. A 100 percent beef patty, for example. Take out some of that ground mince and add in a little water, onion, some salt and pepper. Now you’ve a burger that’s 82 percent beef. Is it still a beef burger?
Most people would say so. But what if we push things even further? Say we dialed the animal component way down and chucked some other stuff in there—soy or pea protein, for example. Is a beef burger with 50 percent animal cells still a beef burger? How about a burger that is just 5 percent cow but packs in so much umami beefiness that it’s closer to the real thing than any plant-based burger out there? Is that a beef burger, or just a beef-flavored burger?