First lab-grown burger is "like a protein cake"

Yahoo! News reporter Rob Waugh was one of a select number of journalists invited to witness the unveiling of the world's first test tube burger...

“Even if I had closed my eyes, I would have known the difference - it was crunchy, like a cake, and the texture was... surprising,” says Austrian food researcher Hanni Ruetzler.

Food writer Josh Schonwald says, “You mentioned the word cake - that’s what it was like...  an animal protein cake.”

The burger looks much like a traditional one - a perfect pink disc with colour added from beetroot juice. In a frying pan, it sizzles like the real thing – although the way it goes brown is slightly artificial, like a frozen supermarket burger. It also seems to lack the smell of the real thing.

It’s the first laboratory-grown burger ever served to members of the public. 

Chef Richard McGowan cooked it in front of an audience in a small studio in West London. The crowd included film crews from Japan and a smattering of technologists from firms aiming to enter the synthetic meat industry.

[Related: How hackers are targeting TVs]

The burger has “lived” in a dish for three months - “shorter than it takes to grow a cow”, points out Dutch physician Dr Mark Post. The cells grow in a jelly in a Petri dish, supplied with serums and antibiotics, “flexing” as they grown into tiny tubes.

Post’s “cultured beef” is meant to act as a subsitute, to offset the environmental costs of growing “real” beef. As it is cooked, Ruetzler says, "I'm very keen to taste it, it's a very interesting technology."

"If I offered this to people in the streets - probably their primary answer would be, "No, are you out of your mind?" Post says. He informs the room that the name - “cultured beef” - was chosen because 'it’s better than Frankenburger'. The technology could be used to create anything from pork to chicken.

Despite pleas from the audience, only three people tasted the burger - the two critics and the burger’s creator. The few crumbs of meat left over were spirited away - although Post suggested he might feed them to his children later.

More than one trillion cells can be grown from one cell taken from a cow, Post says - enough for ten tonnes of meat. 

Post says, "We took muscle from a cow through a harmless procedure - they contain cells that can repair tissue when it's injured. We make from one cell 40 billion cells - enough for a burger. We let them form into tissues - muscle fibres . There are 20,000 muscle fibres in that hamburger."

Schonwald says that the texture of the “minced” fibres is better than the textured vegetable proteins currently used in “mock meats” - and somewhere "between" those and a McDonalds burger.

The burger has cost £250,000 to develop - but the current technology behind it could make beef at around $70 a kilo, Post says. He hopes that the price will come down as they research the subject further.

One of the problems Post’s project faces is that no one knows precisely what makes beef taste good.

“"Fat is important - and I think iron adds to the taste,” says Post. “But in meats there are 400 peptides, 400 aromatics - we don't know which one of those are important.”

Post’s team struggled with culturing fat, so the current burger is all muscle - which may account for its “cake-like” texture. They aim to address this problem in the next few months.

Within “ten or twenty” years, though, Post imagines a very different future - where supermarkets offer lab-grown burgers alongside the “real” variety.

"It maybe has a little label, like the ones in cigarettes, saying, "Animals have been killed for this," suggests Post.

The “new” burgers could be supported by a green tax, Schonwald suggested, and thus be cheaper than the field-grown variety. Post claims that as the middle classes in China and India grow, beef prices will rise rapidly in the coming decades.

Post’s ambition is simpler - to grow a steak. He points out that growing human body parts for medicine has already been done, so it is not impossible.

Josh, "There might be two options - a conventionally grown hamburger, which is much more expensive, or a lab grown version. The conventionally grown burger might have an eco tax. Affluence will have its choice."

"We are nearing a point of 'peak meat'. This is the first sustainable option." says Schoenwald.

Post says, "We developed this in two years, with a team of three people. It's not a long time or a large crowd. This is not the Apollo missions."

Post says that the technology could even be used in the home, with families “growing” their own dinners.

"You could grow this yourself,” says Post. “The problem is you'd have to know eight weeks in advance what you wanted to eat." says Post.