Cultured & Alternative Foods News and Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

Cultured Meat Brand Aims To Spare 27 Million Animals After Raising Nearly $100M

15TH AUGUST 2023

A Dutch cultivated meat brand has raised $35 million in a funding round, bringing its total amount raised to $95 million.

Meatable is based in the Netherlands, and creates cell-based (also known as cultured or “lab grown”) meat, specifically pig and cow products. It claims that its pork takes just eight days to grow, which is 30 times faster than the average time taken to rear a pig for meat.

Investors included Invest-NL, which gave $17 million, as well as DSM Venturing, BlueYard Capital, Bridford Group, and MilkyWay. Meatable will use the money to accelerate the launch of its pork products, which it hopes to sell in Singapore (which was the first country to give regulatory approval for cell-based meat) in the next year.

“This is a huge sign of confidence in the incredible quality, taste, and proven scalability of our product, especially in the current investment climate,” Krijn de Nood, co-founder and CEO of Meatable, said in a statement. “We believe cultivated meat is the answer and we are confident we have the tools and the processes in place to make this a reality.”

 

https://plantbasednews.org/news/economi ... pOAUlVcv0c

[Time_Traveller]

Singaporean scientists create 3D printed vegan seafood with authentic taste

AUGUST 17, 2023

A TEAM OF scientists from Singapore has found a way to create an alternative source of seafood protein using a food-grade 3D printer.

Unveiling: The scientists from the National University of Singapore unveiled their project in a press release on Sunday. They are also planning to present their work at the American Chemical Society (ACS), where 12,000 presentations will be hosted on a wide range of scientific topics between Aug. 13 and 17.

What they discovered: During the experiment, the Singaporean scientists reportedly found a way to create seafood using a food-grade 3D printer and ingredients that mimic its taste and mouthfeel.

In one of their tests, the scientists created protein-based meat that mimics the taste of real seafood, such as salmon and shrimp, by combining ingredients like red lentils and protein-based ink.

Dejian Huang, the principal investigator for the research, said they hoped to print food “interesting with the potential for commercialization.”

https://nextshark.com/singaporean-scien ... ua5271MRRs

[Time_Traveller]

By 2028, Vegan Eggs Could Displace 2.6 Billion Chicken Eggs. Meet the Company Leading the Charge.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

In 2019, ready-made vegan eggs mostly existed inside the kitchens of home chefs, who turned to clever substitutes such as bananas, apple sauce, chia seeds, and powdered egg replacers. Back then, vegan omelets were just a magic trick cooks performed with tofu spiced with kala namak (a sulfuric black salt)

But in just four years, while traditional eggs continue to face struggles—such as recurring bird flu outbreaks—the vegan egg market has grown leaps and bounds.

A new report from market research firm Technavio is forecasting that the sector will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.3 percent from 2022 to 2027. This amounts to a significant market increase of approximately $911 million.

The primary forces behind this anticipated growth are health benefits, such as zero cholesterol and lack of saturated fats, ethical commitments to animal welfare, and increased environmental consciousness.

https://vegnews.com/2023/9/vegan-eggs-chicken-just-egg

[caltrek]

The Bizarre New Frontier for Cell-cultivated Meat: Lion Burgers, Tiger Steaks, and Mammoth Meatballs
September 24, 2023

Introduction:

(Vox) What is the strangest meat you’ve eaten?

For me, it’s reindeer. This was during a trip to Finland when I was 7. We’d gone to the Arctic Circle, where I hoped to meet Father Christmas. I remember being driven through dark forests on the back of a snowmobile to a firelit clearing where we ate reindeer sausages. Though my baby brain didn’t then realize I was eating one of Rudolph’s cousins and that Santa might disapprove, I enjoyed the meat. It was spiced and tender and warmed me after the freezing journey.

Eating reindeer remains one of my core memories, though I now consider eating all animals gross and unethical. But I’ve discovered reindeer is not a very exotic meat, at least compared with what my Instagram followers have been eating. When I posted the question: “What’s the most exotic meat you’ve eaten?” I discovered my followers had eaten everything, from alligator to minke whale.

Which animals we find acceptable to eat vary from person to person, according to our values, palates, and upbringing. Many consider eating cows and chickens okay, but not octopus, dolphin, or tiger. Right now, you’d be hard-pressed to find tiger meat in your local supermarket, but developments in tech are making a future possible in which eating exotic meats, from alligator to zebra, could be commonplace.

But, how? Well, factory-farmed tiger, thankfully, is not about to become a dystopian reality. But we might one day eat “ethical” tiger through innovations in cultured-cell technology.

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/238 ... ethics

[Time_Traveller]

Leading Dutch Dairy Company Boermarke Announces it Will Become 100% Plant-Based

September 22, 2023

Boermarke, a leading Dutch dairy company, announces that after three decades in the dairy industry, it will now focus entirely on the production and development of plant-based dairy products, with the goal of making these products available in all European supermarkets within three years.

Following a reported 800 percent growth in its vegan dairy production over the past three years, the company announces it will transfer its animal dairy operations to another Dutch dairy firm, De Zuivelhoeve, and gradually transition the Boermarke range to 100 percent vegan products under its own brand Vairy or via private label.

https://vegconomist.com/company-news/bo ... ant-based/

[Time_Traveller]

Vegan Yogurt Market Set To Reach $12.2 Billion By 2033

3 MINUTES READ

The global vegan yogurt market is set to reach USD $12.2 billion by 2033 while rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of six percent, forecasters have predicted.

In a report published earlier this week, experts stated that increasing demand in alternatives like oat, soy, cashew, and almond is fueling the market.

Consumer interest in these products is partly driven by health, the report says. It’s thought that around 68 percent of the world’s population has lactose malabsorption (a reduced ability to digest lactose). There is also greater awareness of the environmental implications of buying dairy. The dairy industry contributes to around four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it also uses up vast amounts of land and freshwater.

Concern about the ethical implications of dairy is also mentioned in the report. There are 270 million cows being used for milk around the world, and it’s well documented that they suffer on farms. In order to produce milk, cows must first become pregnant, and each time have their baby taken from them so they can be milked. Cows will often bellow for days after their calf is gone. Dairy cows will be artificially impregnated each year until their body gives up, at which point they’ll be sent to the slaughterhouse.

https://plantbasednews.org/news/economi ... QSnC78RNLs

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Lab-Grown Meat Prices Expected to Drop Dramatically

By Alexander Fabino On 10/17/23 at 12:40 PM EDT

Lab-grown meat could see a significant decrease in price if it continues its current trajectory, potentially matching conventional meat costs by 2030.

Cultivated meat, also known as lab-grown meat, is produced when animal cells are replicated using a bioreactor. The technique could reduce the reliance on farmlands. Livestock farming uses more than a quarter of the planet's ice-free land and contributes to about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a McKinsey & Co. report.

But the cost of producing this alternative has provided a barrier to most consumers. The first lab-produced beef burger cost a whopping $325,000 back in 2013. Producers have since slashed production costs by 99 percent to roughly $17 per pound. Singapore approved cultivated meat for consumption in 2020, opening the floodgate for investors.

That same year, over 100 lab-grown meat start-ups secured around $350 million in funding. The number ballooned to $1.4 billion in 2021.

https://www.newsweek.com/lab-grown-meat ... et-1835432

[erowind]

Can’t wait to try some soon hopefully. The lab grown cream cheese I had was quite good.

[Time_Traveller]

Company Makes ‘Healthy And Nutritious’ Vegan Cheese Made From Peas

7TH NOVEMBER 2023

Vegan cheese can be made using all sorts of ingredients. Coconut milk, potato starch, cashew nuts. And now: peas.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham have received over £300,000 in public funding to develop “Cheese from Peas” with The Good Pulse Company. Yellow peas are the focus of the research because they are nutritious and are already grown in the UK.

“We are focused on creating a product that is tasty, has excellent nutritional value and that is also sustainable,” Vincenzo di Bari, Assistant Professor in Food Structure and Processing at the University of Nottingham, said in a statement.

Researchers in Denmark have also been using yellow peas to make cheese. By fermenting yellow pea protein, they havedeveloped a firm cheese while reducing the bean-like aroma of the peas.

https://plantbasednews.org/news/science ... 3mvT4IUF3M

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Reinventing the eel: first lab-grown eel meat revealed

Mon 22 Jan 2024 09.15 GMT

The first lab-grown freshwater eel meat has been produced, potentially solving a diner’s dilemma. Rampant overfishing has caused eel populations to plummet and prices to soar, but the cultivated eel could provide the delicacy guilt-free.

The eel meat was produced by Forsea Foods in Israel from embryonic cells of a freshwater eel. The company collaborated with a Japanese chef to create unagi kabayaki, marinated grilled eel over rice, and unagi nigiri, a type of sushi.

The company aims to scale up its operation and have the cultivated eel on sale in about two years. Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, last year backed the development of a cultivated meat industry. The restaurant price in Japan is about $250 a kilogram, and Forsea Foods expects the price of the cultivated eel to match that of the wild-caught eel.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... t-revealed



Credit: Anatoly Michaello

[weatheriscool]

Cultivated meat production costs could fall significantly: Bovine muscle engineered to produce their own growth signals
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-cultivate ... antly.html
by Tufts University

Cellular agriculture—the production of meat from cells grown in bioreactors rather than harvested from farm animals—is taking leaps in technology that are making it a more viable option for the food industry. One such leap has now been made at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture (TUCCA), led by David Kaplan, Stern Family Professor of Engineering, in which researchers have created bovine (beef) muscle cells that produce their own growth factors, a step that can significantly cut costs of production.

[Time_Traveller]

Yes, it is cricket: Italy gives go-ahead to insect flour for human use

Wed 31 Jan 2024 17.16 GMT



A company that produces flour made from crickets has become the first in Italy to be given the green light to sell food made from insects for human consumption, defying Italian food purists and even a government attempt to curb its use.

Josè Francesco Cianni, the chief executive of Nutrinsect, said: “a new page in the history of food has been opened” now that his nutrient-packed flour can be incorporated into an array of food items.

“This is very big news for us,” said Cianni, whose main motive for the business initiative was to provide an alternative, sustainable protein source.

Since 2020, millions of crickets have been raised at the company’s plant in Montecassiano, a town in the central Marche region, where they are heat-treated before being frozen and ground into powder.

Until now, the company has been permitted to sell the flour only for use in pet food.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... onsumption

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Scientists grow beef cells in rice to make new protein-rich space food
By Michael Irving
February 14, 2024

In a move that will make some stomachs growl and others turn, Korean scientists have taken muscle and fat stem cells from cows and transplanted them into grains of rice. The end result is a new, high-protein food that should be cheap, environmentally friendly, and useful for famines, military or space travel.

Our current farming practices aren’t particularly sustainable, and with billions more people on the way, the environmental impact is only projected to grow. As such, the future of food might look very different to what we’re used to, whether that’s growing meat in labs, eating insects for protein, or stoking microbes to produce nutritious powders.

Now, scientists in Korea have created a new kind of food that could form a future staple – a beef-rice hybrid. The principle is similar to growing meat cells in the lab, except this time they did so inside the pores of rice grains. The structure provided a stable scaffold for the animal cells, while certain molecules in rice helped them flourish.

https://newatlas.com/science/beef-cells ... rich-food/

[wjfox]

The Leading Lab-Grown-Meat Company Just Paused a Major Expansion

Feb 14, 2024 4:26 PM

In September 2023, Upside Foods announced its plans to open a large cultivated-meat plant in Glenview, Illinois. The 187,000-square-foot plant was slated to have an initial capacity of millions of pounds of bioreactor-brewed meat per year, which would make it one of the largest planned factories in the nascent cultivated-meat industry. The company nicknamed the facility Rubicon, signifying “a point of no return” for cultivated-meat production.

WIRED can reveal that Upside’s plans to build Rubicon have been put on hold, and the company will instead focus on doubling its investment in its established facility in Emeryville, California, before it continues work in Glenview. In an email seen by WIRED, Upside CEO Uma Valeti told employees that expanding operations at its Emeryville facility would cost “substantially less” than building the first phase of Rubicon and that the company had been streamlining the way it operates and stopping noncritical work.

[...]

The Illinois factory was supposed to be a major step toward the commercialization of cultivated meat, with a potential capacity of more than 30 million pounds per year. As part of its commitment to the project, Upside had said it planned to invest more than $140 million in the Midwest region and create 75 new jobs associated with the factory. In April 2022 Upside closed a $400 million Series C funding round, the largest in the industry to date, which brought the company to a self-claimed valuation of more than $1 billion.

But since 2022 there has been a pronounced downturn in the amount of new venture capital money flowing toward the cultivated-meat industry. According to preliminary data from food-tech venture capital firm Agfunder, total investment in the space dropped by 78 percent from 2022 to 2023, from $807 million to $177 million.

https://www.wired.com/story/upside-food ... rown-meat/

[caltrek]

Scientists grow beef cells in rice to make new protein-rich space food

But since 2022 there has been a pronounced downturn in the amount of new venture capital money flowing toward the cultivated-meat industry.

The thing is that efforts at making high protein foods available to the general public may not be either welcome or desirable. I have already posted the citation below in the Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture thread. Still, since it is so relevant to this discussion, I am also posting it here:


Eating Too Much Protein is Bad for Your Arteries
February 19, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) PITTSBURGH, Feb. 19, 2024 – University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers discovered a molecular mechanism by which excessive dietary protein could increase atherosclerosis risk. The findings were published in Nature Metabolism today.

The study, which combined small human trials with experiments in mice and cells in a Petri dish, showed that consuming over 22% of dietary calories from protein can lead to increased activation of immune cells that play a role in atherosclerotic plaque formation, driving the disease risk. Furthermore, the scientists showed that one amino acid – leucine – seems to have a disproportionate role in driving the pathological pathways linked to atherosclerosis, or stiff, hardened arteries.

“Our study shows that dialing up your protein intake in pursuit of better metabolic health is not a panacea. You could be doing real damage to your arteries,” said senior and co-corresponding author Babak Razani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of cardiology at Pitt. “Our hope is that this research starts a conversation about ways of modifying diets in a precise manner that can influence body function at a molecular level and dampen disease risks.”

According to a survey of an average American diet over the last decade, Americans generally consume a lot of protein, mostly from animal sources. Further, nearly a quarter of the population receives over 22% of all daily calories from protein alone.

That trend is likely driven by the popular idea that dietary protein is essential to healthy living, says Razani. But his and other groups have shown that overreliance on protein may not be such a good thing for long-term health.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1034427

caltrek's comments: As more and more such studies come to this sort of conclusion, demand for protein rich rice and protein rich cultivated meat may evaporate. Hence, why continue to invest in their development?

[raklian]

caltrek's comments: As more and more such studies come to this sort of conclusion, demand for protein rich rice and protein rich cultivated meat may evaporate. Hence, why continue to invest in their development?

There is always going to be demand for protein sources as they're an essential macronutrient. Once cultured meat becomes cheaper than conventional meat, it's not hard to imagine we'll invest more in technologies that will make cultured meat production more efficient. Additionally, with sufficiently advanced technology, we may alter the composition of protein to render it relatively harmless to our longevity.

[caltrek]

caltrek's comments: As more and more such studies come to this sort of conclusion, demand for protein rich rice and protein rich cultivated meat may evaporate. Hence, why continue to invest in their development?

There is always going to be demand for protein sources as they're an essential macronutrient...

Yes, but the point is that demand can and perhaps should be met by reliance on existing plant-based sources. Beans tend to be particularly high in protein, but other foods such as mushrooms, eggplant, avocados, etc. also contain protein.