A South Korean research team has developed a new hybrid food, an affordable and eco-friendly source of protein, in a bid to develop a sustainable future option.
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00:00 This pink rice was grown in a lab. It contains 8% more protein and 7% more carbohydrates than regular rice, according to the research team behind it.
00:10 After coupling rice grains, we put the cells in each rice grain and let them incubate for 1-2 weeks.
00:17 After incubation, we collect the cells and wash them.
00:25 Then we put them in a rice bowl and boil them in a steaming method.
00:32 Instead of replicating the shape of real meat, researchers decided to grow bovine cells on rice grains without modifying the shape.
00:39 What do we eat a lot? What do we enjoy eating? What is the psychological barrier to eating?
00:50 However, we tried to combine the two in the context of cell biology, which is the development of muscle cells and fat cells.
01:09 The cells need to be given a certain structure that they have to follow. A rice kernel does that. It can provide, given a lot of modifications, that skeleton, that structure of material that the cells can follow and can adhere to and develop into small pieces of muscle tissue.
01:34 It's a really interesting effort to take a widely grown and important crop and use it as a scaffolding for cultivating the animal cells.
01:43 I think it's unlikely to have an immediate impact on European consumers, but I think it's a really nice demonstration of how you can use existing widely grown crops to use as ingredients in cultivated meat production.
01:56 Despite its unusual color, it tastes and smells similar to standard rice, with a subtle hint of animal protein and fats.
02:04 I think it's a little awkward for consumers in Europe and the United States to eat rice.
02:20 While data shows most Koreans are curious about left-grown meat, some nutritionists question whether this is a step in the right direction.
02:43 While data shows most Koreans are curious about left-grown meat, some nutritionists question whether this is a step in the right direction.
02:51 All meat products, including cultivated meat, are considered as processed food.
02:59 There are processes to add various additives to make it similar to meat.
03:08 So, in that sense, there is a debate about whether it is a desirable direction to produce such food and eat it more.
03:19 Cultured meat has emerged as a potential solution as the world grapples with the challenges of traditional meat production.
03:26 In Europe, strict regulations and cultural considerations remain hurdles.
03:30 In the EU, it's considered a novel food, and that means that you have to prove safety of that food to the European Food Safety Authority here in Europe.
03:42 Quite honestly, the way we produce meat right now is just not sustainable. Sooner or later, we're going to see severe issues with that.
03:51 So we all have to hope that this is a technology that allows us to keep eating meat at the rate and the pace that we would like, without the sort of disastrous consequences for our environment.
04:06 (gentle music)