Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.
Using another method, scientists could grow muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The resulting tissue could be used to make processed meat such as chicken nuggets or hamburgers.
Most of the stuff I consume is only nominally meat anyway (hot dogs, lunch meat, chef boyardee, etc.) I can't imagine that something grown in a lab could possibly be worse for me than the stuff they scrape of the killing floor to make hamburgers. In fact, with all the additives they could shove in there, the triple bacon cheeseburger could actually be the healthiest meal on the menu.
2 comments:
Wow! That's cool.
And to think I let my Tissue Engineering subscription lapse.
If I was making burgers and was given a choice between such lab work or the current method, I think I'd pick super-blasting scraps of leftover flesh off of cow bones. Much cooler equipment required.
"Thin membrane" makes me think of all that Carl Buddig "meat" I used to eat. mmmmm......
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