Your Next Steak Could Be 3D Printed
It’s no surprise that as we move into the future things will be done differently. With the idea of the future, most think of flying cars or teleportation with rarely a thought of the food we’ll be eating 100 years from now. Redefine Meat, an Israel company, has an interesting future in mind. This company boasts a love of meat and created New-Meat, their plant-based meat product, for a meat with a positive impact on the environment that doesn’t hurt animals. The creation process for this meat comes from a big meat printer.
Production of New-Meat
Redefine Meat claims New-Meat to be made from “plant-based proteins, fats, and natural colors and flavors” on their website. However, you can find more specific ingredients like soy and pea proteins, chickpeas, beat root, nutritional yeast, and coconut fat listed. Yaron Eshel, a project manager for the 3D-printers explains exactly how the New-Meat is created in an interview, showing off a large library of different meats for the printer to choose from. You can adjust the settings, like marbling and fat, which could be interesting to choose in a restaurant setting if these machines were to ever be used as such. With most meat creation times being around 30 minutes to an hour, these machines are quite effective in their speed.
Similarity to Real Meat
An important part of making a plant-based variant of any food is how similar it is to the real deal. If people are really going to start eating vegan meat, it needs to taste like real meat. From what it seems, New-Meat reached this goal. When they brought a Food Truck to a bunch of people, these people were unaware of the meat they were eating being plant based until they were told, being met with surprise. Redefine Meat reports “over 90% of visitors claimed the meat products were comparable to animal products, making a satisfying experience” (Redefine Meat’s Food Truck Blind Taste Experiment Leads To Butcher Deals « Fabbaloo). I wouldn’t consider this as definitive proof as you can’t really prove 90% of visitors really did say great things. A video of the experience doesn’t show every single visitor obviously. I believe it’s hard to prove how similar New-Meat is with only digital evidence. A good marketing decision could be getting social media personalities who are trusted in the public eye to do taste tests as a way to enhance their credibility.
Nutrition Concerns
No matter how close it is to meat, it also needs to be as healthy. You can’t replace New-Meat for actual meat from a vitamin standpoint, as some meats have certain vitamins you can’t get from anything else. However, Redefine Meat is clear on a goal of making this co-exist with real meat, not to replace it. If you really did want to only eat New-Meat, then you would still have to take supplements. Most of the nutritional facts you can see on their website (www.redefinemeat.com), match up close to their real deal. Really the biggest concern is to not solely eat this meat.
The Future
I believe Redefine Meat has an interesting future in mind for meat. Their main goal is to help the environment and animals which everyone can agree with. This solution also doesn’t cut out real meat. The CEO and co-founder of Redefine Meat, Eschar Ben-Shitrit, makes it clear he wants New-Meat to live beside real meat. I think this is a great business model as people will never abandon real meat as its engrained in almost every food. It also talked about many places around the world serving their meat 10 years from now as a goal. Although Redefine Meat hasn’t set its sights in America it has launched New-Meat in many places like France and Europe to seemingly good success. I would love to see how our meat industry changes in the far far future.
Sources:
Redefine Meat’s Food Truck Blind Taste Experiment Leads To Butcher Deals « Fabbaloo
More 3D-printed steaks are coming to Europe - YouTube
REDEFINE MEAT™ Food Truck - YouTube
What Really Happens to Your Body When You Stop Eating Meat | livestrong