You passed on those Boca Burger things. You wanted nothing to do with the "mock meats" in that weird corner of the frozen food section. You wholly rejected Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat.
But what about this? This looks appealing, right? You'll eat this, right?
Imagine a way to produce meat without slaughtering animals. Instead of raising livestock on farms, Uma Valeti, a cardiologist, and co-founder of Upside Foods, dreamt of a way to "grow" meat in a production facility, by culturing animal cells.
The concept for what's now called "cultivated" meat came to Valeti when he was working with heart attack patients at the Mayo Clinic more than 15 years ago, growing human heart cells in a lab. It should be possible to grow meat with similar science, he realized.
Scientists could extract cells from an animal via a needle biopsy, place them in tanks, feed them the nutrients they need to proliferate, including fats, sugar, amino acids and vitamins, and end up with meat.
Sounds delicious!
What could be more appetizing than this?
It has taken years of experimentation by a crew of biologists, biochemists and engineers to turn that concept into a product ready to eat.
