It is no secret that the world's population will be causing a global food problem in a few decades. By 2050, the world population will break the 9 billion mark. With the rising demand for food products from developing nations, some out-of-the-box thinking is needed.
Producing 60% more food will take its toll on natural resources. And the biggest issue here is meat. Tim Searchinger of Princeton University and lead author of the World Resources Institute's Creating a Sustainable Food Future says, "Basically there's beef, and then there's everything else."
The massive environmental impact of producing beef has given way to petri dish options known as "schmeat," as Smithsonian reported. Basically, schmeat is the real deal. It is not tofu or some other meat substitute. The big difference is that the meat product is made from skeletal muscle fiber stem cells. Yup, stem cell meat!
Schmeat has been the subject of research for 20 years now and, while it is not yet a commercially viable option, it is an option nonetheless. In terms of how it looks, schmeat is flat as there is no skeleton, like in a live animal, to hold it up. And while many would say no to it outright because of the artificial nature of the food, progress is being done in any case.
First to Know noted that a couple of years ago, Mark Post of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands first debuted his schmeat to judges and chefs. The verdict? It did not taste horrible and has a texture very similar to the beef that everyone knows. It did, however, lack flavor and juiciness because of the zero fat content of schmeat.
There is much progress that still needs to be done. For one, producing schmeat is by no means cheap. The first burger cost over $330,000 to produce! But technological improvements and beefed up scale in the next few years can dramatically bring down costs and make "frankenburgers" commercially available.
