BRB w/ Nathan P - Cultivated Meat, Mushroom Risotto & Eat Like a Fish
The evolving landscape of cultivated meat, a rice dish to impress any guest, and a read on the oceans as our next sustainable farming frontier (#9).
Hi all,
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P - a weekly newsletter featuring 1 Breakthrough, 1 Recipe, and 1 Book on around food & climate.
Before we get started, here are some highlights of food & climate in the news this week:
Eat Just gets FDA clearance for cultivated meat in US (Food Dive). This is the second company to get FDA GRAS approval in the US for cultivated chicken meat.
AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 (IPCC). The IPCC’s 6th report on climate change was released this week.
Storm-ravaged California is Hit with More Rain and Snow (NYT). I’m writing this newsletter from the SFO airport as my plane is delayed from said rain :)))
💥 Breakthrough: Cultivated Meat
I attended Future Food Tech in San Francisco last week, and am returning with both cautious optimism and healthy skepticism on the future of food.
One technology with renewed excitement is cultured meat, which has made impressive technological and economical leaps in the last decade. In 2013, the first cultured meat patty was exhibited in London on live television. It cost $330,000. Ten years later, a few players have managed to drop the price by more than 10,000.
Upside Foods and Eat Just received their GRAS “No questions” letter from the FDA this year, a significant milestone in commercialization. GRAS stands for Generally Recognized as Safe, and it is roughly a 12-month process to demonstrate that a novel ingredient is safe for human consumption.
I was fortunate to hear from and meet Amy Chen at FFT, COO of Upside Foods. Her talk emphasized the importance of transparency in our food production system. If the meat industry is so wonderful, why aren’t their operations more transparent? Upside Foods’ facility in Chicago is in a bustling neighborhood that welcomes curious visitors, much like a brewery or yogurt facility.
I also enjoyed hearing from and chatting with Didier Toubia, founder of Aleph Farms in Israel. He believes that the animal agriculture is already stretching our planetary boundaries, and that we should strive to eat less meat but of higher quality. He considers the future of high-quality meat to be regenerative and cell-based. “Food is culture and it is an emotional product, not tech,” Didier explains.
I agree with Didier’s sentiment, but as a biology nerd myself, I still think there’s some cool tech here to discuss.
Cultivated meat relies on a few key technologies to reproduce the structure of meat products. Some require less sophistication - like sausages or ground beef - and some are more technically involved, especially whole cuts like chicken breast or fish filets. For the latter, the approach relies on technology from bioengineering, materials science, and tissue engineering. Some key terms I want to help you become more familiar with here: media, scaffolds, and mechanotransduction.
🧬 First, scientists need to to simulate the space where cells usually grow, which is called the extracellular matrix (ECM). It has gel-like properties and needs to contain the right growth factors, amino acids, and other nutrients cells need - this cocktail in cell-based meat is referred to as ‘media.’ It is one of the more expensive inputs.
🏗️ Second, engineers need to create a ‘scaffold’ for meat tissues to grow into with the right 3D structure. This is a crucial element is what recreates meat texture and is a key differentiating technology for start-ups in this space. These scaffolds are usually made from natural, synthetic, or composite biomaterials. They will have different structures and anchor points based on different fermentation designs.
📈 Third, scientists need to stimulate cells to grow into this scaffold with the right directionality and cell differentiation, in a process called ‘mechanotransduction.’ Cells not only require the right biochemical inputs, but their growth into the right kind of cell can also be dictated by pH, temperature, and electrical currents. Of course, there are many more parameters here to be considered. This is hopefully a glimpse into how involved this process is. Cool tech indeed.
Cultivated meat is hailed by many as the future of meat. While it largely removes issues of animal cruelty, a few key questions remain. How close will it taste to the real thing? How healthy will it be? And how will its environmental impact compare to meat produced in different ways?
👅 On the taste, one challenge is fat content. Growing muscle and fat cells together is extremely difficult. This makes lean chicken breast is easier to reproduce than a marbled steak 🥩. Animal fats without the animal are gaining traction, too.
⚕️On health, expectations are that its properties will be similar to the real product. But how can we ensure that it contains all the right micronutrients, or the right ratio of omega-3 and omega-6? Quality control will be important, yet we should humbly remind ourselves that our knowledge of what makes things healthy or unhealthy remains limited.
🌱 On sustainability, it will be a question of comparison standards and what assumptions we make in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a common practice to determine different forms of environmental harm across the value chain. Depending on how we take into account the construction of new facilities, the impact of feedstocks, and the products we compare them to, the results can be quite different. Beware any greenwashing 👀
With all that said, it seems likely cultivated meat products will be on shelves later this year or early next year. Are you curious to try them? Let me know your thoughts.
🥘 Recipe: Mushroom Risotto
For a mighty sidekick to your favorite main - or a delightful dish of its own - make this flavorful and creamy mushroom risotto.
I recommend using chicken stock (click here for how I make my own) instead of water for a more nutritious and tasty bite.
PS: if you make it, please send pictures :)
📚 Book: Eat Like a Fish
Eat Like a Fish by Bren Smith was recommended by a friend and has been an unexpected favorite of mine in the last few months. I hope it inspires the next generation of ocean farmers.
Bren Smith was a commercial fisherman for over 20 years, over the course of which cod populations in his hometown of Newfoundland plummeted. He shifted gears to become a restorative ocean farmer. In particular, he honed marine permaculture, a practice cultivating sea greens and mollusks like kelp and scallops the same vertical water column.
He demonstrated that with $20k, you can purchase all the materials and farming rights to 20 acres of coastal waters and generate over $100k each year. Unlike land agriculture, once the farm is set up there are no additional inputs — the organisms source all they need from sunlight and available nutrients.
Bren Smith founded Green Wave, a Connecticut-based non-profit providing resources and know-how to enable sea farmers to plant 1 million acres in the next 10 years. The impacts for climate, human nutrition, and job creation will be monumental.
Our current approach to nourishing ourselves from the sea is unsustainable. We are waging war with fish populations using military-grade equipment and strategies. We may look back on this era as the tail end of wild caught fish. Or, we can give them a chance to rebound and get our essential nutrients by eating like a fish.
My favorite quotes as teasers:
As fishermen and farmers before me, all I’ve asked for is a job that fills my chest with pride, a working life that my people can write and sing songs about.
I still miss being a commercial fisherman. But that’s over now. Overfishing, climate change, acidification have forced me to change course. Now I have more in common with a kale farmer than I do with fishermen.
Restorative ocean farms have the capacity to grow massive amounts of nutrient-rich food… A global network of sea-vegetable farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers—roughly the size of Washington State—could provide enough protein for the entire world population.
Time for a Blue New Deal: seaweed farming 5% of US waters would generate 50 million jobs.
That is all for today - BRB next week ✌️
🥘 Recipe: Mushroom Risotto
Ingredients (4 servings)
1 cup arborio rice
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
250g of cremini mushrooms
150g of shiitake mushrooms
50g butter, unsalted
1 shallot
100g grated parmigiano reggiano
1 stalk of green onions
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil
Instructions (35 minutes)
Slice the mushrooms, then cook on medium heat in a large pot without oil. After some water has evaporated, add the butter and cook for another few minutes. Set aside 1/3 of the mushrooms to garnish.
Add oil and finely diced shallots. When the shallots are translucent, add the rice with two tablespoons of olive oil. Stir until the rice turns slightly golden.
Add in the chicken broth and water, then bring to a boil. Once boiling, place the lid and turn the heat to the lowest setting. Stir occasionally to unstick any rice at the bottom.
After 20 minutes, add in the parmigiano reggiano and stir. Cook until reaching desired consistency. Serve garnished with the mushrooms, thinly sliced green onions, and more grated parmigiano reggiano. Enjoy with your besties :)
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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