Plant-Based Burgers and Realistic Meat Alternatives: Novameat's Innovation

Plant-based burgers that taste very similar to real meat are now available at your local Burger King. Additionally, you can find meatless ground beef and realistic sausages in grocery stores. As the next major advancement in sustainable and animal-friendly meat, some startups are cultivating it in laboratories from animal cells. In December, Singapore became the first country to authorize the sale of lab-grown chicken by American startup Just Eat.

But the founders of Barcelona-based Novameat want to go further. They plan to move beyond simple chicken pieces and processed "meat" to the tender, muscular, and juicy taste of whole meat cuts. "We want to create the Tesla Roadster or iPhone moment for the future of food," says CEO and founder Giuseppe Scionti. "Alternative meats shouldn't just be better for the environment, animals, or health, they should be superior to what they're trying to compete with. The Holy Grail is pork and steak."

The company uses 3D printing to achieve this. In what could be a revolution for the meat alternatives industry, they have now created the world's largest piece of 3D-cut analog meat. And they claim their 3D printing process is 150 times faster than their competitors, allowing them to produce 1.5 tons of meat substitute per hour.

Creating a ribeye steak, with its fibrous proteins and marbled fat, from plant-based proteins is a difficult recipe to perfect. Novameat's microextrusion technology, which produces fibers 100 to 500 micrometers wide from different ingredients and combines them in precise ratios and organized microstructures, is essential for mimicking the mouthfeel, taste, appearance, and nutritional properties of animal meat, explains Joan Solomando Martí, Senior Food Engineer. This three-year-old startup uses vegetable fat and non-soy plant proteins to make realistic 3D steaks.

The latest 3D-printed whole-cut prototype was made with the company's new hybrid meat analog, which they create by adding mammalian fat cells to a biocompatible plant structure. The cells are grown separately using traditional cell culture techniques, then added to the structures, where they produce fatty acids or proteins. "This allows us to create beef and pork muscle cuts, and we're now exploring fish and seafood as well."

Making larger sizes of this hybrid meat analog is challenging, he adds. "You want nutrients and oxygen to diffuse through the structure, otherwise cells in the middle of the structure will die. So you need a microporous and interconnected structure to fill ingredients uniformly. It's super complicated."

The texture of this hybrid meat is realistic, but the taste isn't quite there yet. Scionti and Marti are now exploring whether to focus on their plant-based meat or start a full production line for cultivated meat.

Whatever they choose, they'll be part of a booming alternative meat industry. Growing consumer demand for fake meat is attracting investors to companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. These companies are seeing their stocks soar following deals with major brands like PepsiCo, McDonald's, and Taco Bell. But even as plant-based meat approaches the price of regular meat, its high costs remain a major hurdle.

3D printing technology could help further reduce costs. Novameat isn't the only player in this sector. Israeli startups Redefine Meat and Aleph Farms are also racing to get their 3D-printed plant-based steaks onto people's plates. On February 9th, Aleph Farms unveiled the first 3D-printed ribeye steak, and a week later, Redefine announced raising $29 million in funding.

Scionti's background in tissue engineering - he was a bioengineering professor before creating Novameat - could give him an edge over competitors. The company is now collaborating with Michelin-starred restaurant Disfrutar, based in Barcelona and ranked 9th in the world, to test and develop their products.

This article is sourced from: Beyond Burgers: Animal and Plant Cells Combined for 3D-Printed Steaks Startup Novameat's hybrid meat analog chews like sirloin, pulls like pork
author: #PRACHI PATEL Novameat's plant-based printed burgers