Researchers at Tufts University in the US have been able to bulk-produce fat tissue that has a comparable texture and make-up to fat tissue naturally present in animals, which is being studied by food innovators for its environmental and health benefits.
They claim that their findings represent a significant advancement in the “third epoch in human food harvesting – from hunting to domestic animal farming to cellular agriculture.”
The researchers emphasise that “fat is what contributes not only texture but also to the meat’s delicious flavour.” Consumer testing on natural beef with varied fat contents revealed that beef with 36% fat had the best results.
The beef with 36% fat scored the highest in consumer testing using natural beef with varied fat contents.
The findings, which were reported in a paper that was published in the journal eLife, may be used to produce cultured meat that is entirely made of cells, giving it a more authentic texture and flavour.
“Our objective was to create a relatively easy process for manufacturing bulk fat. We believed that aggregating the cells after growth would be sufficient to replicate the flavour, nutritional profile, and texture profile of natural animal fat because fat tissue is primarily made up of cells with few other structural components, says John Yuen Jr., a graduate student working at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture. (TUCCA).
Since we can harvest the fat in large quantities, there is no need to keep the cells alive while making tissue exclusively for food.
establishing a new sector
Startup businesses all around the world are creating cell-grown chicken, beef, swine, and fish, which is cultured meat. With a few exceptions, most are still in the early phases of development, not yet certified for commercial sale, and not yet suitable for mass production.
The capacity of cell-based production to greatly reduce food footprint and do so without requiring growth hormones and antibiotics to enter the food chain through eaten cattle is the main factor driving the trend.
The majority of those products are unstructured mixtures of cells, which are more suited to making chicken nuggets rather than a piece of chicken breast, point out the Tufts University researchers. The genuine texture of a fillet or steak—a texture produced by muscle fibers, connective tissue, and fat—is what’s missing, they observe.
Due to the cells in the centre of the fat becoming deprived of oxygen and nutrients as it solidifies into a mass, producing cultured fat tissue in significant quantities has proven to be extremely difficult.
In the natural world, capillaries and blood vessels distribute nutrients and oxygen throughout the tissue. Scientists can only grow muscle or fat to a few millimetres in size because they are yet unable to recreate that vascular network on a big scale in lab-grown tissue.
To get around this restriction, the Tufts University researchers first grew fat cells from mice and pigs in a flat, 2D layer. They then harvested those cells and combined them into a 3D mass using binders like alginate, which was created from seaweed, and microbial transglutaminase (MTG), both of which are already in use in some commercial foods.
The scientists conducted a second set of studies to see if the aggregated fat cells accurately mimicked the characteristics of natural fat from animals. The aggregated fat cells instantly had the look of fat tissue.
By compressing the fat tissue and comparing its resistance to pressure to that of actual animal fat, they first investigated the texture.
They discovered that cell-grown fat bound with MTG behaved more like rendered fat, akin to lard or tallow, whereas cell-grown fat bound with alginate was able to bear pressure comparable to that of fat tissue in animals and fowl.
This implies that it could be able to fine-tune the texture of cultured fat using various types and concentrations of binders in order to make it more like the texture of fat found in meat in the real world.
Growth hormones and antibiotics entering the food chain through eaten cattle may be avoided with cultured meat production.
The researchers emphasise that fat’s molecular make-up is equally significant. Numerous substances are released during cooking that give meat its taste and scent, and the majority of these substances come from fat, including lipids and the fatty acids that make up these substances.
According to the team’s preliminary study, it may be feasible to add more lipids to developing fat cells to help them more closely resemble the fatty acid profile of real flesh.
According to David Kaplan, director of TUCCA and Stern Family Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University, “This method of aggregating cultured fat cells with binding agents can be translated to large-scale production of cultured fat tissue in bioreactors – a key obstacle in the development of cultured meat.”
We continue to examine every element of cultured meat production with the goal of enabling mass production of meat that resembles genuine meat in appearance, flavour, and texture.
Future TUCCA’s cell-based food aisle is still working on projects that will help the sector of cellular agriculture thrive. It is concentrated on resolving significant technological problems in the manufacturing of cell-grown meat along with a collaboration of academic and commercial participants called the TUCCA collaboration.
While the developing industry has advanced significantly over the previous year, with the development of a woolly mammoth meatball and a Japanese eel, there has been considerable criticism from traditional livestock producers who feel that it is pushing against their country’s agricultural history, notably in Italy.
Although it is predicted that cultured meat will play a significant part in the change of the global food system, it is important to note that industry cannot fully capitalise on this potential without the support of farmers.
In light of this, firms that produce cultured meat have a big potential to work with farmers early in the manufacturing process by incorporating them in cell procurement and cell feedstock.