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3D printing is a relatively new technology. The process involves creating an image on a computer that is then printed to life three-dimensionally. Though the limits of 3D printing are still being tested, one can seemingly print almost any object…even food.
Giuseppe Scionti of Nova Meat has ingeniously figured out how to 3D print steak. Admittedly, the steak is not real beef. Rather, the “meat” is protein-powder combo of rice, peas, and seaweed.
Scionti, the CEO of the Barcelona tech startup, said the following about Nova Meat:
“I developed the first 3D-printed plant-based beefsteak while I was working as a postdoc researcher in tissue engineering and as an assistant professor at the UPC University in Barcelona.
I was lucky…because this city is a great hub for both 3D printing companies and world-renowned restaurants.
The first focus of my investigation in this project was to obtain a plant-based meat substitute with the same texture, consistency, and integrity of the animal pieces of fibrous meat.
In fact, although some companies have already managed well to reproduce the taste of animal meat – [such as] the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger – before my technology was patented there was no existing method able to replicate simultaneously the texture, the microscopic morphology, and the macroscopic appearance of a fibrous piece of meat such as a beefsteak, a chicken breast, or a tuna steak with this level of complexity.
At the moment, our products can mimic the texture and a simplified appearance of beefsteaks and chicken breast meats, but achieving products that are able to simultaneously mimic the texture, the appearance, the taste, and the nutritional properties of specific pieces of fibrous meat is not trivial.
That will be the focus of Nova Meat in the first place. Then it will be fundamental to scale up the production, to bring it to the supermarkets and to the rural areas of the planet where meat substitutes are most needed.”
Sounds like Scionti knows what he’s doing. With funding to back up the project and a market-introduction timeline, Nova Meat might be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
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But one question remains…will people actually eat this food? While the steak doesn’t taste like real beef, every other aspect seems the same as a regular cut of meat. The health benefits of this concoction are probably favorable too. Perhaps if we can get past the ugliness of the burger, we’ll take a bite out of this groundbreaking creation.
Currently, the steak and its ingredients are printable at the rate of a quarter pound an hour. Though die-hard carnivores may not be keen about this food, this invention has the potential to perhaps solve world hunger, offer a healthier alternative to red meat, and increase environmental sustainability. Keep that printer going, Scionti!
Will Nova Meat make a big splash in France where vegan food labels have been banned?
