{"id":2471,"date":"2025-09-24T10:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laurenhwhite.com\/?p=2471"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:56:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:56:37","slug":"what-will-it-take-for-us-to-eat-lab-grown-steak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laurenhwhite.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/24\/what-will-it-take-for-us-to-eat-lab-grown-steak\/","title":{"rendered":"What will it take for us to eat lab-grown steak?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lab-grown<\/div>\n

Lab-grown meat<\/a> is gaining traction. But before we consume it, we need to believe in it \u2013 and that’s where design comes in. Jane Englefield<\/a> asks scientists, designers and a food critic what’s at stake.<\/span><\/p>\n

“What is meat, really?” considered emerging London-based food designer Leyu Li<\/a>. “Is it defined by its molecular structure, its nutritional composition, its cultural role, its biological origin, or the emotional resonance it carries?”<\/p>\n

Questions like Li’s make lab-grown meat, which could be on sale in the UK<\/a> within the next two years, an intriguing proposition.<\/p>\n

“Far more sustainable” than conventional meat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also known as cultured meat, in vitro meat, clean meat and healthy meat \u2013 among other suggestive titles \u2013 lab-grown protein is produced in a bioreactor by cultivating cells that can be repeatedly extracted from a live animal without the need for slaughtering it.<\/p>\n

Worldwide, lab-grown meat is still in its infancy. Singapore became the first country to green-light cultivated chicken<\/a> for human consumption in 2020, followed by the United States<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

The first slaughter-free steak<\/a> was approved in Israel last year, while Australia permitted the use of cultured quail<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n

With conventional meat already accounting for around 60 per cent of the greenhouse gases<\/a> caused by global food production and human population growth driving surging demand for protein, advocates of lab-grown meat describe it as more sustainable, healthier, and a game-changer for animal welfare.<\/p>\n

\"Lab-grown
Lab-grown meat is produced in a bioreactor. Photo courtesy of Eat Just<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

American alternative proteins analyst Zak Weston<\/a> is confident that cultivated meat is “likely to be far more sustainable” than animal-derived meat if scaled up.<\/p>\n

“Even with early life-cycle assessments, we see significant land and water usage reductions along with reduced carbon dioxide emissions intensity, and it’s highly likely that these metrics will improve as the technology matures and becomes more efficient,” he told Dezeen.<\/p>\n

But scaling up lab-grown meat for widespread consumption raises myriad practical and ethical questions<\/a>, not least the creative challenges involved in making it look and taste palatable.<\/p>\n

Recent revealing studies showed that just over 30 per cent of Americans<\/a> find the concept of cultivated meat “appealing”, while only a quarter of Britons<\/a> would eat the protein if it were commercially available.<\/p>\n

“As much a design challenge as a biological one”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the trickiest task of all will be popularising the lab-grown beefsteak \u2013 an age-old cut of red meat that is infamously bad for the planet, but considered among the most desirable foods in many culinary traditions.<\/p>\n

“Creating the ‘perfect’ steak, whether from plants or cultivated meat, is as much a design challenge as a biological one,” explained Bianca L\u00ea, a cell biologist at San Francisco lab-grown meat company Mission Barns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Texture, marbling, colour, and even how it cooks and sizzles \u2013 all these elements need to be intentionally crafted,” she told Dezeen.<\/p>\n

Mission Barns is one of three cultured-meat organisations currently approved for practice<\/a> in the US.<\/p>\n

All of the company’s products are courtesy of resident “donor pig” Dawn, who L\u00ea said “remains happy and alive in a climate sanctuary called Sweet Farm<\/a> in upstate New York, while we’re producing cultivated pork in San Francisco”.<\/p>\n

While Mission Barns is gearing up to serve its lab-grown bacon, pepperoni and meatballs at local restaurant Fiorella<\/a>, L\u00ea explained that designing structured whole cuts of cultivated steak is still some way off.<\/p>\n

\"Mission
Mission Barns is one of three cultivated-meat organisations approved in the USA. Photo courtesy of Mission Barns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Whole cuts of meat are made of muscle, fat and connective tissue,” she said. “Producing and combining all three components at scale is costly and not yet feasible with today’s technology.”<\/p>\n

Progress is being made on costs. Weston predicts that cultivated meat could reach commercially available cost parity with conventional meat within seven to 10 years, but he also acknowledged that “much more work remains to be done” in every area of scaling up the products.<\/p>\n

Financial Times restaurant critic Jay Rayner<\/a> agreed that it could be a while before lab-grown steak becomes the norm on our menus.<\/p>\n

“My suspicion is that this isn’t going to happen for a very long time,” said Rayner, who once worked in an abattoir<\/a> to confront his own carnivory.<\/p>\n

“A steak is a very particular thing,” he told Dezeen. “It’s a lot of different things, and that’s why I think it’s proved to be so very, very difficult to replicate.”<\/p>\n

“Culturally, it can feel uncanny”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Naturally, our relationship with food stretches back further in the collective memory than almost anything else. But as recently as the turn of the millennium, lab-grown meat was merely an abstract idea.<\/p>\n

The push for cultivated protein was popularised by American scientist Jason Matheny, who founded the cellular agriculture nonprofit New Harvest<\/a> and in 2005 optimistically declared<\/a> that “with a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply”.<\/p>\n

This paved the way for Dutch pharmacologist Mark Post to create the first lab-grown beef burger<\/a> in 2013, which reportedly cost \u00a3225,000 to produce.<\/p>\n

Despite significant scientific progress since, the issue of consumer acceptance persists.<\/p>\n

“The main cultural challenge, which is an interesting one, is a suspicion in certain quarters of what is regarded as something being unnatural,” said Rayner.<\/p>\n

“In an age when there is a backlash against ultra-high processed foods<\/a>, making a market for something which is about as processed as it’s possible to imagine may be tough,” he added.<\/p>\n

\"Leyu
Leyu Li has created a trio of conceptual products that combine lab-grown meat with vegetables. Photo courtesy of Leyu Li<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Culturally, it can feel uncanny,” offered Li. “It evokes concerns about artificiality, ethical ambiguity, and even bio-disgust.”<\/p>\n

This is especially evident in the US, where seven states have already banned<\/a> lab-grown meat, including Mississippi.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know about you, but I want my steak to come from farm-raised beef, not a petri-dish from a lab,” wrote the state’s agriculture commissioner Andy Gipson<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

Texas has also forbidden cultivated meat, with commissioner Sid Miller proclaiming<\/a> that people “have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture”.<\/p>\n

“If we look at the current state of world politics and the shifting right, and the lack of attention to climate change, while we might have assumed that the course of human history was leading us towards less meat consumption, I would say at the moment, all bets are off,” observed Rayner.<\/p>\n

“What we eat is political”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This might be where design comes in.<\/p>\n

Caroline Cotto is a food researcher who understands the complexities attached to distributing appetising alternatives to animal meat.<\/p>\n

Her California-based non-profit Nectar<\/a> conducts taste tests of protein alternatives as part of chef-prepared meals, complete with all the expected trimmings and condiments,<\/span> in restaurant-style settings.<\/p>\n

The idea is to orchestrate “a much more authentic experience for consumers than being served a quarter of a burger patty naked on a plate” in a laboratory.<\/p>\n

For Cotto, a key challenge is demystifying the underlying motivations behind why people eat meat and resolving “what they would need to be true” to adapt their diets.<\/p>\n

“What we eat is political. It’s cultural,” she acknowledged. “It’s not easy for people to make the link between food and climate. And then it often requires them to sacrifice something or change their personal behaviours, which is a largely unpopular practice.”<\/p>\n

\"Leyu
Li promoted the spoof cultured-meat products on TikTok<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Designers like Li are also aiming to redirect perceptions. In 2023, she created three conceptual products<\/a> that combine lab-grown meat with vegetables, playfully called Broccopork, Mushchicken and Peaf.<\/p>\n

Part of Li’s project involved promoting the products on TikTok to an audience who didn’t know whether they were real or not, under the pseudonym account Meaty Aunties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Li’s goal was not to predict or dictate the future of meat, but to expand the way we think about it.<\/p>\n

“The ‘perfect’ fake steak is not just a matter of mimicking marbling and texture,” she explained. “It’s about creating a believable story.”<\/p>\n

“Designers have a unique role in this space,” added Li. “Not only to help translate scientific innovation into sensory experiences, but also to expand the vocabulary of what meat can be.”<\/p>\n