Lab-grown meat is gradually becoming a viable alternative to meat sourced via traditional agriculture, but it’s not perfect in terms of how it’s produced. For the first time, scientists at Boston College have developed a new, greener technology that uses the skeleton of spinal leaves to support bovine animal protein growth.
As the population continues to grow and arable land shrinking, cultivating meat products from “cellular agriculture” rather than live animals is becoming an essential part of our food security moving forward.
Some of the benefits of lab-grown meat include:
- It uses a fraction of the water and energy of conventional meat production;
- Avoids animal cruelty;
- And significantly cuts greenhouse gas emissions.
However, animal products aren’t eliminated from the process entirely. For example, lab-grown steak and chicken are created by painlessly harvesting muscle cells from a living cow, which are subsequently fed and nurtured to multiply and develop muscle tissue. But for this to have the same texture as real meat, the cells need structural support to flourish and are therefore placed in a scaffold.
Some lab-grown meats have achieved this through scaffolds made of gelatin obtained from animals, and experimental forms in the lab have produced eco food from CO2, water, and electricity. But lately, scientists are progressing toward animal-product-free scaffolds. Aleph Farms, which in 2018 unveiled the world’s first lab-grown steak, created its cruelty-free animal products using scaffolds made from soy protein.
The Boston College team has recently put forward another plant-based solution: spinach leaves. The breakthrough builds on earlier research in which the team cultivated human heart tissue using a spinach leaf scaffold. These leaves had their plant cells removed, leaving behind a vascular network primarily of cellulose, with a circulatory system that promotes human cardiac tissue growth.
For this new experiment, the team used the decellularized spinach leaves as a scaffold for cow meat cells. In this setting, the cells remained viable for two weeks before unraveling into muscle mass. The scientists believe their edible, plant-based scaffold lays solid groundwork for further investigation and may shape the future of lab-grown meat.
Glenn Gaudette, the study’s lead author, said:
We need to scale this up by growing more cells on the leaves to create a thicker steak. In addition, we are looking at other vegetables and other animal and fish cells.
The Boston College team published their findings in the journal Food Bioscience.
