Breaking: Lab-Grown Meat Passes Blind Taste Test

In what could be called a public blind taste test, two dishes were presented to a three-judge panel. Although both dishes contained meat, they were technically not the same. One was a plate of cultivated chicken meat, while the other was meat from an animal raised conventionally.

The judge of the day was no other person but Michal Ansky, a renowned Israeli gastronome and professional taster. She knew her way with food and was optimistic she would know which was which in this simple but tricky test.

Her platform was a restaurant table, on which both dishes lay. The two other judges sat across the table while cameras poked at them from behind the scene. Michal Ansky began by sniffing both samples; then, she went ahead to taste both.

In her review, both samples smelled and tasted the same. She highlighted that both had a bland taste without any chicken flavor. This could be true, considering the way the samples were processed. The samples were initially committed to a chef who also didn’t know which one was which. The chef simply sautéed the meat in sunflower oil without salt or seasonings. After that, the samples were finely grounded such that it would be hard to differentiate which was better by merely looking.

At the end of Michal Ansky’s review, she thought that one of the samples (sample A) must be more authentic than the other (sample B). However, there was no significant difference in their tastes.

One of the other two judges, Chef Yair Yosefi, said he wasn't sure which one is cultivated but that there is a slight difference and that sample B may be the conventional meat.

Anksy disagreed with this immediately. In her argument, sample B was less tasty and would therefore be the lab-grown meat. Later on, Ido Sasviar, the founder of SuperMeat, the company that had grown the cultivated meat sample, announced that sample A was actually the cultivated one.

Would Cultivated Meat Become the New Natural?

Although Ansky admitted she was wrong, she mentioned later that "it's one of the only times in my life that I'm really happy that I was wrong." She agreed that conventional methods of providing meat would no longer be able to sustain global protein needs. In her words, "it is about time" for lab-grown meat production to thrive.

The blind tasting was graced by journalists, researchers, food technologists, and other observers. Many of them believe the result of the simple activity means a significant feat in food technology, especially where cultivated meat is concerned. Recent innovations in cultivated meat focus on making them appear as natural as possible.

To achieve this, technologists focus on the most prominent features of meat: taste, appearance, and texture. Innovations like bioprinting have made it possible for cultivated meat to appear and feel just like conventionally grown meat.

According to Ansky, these new developments are not just about lab-grown chicken alone. There are also cell-cultured eggs, seafood, and dairy products. Food tech startups are beginning to pick a specific niche of cell-based protein production. The good news is that most of them are practically doing well all the time.

This question, however, remains: will the world eventually embrace cell-based meat as the new natural meat? Only time would reveal the answer.