“When it comes to tasty and realistic meat alternatives, what you need is texture, cooking performance, and taste. Plant-based companies do a really good job of recreating muscle. What they don’t do a good job of is recreating the sizzle, the juiciness, and the taste of fat, which increases its texturization,” [says Hoxton Farms cofounder Max] Jamilly.

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Most companies and startups focus on producing the protein chunk of meat composition. But when it comes to comparing cultivated fat to cultivated muscle, fat cells are a lot easier to grow: “Fat cells depend a lot less on structure and exercise while they’re growing, whereas muscle cells need alignment and stretching forces and are ultimately a lot harder to grow,” says Jamilly. 

To make the lab-grown fat business even more profitable it’s the quantity of fat needed to change the taste game: “Only a limited amount of added fat makes a sensory difference, it really pays back,” he says. 

In the future… novel meat containing less dangerous fat could be less dangerous for human consumption and health, [and] could help prevent diseases from spreading while enhancing our food experience.

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