The vegan-carnivore war never stops. Now, it may get even heated thanks to meat-based plants. The concept of plant-based meat is not new and has been in the market for quite some time much to the delight of vegans but this new wild concept is going to make vegans go bonkers.
Technically, I would not call it a meat-based plant but what South Korean researchers at Yonsei University in South Korea did was infuse rice grains with cow muscle and fat cells which resulted in a hybrid rice variant, a plant-meat hybrid.
This rice has a bright pink appearance and reportedly tastes like beef sushi. But the creation of this flip-the-table on vegan food is not a declaration of war with vegans.
This innovative rice aims to provide a more sustainable and lower-carbon footprint alternative to beef, offering a unique solution to both nutritional needs and the ecological impact of meat production. Obviously, we are talking about people who need to have meat here.
The process involves coating rice grains in fish gelatin, inserting cow muscle and fat stem cells, and allowing them to grow in a petri dish.
The result is beef-flavored rice that could potentially serve as a sustainable food source, reducing reliance on livestock and contributing to efforts to combat the ecological disaster of meat production.
This research is still in its early stages, focusing on improving nutritional value, taste, texture, and color for future applications such as famine relief, military rations, or space food.
Image: Yonsei University [CC BY-SA].
via engadget.
