Sensorial aspects of cultured meat

[PDF]

• By Dima Janoudi

If cultured meat were to supersede traditional meat, it will need to at least simulate conventional meat’s sensorial properties perfectly. The structure, texture, colour and taste would have to resemble what consumers know best, otherwise, consumers would not accept this novel technology. Meat is known to be red. The redness is imparted by myoglobin, which is a haem-containing protein. In contrast, cultured meat is pale as it lacks myoglobin. Several ways have been proposed to resolve this issue. One proposal is adding soy leghaemoglobin, an artificial colourant to the cultured meat. It ito the cultured meat. It’urant,s being utilised in plant-based burgers and is yet to be experimented on properly in regards to cultured meat conditions. Interestingly, beetroot juice has been supplemented with cultured meat; however, current research is focusing on mimicking myoglobin rather than adding colourants. From a textural perspective, scientists have figured out how to produce cultured ground beef but not a steak. The reason being is that in traditional meat, blood is available to provide nutrients and oxygen; whereas, that element is lacking in cultured meat. One option to overcome this problem is to introduce a perfusion system allowing nutrients to be dispersed to the tissue. In conventional meat, the texture is reliant on post-mortem metabolism, the quantity of connective tissue in the muscle and intramuscular fat. For cultured meat to resemble the traditional, it can be co-cultured with adipocytes. Apart from this, edible scaffold (a connective tissue structure like collagen) can be added that may facilitate in mimicking the structure of traditional fresh meat. From a flavour standpoint, the high iron content of fresh meat contributes to its bloody flavour. To imitate that in the lab, in vitro meat can be grown in an iron-rich medium. A predominant reaction that lends meat its taste is the lipid degradation reaction. When traditional meat is cooked, fat is oxidised, contributing to the aroma and taste of the meat. On the contrary, cultured meat lacks fat as it is grown from only muscle cells. To overcome this obstacle, in vitro meat can be co-cultured with adipocytes, or plant-derived fat can be added at the end of the culture process. It remains to be determined when exactly it would be attainable to culture larger cuts of meat like a steak. Until then, scientists and food technologists alike have a long way to go when it comes to upgrading their culturing techniques.

Keywords: Cultured meat, In vitro meat, Colour, Flavour, Meat, Texture, Myoglobin, Aroma

Image source:
First cultured hamburger unbaked by World Economic Forum, available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_cultured_hamburger_unbaked.png

Citation:
Dima Janoudi. Sensorial aspects of cultured meat. The Torch. 2021. 2 (31).
Available from: https://www.styvalley.com/pub/magazines/torch/read/sensorial-aspects-of-cultured-meat/.

Article counter:

The article has been read 523 time(s)