Lab-produced beef, not so tasty

The sampling of the world’s first stem cell burger took place in London.

Considered a revolution to some and to others a futile attempt at food, the artificial beef was designed and produced by Mark Post, a researcher from the Netherland. The cooking and consumption demonstration was covered by BBC.

Mark Post from Maastricht University in the Netherland produced the artificial meat, chef Richard McGeown from Cornwall prepared and cooked the meat, and Austrian food researcher Hanni Rutzler and Chicago-based author Josh Schowald sampled the world’s first artificial hamburger.

“I expected the texture to be softer - it's not that juicy. It's close to meat but it misses salt and pepper,” reviewed Rutzler.

She added, “It’s not different from meat. It doesn’t break apart.”

“It has a familiar mouth-feel to real meat. The flavor is different though. It misses fat,” evaluated food critic Schowald.

Schowald pointed out fat was the biggest substance absent from the taste.

Mark Post and his research team layered thousands of individual cultured beef parts together and created a successful hamburger patty for the demonstration.

The raw meat is actually white in color, so they added red beef juice and saffron to bring about its red color.

“Today's presentation is only a proof of concept that it's not science fiction," Post said. "However, there is still an efficiency issue and it remains expensive to develop."