Cultivated Beef Could Be As Nutritious As Real Meat

An Israeli startup claims its cultivated meat products could provide “similar nutritional value” to real meat. 

Steakholder Foods tested its own cultivated beef products against actual meat and found the same amounts of 17 amino acids were present in both.

The company says this indicates that cultivated meat has the same biochemical composition as conventional meat, with the potential to provide similar nutritional value. 

Meat contains essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein that are crucial to human nutrition and cannot be produced in our own bodies. They are important for bodily functions like muscle growth and repair, immune function, and hormone production. 

Steakholder Foods uses bio-printing and bio-inks to develop a variety of cultivated beef, chicken, pork, and seafood products, both as raw materials and as whole cuts.

Last month, the company announced that it will develop 3D-printed eel with a company in Singapore, the only country in the world where cultivated meat has regulatory approval.

Cultivated meat is genuine animal meat that is produced by acquiring and cultivating cells directly rather than slaughtering animals. The cells are grown in bioreactors and are fed basic nutrients, and grow to be arranged in the same or similar structure as animal tissues, thus replicating the sensory and nutritional profiles of conventional meat. This production method eliminates the need to raise and farm animals for food.

The environmental benefits of cultivated meat are still very hard to predict, but some say that the shift could not only reduce methane emissions but also decrease the use of water and land by over 95 percent.

Growing meat directly from animal cells could also reduce the need of farmers to dose livestock with antibiotics, which contribute to the growing antibiotic resistance crisis, and with growth hormones, which are controversial for their impact on human health.

Steakholder Foods was founded in 2019, and is based in Rehovot, central Israel.