As someone who has spent a small eternity inside of a White Castle at 2 am, I know the pains of waiting an extremely long time for a slab of seasoned ground-up meat. And now I can breathe a sigh of relief: the longest meat-wait in recent memory is finally over. After five years of research and months in the lab, the hamburger grown in a laboratory has at last been taste-tested.
The labburger was created by painlessly harvesting muscle cells from a living cow; the muscle cells were then put into a nutrient solution and developed into muscle tissue. WE SUCCESSFULLY GREW MEAT AND NO COWS WERE HARMED. If you are not freaking out, then I don’t know what to do with you because, clearly, nothing will move your heart of stone.
In order to synthesize a 5 ounce burger, this project required 20,000 hand-grown strands of muscle tissue and cost around $332,000 — so you won’t be getting it out of a vending machine in the basement of your college dormitory any time soon. According to the project’s website, however, Cultured Beef will be available commercially within 10 to 20 years.
If you’re really into the lab-meat (as you should be), you can watch a livestream of the Cultured Meat panel here. According to one of the taste-testers, it had the flavor of a “protein cake.” I’m sold.
“Scientists to serve lab-made burger from cow cells” [TIME]
Image via Ari N/Shutterstock.