The food industry in recent years stepped far forward. Thanks to the work of scientists from all over the world it is already possible to synthesize almost any product. The only thing that currently fails is to create affordable artificial meat. They either sugary or tasty, but expensive. It is possible to create “true” artificial meat close company Impossible Foods. According to the authors, their meat “taste sensations are not inferior to the present”.
Specialists of the company Impossible Foods believe that the uniqueness of the “meat” flavor is a special set of proteins, most of which is heme. He gives the meat its unique color, taste, and can also be found in blood hemoglobin (the oxygen carrier) and in muscle fibers as a component of myoglobin. Moreover, heme is not only in animal but also in plant organisms, where it can be successfully allocated. However, there is one problem: the percentage of heme in plants is several thousand times lower than in animal tissues. But scientists from Impossible Foods has found a solution: a gene in plants for the production of heme was extracted and “transplanted” culture of the yeast pichia pastoris, which can successfully synthesize it in adequate quantities. But that’s not all! Specialists Impossible Foods was also able to synthesize and smell of meat.
“To create the odor we use the gas mass spectrometry. We fry a piece of meat and fix the smell. Then, an analysis of all the molecules responsible for the scent. Thus, we obtain a kind of “casts of smells” different meats”.
And finally, what is required to create artificial meat, is the correct structure. It also uses a number of vegetable proteins. For example, wheat protein imparts the required viscosity and density of the meat, and thanks to the starch hardens the meat when roasting. Now the company Impossible Foods has opened a factory in the US and plans to produce about one million units of finished products per year.
Artificial meat, which taste does not differ from the present
Vladimir Kuznetsov