Let’s say that one day, in a given situation, we can no longer (or we no longer want) to use natural products to feed humanity.
The concept of « natural products » is not really appropriate as both reared cattle and truck farming derived without exception from several lines of species selected by mankind during the Neolithic stage, some 13 000 years ago! They are therefore products derived from a culture. But to make things simple, say we no longer want to feed ourselves from cattle or, more generally, from constituted species.
The idea is to grow cells to create edible food tissues. The process includes growing cells so to become edible foodstuff on demand, thus turning mankind into a kind of demiurge…
TCC1. This project involves growing a small meatball on a short stick. In order to achieve this, one uses a bioreactor in which the growth medium is renewed several times. It is thus possible to pilot the cells to obtain a spherical growth of stratums made of various layers of cells. With this process, it is not necessary to vascularize in order to create material in mass. Depending on the type of cells grown, the taste of the « lollypop » will vary.
TCC2. This project involves the use of specific container in which sheets of cell tissues grow. The idea is to produce sheets of meat material (fat, skin, muscle and so on) directly in their ultimate packaging, thus shortening the typical stages of processing. The chef is then entirely free to use these sheets to invent recipes of a new kind (a meat mille feuilles for example)
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Stephane Bureaux