Burger grown from cow stem cells in laboratory put to taste test in London

LONDON For $332,000, you might expect a burger to come with fries and a shake.

But it's no ordinary hamburger that two volunteer taste-testers tucked into in London on Monday. The meat was grown in a laboratory, from cattle stem cells.

The perfectly round patty was pan fried in sunflower oil and butter and then sampled by Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow, and food scientist Hanni Rutzler.

It was "close to meat," according to Rutzler, but she said she expected it to be softer and as the petri-dish beef contains no fat, it wasn't very juicy.

Schonwald also noted the absence of fat, which translated into a lesser flavor, "but the bite feels like a conventional hamburger"

Mark Post, whose team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the burger, hopes that making meat in labs could eventually help feed the world and fight climate change.

Monday's taste test, coming after five years of research, is a key step toward making lab meat a culinary phenomenon.

"For the burger to succeed it has to look, feel and taste like the real thing," Post said.

Post and colleagues made the meat from the muscle cells of two organic cows. The cells were put into a nutrient solution to help them develop into muscle tissue, growing into small strands of meat.

It took nearly 20,000 strands to make one 5-ounce patty, which for Monday's taste test was seasoned with salt, egg powder, breadcrumbs, red beet juice and saffron. The project cost $332,000.

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Burger grown from cow stem cells in laboratory put to taste test in London