"Better" 3D meat than the real thing is already a reality. Novameat's goal is to overcome the taste of current products with a sustainable solution.
Despite the boom in plant-based meat, which can already be found in supermarkets, every experiment in this direction has come up against the limitation of imitating the "real thing". Yes, because chicken strips, minced meat, frankfurters, fish sticks that have nothing to do with chicken, meat or fish can perhaps come close, but they do not equal the unmistakable flavor of food products made through traditional processes.
The new challenge, in short, is all about imitating the true flavor despite completely different ingredients.
Who is Giuseppe Scionti and what does Novameat do
"To date, the Holy Grail of synthetic meat remains the steak, or pork. Cuts of whole muscle that convincingly reproduce the fibrous structure of animal meat". These are the words of the young founder of Novameat, Giuseppe Scionti, born in 1986, an expert in tissue engineering and very attentive to the issues of sustainability.
"During my PhD at the University of Granada, after a degree in Milan and a specialization in Sweden, I studied in depth the 3D printing processes of soft tissues. I realized that the technique could be simplified to create a muscle for food consumption, which does not need to be implanted and activated," he said during Italian Tech Week in Turin, organized by GEDI Group and La Repubblica.
What is Novameat's real goal: a meat that is better than the real thing
Thanks to 3D printing, Novameat can recreate the fibrousness, cut resistance and chewability of animal muscle thanks to a "hybrid between vegetable meats and those made by cellular cultivation." Giuseppe Scionti's company combines plant components with animal fat cells multiplied in the laboratory from a non-invasive biopsy of the starting animal.
Flavor is of course a decisive aspect, which is why Novameat has hired star chefs as consultants. Scionti is certainly ambitious when he talks about "surpassing" animal meat. Will this be the future of meat? We'll see.
About sustainability, lab-made meat could be the future of food. Here instead are the effects of vegetarian diets in a three-decade-long study.
Giuseppe Giordano