People turn to a vegetarian diet for a wide variety of reasons. Some people do it for their health, other people do it for the environment. Regardless of your choice, you may sometimes miss the taste of meat. It seems as if that isn’t going to be a problem any longer, thanks to an alternative meat product from Redefine Meat. They are using a 3D printer to create a vegan steak that you can throw on the grill.
The CEO of Redefine Meat, Eshchar Ben Shitrit, had the following to say in a press release: “The importance of using precision 3D printing technology to achieve texture, color and flavor – and the combinations between them – cannot be overstated. By using separate formulations for muscle, fat and blood, we can focus on each individual aspect of creating the perfect Alt-Steak product. This is unique to our 3D printing technology and lets us achieve unprecedented control of what happens inside the matrix of alt-meat.”
Some of the popular options for eco-friendly meat alternatives include Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers. They had the market covered for alternative vegan products that mimic ground beef, but creating something that gave the taste and texture of a real steak was another story.
A number of restaurants are already testing Alt-Steak products. They hope that the printers can beef up productions for the products in 2021.
According to Redefine Meat, there is a 95% reduction in environmental impact compared to animal meat. It is also affordable and has no cholesterol. Currently, 13 pounds of meat can be produced on the 3D printer per hour. New printers are possibly coming online in 2021 to print up to 44 pounds per hour.
The recipe that is used for Alt-Steak is a secret, but the company claims on their website it’s completely animal-free.
Novameat is their prime competitor and they are also using 3D printers to create plant-based proteins. They call their printer the “Nespresso for meat substitutes.”
“We are ordering the fibers as if they were muscular fibers, so we are micro-extending these filaments so that the plant-based steak has at the same time the appearance and the texture of an actual beefsteak,” Novameat founder Giuseppe Scionit told Reuters, according to the New York Post.
Look for plant-based steak from Novameat sometime next year.