Hacker News Reader

Comment by shaunregenbaum | Hacker News Reader

I worked in this lab! Would be glad to answer questions.

From a comment above,

> But you have to feed the cells. And you can't just grow some plants and feed it to the cells, you have to manufacture a very precise blend of chemicals (amino acids, sugars, surfactants, antioxidants, etc.) at >99% purity for each one. Often extremely nasty solvents are involved in the production process. Usually, some sort of petroleum product is a feedstock.

How would you assess these statements?

I would say that's quite ridiculous. While the serum is very important when experimenting, later on the goal is to grow the cells serum-free (from what I understand). These types of cells would die from any high exposure to petroleum...

Is it only burger style meat? Grinded? Or are they trying to replicate the shape and consistency of a steak too?

Future Meat is focused on ground meat/chicken products. There are other companies in Israel focused on more refined products, check out Aleph Farms. More refined products are wildly more expensive though as you can't easily grow it in vats.

Is it just meat or also fat? How does the nutritional content compare to say beef liver or a regular steak?

The main IP in the lab is replicating the fat + other stuff in meat. It compares to average ground beef by design.

Have you tried it? How was it?

I haven't tried it personally (I worked in a different part of the lab), but I've been told that its pretty indistinguishable from ground chicken/beef.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com