World's First Test Tube Beef Burger: Tastier And Healthy

Over the summer, scientists tasted the world's first "test tube burger," made with beef grown in a lab. The Daily Meal reported at the time that the burger received pretty negative reviews from food scientists who tasted the supposedly-bland burger. Creator Dr. Mark Post, Professor of Physiology at Maastricht University, said in an interview with Gulf News that they are right now working on putting fat into the burger to make it taste better, and they can choose to insert only healthy fats into the burger, creating the world's first lab-grown and heart-healthy beef burger.

So how do they do it? Dr. Post explained to The Daily Meal that he extracts stem cells from cows, and grows muscles in a laboratory using those cells. From there, they can manufacture the artificial beef. Post said he is doing the same thing with growing omega-3 fatty acids (healthy fat) in a petri dish, and adding it to his creation to amp up the flavor in response to initial reviews.

"We can absolutely use this with other meats in the future like poultry, fish and other mammals, basically from every creature that has muscle-designated stem cells," Post told us. "The burger tastes like meat and has the same mouth feel. It is not perfect yet because it completely lacked fat, but we're working on that."

But don't count on grilling up test tube burgers anytime soon. Post said that they need at least a couple of years to work on improving the burger's taste, and several more years to scale up production and get it regulated by authorities.