Meaty rice’: what is it? A sustainable protein that will revolutionise the world’s food supply

Scientists from South Korea are hoping to transform global eating habits by introducing individual rice grains with grown cow cells in a tiny lab in Seoul. Team leader and professor Hong Jin-kee thinks his new so-called “meaty rice” might become an ethical and environmentally sustainable way for people to receive protein, from preventing famines to feeding astronauts in space.

The meal, which is made without using any animals, has the appearance of a typical bowl of rice (although pink), but because it contains beef muscle and fat cell culture, it has a subtle buttery scent. Hong, of Yonsei University in Seoul, stated that “we can obtain animal protein without the slaughter of livestock” by using cultured meat.

Due to environmental worries about greenhouse gas emissions from animal husbandry and ethical qualms about industrial livestock rearing, businesses all over the world have been looking to commercialize meat substitutes like plant-based or cultured meat. With a background in organoids and biomedical sciences, Hong decided to focus his research on rice because it’s the most popular grain in Asia for protein.

Currently, this can be a laborious process: a typical rice grain is individually injected with beef cells, coated with fish gelatin to aid in adhesion, and then cultivated in a petri dish for up to 11 days. According to Hong, rice has a “slightly porous structure,” and after the beef cells are injected, the grain provides “an ideal structure for cells to grow uniformly from the inside out”.

carbon footprint
Compared to ordinary rice, Hong’s “meaty” rice has 7% more fat and 8% more protein. Although Hong and his colleagues are still figuring out how to scale the procedure, he intends to have their invention certified as emergency relief food for two African nations. “For those who are limited to… just one meal a day, a slight increase in (protein content), even by just a few percent, becomes incredibly important,” he stated.

Although it hasn’t authorised any meat that has been grown for human consumption, South Korea declared in 2022 that it would invest millions of dollars in a “foodtech” fund and designated cell-cultured meat as a top research priority. Singapore and the United States sell meat that has been raised.  but Italy banned it last year citing a need to safeguard its livestock industry. Some scholars say potential ethical concerns with cultured meat include the sourcing of the initial animal cells.

It’s hard to be “certain about the safety of the serum used in culture media, and the antibiotics and hormones added during the culturing process” , Former Seoul National University emeritus professor Choi Yoon-jae,

By removing the need to produce and farm animals, Hong’s team’s hybrid rice approach greatly reduces the carbon footprint of protein. He calculates that it releases 6.27 kilogrammes (13.8 pounds) of carbon dioxide for every 100 grammes (3.5 ounces) of protein produced, which is eight times less than standard beef production.

Would you consume it?
According to Neil Stephens, a technology and society lecturer at the University of Birmingham, cultured meat has long been “presented as a climate solution compared to traditional livestock”. However, he pointed out that the industry faces difficulties, such as the requirement to be “produced at scale, and cheap, with low energy needs and environmentally friendly inputs,”

“The ‘meaty’ rice might have an advantage over some other cultured meat products” , because it’s a hybrid item that involves “mixing animal cells with plant material — the rice — making cheaper and less energy intensive,” he stated. Nevertheless, it would still need to persuade people to eat it and demonstrate its environmental merits on a large scale. Both could provide difficulties.”

By 2040, only 40% of the world’s meat consumption would come from conventional sources, according to global firm AT Kearney, upending the whole meat sector. According to a 2019 article, “Products such as milk, egg white, gelatin, and fish can be created with similar technology.” Hong is adamant that biotechnology has the power to improve human nutrition consumption.

For instance, he explained, eating lab-grown beef made exclusively of muscle cells rather than fat could help an elderly person suffering from sarcopenia, or muscle loss. He stated that “more biological information becomes available and we need to meticulously control our food” as a new era approaches.

He added that this might imply that a  future AI-infused kitchen could assess a person’s health through a blood analysis, then instruct a robot to prepare the most suitable breakfast.

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