I try synthetic salmon and enter the “uncanny valley” of taste
I try synthetic salmon and enter the “uncanny valley” of taste
Synthetic fish isn't quite there yet—and may not be worth the effort.
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To get right to the meat of the article:
New School Foods’ process starts by creating a biopolymer gel. This homogeneous hydrogel is placed in contact with a freezing surface and the gel is directionally frozen, resulting in the formation of thousands of directionally aligned, microscopic ice crystals traveling away from the freezing source.
Once the gel is fully frozen, the ice is removed, leaving behind empty channels. These channels act as a scaffold; the channels are filled with proteins and other ingredients (color, flavors, fats) to form the muscle fibers.
This was pretty close to my guess from looking at the pic of the the raw product. It looked like if you'd flatten out a swirled soft serve ice cream cone. The lattice structure should create a nice flakey texture.
Flavor is always the hard part, but I'm not looking for 1:1 replacement there. Actual recipes can always help shape the flavor to your palette. Salmon is pretty distinct, so maybe a generic white fish may work better.
There are always negative comments about it being processed food, but I still think the ecological benefits will outweigh that. Adapting our cooking can offset the near term nutritional issues. Use less meat, real or synthetic. We might not be able to keep our current habits if we want things to improve. We can start compromising now, or sacrifice later. That's my feeling about it at least.
I haven't been impressed with meatless fish flavours in general yet, to be honest. It doesn't seem like "fishy" should be hard to achieve, but apparently it is.
Here's hoping the next generation impresses me more.
Have you had the Gardein Fish Filets? That's the first one I've had that nailed the fish flavor, but it was also going for "fish stick" which is a milder flavor overall.
I think that's one I've tried. I remember fish fillets being fishier, although I've been veg for so many years I could remembering be wrong.
I haven't had the chance to try fake fish yet.
Maybe they should go for something a little more exotic, say ostrich or crocodile. Close to flavors people know, but they'd go into with a more open mind. Maybe too novel though to be a lasting success though. I'll leave that to the marketing people.
I wonder if we'll ever get a blue raspberry of meats - something that doesn't exist at all in nature. The trick is that most Anglos are pretty picky about what kind of land meat they will eat to start with.
Though it's not neon blue and more of a blackberry black, I thought Blue Raspberry was based on the flavor of Rubus leucodermis, the Whitebark Raspberry which grows in the Pacific Northwest?
I thought Blue Raspberry was based on the flavor of Rubus leucodermis, the Whitebark Raspberry which grows in the Pacific Northwest?
Wow, that's news to me if so, I'll have to look it up.
Edit: Nope, Wikipedia at least says it was just made up.
That's really what I look forward to most is an infinite flavor palette. My family hunts, do we've tried quite a number of things over the year. An endless availability of passable antelope or cougar meat that didn't hurt living things would be amazing to me.
How long before someone makes faux human meat? Would it be outlawed?
It shouldn't be. Sounds like a victimless crime if there ever was one.
in theory youre right.
but meat industry lobbyists woud surely try to take advantage of the outrage.
i vaguely remember a post on reddit on this topic.
something like "artesinal celebrety meat"
which of course turned out to be an "artistic project" or something trying to
"highlight the moral issues" with lab meat,
or some other horseshit.I'm really damn worried about what the meat industry will do going forwards. The oil lobby got pretty crazy with a lot less pre-existing cultural fodder.
im staying optimistic, as long as it will be cheaper, the fastfood industry will massivly lobby in favor of it, and imo. mostly balance that out.
it will probably just have an awfull reputation, like mcnuggets "pink sludge"
It is kind of interesting that the cool hipster thing has gone from all-natural ingredients to literally actually synthetic lab meat in the space of a few years.
i kinda doubt you are talking about the same people here(mostly)
at least id say im a "tech bro" not a hipster.
i never gave a shit about "all natural" stuff, i dont care about msg, preservatives or Transglutaminase (a.k.a. Meat Glue)
heck, i even thought that "pink sludge" is kinda based, when i first learned of it.