Hold the taste

It seems the pendulum can never stay too long in the middle, no matter what it is swinging for. Take food. Just when many people are embracing a more natural, local, know-what's-in-your-food-and-where-it's-coming-from eating lifestyle, we hear that the future of food is really in a) petri dishes and b) 3-D printers.

Let's start with petri dishes (mainly because the 3-D printer thing largely eludes my ability to grasp it). Scientists have succeeded in growing, from actual cow muscle cells, a Five Guys burger. Okay, a Five Guys burger minus the lettuce and tomatoes and onions and cheese and everything else that really makes it a Five Guys burger, including, according to three tasters who recently sampled the very first petri-dish burger, much of the taste.

The lab-produced burger is being billed as possible way to meet the projected need for meat around the world, which by 2050 is estimated to way outnumber actual cows. Making burgers in a lab is also intended to give the environment some much-needed R&R, drastically decreasing the need for land and water as well as emissions from, er, methane-expelling animals (cows' digestive systems are, according to one source, "especially effective at producing large amounts of methane"). 

The burger in a lab dish is also touted as a way to provide food for individuals in developing countries, who need cheap, reliable, protein-rich foods, just what the petri dish burger delivers -- well, except for the current price tag of, um, $330,000. Per burger.

But more important, the burger doesn't yet taste like a burger, despite the addition of salt and pepper and egg powder and breadcrumbs. Apparently it is missing that essential burger flavor: fat. Scientists say not to worry, that can be remedied. So if anyone asked you to donate some extra fat...just kidding! Of course they would use fat from a more natural source...grown in the dish with the muscle cells.

So, maybe the petri-dish Five Guys burger isn't quite ready for a mass rollout just yet. But the real question is: Do you want some 3-D-printed fries to go with it?

Stay tuned...