The New Meat

“We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”. This prediction of growing meat in a lab was made in 1931, surprisingly not by any scientist, but by Winston Churchill, who was not so famous at that time. Lab-grown meat, which goes under various appellations like “cultured meat” or “cultivated meat” is currently one of the hottest emerging technologies. Cultivated meat is grown in a controlled environment out of a small sample of animal cells and the results have shown that it is possible to reproduce the taste, texture, smell, appearance and nutrition of conventional meat. Many start-ups are betting big on lab-grown meat and one estimate values the market for this novelty at $ 25 billion by 2030.

The starting material for cultivating meat is stem cells from the animal. These cells are grown in large bioreactors in a cell culture medium that is rich in oxygen, amino acids, glucose, salts, vitamins and other growth supplements. As the stem cells grow, they get differentiated into skeletal muscle, fat and connective tissues that together constitute the meat. Depending upon the meat that is being grown, the process can take up to 8 weeks.

Though the production process itself is fairly standardised there are some technical challenges related to scale-up, which is important from the perspective of lowering the cost. Even supplying 1% of the global demand for meat would require building a fermentation capacity that is 10 to 15 times more than the installed capacity of the entire biotechnology industry. The numbers are staggering. Researchers need to figure out how to improve the rate of cellular metabolism and reduce the amount of nutrients, so that more cells can be grown in the same volume. Another challenge is to lower the cost of the culture medium, which accounts for more than half the cost of the cultivated meat.

Lab-grown meat offers several advantages on the sustainability and health fronts. It would require significantly lesser land and water. A recent lifecycle analysis says that the reduction in land usage will be as much as 95%, while the water reduction can be up to 78%, when compared to conventional animal husbandry practices. Also livestock contribute nearly 15% to the global emission of greenhouse gases. Cultivated meat is expected to mitigate agriculture related deforestation and biodiversity loss. Since the meat is cultivated under sterile conditions, it is expected to significantly lower incidences of foodborne illnesses. Not having to eat slaughtered animals will please the more ethically inclined segment of the population.

The biggest challenges facing lab-grown meat are government regulations and consumer acceptance. At present, only Singapore allows commercial sale of cultivated meat. But more and more countries are opening up for tasting sessions in niche restaurants.

Squeezing Toothpaste

I am one among those millions of people who squeeze the tube of toothpaste harder and harder towards the end, trying to extract the last nanogram of paste before switching over to a fresh tube. Toothpaste is not the only stuff to be meted out this ignominious punishment in millions of households. There are hundred other gooey things like ketchup and mayonnaise which endure the same fate, as they try to cling like leeches to the inner walls of their containers. While this behaviour begs a serious study by sociologists, it is also a problem that strikes deep at the core of sustainability. Sticky gels, creams and pastes worth hundreds of millions of dollars are discarded every year, still stuck to the insides of their packaging. 

Stuff adhering to the walls of plastic packaging and metal cans also slows down their recycling and makes it more expensive. The problem extends to the equipment and pipelines in which these sticky materials are manufactured and processed. Cleaning chemicals and hundreds of gallons of water are required to expel the clingy stuff at periodic intervals and the resulting effluent also needs to be disposed of safely. So, can something be done to expel all the toothpaste leaving behind a squeaky clean tube?

LiquidGlide, a MIT-based start-up, seems to have solved the problem. The founders of the company have developed a robust superhydrophobic surface that will help all of the toothpaste to glide out of the tube. Inspired by the lotus leaf, the technology creates a liquid impregnated surface with non-wetting properties. Previously, nano-engineered textures have been used to produce hydrophobic surfaces with water-repellent and self-cleaning properties. Superhydrophobic surfaces are created by engineering nanoscale roughness on an intrinsically hydrophobic coating.

Hydrophobicity is the result of air-water interface within the nano-surface textures. The air entrained within the surface textures are displaced by impingement of liquid droplets, thereby diminishing the non-wetting property. LiquidGlide’s innovation lies in overcoming this vulnerability and creating a very robust superhydrophobic surface. The novelty essentially consists of impregnating a liquid within the matrix of the nano-engineered surface topography.

Different types of liquids have been successfully used for impregnating the surface textures. This makes it possible for the technology to be customised for a wide variety of applications. The innovation has implications beyond revolutionising toothpaste and ketchup packaging. It can be used to reduce viscous drag in oil and gas pipelines. It can prevent icing on aircrafts and powerlines. It has the potential to enhance heat transfer in condensers and to improve lubrication in compressors and engines. It will eliminate occlusions in medical devices. Losses during manufacturing can be substantially reduced. 

This innovation is yet another fine example of manipulating material properties through clever engineering to achieve miraculous results. LiquidGlide’s technology has already been lapped up by Colgate. My morning routine of exercising the fingers on the toothpaste tube will have to cease soon