This might look like a fairly normal bowl of rice, but it’s not. This is the new hybrid rice that isn’t just a grain, it’s also technically meat. Researchers in Korea have developed a new process of culturing lab grown cow fat and muscle cells inside grains of rice.
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00:00 [Music]
00:03 This might look like a fairly normal bowl of rice, but it's not.
00:06 This is the new hybrid rice that isn't just a grain, it's also technically meat.
00:10 Researchers at Yonsei University in Korea have developed a new process of culturing lab-grown cow fat and muscle cells
00:17 inside grains of rice.
00:19 And this is the result, a pinkish-hued rice that has a high fat and protein content.
00:23 The developers say the process is currently laborious, but it could one day be refined,
00:28 allowing humankind to meet its growing demand for food.
00:31 With researcher Sohyun Park saying about it, quote,
00:34 "Imagine obtaining all the nutrients we need from cell-cultured protein rice.
00:38 Rice already has a high nutrient level, but adding cells from livestock can further boost it.
00:43 They first coat rice grains with fish gelatin,
00:45 and then siphon bovine muscle and fat stem cells into them for around a week and a half.
00:49 The end result is a pink rice with 8% more protein and 7% more fat than traditional rice."
00:55 Even with its current manufacturing process, this meat rice is actually still cheaper to make than traditional beef
01:01 at only around 15% the cost and releases far fewer emissions than beef farming as well.
01:06 So how does it taste?
01:07 The researchers say it's a little beefy, with a creamy flavor and a plant protein aftertaste.
01:12 [music]