Why is this move by Burger King so important? Because this indicates that artificial meat technology may usher in a turning point, and it may enter the stage of large-scale commercialization. The artificial meat burger technology was selected as the top ten breakthrough technologies of the year by MIT Science and Technology Review in 20 18. Why is this technology so important? One reason is that the eating habits of human beings lead to the occupation of a lot of environmental resources in the production of meat food.

Specifically, the greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock raised by humans account for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. A quarter of the land on the earth that is not covered by ice is used for grazing livestock. One third of the farmland is used to grow plant feed for livestock. Moreover, we must also take into account the increase in the world population and the changes in the quality of life of more and more people. Meat production consumes more resources than grain production. According to MIT Science and Technology Review, according to different animal species, it takes 4 to 25 times more water, 6 to 17 times more land and 6 to 20 times more fossil fuel to produce one pound of meat protein by industrial method than to produce the same amount of vegetable protein. In addition, from a commercial point of view, some technology entrepreneurs believe that it is too inefficient to feed cattle plants and then turn them into meat.

From the health point of view, the current artificial meat burger is less 15% fat and 90% cholesterol than beef burger. Therefore, artificial meat has always been an important technology in the food field. Let's take a look at the human exploration of artificial meat burger technology. In 20 13, the first artificial meat burger appeared in the world. At the press conference, this artificial meat burger was eaten on the spot. The person who funded this research is sergey brin, co-founder of Google. The production cost of this hamburger is as high as 330 thousand dollars, which is more than 2 million yuan. The principle of this technology is: extract a small amount of cells from animals, then cultivate them in the laboratory, nourish them with special nutrient solution, and let them produce muscle tissue. To put it simply, it is to let animal cells directly deliver babies to grow into meat in the laboratory.

However, today, two leading companies in the field of artificial meat have adopted new technologies. The names of these two companies are "Impossible Foods" and "Beyond Meat", which are literally translated as "impossible food", abbreviated as IF, and "beyond meat", abbreviated as BM. Among them, IF Company has successively obtained big-name capital investments including Google, Bill Gates and Li Ka-shing. At present, the products have been sold in more than 5000 restaurants.

The new technology is no longer to produce meat by cultivating cells in the laboratory, but to produce meat based on plants. IF company uses heme produced by transgenic yeast to make artificial meat burger. Heme can bring color and taste to meat. BM Company uses pea protein to make ground beef. BM's products are sold in chain stores including Whole Foods Supermarket in America. The artificial meat needed to make hamburgers is only minced meat.

So artificial meat is produced all over the world.