Novameat says their method of 3D printing plant-based proteins can produce a vegan meal with the texture and appearance of a real beef steak.
Does this 3D printed 'steak' taste like the real thing?
Meat-free vegan burgers are already a well-established meal, but a new food-tech start up says its vegan 'steak' can not only fool the tastebuds into thinking you are eating beef, but also offer a more sustainable food supply system.
"It is done with a printer so that we can get at the same time the appearance and the texture of a traditional steak," Novameat founder Giuseppe Scionti told Reuters in Barcelona on Tuesday (Feb 25) following the first public demonstration of Version 2.0 of their steak.
"We are ordering the fibres as if they were muscular fibres, so we are micro-extruding these filaments so that the plant-based steak has at the same time the appearance and the texture of an actual beefsteak." The company estimates that to print 1 kilogram of steak costs about $30, based on the cost of the raw ingredients.
This price is expected to drop as they scale up.
They hope to have the final version of the Novameat plant-based steak available at a top restaurant before the end of 2020.