3D-printed vegan steak just got appealing

Meat alternatives have been around for years now. They started off pretty shoddy. Plant or soy based offerings that tasted like nothing you'd ever had before (and not in a good way) and their texture was questionable, at best.

The industry has come on in leaps and bounds since and we now have plant based alternatives that are nothing like meat but amazing, and plant based alternatives that you would be hard pushed to tell apart from burgers. We are a lucky bunch!

Israeli company, Redefine Meat, are looking to take it one step further by 3D printing alternatives to whole cuts of meat that will have you questioning your carnivorous self all together. They call it the Alt-Steak.

The startup is run by three guys who met while making digital printers for HP. So it's not surprising that they had the know how to make the world's first printer capable of 3D printing a steak!

Image: Redefine Meat

Image: Redefine Meat

Real cuts of meat are more than the mush of material you get in a burger. There are muscle fibres, blood vessels and fat. Redefine Meat claims to have been able to replicate this heterogeneous framework, using their 3D printer, to bring us the most realisting replica yet. They are calling their components alt-muscle, alt-blood, and alt-fat.

And they aren't just relying on guesswork. They have accounted for 70 of the sensory experiences we register when eating meat, including texture, juiciness, taste, feel in the mouth, and fat content, ensuring that not just the look is as you'd expect from steak.

Image: Redefine Meat

Image: Redefine Meat

In doing so, they claim to bring us a product that is as close to a real cut of meat as you'll find, with the same protein content but zero cholesterol. 1kg of real beef requires 20,000 liters of water and produces 22kg of greenhouse gases. The Alt-Steak uses 90% less water, 95% less land, and produces 90% less carbon dioxide.

Redefine meat will be trialling the printers in restaurants in Israel later this year, before rolling it out across Europe in 2021.

Will you be looking out for an Alt-Steak on the menu?