You'll Probably Be Able To Eat Lab-Grown Meat By 2020

Ain't the future grand? Faux-hoverboards, tiny computers, moon pies, and now lab-grown meat! The famed test tube "burger," developed by Professor Mark Post at Maastricht University in The Netherlands could be available to the public in as little as five years!

The burger is made by taking stem cells extracted from cow muscle tissue, which is then cultured with nutrients and growth-promoting chemicals and mixed with fat. Mm mmm mmm!!

The whole process takes many weeks to complete, but it could be pretty damn fascinating meat alternative for vegetarians. BBC reports that when the burger was eaten at a news conference in London two years ago, food critics could barely taste the difference...sorta. One said it tasted like a real burger, while another reported it being "close to meat, but not that juicy." The downside? That one burger ended up costing roughly $332,000 to produce.

However, Professor Mark Post and those involved with the Frankenstein meat are confident in their ability to, both, improve the flavor of the meat while also reducing its price.

Playboy reports that Peter Verstrate, the head of the firm developing the meat, is extremely optimistic about the synthetic meat: "...I am confident that when it is offered as an alternative to meat that increasing numbers of people will find it hard not to buy our product for ethical reasons.

Hear that, vegetarians? Meat for everyone!


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Jeremy Glass is a writer for Thrillist and would honestly eat anything over tofu.