Cell‐cultivated food production and processing: A review

Abstract

Cells cultivated in bioreactors offer many possibilities for the production of novel and nutritious food products. Scientific and technological advances in cellular agriculture and processing technologies have allowed for the development of new techniques to utilize in vitro animal cells, plant cells, and microorganisms to mimic the organoleptic and nutritional properties of traditional foods as well as to potentially develop entirely new product classes. This review compiles and discusses the state-of-the-art cellular production and processing systems including 3D printing of customizable cell-cultivated food products. In addition to the technological state-of-the art, this article reviews the nutritional characteristics of cell-cultivated foods, introduces examples of new food products, and compiles economic characteristics and environmental impacts of each production system as assessed through technoeconomic analyses and lifecycle assessments. The factors influencing consumer acceptance of cell-cultivated foods are articulated and the potential implications of these new technologies on traditional agricultural industries and food chains are discussed. Lastly, future research and development trajectories are introduced with suggestions for continued development.

Techno‐economic modeling and assessment of cultivated meat: Impact of production bioreactor scale

“…The final step of the process is a decanting centrifuge with ~2% cell losses to remove most of the water and media components, resulting in a product that is about 97% FW meat tissue, 3% water, and less than 0.02% impurities. This model neglects some additional downstream steps that might occur to make a finished final product with the desired taste and texture, including dewatering, drying, filtering, extraction of compounds, chopping, texturizing, flavoring, and packaging and labeling (Allan et al, 2019; Barzee et al, 2022).…”

“…This is an active area of research with several large‐scale commercializations, including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Quorn. Environmental and life cycle assessments show that when looking at the global warming potential, aquatic eutrophication, and land use, alternative protein products perform better than currently conventional beef products, with the exception of microalgae‐based production (Barzee et al, 2022).…”

Potential of utilizing almond hull extract for filamentous fungi production by submerged cultivation

“…Using these byproducts or wastes as resources to cultivate fungi provides a sustainable strategy to capture and convert these low‐value organic materials into valuable products. This approach can potentially reduce the feedstock cost for fungal cultivation, which provides an environmentally friendly and economical solution for managing byproducts and producing fungal‐based products (Barzee et al, 2022).…”

Edible mycelium as proliferation and differentiation support for anchorage-dependent animal cells in cultivated meat production

“…The morphological and biochemical properties of these fungi can be tuned by fermentation bioprocesses, with know-how that has already been optimized for large scale fermentation vessels 26 , 27 . Mycoprotein contains all essential amino acids and has a protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score of 0.996, making it a complete protein source with bioavailability similar to that of dairy milk and better than wheat-based or soy-based protein 28 – 30 . Therefore, edible filamentous fungi are an ideal, sustainable biomaterial for cultivated meat microcarriers.…”