Sirloin, rump, tomahawk, fillet, rib-eye. However it comes, is there any food that gets salivated over more than steak? Restaurant reviewers compete to outdo one another with their florid descriptions of the sensual delights of tucking into a particularly prime example.
But then steak comes loaded with far more than a dollop of garlic butter or hollandaise. More recently, tucking into a juicy slab of meat has also become a bold statement of ‘I will eat – and live – as I please’, a carpe diem rejection of vegan-botherers and eco-worriers.
Veganism is on the rise, with the number of vegans in Britain quadrupling between 2014 and 2019. This month the organisation behind Veganuary has reported a record number of people taking part in its tenth annual event, which sees people abstain from animal products for the month of January.
Yet globally, we’re also eating more meat than ever – and steak has become perhaps the last bastion of the carnivore. Sausages, burgers and even bacon may be convincingly bastardised by plant-based versions, but there’s something about the fibrous texture and the way steak sears, sizzles and smells that has made it impossible to recreate.
Many will turn their noses up at such an idea, claiming it’s not ‘natural’. But the idea of engineered meat and dairy may not be as new as you think
At this point I have to make a confession. My recollection of the delectable steak experience is from memory – because I haven’t eaten one in more than six years. But while I may be one of those annoying vegans, that doesn’t mean I don’t get why a lot of people like steak too much to give it up.
And if there’s one thing I’ve observed from going over to the other side, it is that guilt-tripping people into stopping eating meat doesn’t work. Usually our taste buds win the day, especially when it comes to a sirloin. If we are going to reduce global meat consumption, the only way is to accept people’s love of meat – and that includes offering steaks of the same quality and taste.
Sound impossible? If you ask some of the world’s top chefs, who are notoriously difficult to please, it seems like we are almost there. One of the companies at the forefront of the mission is Redefine Meat, which makes steaks served by Marco Pierre White at his flagship restaurant Mr White’s and across his steakhouse brand. The Israeli company says it has worked out a way to take the same amino acids and lipids that cows convert into meat and use 3D printing techniques to arrange the ingredients into an experience resembling the real thing.
At first, I was sceptical. Then the other day I found a restaurant in North London that serves Redefine Meat’s steak – and I couldn’t resist giving it a try. When it was brought to the table, laid out in four robust-looking slabs and garnished with pomegranate jus, with a side of greens and fries, it certainly looked like the real thing. When I took a bite, it tasted like the real thing, too, with the same flavour and chewy texture. At £18, it was a comparable price – and in a blind taste test I’m confident I wouldn’t have known the difference.
Many will turn their noses up at such an idea, claiming it’s not ‘natural’. But the idea of engineered meat and dairy may not be as new as you think. For example, rennet is the set of enzymes used to trigger the coagulation of milk to turn it into cheese. It always used to come from the stomach lining of the fourth stomach of calves – until in 1990 a pharmaceutical company started selling a cell-cultured version. This is now widely used in the cheeses you eat, and most people probably aren’t aware of it.
So if a steak tastes like meat, cuts like meat and looks like meat, is it meat? Well, electric cars are not fake cars, digital cameras are not fake cameras and mobile phones are not fake phones. They just use different ways to do the same job.
Why shouldn’t we give man-made steak the chance to compete with traditional meat and dairy? After all, it would need a fraction of the land and water, and have a fraction of the environmental impact. Beef already accounts for a quarter of the emissions produced by raising and growing food.
And whatever you think of veganism, it’s hard to deny that this matters – and matters more every year. As the global population continues to grow, the consumption of meat is also rising. Already at the highest it’s even been, it’s projected to double by 2050, according to the UN. A paper in the journal Science warned: ‘It is difficult to envisage how the world could supply a population of ten billion or more people with the quantity of meat currently consumed in most high-income countries without substantial negative effects on the environment.’
There is also another reason for urgency. Globally, two thirds of all antibiotics are given to animals to stop them getting infections in overcrowded conditions. This overuse creates drug-resistant bacteria which pass into humans, spreading resistance to life-saving drugs. One study recently found that antibiotic resistance is already killing about 1.3 million people globally a year. By 2050, some researchers predict that it will rise to ten million deaths worldwide every year, more than current annual global cancer deaths. All of this means that humans getting inventive about how to make meat is more than just a matter of culinary fashion.
For now, though, carnivores can rest easy. Those damn vegans and environmentalists aren’t going to take your cow-made steak any time soon. But many are keen to offer up some animal-free versions so good that your taste buds won’t be able to tell the difference.
If we get behind it, this new way of making meat could kick off a sea-change as radical as our switch from hunter-gatherers to farmers 12,000 years ago. We will be able to keep tucking into plates of prime juicy steak just as we always have. Only this time, it will be free from some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past.
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