Demolish Foods unveiled its Gen3 platform for the production of slaughter-free meats at the Future Food-Tech Conference in San Francisco. Enabled by a suite of cutting-edge technologies, the versatile platform is capable of scalably producing whole cuts of meat, including chicken breasts, fish filets, beef steaks and pork chops. Further, the platform is flexible and has been used to produce a range of plant-based meats as well as cultivated meat hybrids made using a combination of plant-based materials and cultivated animal cells.
The platform replicates the chewiness, sustained juiciness and changing mouthfeel of slaughtered meat as it is successively chewed and broken down. To do this, it replicates the hierarchical structure of meat, starting from its smallest perceivable structure - the muscle fiber - which is thinner than a strand of human hair.
This patent-pending "precision structuring" technology is implemented across a 1000x scale - from a muscle fiber that is typically 20-80 micrometers thick to muscle fascicles, muscle layers, and up to a whole cut, which is typically 2-8 centimeters thick. The production of the whole cut incorporates connective tissues at each level - the endomysium, perimysium and epimysium.
To produce muscle fibers out of plant proteins that mimic the size, tensile strength and nutritional profile of slaughtered-animal muscle fibers, Demolish Foods' patent-pending "protein chaining" technology is employed. This produces muscle fibers with a precision down to 5 micrometers.
To replicate the thermal transition of meat as it is cooked, Demolish Foods employs its "thermal transitioning" technologies. These techniques ensure that the meat changes its texture, breaks down connective tissue and releases juices and flavors in specific temperature ranges.
The Gen3 platform is capable of combining muscle fibers and connective tissues from plant and animal sources. For instance, Demolish Foods has built cultivated meats by combining plant materials with animal cells. This process involves the use of their plant-based muscle fibers as scaffolds to grow animal fibroblast cells, which then exude collagen and other extracellular material. Alternately, the fibroblast cells can also be separately cultivated and added to the plant-based muscle fibers.
Demolish Foods is utilizing the Gen3 platform for developing its own innovative products and for collaborating with partners to develop products that use all or part of the modules and technologies embedded in the Gen3 platform.
At the Future Food-Tech Conference, participants at Demolish Foods' Taste Lab sampled chicken dishes made using its Gen3 platform.
For further details about the Gen3 platform, visit the Demolish Foods' website, or contact them via email at info@demolishfoods.com.
Source: Demolish Foods