The great protein shake-up: start-up creates lab-grown fish – without the bones – for 3D printing
- Following the success of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat’s plant-based burgers, BlueNalu is working on lab-grown fish meat
- Its products will be made from fish cells that are grown in plant broth, then formed with a 3D printer
Vegetarian creations, like the Impossible Burger, which look and taste like real meat are the big headliners, with companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods leading the pack. Just this month, these start-ups scored multibillion-dollar valuations and mega deals with fast food chains, igniting the plant-based “food tech” industry.
But there’s another area of food science fast on their heels: lab-grown meat. And San Diego is home to the newest player.
In a small laboratory in Sorrento Valley, scientists at BlueNalu are growing fish parts – just the muscle and fat – from cells. The tissue will be stacked into familiar shapes like freshly caught mahi-mahi fillets, red snapper or flaked tuna using something akin to a 3D printer. Instead of printing plastic, the scientists are using ink made of cells.
The start-up’s experimental food is a far cry from the plant-based meat products that keep popping up in headlines and are designed to look like something they’re not. BlueNalu’s “alternative seafood” will be made of real fish cells – they’re just grown outside the fish’s body.
“The only difference from a BlueNalu fillet and a regular fish fillet is that we don’t have the bones,” says BlueNalu’s CEO Lou Cooperhouse. “We also don’t have the mercury, the parasites, the microplastics, nor the bacteria these things are usually covered in.”
The fillets would also be missing the animal’s nerves, lymph system and blood vessels.