A Lab-Grown Salmon Taste Test And More Foodie Innovations

Cell-cultured salmon is showing up on menus. How does it compare to the real thing? Plus, food innovations from cultivated meat to mung beans.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Science Friday is supported by MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:16Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, I'm Flora Lichtman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

• 0:23Flora Lichtman?

  Today on the menu, the future of food, including a serving of lab-grown fish. What does it taste like?

• 0:31Speaker 02

  It was bright orange. My first thought was, oh, my God, this is Nemo on a plate.

• 0:39Flora Lichtman?

  If you order salmon at a restaurant, you often have options: sockeye, coho, Atlantic, farmed, wild-caught. And in four restaurants across the country, you may also have another option you haven't seen before: cultivated salmon, also deliciously known as lab-grown. Lab food correspondent and adventurous eater Kathleen Davis, a Sci-Fry producer, sampled the Petri dish fish at a high-end sushi restaurant. She's here to tell us the fish tale and take us on a deep dive into the state of the lab-grown fish industry. Hey, Kathleen.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Hey, Flora.

• 1:16Flora Lichtman?

  OK, set the scene.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  So about a month ago, I was in San Francisco, and I had quite the West Coast techie experience. So I took a Waymo self-driving taxi for the first time. I'm scared. But it's actually a very smooth ride. I feel actually like I'm in good hands. Flora, I don't know if you know this, but they're straight-up piping spa music in those cars as, I think, a relaxation tool.

• 1:42Flora Lichtman?

  I would need that to help relax me in a self-driving car.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  I did. I did. But my car did deliver me in one piece to Robin, which is one of the four restaurants in the US that is serving cultivated salmon. So I've been covering lab-grown meat for a while, but mostly it's been in the context of things that are meant to be cooked. So think like a beef patty or like a piece of chicken. This was going to be raw.

• 2:06Flora Lichtman?

  Did you have any hesitation about trying it?

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Um, honestly, no. I was just excited to be along for the ride, honestly.

• 2:15Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so take me there.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Okay, so the chef at the restaurant, his name is Adam Tortosa, he served me up two pieces of sushi. So one was traditional salmon and the other one was cultivated salmon, which is made by this company called Wild Type. So Wild Type is the only company that is making and selling lab-grown fish to restaurants in the US.

• 2:36Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, and how are they serving it at Robin?

• 2:39Speaker 02

  So the fish at Robin is served nigiri style, which is like a strip of raw fish on top of a little rectangle of rice. So I'm sitting at the bar, Chef Adam brings out the Wild Type salmon. And I have to say, the first thing that I noticed is that it has a blinding color.

• 2:56Flora Lichtman?

  Blinding how?

• 2:57Speaker 02

  It was bright orange.

• 3:00Flora Lichtman?

  Like in a yummy way?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  I, okay, my first thought was, oh, my God, this is Nemo on a plate. Like, it really did kind of look like a clownfish. It was bright orange. It had those little strips of white fat running through it. Which is similar to regular salmon, but that is the headspace that I was in going into this. Chef Adam did say, when I commented to him about this, that that orange color is a little closer to wild salmon. So maybe it's not as far off base as it struck me. Maybe I'm just getting crappy grocery store salmon.

• 3:32Flora Lichtman?

  Gray.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  That's where my head is at going into this. And so I had asked Chef Adam to make me the Wild Type salmon, like he serves it at his restaurant to guests. I wanted the full Robin experience. And that turned out to be very seasoned.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  We serve it with truffle butter, truffles that we preserve, truffle salt that we make.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  And I have to say, truffle's not my favorite flavor. I find it really overwhelming in a dish. It's hard not to think that the truffle is like masking something in the eating experience.

• 4:03Flora Lichtman?

  Could you taste the salmon, part of the salmon?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yes, so I recorded myself, obviously, and I tried it next to the regular salmon to compare. All right, I'm gonna try the Wild Type. Let's see.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I mean, it has the texture of salmon, for sure. But yeah, texture wise, I would say it's pretty spot on to what I've had before in a traditional salmon. So from what I could taste from the fish, it was mild. It wasn't too fishy. It didn't smell particularly strong and the texture was soft in the way that you would expect from sushi fish. And now I'll try the traditional salmon.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Okay, so the traditional salmon, almost more, and maybe this is just the other flavors that were going along with the other piece,

• 4:53Speaker 02

  almost a stronger salmon flavor in the traditionally grown salmon as opposed to the wild type.

• 4:58Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so it seems like it was fine. I mean, I don't know, is no news good news when it comes to lab grown fish?

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it definitely was not a bad experience, especially considering what Chef Adam told me about the first version of wild type that he tried.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  I got introduced to wild type, my guess is like five years ago, when they had like essentially a prototype and their prototype, to be honest, was like very bad. Like, this was a long time ago, right? And it was like wet beef jerky. That's like the best explanation I could give.

• 5:32Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so yay, it's not wet beef jerky now. How about Chef Adam? How did he describe the difference between the cultivated salmon and the, you know, traditional salmon?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was super curious about that and this is what Chef Adam said.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  I've touched like so much salmon in my life, probably more salmon than most people, I would say. So for me, it's like very obvious. The way that it breaks when you slice it or when you eat it is not exactly like real salmon because of the

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Textures of the meat or whatever, like it breaks a little different where this, where the wild type salmon breaks more rigid.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Chef Adam also said that the fish didn't react to heat like a normal piece of fish. So for example, he torched the piece of traditional salmon as part of its preparation, but he didn't do it with the wild type because he said it just didn't take well to torching, which is something that I heard from another chef as well. So I also talked to Renee Erickson. She's a chef in Seattle at another restaurant that serves wild type. The restaurant name is very Pacific Northwest. It is called The Walrus and The Carpenter.

• 6:39Flora Lichtman?

  Love it.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  So she serves wild type in a ceviche. So it's raw, it's all chopped up, it's very fresh. When I talked to her about what it's like to cook with wild type, she said, look, it's nothing like real salmon. It's not like a muscle that's been swimming for years. She actually said it cuts more like tofu than a fish, which I found super interesting.

• 6:56Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, that, that is really interesting. I mean, how does it do on the menu? Do people order this?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Renee, who's the chef in Seattle, she said she's been getting a pretty positive response from people who try it. She does say that her restaurant does cater to more of like an adventurous eating crowd. So at a baseline, people are probably going to be more open to try and cultivated meat. Chef Adam in San Francisco was a little bit more conservative. He said that the interest in trying it is about half and half with the people who come to his restaurant. And there's like 10 to 20% of people who are like, absolutely not, I'm not going to try that, there's no way.

• 7:31Flora Lichtman?

  Does he, or do you have a sense of what people's aversion is?

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that was a big thing I was curious about in reporting this story. And in talking to these chefs and other people in the industry, a common thread was that it can feel very biomedical. And that's a huge reason why most people in the industry really don't like to say lab grown meat when they're talking to the public.

• 7:53Flora Lichtman?

  Yeah, it's not great branding.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Not great branding. The more accepted terms are cultivated or cell cultured because those terms lean away from like the clinical nature of things.

• 8:03Flora Lichtman?

  Even cell cultured though, does feel a little clinical.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  I think you're right. And at the end of the day, it is a hurdle for people. I think it's easier to have a positive response at a restaurant that leans more into adventurous eating, but you know, that's not always the mood people are in when they eat out. And I did ask Chef Adam if theoretically he would consider having more menu items come from cultivated fish.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  So I would like to think I would say, yes, I could see a future where we have, whatever, 10% of the menu is three different types of cell cultured fish.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Granted, it all depends on guests' reaction at the end of the day. Like, we're here to make guests happy. So if they have positive reactions to it, then me personally, I'm happy to serve it. If for whatever reason, they don't react positively, then I don't think we would.

• 8:59Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, there, I mean, there are also states that ban lab meat, right?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so right now, there are restrictions on cultivated meat in seven states. These restrictions range from you can't sell it here to even, you can't even experiment on it in a lab setting. I will say that the folks that I talked to didn't seem terribly worried about these bans because right now, they're so limited.

• 9:23Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, so there are obviously some hurdles for mainstream consumption of cultured meat. But I know that the other big challenge is scalability. You know, can this scale?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  So I talked to Justin Kolbeck, he's co-founder and CEO of WildType. And he said that right now, in WildType's fishery, which is what they call their facility, they can produce less than 10 tons of meat per year. For context, millions of tons of salmon are eaten every year.

• 9:54Flora Lichtman?

  Right, so at their best, we're talking about a drop in the bucket.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it currently takes two to three weeks to make one fillet that's sushi chef-ready. And Justin says it's being priced to restaurants to be competitive with premium Pacific salmon. Chef Adam in San Francisco said it's on par with the most expensive fish that they buy, which is fatty tuna. And what I kept hearing from people on the industry side of things is that scaling up cell-cultured meat is really going to come down to money and investment. Because more money could mean, you know, like more innovation potential, improving product, helping new companies get off the ground. And actually, in general, a lot of biotech money has been rerouted to AI over the past few years. That's just been a general trend in this industry.

• 10:39Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, I mean, given all that, what is the goal here with lab meat?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I will say, everybody who I talked to who's in this industry said, "We know this is not going to replace traditional agriculture or traditional aquaculture. It's just not possible. There's always going to be a demand for like your traditional burger or your traditional chicken breast." The goal is that cultivated meat is just going to be another option available to people. And one thing I want to point out, too, is that the cultivated meat industry is really global. There is industry in Asia, in Europe, in Australia. There is a whole ecosystem for this outside of the US. And another thing that I came away from my reporting on this with was an understanding that the people involved in this really care a lot about the environment. A lot of the people I talked to were super passionate about sustainable

• 11:28Speaker 02

  fishing. So their particular interest in wild type is that maybe they can alleviate some of the pressure on the seafood industry. So for them, it's worth it to take a gamble on this product that maybe still needs a little bit of work, but they feel really encouraged by what they're seeing right now. And the people I talked to are super hopeful that this is going to become more normalized and more and more people are going to try it. And then they'll tell their friends, hey, I tried this interesting thing. And then it'll just kind of spread by word of mouth in some ways, too.

• 11:58Flora Lichtman?

  That's exactly what happened today. Now all of us know someone who's tried it. You.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. I'm happy to be your man on the inside for this one.

• 12:07Flora Lichtman?

  I appreciate it. Thank you for your fantastic reporting.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 12:12Flora Lichtman?

  Kathleen Davis, Science Friday producer and lab-grown meat correspondent.

• 12:21Flora Lichtman?

  Don't go away, because when we come back, we're serving up more food innovations from lab steaks to overlooked heirlooms.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  We design materials that look like, feel like a steak. And then when we put cells on them, that's where the flavor comes from.

• 12:36Flora Lichtman?

  Stay with us.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  Science Friday is supported by PBS, presenting Going Wild. If you love learning about the natural world and meeting the scientists who help us understand it, be sure to check out the new season of Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn-Grant. It's the chart-topping and Webby Award-winning podcast from the folks at Nature on PBS, now with a video companion series. In this season of Going Wild, host acclaimed wildlife ecologist Dr. Ray Wynn-Grant heads out into the field to explore the animals, people, and stories that make nature worth saving. Stops include a hibernating black bear den in And an underwater shipwreck site off the Florida coast. If you're looking for a place to start, check out the season's debut episode, where Ray joins beloved biologist and influencer Jordan King in the Florida Everglades

• 13:26Speaker 05

  to learn about his unlikely journey into science and how to study a wetland when it's not very, well, wet. So don't miss out. Follow Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wengrant on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:40Speaker 06

  Support for Science Friday comes from the Hyacinth Simons Foundation. Unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities. More at hsfoundation.org.

• 13:53Flora Lichtman?

  Our food science feast continues. And for the next course, how about a lab-grown steak with a side of mung beans? Last week, we took Science Friday on the road to Burlington, Vermont, for a special live event with our friends at Vermont Public. And the theme was "The Future of Food." So we're bringing you that conversation with two scientific tastemakers who are innovating food in very different ways. Alexis Yamashita is a community organizer studying food systems at the University of Vermont, and she's growing mung beans and trying to get them onto more plates in Burlington. And Dr. Rachel Floriani is a mechanical engineer at the University of Vermont, who cultivates meat in her lab. Welcome to Science Friday.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

• 14:38Flora Lichtman?

  Okay, Rachel, you're an engineer. How did you get into cultured meat?

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I started off in orthopedics, so designing hip implants, believe it or not. And it was five years ago that I had a student come into my lab, and he said, "You know, the things that you're looking at, trying to move away from plastic, engineering bones and muscles, you can make food." And I was like, "No, you can't. That's crazy." But after 24 hours on the internet, I found out he was actually right. And so I came from orthopedics, getting people back out on the golf course in the ski hill, to now trying to create steaks that have less of a carbon footprint and tastes good to everyone.

• 15:28Flora Lichtman?

  Is that the problem that you're trying to solve, sort of the carbon footprint problem?

• 15:32Speaker 04

  No, actually, it's a multifaceted problem and it's going to take everyone on board. Cultivated meat is just one of the solutions. The biggest thing for me coming from Vermont is trying to feed people, especially Vermonters. This is my community and one in 10 children go hungry every day. So that's sort of the goal here.

• 15:50Flora Lichtman?

  What is your lab's role and what do you do?

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we actually create the ingredient that goes into cultivated meat. So if I just took cells from your body, it would look like goop and that's not very appetizing. And in fact, let me retract, it's not coming from your body.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  So we have these cells and we have this goop and we take them from farm animals using anesthesia. But in order to have something like a steak or you go into a restaurant and it's familiar to you, it has to look like a steak. And so what we do is we design materials that look like, feel like a steak. And then when we put cells on them, that's where the flavor comes from.

• 16:33Flora Lichtman?

  Is that the scaffold?

• 16:34Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right.

• 16:36Flora Lichtman?

  And is the scaffold sort of like, I don't know exactly how to picture it. Should I be thinking of it as like the bone in a T-bone steak or is it something different?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a really good question. So it looks like a sponge. And if I were to ask you to close your eyes and touch this, you may have trouble like differentiating this from a steak. And so the idea is that really it has the same properties. That's where the mechanical engineering comes in. But it it's colorless and tasteless. And then it's up to nature and biology to actually turn this into something that we recognize.

• 17:11Flora Lichtman?

  Once you make the scaffold, what happens to it?

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the scaffold has to be cleaned and pasteurized, just like if we were to create any other food product. And then we put it into a soup pot, if you can imagine something like that. And in that soup pot is maybe some chicken broth. And that chicken broth has all the food and the nutrients and maybe we add a little fish.

• 17:34Speaker 07

  ...bubbler to it, okay? So the cells are getting the oxygen, they're getting all the food they need. And what they do is they find that little sponge and that becomes their little home. And so they stick to that sponge, they crawl inside of the sponge so that eventually, when you cut that scaffold open, it oozes.

• 17:53Flora Lichtman?

  It's not that appetizing when you put it that way.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  Use your imagination.

• 17:59Flora Lichtman?

  It oozes. Alexis, you are championing the mung bean.

• 18:04Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 18:06Flora Lichtman?

  Initiate us. Tell us why the mung bean.

• 18:09Speaker 07

  Why the mung bean? So in Vermont, we have many communities where mung beans are at the heart of their food cultures. And most of the mung beans that we have present in the United States are actually produced internationally and imported in. So that is really at the heart of my work is to really cultivate a local scene where we have mung bean seeds, you know, integrated into our gardens, our farming, and really to be able to serve more broader communities in food access with their culturally relevant foods.

• 18:49Flora Lichtman?

  Are they, where are they native to?

• 18:51Speaker 07

  So mung beans are native and grow in many different areas, predominantly in East Asia, Southeast Asia, but also Africa as well.

• 19:04Flora Lichtman?

  Do they grow well here?

• 19:05Speaker 07

  Yes, they actually grow really well here. And right now, my work, we have trialed over 50 different varieties of mung beans here locally for the past two years. And many of those varieties are very happy in Vermont.

• 19:21Flora Lichtman?

  Are they like heirloom mung beans? Like, should I think of them that way? Like what I would find at the farmer's market with tomatoes? Or what's the difference between them?

• 19:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, so they are, many of the varieties are what people call heirloom. And heirloom, there is not a unified definition of what that means. It just means a old variety that's been around for many years. Many of the varieties we're working with are open pollinated. So what that means is that farmers and gardeners can actually save seed from these varieties and grow their own mung beans. And as we know, the more that farmers and gardeners are engaging with the seeds, growing them locally, they're going to adapt and be stronger to our region.

• 20:05Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm. I know that you're both focused on protein. How does that fit into sort of the grand scheme of the problems you're trying to solve?

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of the problems, I guess, that we're trying to solve is multifold, but the increase in the world's population is going to put more of a demand on food or more of a demand on how to be more efficient with the food that we do have. But in terms of the protein, a lot of it comes from culture. There's a lot of data out there saying that it would be easy if everyone just became vegetarian. That's not going to happen, right? Like, so in order, yeah, and in order to get around that, we, we are just trying to make it familiar. It's almost like this healthy indulgence. And the, the focus on protein, and we have now, what? Protein infused like cheese puffs or something?

• 20:59Speaker 04

  It's, it really is like how you receive the protein and you don't necessarily need it for meat, but that's what people want.

• 21:05Flora Lichtman?

  What about you, Alexis?

• 21:07Speaker 07

  So one fun fact, the common Beyond Burgers that we see, just eggs on the shelf. One of the main plant-based proteins in those products is actually mung bean. So, yeah, so, and I know there are other products out there too that are in line with that. So there is, you know, interest really emerging because of the protein nutrient density that mung beans have to also looking at including them in products that are trying to really advocate for more plant-based diets and alternative proteins.

• 21:42Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm. I mean, when you guys go to food sustainability conferences, is there a rivalry between the veggie people and the meatheads?

• 21:52Speaker 04

  I don't, to be, that's a really good question.

• 21:55Flora Lichtman?

  I feel like you're hesitating.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  I am a little bit. So, I'm gonna choose the academic route.

• 22:01Flora Lichtman?

  No, no, no.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:04Flora Lichtman?

  Uh-uh. People paid to be here.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine. So then if we, if we talk about those conferences where you have these companies that are trying to make a lot of money off of this, to be honest, there's a lot of collaboration because the, the idea is really to feed more people and to do it in a healthier way. And so, if we can all just work together, and it's really hard to convert people's diets, so.

• 22:28Speaker 07

  So, really, I have never honestly sensed a rivalry, but really, like, how can we work together? And I will echo what Rachel said about, you know, it is also really hard to ask somebody to change their food preferences. So I think, really, instead of asking people to change their food preferences, it's a matter of us going, okay, how can we honor those food preferences? But, you know, also, what we're talking about, and even some of the points to Rachel is mentioning, we're gonna need diversification of solutions. And really, when I think about how that pertains to my work, is also embracing many new and

• 23:12Speaker 07

  innovative uses for mung beans, too.

• 23:14Flora Lichtman?

  Let's go to a question from the audience. Go ahead.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, Rachel, I'm a molecular biologist, and so when I think about tissue organization, their cells communicating and talking to each other, when they come together, like, just having cells glum together is not quite the same as a tissue in an organ. So, what's the engineering solution to that?

• 23:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is a really great question. So I mentioned the mouth feel and trying to get those same properties that we would get in steak, but if we talk about how nature grows, it grows on a substrate, and that substrate kinda dictates what type of tissue develops. And so, your bones and your muscles and your tendons all come from one cell that starts to differentiate. So what I actually use is whey protein. It's upcycled from Cabot Creamery, and I...

• 24:04Speaker 04

  Luck, I guess, but I was the first one to show that we can actually grow muscle cells on a whey protein scaffold. We don't have to use collagen. One of the reasons for that is we're trying not to kill animals in this process. But if I can make that scaffold or that sponge hard, then I can start to get bone. But if I make that scaffold or that sponge squishy, then I start to get fat. And we almost need all of that when we talk about meat. So that's where the, that's where the mechanical engineering comes in. Yeah.

• 24:35Flora Lichtman?

  Where are we with scaling cultured meat? Like, what, what are the goals around how big this should be or can be? And like, what is it going to take to get there?

• 24:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a really good question. So when cultivated meat research started off, it followed the same process as the pharmaceutical methods, which are actually quite expensive. And so that model was not going to work. And then we looked at the vaccine, uh, community and scale up. And we were like, okay, well, how do people do that? And so the scale is actually a huge problem because in the beginning, you didn't have a cohesive team working together to solve these problems. So the industry unfortunately keeps sort of hitting these walls and bringing more people to the table, but it'll take some time.

• 25:19Flora Lichtman?

  Let's go over here to the audience. I'm sorry, but this is an unfortunate question. Will climate change help or hurt the mung bean?

• 25:27Speaker 07

  Oh, that is a good question. Uh, so I think, uh, the answer I will choose for that tonight, uh, to be a little concise, is that the mung bean can help us really adapt to climate change. So, uh, what I'm doing with mung bean is really working closely with farmers and gardeners to make sure that the breeding efforts, the trialing, are going to happen in their fields. And when you have the actual breeding efforts, you know, working closely with the people that will be growing them in the environments, the seed will adapt to those environments. So this is how we can strengthen our seed access.

• 26:13Speaker 07

  Locally to also really be able to navigate climate change. So, yeah, when I think about like, will climate change hurt or help the mung bean? I like to think about that they are extremely adaptive and they can really help us.

• 26:33Flora Lichtman?

  You are serving a community, people who want this in their diet. But how do you know when you're testing all these different varieties that you have a tasty one?

• 26:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, and that is a really good question. So as a part of the work, really what we're looking at is really asking the people, what makes a good mung bean and taste texture? And we're going to use this information to then inform variety selection. So texture is very important. And with the specific community members that we were working with, they like a soft, smooth texture and almost kind of creamy too.

• 27:13Flora Lichtman?

  We've got a question from the audience. Go ahead. Rachel, this is a question for you. Are there any differences in health implications or nutrients from a live grown meat

• 27:21Speaker 04

  as opposed to a traditional animal produced meat?

• 27:24Speaker 07

  That is a really good question. It depends on the nutrients that you're looking at. So the amino acid profile will be there. But if you're looking at other components that come from the vasculature or the blood in red meat, that would be difficult to actually mimic. The ability that we have in this technology of cultivated meat is to make it more nutritious. So you can imagine, what if we had meatballs and SpaghettiOs? Okay, so SpaghettiOs are one of those things that are sold at a gas station that families that live in remote areas will have to get to. What if we could actually cultivate the little meatball that's in there and make it three, four times as dense, nutrient dense? So that is something that we have the ability to do.

• 28:09Flora Lichtman?

  I think we have time for one more audience question. Go ahead.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  I know this is going out to a national audience, so maybe answer this with lowered voices, but how do we keep this in Vermont or for the, into the regional food system?

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's a really good question. Here in Vermont, we have a lot of farmers and I come from a farming community. They are some of the most innovative, passionate, caring people that I know. And if we can just embrace that community and welcome technology and science into that, then I think we can have a very strong footprint. Absolutely. There is no reason why we have to go to Boston or San Francisco. And that's why I started my company. So I'm a professor, but I saw this talent leaving the state because there weren't jobs here. If we can do something like food tech, people are really passionate about food. What's in their food? Where does food come from? We have something here now in Vermont to keep that talent here, raise their families, get more elementary schools.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's sort of the goal.

• 29:15Flora Lichtman?

  Yeah, I mean, I think I'm curious about that, too, just sort of how both of your efforts fit into the bigger picture. I mean, you brought up hunger right at the beginning. And like even in Lab Made, for example,'s biggest incarnation, it feels like a piece, right? Not like the whole solution. And I want to know how you think about that, like where you think it's most effective.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  I think it'll be most effective if we look at fast food chains, actually, and in restaurants, college campuses, where there is a lot of food that's going out. But for me, it's not just food security or making more food, it's food access. That's a big reason why I'm doing this, is that if we can get it to a price where it's cheaper and we can make way more meatballs or something here in Burlington, then imagine the power we have to take that to a food shelf or something. So that's, that's really the driver of why I'm doing it.

• 30:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think really bringing this all together is really looking at regionally based work. Commonly, people think about grapes, you know, and wine of how the flavor is really tied to the environmental conditions that they are grown in. This is food across the board, including mung beans. Because as we know, a lot of the like industrial food out there, when it's bred for transportation and make sure it doesn't bruise, it can stay fresh long, but not necessarily the taste. So if we are naturally breeding to get mung beans into our local system that fit taste preference and taste good, the climate adaptation

• 30:53Speaker 07

  will follow. So that is really at the heart of my work is having local mung beans, but local mung beans that taste amazing.

• 31:04Flora Lichtman?

  I think that's a perfect place to leave it. Thank you both.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 31:07Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 31:10Flora Lichtman?

  Alexis Yamashita is a community organizer and PhD student in food systems at the University of Vermont, and Dr. Rachel Floriani is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Vermont.

• 31:27Flora Lichtman?

  Today's episode was produced by Kathleen Davis and Rasha Aridi. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.