At first glance it looks like meat. It smells, tastes and is even juicy like meat, but it is not. It is a dish developed with special technologies and vegetable base.It's not about futurology, there's nothing science fiction about it. On the contrary, the proliferation of "unconventional" foods is already a concrete, booming and "edible" reality.To a large extent, product of a global demographic explosion that will go up and a supply of "real" food that will not be enough to cover that demand.Faced with this context, more and more technological, scientific and entrepreneurial people are embarking on the development of products that can supply ingredients of animal origin. The first simulatorsAmong the pioneering companies in this sector, Impossible Foods stands out, offering vegetable burgers with the same taste as meat. In the last edition of the fair, CES presented its hamburger Impossible Burger 2.0, as it showed in iProUP video."This company uses technology based on a substitute for hemoglobin, which is capable of deceiving the brain, it is a protein of natural substance found in the roots of some plants and in the blood of animals. , but our mind thinks that it is flesh, "explains Giuseppe Scionti, CEO and founder of Novameat, in dialogue with iProUP.But not only companies in the food industry are watching this company closely: Bill Gates is one of the main drivers of these projects, so much so that he has already invested 75 million dollars in Impossible Foods.Another of the cases that are marking the way is BeyondMeat, whose objective is to contribute so that global meat consumption decreases 25% this year.Uses soy and legume proteins to recreate the taste, texture and nutrition of the meat. They have proposals that perfectly mimic chicken, with its BeyondChicken product; to beef, with BeyondBeef; and the hamburgers, with TheBeasts, in whose development they have intervened until the New York Mets.For its part, Novameat, the Scionti project, tries to recreate the flavor and texture of hamburgers through a fibrous microstructure that is made with a very advanced technology used to make animal-like fabrics."This idea came about when I worked as a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, where we generated artificial human tissues to implant them, and through bioprinting, I adapted that technology to build a piece of meat, but only with ingredients of vegetable origin," he recalls. This Italian scientist.Recently, he was invited to participate in a project in Barcelona. There he completed his first prototype and patented the technology."I founded my company in November 2018. For now, we are only in Barcelona and our plan is to expand to other countries in Europe and the US We also intend to reach Argentina," Scionti told iProUP.This expert in tissue engineering told a revealing fact: prestigious European chefs are testing their developments to advise on the texture and flavor of their creations.Cultured meatIn addition to the "veal vegetable", the industry also began to explore the meats "in vitro" or "cultivated".The first hamburger created in the laboratory was cooked and eaten in London. This was the debut of the project led by Mark Post, a researcher at the University of Maastricht, in the Netherlands, who studied for years the possibility of making synthetic meat through the cultivation of bovine stem cells.In this case, the creation process lasts three months. The stem cells of the muscles of the animals are collected with a simple biopsy and then "fed and reared" in the laboratory.Also with this technology stands Just, an American firm that offers chicken nuggets made from the cells of a chicken feather. The production of these snacks takes approximately two days and takes place in a small bioreactor.At the local level, Granja Celular stands out, an Argentine project led by Sofía Giampaoli, ITBA chemical engineer, who works with biologist Carolina Bluguerman, of Conicet.The initiative produces meat obtained through cultivation in a reactor of stem cells of animal origin, a technique that is in the experimentation phase in only three countries: Israel, the Netherlands and the United States."At Granja Cellular we make meat without killing animals, we replicate the biological process that the stem cells undergo in the animal, but in a bioreactor, which is a tank with the right environment to achieve cell growth," Giampaoli explains to iProUP.And he remarks: "Although the process on an industrial scale has not yet been developed, in the laboratory we perform a microbiopsy on the animal to obtain the stem cells and, in a suitable culture medium, we proliferate them. difference in muscle and adipose tissue ",Giampaoli became interested and worried from a young age due to the suffering of animals and the environmental impact generated by meat consumption, due to the scarcity or poor distribution of food."In 2013, I learned that they had developed the first prototype of cellular meat, which was exceptional because it has the potential to be more sustainable, healthier and more ethical." I decided, then, to carry out an undertaking to bring meat to the world. cellular from Argentina ", the scientist is proud.It's not just about meatsIn addition to meat, there are other companies that are developing vegetable replacements of other foods of animal origin using technology.An example is Clara Foods, which uses a yeast genetically modified to create a liquid very similar to egg white.Another case is Muufri, who created a substitute for cow's milk, with the same proteins, fats, minerals and sugars. To do so, he genetically modified yeast, with the addition of synthetic bovine DNA.In Latin America there is also another interesting player that is stomping: NotCo, a Chilean company that already has a presence in Colombia and Brasill, which iProUP already gave an account of."We are doing the tests in Argentina to launch, there, our products as soon as possible," said Sebastián Álvarez, general manager for Argentina of NotCo.In addition, he adds that his company's goal is to change the way food is produced."For that we use artificial intelligence, because it gives us a new way of understanding what foods are made of, then we combine ingredients from the vegetable world and replicate the flavors that we love so much," says the manager.However, he clarifies: "The most important thing is that we work so that the food maintains the same behavior, in other words, we want the NotMilk to taste like milk, boil like milk and have a nutritional profile equal to or better than milk. that philosophy applies to each of our developments. "This company has already launched NotMayo, based on a combination of vegetables with a taste similar to traditional mayonnaise. For this, they use Giussepe, an artificial intelligence algorithm that maps the chemical composition of plants to find replacements in the plant world."In Chile we already have 10% of the market share of mayonnaise In Argentina, we are in the stage of manufacturing tests and finalization of NotMayo records, with which I could say that the arrival is imminent. the rest of the products the idea is to launch them first in Chile and then expand to the rest of the countries, "reveals Álvarez.As they anticipate, they will soon launch a series of vegetable replicas of NotMilk products (milk), NotIcecream (ice cream), NotYogurt (yogurt) and Notcheese (cheese spreadable)."We developed a revolutionary, efficient, sustainable and economic solution that vertically integrates science and technology to produce healthy and sustainable versions of traditional foods from plants", summarizes the NotCo manager in dialogue with iProUP.Although entrepreneurs, scientists and even large corporations are betting on this innovative sector, there are still several obstacles to overcome. Among them, the regulatory framework of some countries that must adapt and approve these new developments."I think you need to realize that the problems we mentioned earlier will come very early, before we think," says the founder of Novameat.For Álvarez, the sector's potential is enormous and grows as people become more aware of the importance of understanding what they eat and how it impacts their health.And it closes: "Probably, in our region, that consciousness about food is a little more backward and that is why, except for NotCo, not in Latin America an intensive use of technology to help design food. arrive".