As a pescatarian, I’ve always had a slightly uneasy relationship with foods designed to look and taste like meat. It made little logical sense. By eating it, I wasn’t harming the animal. But I think what unsettled me was the symbolism of it. I may not be actually eating it, but I’m still pretending to. And yet we don’t eat things that are imitations of things like human flesh, or our beloved pets, do we?
Still, for many, lab-grown meat represents something rather promising: a way to enjoy familiar and even beloved foods while reducing animal cruelty and lessening the environmental impact of traditional meat production. It might even be healthier for us.
So when the opportunity recently arose at Web Summit to speak with Dr. Uma Valeti — cardiologist, co-founder, and CEO of UPSIDE Foods — I was eager to have the conversation.
Founded in 2015, UPSIDE Foods created its first cultivated meatball in 2016, followed by cultivated chicken in 2017, both grown directly from animal cells with no slaughter required. Earlier this year, the company’s lab was also featured in a video by none other than MrBeast.
What follows is a video of our conversation.
