Have you ever tried chicken rice or pork rice? Is it meat or rice?

Do you know "chicken rice" and "pork rice"? I heard that they are more nutritious and delicious than ordinary rice. If this new type of rice is on the market, would you buy it?

How to achieve the combination of rice and meat?

Chicken rice and pork rice are new types of rice that combine meat and rice, which were successfully developed by my country's food research team. They are a combination food produced by the organic combination of cell-cultured meat with rice, millet and purple rice.

Chicken rice and pork rice production process

The uniqueness of chicken and pork rice is that they contain the nutrients of meat in their rice grains. The research team used a unique treatment method to transform ordinary rice into a "scaffold" that can support the growth of meat cells. Then cells were extracted from chicken or pork and allowed to grow on the rice "scaffold"...

This process may sound incredible, but it is actually feasible. Researchers used the characteristics of chicken and pig muscle and chicken and pig fat cells to grow on the wall, and pre-treated rice, millet and purple rice as scaffolds to provide a microenvironment for the growth of pig and chicken cells, allowing the cells to proliferate and differentiate on their surface, eventually forming chicken rice and pork rice.

So, how is this new type of rice different from the ordinary rice we usually eat?

Chicken rice, pork rice series food

In appearance, chicken rice and pork rice have no obvious difference from the corresponding rice, millet or purple rice, but after steaming and cooking, they have the aroma of both rice and meat. It is reported that chicken rice and pork rice retain the dietary fiber, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals in rice, while supplementing the essential amino acids for the human body and increasing animal protein, making the nutrition richer and more balanced.

Some people may ask: "Does adding some artificial meat to rice make it nutritionally balanced? Meat fried rice and minced meat steamed rice are also nutritionally balanced foods. Wouldn't a mouthful of meat and a mouthful of rice be delicious? Even if you put some broth in the rice, it will have the aroma of both rice and meat!"

There are many people on the Internet who regard chicken rice and pork rice as "black technology". They believe that instead of spending time on this kind of technology, it is better to study natural crops that are resistant to high temperatures, severe cold and disasters. Increasing grain production is more reliable than studying these things.

Are chicken rice and pork rice really just gimmicky and useless products? In the long run, obviously not.

When will it be served on the public table?

The pork and chicken in chicken rice and pork rice are somewhat different from those we buy in the market. Although the chicken and pork cells used for synthesis are extracted from conventional meat, it is still necessary to use technology to direct the reproduction and differentiation of meat cells, which is a brand new "new meat". Finally, edible and nutritionally balanced meat rice products are obtained.

Moreover, during the targeted breeding process, researchers can accurately control the content of nutrients such as animal protein, essential amino acids, dietary fiber, carbohydrates, etc., which is difficult to achieve in daily life.

For normal and healthy people, the value of these rices is not very prominent, but for some groups with restricted dietary and nutritional needs, this provides them with a new channel to ingest the unique nutrients of meat.

For example, patients who have undergone oral, maxillofacial or throat surgery can only eat liquid food to avoid chewing and speed up wound healing after surgery, and cannot supplement the nutrients needed for meat. Chicken rice and pork rice can make up for the lack of meat nutrition during their liquid food period.

In addition, some people only lack one or several of the various nutrients in meat, and can only continue to eat meat on a regular basis. If all the nutrients in meat are supplemented together, the body will inevitably have adverse reactions caused by excess other nutrients.

By mastering the targeted cultivation technology, we can accurately provide the specific nutrients and content that the eaters lack. This can not only meet the nutritional needs of the eaters, but also avoid the side effects of other nutritional excesses, and effectively meet the personalized food needs of groups with special nutritional needs.

Chicken rice and pork rice are closer to the category of functional food, and current research on functional food is one of the hot topics around the world. In addition, conducting such research is also in line with an important trend in future agricultural development.

As the population grows, animal protein production will no longer be enough to meet human demand

The cell-cultured meat technology used in the production of chicken rice and pork rice is a new type of food synthetic biology technology that has emerged in recent years. It obtains muscle, fat and other tissues through large-scale cultivation of animal cells, and then produces meat products through food processing.

From the initial research on cell-cultured meat by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to providing edible meat to space stations and astronauts to the present day, it has gone through more than 20 years of development. Now, many institutions in my country have also begun conducting research in this area.

In 2019, the technology was selected as one of the top ten breakthrough technologies for humanity by MIT Technology Review. It is considered to be one of the most likely solutions to future human meat production and has extremely high potential commercial value.

Finding alternative sources of protein or improving the efficiency of traditional livestock production is crucial and may be one of the most important things facing humanity in the future. In the coming decades, as the global population increases, the production of food and animal protein will not be able to meet basic human needs. Take China as an example. According to statistical analysis, my country's dependence on imports of meat protein has become increasingly serious.

Cell cultured meat

In addition, traditional farmed meat will also bring environmental pollution, excessive resource consumption, animal welfare and other issues, resulting in major uncertainty and demand crisis in traditional food production and meat supply in the future. Therefore, it is urgent to find alternatives to meat products, and the development of cell-cultured meat is of great significance. From the supply perspective alone, cell-cultured meat is not affected by natural disasters, infectious diseases and other factors, and the supply is more stable. The production cycle can also be reduced from 9 months to about 1 month, making production conditions and prices controllable.

In addition, in the process of large-scale livestock breeding, there is a widespread phenomenon of preventive use of antibiotics, which has led to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria and other pathogenic factors, and the residues of antibiotics, hormones and other substances in meat products, which in turn lead to the use of meat by humans and animals, causing serious harm to human health. The strict cultivation environment of cell-cultured meat can eliminate viruses from the source, and there is no need for preventive use of antibiotics, which can reduce the risk of infection from zoonotic diseases.

Although cell-cultured meat has great potential, humans have more than just nutritional needs for food. Only when cell-cultured meat has advantages in safety, nutrition, cost, etc. can it become a real substitute for meat products. Otherwise, it can only remain at the stage of alternative. Therefore, cell-cultured meat still has a long way to go.

The research and development of chicken rice and pork rice is an exploration and practice of the future food product form using cell-cultured meat technology, and it is also a display of the diversified application scenarios of cell-cultured meat technology. As for when they will be available on the market, chicken rice and pork rice are still in the laboratory. In order to enable them to achieve commercial production as soon as possible and meet people's diversified consumer needs, the relevant R&D team is still conducting in-depth research on the basic science and engineering technology of cell-cultured meat.