This Futuristic Food Invention Is A Game Changer, According To Andrew Zimmern

If you ever feel guilty cooking or eating meat due to the ecological or moral implications but still can't seem to give it up, there's some good news from a brand called Good Meat. Before you get the wrong idea, this isn't another Impossible Burger. It's actual meat, but it's sustainable and ethical because it's grown in a lab from a single cell (via Twitter).

According to the founder and CEO of Eat Just, Josh Tetrick, whose company is behind the Good Meat brand, the goal was "real chicken and real beef that didn't require killing an animal, that didn't require using a single drop of antibiotics. And that's broadly a process called cellular agriculture" (via CNBC). That process involves taking a cell from a live chicken, feeding it nutrients, and leaving it to mature for about two weeks, after which it becomes raw minced meat! The quest to make the meat market more sustainable and minimize the harmful effects of industrial farming on the environment is unfortunately slow-going as the company struggles to get regulatory approval to sell the cultured meat to the public. 

After two years, a lab-grown Good Meat chicken nugget became available for $17 in Singapore, a "big turning point" according to American chef and writer Andrew Zimmern, who hailed the achievement on Twitter. The former Bizarre Foods host urged people to "remember it." However, the company didn't actually start with the chicken... It started with the egg.

Back in 2018, years before Good Meat would launch its first cultured chicken, Tetrick's umbrella brand Eat Just launched a plant-based egg substitute called JUST Egg that boasted it was "egg-free and dairy-free, with no cholesterol, [and] no artificial flavors" (via BusinessWire). If that sounds too good to be true and still tasty, you might want to look at the online reviews. According to Walmart.com, 88 percent of customers would recommend it, with 43 five-star ratings out of 52 total as of this writing. Meanwhile, on Amazon, JUST Egg has over 9,000 reviews and 4.5 stars.

Unlike Good Meat, JUST Egg is made entirely of plants, mainly mung bean, so the taste won't be as accurate as their chicken nugget. However, as Just Culinary Team stated the same overarching: "to find more sustainable solutions to feed our growing population in a safe and healthy way" (via Thrillist). So, while you may have to wait a while for your first bite of Good Meat's cultured chicken nuggets, you can start supporting that worthy mission now by finding JUST Egg at a store or restaurant near you using their handy online tool (via JUST Egg).