Mushroom growers turn to laboratory meat

Evocative, a startup that makes packaging material based on mushrooms for Ikea, is now turning to laboratory-grown meat. The texture of mushroom stems is said to be perfect for ‘growing’ steak.

Mushroom stems become ‘meat’

Using a new platform called MycoFlex, Evocative is able to create a customisable foam-like product. The thick, elastic foam is made of mushroom stems, for which the scientific name is mycelium. It is now being tested as a candidate for growing lab meat: “The most important function of mycelium is going from a single-cell organism to a 3D structure,” according to CEO Eben Bayer in an interview with Business Insider. “We’ve grown animal cells on them and they have developed very well.”

The trouble with lab meat so far has been the texture: scientists do succeed at cultivating animal fat and muscle cells, but in order to get from that to a meat product such as a hamburger or a steak, the current process consists mostly of pressing the cells together. By growing the cells on the mushroom base, a more natural and ‘meaty’ structure is developed. That innovation could also be used for vegetarian meat replacers, such as the ‘bleeding’ Impossible Burgers. “Those companies could use our base and impregnate it with their own ingredients and flavours”, according to Bayer.

Outside of the food industry there are other possible applications. Evocative already created the first MycoFlex product back in April: a leathery bag. Before that, the company had been developing packaging material for Ikea and Dell based on mushrooms as a substitute for styrofoam.