All right, Chris and I are here at the Spotify studios.We just finished a rehearsal for tomorrow's dinnertime live.Uh, that's every Tuesday, 4 PM Pacific standard time.And we just recorded a great interview with Big Brain.
Big, big brain, Eric Schultz.We worked together on Prolific Machines.You're going to learn a little bit about that, but more about the reason I'm interested in cultivated meats and giving you a brief primer.
And I think I have somewhat of a good understanding of it.
Yeah, I understand much better after that.This is a good interview.
Yeah.And we're going to do a quick moif after that. Welcome to The Dave Chang Show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network, presented by Make It Daily Media.Thank you to Yola Tango as always.
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We finished that episode was a lot of fun.And, uh, it was with fortune Feimster and Rachel, Rachel bloom.Um, and the next episode is, uh, drinks and hors d'oeuvres because that's what happens in the holiday season.
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And let's get in an interview with Eric Schultze.He is a professional molecular biologist who led the world's first cultivated meat cell line. And the first cultivated meat food product design team, uh, I he's worked on the federal level.
He's extremely well-rounded.He's also a great cook.We're going to have them on.I want to say many times, just a good guy.I think that we want to have Eric on to give you a, just a brief primer.
very simplest possible introduction to the world of lab-grown, which is not the term, self-cultivated meats.
It's a conversation that is happening right now among smart, smart, smart people, and it is going to affect every single one of us.This was super informative for me.
Let's take a break and we'll get into the interview with Eric Schultz. This episode is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve.Half the fun of traveling is getting to eat delicious new foods.
But if you really want to make your next trip special, get the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
You can earn three times the points on travel and dining, and more importantly, you can get access to Sapphire dining events for one-of-a-kind experiences, from curated restaurant collaborations to VIP access to popular events.
If you want more from every bite, this is how it happens. Learn more at chase.com slash Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.Terms apply.This episode is brought to you by Vital Farms.
No matter how you like your eggs scrambled over easy or sunny side up, the people at Vital Farms believe in one thing. keeping it bullshit free.
That's why their pasture-raised eggs come from hens who each have over 108 square feet of space to roam and forage all year round.So you can spend less time questioning your food and more time enjoying it.
Look for Vital Farms in your grocery store and learn more at vitalfarms.com.Vital Farms, keeping it bullshit free. Well, Eric, when you were in elementary school, did they ever think that one day you would be in the food world as you are today?
Did you ever think that you were going to be?What did you want to do when you were a kid in school?
Man, I didn't know.I'm a first-generation college grad.I grew up in a really poor family.Like, I didn't know.Actually, you know, the thing that I thought would get me out, you can't tell this person right now, but I'm very tall.Very tall.
I'm very tall.Intimidatingly so.My way out was sports.
Hold on, hold on. You may be smaller in stature, but your fucking brain is way goddamn bigger.
Let's be honest here.Let's be honest.You've tried my products.I have.Let's be honest.
Of the three, what you lack in stature, you gained in intelligence.But you're a doctor.
I am a doctor.The only people who call me doctor are my parents and apparently you.I mean, if I was a doctor, I'd be a fucking doctor. No, no, no.Actually, I only really make people call me doctor if I don't like them.
If I introduce someone as a snicker or smig, I'll just be like, my name is Dr. Schulze.That's Dr. Schulze to you.And then they inevitably say Dr. Schultz.And you played sports?What sports?Played basketball and water polo and high line.
No, I'm kidding.I just played basketball.So my way out of the cornfields of Texas was sports.But I also realized I was really good at school.
What age were you like, everyone's so dumb and I'm so smart?
So apparently my parents knew this pretty early on.Like they had, they secretly had my, my school had me and my brothers IQ tested really young and they were, they told my parents and that they, we were very high up.
Um, and my parents were like, where, where the hell did they get it from?Not from us.Um, although we know that it's almost always maternally inherited.So your intelligence.
No, actually I didn't know it was maternally inherited.
Is that a real thing?That's a real thing.Intelligence is maternal?I have a PhD in genetics, yes.Whoa.Now, environment matters, but the framework of your intelligence.
But how much environment versus what's in your genetic code?
Currently, it's somewhere between 60% and 80%.Environment.No, no, is genetic.
That's what I thought.I can always blame that.
Um, but then you get like, you know, like some things only come from your father like your like metabolism and stuff like that All the horrible traits that I have Yeah, generally come from the dad Can I ask just like off topic because you know I do the stuff with amazon football and tony gonzalez And his brother the hall of fame tight end They're like genetic freaks he's an adonis and fast and
He's brilliant too, but it's really the athletic perfection.And I was like, so you must have a long lineage of just like people that crush.He's like, no, my parents are tiny.And there's nobody.
But like, but in that same category of like, how much can one predict or is it completely random to some degree?
Oh, it's very predictable.I mean, you have a child, young child, right? So you can have the wrist bones x-rayed, and they can measure the thickness of the growth plates.
And then from there, they can pretty accurately estimate how tall you're going to be, assuming a perfect diet.
But what about the intelligence?
Intelligence?Is that as random as that too?Man, probably not.We don't, we are, I mean, look, we're guessing at, you know, with ChachiPT, how it thinks.We don't even know how it thinks because we don't even know how we think.
That, yeah, that's right. But we know, for example, over 300 genes alone that we know of control height.But eye color is only three or four.So it's very easy to predict.But your height, very hard to predict just by looking at one or two genes.
You have to look at everything.And just nobody does that.
And the intelligence maybe came from your mom.But for whatever reason, between the three of you brothers, it just was a perfect storm of we're smarter than everybody.
Trust me, I've spent a lot of time in therapy trying to figure out what happened.I don't know.No, the thing that my parents did really, really well was they didn't disinhibit our creativity and curiosity.
My mom was an artist, and my dad worked in TV.And so they really liked creative things.We just happened to be curious about everything around us because we didn't have anything to do.We couldn't buy any toys.We had to make our own fun.
So me and my brothers would just like learn wherever we could and go to the library.This is right before the internet.I'm an elder millennial.How much food did you guys go through?
Now we're getting to the real questions.As a family of what, five?
How close in age are you guys?
Uh, 18 months and then four years.Uh, so yeah, four years.
There's a period of time where it's like 17, uh, 13, 12, right?Just like three.Yeah.17, 16, 13, 16, 16, 13, just three.I'm really missing that smart gene mom.
We had to have an entire separate fridge in our garage just for milk.We just drank, like we just grabbed it and assigned ourselves and we would just drink it straight out.I feel really bad.
But you defied, you defied genetics too.I mean, we're going to talk about all these other things, trust me, in a second, but.
Really do we get a genuine smart person we got people that think that are smart that we finally get to confirm some long held theories here renaming the show myth busters all can you force growth by drinking a lot of milk.
Formative years and milk that was not organic that i'm sure had bovine growth hormone in it.
All milk's going to have that in it.
No, I didn't even know that.
Oh yeah.It all, it all has, it's all going to have growth hormone in it.
Uh, it's just, you know, again, how much where it's coming from, but would it, would that in theory make you bigger bovine growth hormone?
If you injected it into your veins, yes, it would.If you eat it, no.
So whether or not this is true, Dave ran an experiment on himself as a young lad.
Yeah, everyone in my family is basically 5'8 and size eight shoe.And I got tired of my older brother kicking the shit out of me.And I was like, I'm just gonna eat a lot of beef and I'm gonna drink a gallon of whole milk every day.
My man.For like six years straight, I did. So older brothers of control, in our experiment here, our man here drank a gallon of whole milk.The most BGH of milks.
Yeah.There's nothing, I mean.
And he was mainlining anabolic steroids.
And like, so like, you know, I'm exactly like six feet.Yeah.And my shoe size is 13.Right.And it's weird.
And it can't necessarily make you exceed your genetic potential.But what it did is, what it probably means is
Almost certainly means is that you have genetic potential to be this tall and have that like the the tall large all that is there but You have to basically feed it if you will and you did that is your limitless, bro So somewhere in your line somebody had these genes and maybe they were lying dormant in you and they might be you know in
some of your other family, but they didn't do what you did.And you, so you did this and also, you know, again, steroids will help.So now's the time to tell everyone, you know, the truth.
Wait till I'm on steroids.I can't wait.Um, well, listen.
I, this has been a crazy preamble to get to this point, but I think it was worth it because you're one of the few individuals that could actually explain to an audience genetics and genetics and food and all of the things you've been working on to get to this point in cultivated meats, where we work sort of not together, but helping out in the same company.
But before we get there, we met when we were filming Next Thing You Eat on Hulu that Disney took down. Bob, he was at the, at the time he was at, um, upside, which was before that was called Memphis meets and we ate chicken breast.That's right.
And he cooked it up.It was extremely down to earth and he was able to explain, you know, to, to dumb, dumb, like me, like what was going on.
And I heard some phrases for the first time that I like assumed that like, you know, I was like, yeah, of course I know that.I don't, scaffolding, it's like the building scaffolding.But you're right.But that was it.Yeah, sort of, but not.At all.
Listen, I'm trying to give you credit here.
Most people would think scaffolding, which we'll talk about in a second.Well, like the building scaffolding, absolutely not. You know, sure bud reactors, you're thinking like a nuclear reactor, like, no, absolutely not.
None of these things are, it's just a completely different world.But, um, I had, you know, we had a couple self cultivated items during that show and it was.
The one thing that everyone asked me post show, it was also film peak pandemic, different vibe, but everyone was asking me like, what was it?
And all the talk shows I did to promote afterward, every, every talk show host was like, what was that about?How do you summarize cell cultivated meats in the, you know, like, you know, how we got to this point.And then we'll talk.
Well, for those of you, those of you that like don't know, but you know this cause you, you know, you're, you work in the space now at this point, but like cultivated me or cultured me or said derogatorily lab grown, which I don't use, um, is actual animal tissue, like muscle fat, connective tissue, not plant based, not any of that.
That's grown.It's like using living cells from an animal and it's grown. inside of another vessel, like a beer tank, if that is familiar.And then you grow the meat, and then you form it and eat it.
So it's actual meat just growing outside of an animal's body.That's a fucking wild idea.So I still, to this day, after working in it for like 10 years, still think it's crazy.
And how it got started, we've been able to grow muscle and fat and all this stuff for 50 years in science. But in tiny amounts, and it was for like, you know, medicine, people were like, Oh, I want to fix, like grow.Could we grow muscle?
Could we regenerate?You notice you can't really regenerate muscle.The muscle you have today is the muscle you were born with.They just, the fibers get thicker.Um, you can't repair heart muscle.If you have a heart attack, it dies.It's dead.
So the guy who founded, uh, upside, you know, you've met Uma Valetti, uh, cardiologists and basically no one had ever attempted to make.Like cultivated meat for commercial purposes.And so he basically said, screw it.
I'm going to give up my wonderful career at the Mayo clinic and all this stuff and raise some money, find a team, start a lab and see if we can actually grow it for money. And he did.
Can you sort of backing up a tiny bit, I started asking you about like how much food you guys went through as a, as a young youngster, but like, can you explain why, why cultivated meat?Why, why is this a frontier?Why is there, why is this happening?
Cultivated meat is cool to me.Cause it's like a choose your own adventure.Like there's a lot of reasons to do it.Um, one, the one, the one that I think is like most appealing to me is, is climate change.Like.
Unfortunately, I'll never not have a job because climate change will be the thing I can work in for the rest of my life.So meat demand's going up.I'm sure you see it, especially in your restaurants and what have you, right?
People want me, especially as they industrialize.And then on top of it, I was just reading today, the meat industry, the plant-based industry saw a 5% to 20% decrease in sales the last quarter.Meat went up 5%.
They're just doing gangbusters in the conventional meat industry.People want meat.So the problem is it contributes heavily to climate change.That's one.
Some people do it because- Could you believe in such a thing?
Right, exactly. 99% of the scientists on this planet.
Also missing the maternal smart gene, this man over here.
Okay.For those listening, it is scientific consensus.Okay.Like, do you know how hard it is to get scientists to agree on anything?We want to debate everything.We're all like the planet's warming up.Uh, it's alarmingly bad.We need to figure this out.
Okay.All right. The other reason is to meet demands.In order to grow the plants that feed the animals, we would need about another two and a half Earth's worth of land to meet the demand in 2050 for 10 billion people.
Protein units.2050 is the key year, right?
Yeah, 2050 is the major year.
Not enough protein units for the people on this planet.
I had one time a Yum!Brands executive, this was years ago when I worked for FDA, came up to me and he was like, we thought about going organic for chicken for Taco Bell.
And they said in order to switch their flock over to organic feed and change nothing else, no increase in volume, they said that they'd have to buy a plot of land the size of the islands of Hawaii in order to just switch over to organic for this to do the chicken.
So they were like, there's no way.So that's the other reason. And I think the coolest one is like, you can kind of meet, make me whatever you want it to be.Like we only eat the things we eat because it's all there is.
That's what we've tried because we can domesticate those animals.But again, there might be like other things on this planet that tastes really good.We've never tried it cause we never grown it.
We taught, I mean, I told you, we talked about doing dino dino nuggets.Um, That's not an impossibility.But you know what?The number one thing I get asked is, what do humans taste like?And can I make Brad Pitt?Can I make Brad Pitt meat?
Or like a Brad Pitt burger?
Who are you hanging out with?
Listen, apparently I'm here.I was just waiting for that question to come out.Seriously, I get asked a lot.Can we clone humans?Can we make human meat?And the answer, of course, is yes.But I don't know how long. I'm waiting for you to, of course.
Yeah, of course.Sure.Can't wait.So it's, uh, the promise of, of cultivated meat is that the emissions involved in producing it are significant less, or the resources are significant less to produce this meat.
You can meet the demands of, of a growing population and you can eat that sinewy motherfucker Brad Pitt someday.These are the, these are the things that we are chasing.
This episode is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve.Half the fun of traveling is getting to eat delicious new foods.But if you really want to make your next trip special, get the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
You can earn three times the points on travel and dining, and more importantly, you can get access to Sapphire dining events for one-of-a-kind experiences, from curated restaurant collaborations to VIP access to popular events.
If you want more from every bite, this is how it happens. Learn more at Chase.com slash Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval.Terms apply.This episode is brought to you by Vital Farms.
No matter how you like your eggs scrambled over easy or sunny side up, the people at Vital Farms believe in one thing. keeping it bullshit free.
That's why their pasture-raised eggs come from hens who each have over 108 square feet of space to roam and forage all year round.So you can spend less time questioning your food and more time enjoying it.
Look for Vital Farms in your grocery store and learn more at vitalfarms.com.Vital Farms, keeping it bullshit free.
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Exclusions apply.Visit the website for full terms and conditions.Can you paint a picture though, if you can?
Cause I get this question a lot.I was like, how and what does it look like when you're growing a piece of chicken breast?
I think when I had a better visual understanding of it, it helped unlock a lot because I think a lot of people, it's just such a foreign, crazy concept.They're like, is it on a branch?Is it growing?You know what I mean?Is it what, what and how is it?
That's a fair question. It's hard to imagine like, how do you grow meat?How do you grow muscle outside of an animal?
I like, like, if you've ever taken chicken breast or chicken thigh, put it in a food processor and pulse it up until it's sort of, you know, chunked up and you're turning it into sausage or something like that.
That's about what it looks like when it comes out of the, of the reactor.Uh, see. the nuclear fusion.
When you climb down from the scaffolding and you open your reactor.
I mean, the terms are so crazy.You're like, are they building like a, like a robot in there?Like what's happening?
You can tell it was all named by engineers.
That's super interesting.Cause when you said, you know, you kind of grow it in the equivalent of a, of a beer tank.I mean, Dave is right.Like my, in my head, I was like, okay, so you opened up the lid and there's a chicken breast in there.
There's like a perfectly formal chicken breast.
That's right.Well, the chicken breast looks like it because it's, you know, it's growing anchored onto bones.
But there's no bones inside of like imagine again, like it's just filled with liquid that's just gently swirling around and it's growing In effectively an enriched Gatorade.
That's what it is It's very salty Gatorade has all its food and stuff in it and the cells can absorb that directly But then they just make muscle fibers, but they're not attaching to anything so they attach to each other and they kind of just form like Like I mean, I'd say it's sort of a mass that you just like a gloopy mass that comes out and
It doesn't look appetizing, but neither does like raw chicken.Um, and then, um, then it's formed and processed just like any other meat.Now there are people that are using scaffolds, uh, which are like the building blocks of like your cells.
You have like framework that glues everything together at the molecular level.And your cells can have, has those, you can, what you can do is you can put those in the cells will take over. And then you can grow those too.
Um, so you can get like an actual chicken breast coming out directly.
And that's a huge buzzword in this industry scaffold.
Right.You're going to hear that time and time again and hotly debated subject.
Correct.Um, that's right.Like getting structure is the Holy grail.Like, uh, you know, like.
When I joined this I always think I wanted to like play-doh that play-doh thing that you would squeeze it out And it would come out extruded like and I'd be getting like a t-bone steak basically and I would just chop it off I think that's what most people envision.
Yeah for sure and that's the goal believe it or not I think that's actually where we want to go is like you make a meat block literally a block of t-bones and you just slice them up But like I don't know why we're limited.
There's something I want to ask you guys as well as like What what what shapes of meat like there's got to be like a pro grade meat.
That's that professional chefs would want Like is there like something that if it what were the characteristics of meat have to have to be like ideal and perfect?
Yeah, like, you know, i'm seriously I think chefs would want something that is perfectly imperfect I think what's going to freak people out is if it looks
like a cylinder, like a, you know, the state of Florida every time, you know, I think that's the hardest part is that randomness, which I do know maybe one day, but right now, very, very, very, very far away.
And I think this is important for people to have an understanding because we've never talked about this, but when you think about a reactor and there's all of these, you know, What's in the traditional liquid, the pool?
Yeah.Amino acids, sugars, vitamins, minerals, and salt.
Ajinomoto plays a big role in this.
Yeah.In fact, Ajinomoto provides all the amino acids that are used. And guess who the other customer of all those amino acids are competing against?Pharmaceutical industry.Aji sells most of those amino acids to drug companies.
Aji makes tons of money selling their amino acids.But you're asking me, when I hear these terms.
Reactor, there's a liquid bath of amino acids and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And all this shit is growing together in there.I'm very open-minded to this, but nothing you said just now makes me hungry.
But did you think that maybe a chicken breast is forming, and then there's a bunch of chicken breasts in the reactor?Yes, I thought in this pool... Like a string of Christmas lights?
Suddenly, as this thing is swirling, over time, a chicken breast is forming.It's swirling around in this pool.
I mean, eventually, that's the way it's gonna go.But you're right.By the way, you're totally right. It doesn't sound appetizing, but also like conventional meat slaughtering is also not appetizing.
I mean, you know, like, like the process of unaliving an animal to eat it is disgusting.Um, and I just think it's just because that's the only way we've done it.
I just love cultivated meat and all these alternative protein approaches because it's finally sort of going, what are the other ways to do this?We.
we can we even can we even do it a different way and I didn't say it is but also some people want this because they don't like the way animals are treated right and I I'm a reluctant carnivore like I barbecue
You know, I build pits and smoke lots of meat.You're from fucking Texas for Christ's sake.It's like, it's my birthright.
Yeah, what?I just need to, I should've brought in some pumpernickel for you guys.For me though, it's like, I do see what I'm, I'm participating in this.So I'm like, I'm motivated to find a solution. Um, and so obviously cultivate is one of them.
Yeah.Um, so, I mean, Dave was saying like, we're, we're a long ways away from maybe, you know, the, the T-bone steak or the sort of perfectly imperfect, uh, you know, cuts of meat that have variants and, and, and difference to them, but how far along
Are we relative to I don't know when a decade ago or how far we've since like dave saw you And tasted the chicken for the first time like four years ago We are a lot further than we were even then this is only a 10 year old field actually less than that Memphis meats was the first company Now that it got up to I think 120 companies worldwide now, it's probably I think it's like 80 or 90 some have winnowed out but like
People are coming up with crazy ways to do this.I mean, we both work with a company called Prolific Machines that uses light to physically control cells.
Like imagine a disco ball that's like flashing different colors and lights, intensities, and it tells the cells how to grow, which works.
Same principle of photosynthesis, right?Of course.
Duh, as one knows.So you basically put the first cousin of photosynthesis into a chicken cell or a cow cell, and you can control it so that it grows or makes muscle or makes fat very precisely.
I think it's important to back this up.Let's go back to the chicken.And I think one of the things you told me when you were working at Upside was, and I think this should blow people's minds, How many calories are spent just producing a chicken?
And, and, and the by-product that will never get used.Right.Isn't it like you gave me some figure.
I can't know if you remember versus one, if you just grow the chicken breast and how energy efficient it is versus the feathers, the blood, the sinew, all the cartilage that you don't need.Yeah.
Well, you would need it if you want stock and stuff, but it's, it's a, it's a mind fuck when you realize like, wait, like we actually don't need the feet.We don't need. The eyes.
Yeah.It's something like, it's like 60 to 80% of all the energy goes into making not muscle.And just like maintaining the immune system of an animal and like just existing and growing.And then that's to say, you know, the sun's energy.
you know, gets into a plant, 10% of the sun's energy becomes a plant.And then when an animal eats that plant, 10% of that plant's energy gets into the animal.So like a small fraction of the sun's energy is actually making it to the animal we eat.
So so much has to be consumed to get there.With cultivated, it's like a direct transfer of energy.So it's like three calories, um, to make one calorie of meat, like a cow right now is about 30 calories to make one calorie.
And that's optimized back in the day was much more.
Can you clarify or illuminate a little bit more about the reason why cultivated meats or however you want to describe it? is necessary.Right.
It's not a, cause I've had this conversation, not arguments, conversation with people like, ah, I don't want to eat that.I don't like it.It's just not natural.Right.
It's the same conversation I had with chefs when, you know, similar to me when it was like, oh, you want to use a hydrocolloids?Like, no, no, no.I was like, I want my food to be virgin.I was like, you actually use them all the fucking time.
You don't even realize. So once we get over the, maybe the technical understanding, which is going to take some time, what is the, the, the, how do you explain to somebody who's like, this is actually a necessity that we embrace?
Well, the worst case scenario I'll say is we're forced to, um, and you know, this isn't as unrealistic as it sounds, you know, meat prices will continue to go up without extra capacity. And it'll become a premium product.
Then it'll become exclusive product.Then it'll become something that we eat maybe once or twice a year, if that, if we're lucky.So we're back, you know, to that.
And how far down the road do you think that is?
Oh, I don't know.I've heard wildly different.
Worst case scenario versus best case?
Worst case scenario, that's like 60, 50, 60 years where we're like really out of time.And then like, you know, the longer, gentler removal from the system is probably closer to like 80.The other issue I think though is,
We just have a lot more opportunity to try now.First off, one, the governments are starting to invest in it.So I think that's a great sign.But I think you want to be able to eat this and have different options because, again, it could be cheaper.
You could put a cultivated plant in places where animals are hard.It's harder to grow them.You can maintain genetic stock that are important to people.I think the problem is, as we start having to feed all these people,
we're going to lose genetic diversity and people are going to have to eat more and more of the same thing.And instead of the animals that they're used to eating, the breeds that are important to their cultures.
So I think it's important because like science is always painted as dystopian, like it's going to remove tradition.I see this as actually the opposite.It's like allowing us to keep doing this, to keep having cultural traditions around meat.
I mean, the OK boomer of it all is real, though, right?Because I feel like it seems to me like it will be an impossibly uphill battle to try to convince the people who are going to be like, hell, no, I kill my meat.I eat my meat.
Let's see if it didn't walk.It's not going in my belly.
But my kids, Dave's kids, you know, your kids are going to be, if you grow up with this technology as like a foregone conclusion, if it is a given, like it's, it's, there's less of that uphill to convince.And I mean,
to that same kind of point, you said, you know, usually this is, is dystopic, but like, I think about Star Trek, I'm like, nobody watches the replicator produce.Yeah.Like no one's like gross.I'm just like, Oh damn, that looks awesome.
Replicate whatever I want.Like, that's cool.Right?Like, but that's, that's a mindset.I imagine like, in addition to the scientific obstacles to getting where you want, like that sort of uptake is like
Not just for your company, but for like the world at large has to be the bigger issue.
Yeah, you're right.And we're finding like, you know, Gen Z is way more friendly to genetically engineered foods. and cultivated meat, just new food technology in general, because of the climate angle.They're like, we get it.
We got to do something about this.So I think there's a lot of, it just has to be available.You have to grow up with it, I think, too.But this is all new food technologies.
30 years ago, people would say, I'm not putting any GE food in my body, but 90% of the food we have is genetically engineered in some way, shape, or contains genetically engineered food products.
So it's arguably the safest food we've ever made in the history of humanity.
And say to people that would argue, well, we should just give up meat altogether then.
Yeah.That's been, I mean, but that's been said for a long time.It's just like, you should just give up meat.Um, it would honestly solve a lot of problems.Like just scientifically it would help with so many issues.
However, for a myriad reasons, like, are you going to give up me?Like if somebody told you you have to, why don't you just give it up completely?
Because I'm, it's not my problem.
You don't see it as delicious.I can't, again, I say it time and time again, I should be a vegetarian, but I can't.
And I think a lot of people feel your way.I feel that way.I don't know.Like, do you, like, I, I don't, I feel like I know the right answer and I'm not going to do it.
Yeah, I mean, there's an element of it for me of like, I'm hyper aware of what the future holds of where this is all headed of climate change.I'm hyper aware of what vegetarianism could do to resolve those problems.But I'm also just kind of like,
Well, if the ice caps are melting and the glaciers are melting, I want to go see them before they're gone.I'm just going to see them, right?I got to see them.
But do we even have the land to grow all the vegetable protein needed on the planet?
Not in a conventional system.No.Cultivated will allow a lot more efficient.
And that's my argument I have, is we just don't have the land that will allow us to do that.
The common pushback I'll tell you that I do hear from, and I like a lot of the conventional producers and stuff I work with, I think actually most of them really like this idea. Um, cause it's great for competition.
It helps people eat more meat, whatever.Uh, they'll say that like a lot of livestock and what have you used land that would otherwise not be used.Um.
And I think there's some truth to that, but at the same time, I think that's such a small part of the total land usage.We're using so much land to grow animals that we eat.
If you just took all of the mammalian biomass, cows, everything but chickens, basically, that we eat, plus humans, and you put them on a bucket,
It's over like almost a hundred to one like we're outnumbered by cows Basically in mass on this planet if you just like looked at your aliens looking at what lives on this planet you go It's a planet of cows
Thank God they're not smart.
These cows have really successfully taken over the world.
Which is true, really.They have ensured their survival and their growth by being delicious.
With the smartest ape that's ever existed, we figured out how to make them the most abundant species by mass on the planet.
So moving forward then, none of this is concrete.We're just sort of giving a brief sort of conversation, introduction. So the word scaffolding, why is it a hotly debated subject in this field?
Because like, if you grow, if you're growing, like we're saying, we're growing cells in this reactor. They don't, they don't necessarily know how to assemble themselves into a chicken breast.They need guidance.
And so you can either do it by having cells coordinate kind of like traffic cops doing it by secreting molecular messages that tell you become nerves, you become muscle, you go here, you go here.Um, or I should say, and, or.
you then physically build like, imagine like a spider web at a molecular level that can hold individual cells made out of, you know, uh, cellulose or gelatin.
Um, and then the cells can physically fit in like puzzle pieces and then grow exactly where you need them to be, or even including 3d printing the scaffold too.
And scaffolding, is important because it allows one to produce, say, a T-bone, right?With the sinew and the fat and the bone, right?It's not a... amoeba-like mass of protein that you're going to form into, you know, a patty later.
That's the theory is that scaffolding will allow you to create all those things that people think about meat.
You're growing it to fit the shape.You're growing it into the form you want.
Like a replica of it.So when people think, oh, I'd like a ribeye, a tomahawk bone-in 40-ounce ribeye. The scaffolding, when they're using that terminology, in theory, will allow you to actually do that.
Yeah, you literally just like a tomahawk would just appear one day, basically.You would just see a tomahawk.
Great.Right?Yeah.And by the way, we've already done this.
Tony Atala's lab at Wake Forest 20 years ago has been making, growing, literally this topic for bladder cancer, like growing bladders and rebuilding organs and then putting them back into people.And that's exactly how they do it.
But there's one issue to scaffolding.And a dum-dum like me, if a dum-dum like me can understand the basics of this, then dum-dums everywhere again.What is the biggest issue here with scaffolding?
Well, right now you have to use stuff that isn't normally found in meat.That's one.And the other thing is it's very expensive currently.
When you say very expensive, it's like,
Crazy expensive.How much is that T-bone?Like Salt Bae would be making so much money at his restaurant off of this.The margins on this would be insane.
Now, it'd be probably the most expensive meat that's ever been created, even before cultivated meat became reality.Although that is changing, I will say.
There are companies now I'm involved with one of them actually next year bio that's making scaffolds that are made out of like food ingredients and then growing cultivated meat on that.
So people are figuring out how to do it cheaper, but it is expensive right now, but it will take time.
Do we have the technology in the next five to 25 years to actually make it so scaffolding is scalable and cheap?
Yeah, I think so.I think the biggest challenge is going to be will people accept that their product was, you know, it was grown from the cell, like the cell up.It was rather than coming from an animal.
And what do you mean by that?
Like, again, like this, the tomahawk just kind of emerges one day. Like the cells individually are placed and then they're allowed to sort of replicate basically and fill out the scaffold.
And it takes more time because you got to put the fat cells in.You have to put the muscle cells in.You have to put the skin cells in.That was something I was working on.I was trying to get like perfect crispy chicken skin.
Trying to grow the right collagen type so that the skin would come out crispy.The product you tried didn't have skin. But that was something that's working.
So it's like a chia pet.The scaffolding is a chia pet.It's growing to whatever shape you've sort of asked this thing or allowed this thing or set this thing up to grow.Note to self, get a Bob Ross shape.A piece of meat.
So for me, the most convincing argument is the one that you said is versus climate change, protein units, feeding the world in a way that is sustainable, in the most real sense of that word, like sustainability.How...
real are the like, how real is the difference between I mean, you said it's like 30 calories to one calorie to raise a real cow as opposed to, you know, three calories to one but like
In terms of that input, in terms of emissions, what is the promise of this if you set aside people accepting it?What is the promise of this from that perspective?
I think the most appealing thing to most people is it's going to be cheaper once it's at scale.I really think most people don't care.Climate is the impact.I really think most people care about, can I get it?Does it taste good?And what's the price?
And if you can undercut conventional meat prices and still be on par quality-wise, that's still tasty, I think people will buy it.
I think a comp for that is actually the diamond industry right now, which actually sounds crazy.But fake diamonds, which are now actually real diamonds, 25 years ago was way too cost prohibitive to actually do.
But over time, it's now become still expensive, but less expensive than an actual diamond.
One third the cost, actually.Lab-grown.Lab-grown.Lab-grown.They're literally molecularly identical to natural diamonds. And yeah, they were also disparaged early on too.They were people were like, no way, no way am I going to get a fake diamond.
And now they're like, oh, I get a three carat for a grand?Genuine VS1?
But weirdly, it's now made like the top tier 1% and 1% diamonds like way more expensive, but everything else is now flattened out and bottomed out to some degree.
And I do think it's going to be a similar comp to what's going to happen in the meat industry.
I think specialty breeds and stuff are going to become, like you said, really high value products.People who spend the time to grow, the way we look at A5 Wagyu right now, or any Kobe beef in general, I think people do that for other cuts of meat.
I want to purchase You know, I, I suspect it'll be called slaughter meat or I don't know, we'll come up with some traditional meat.So I don't know.I think that if the price comes down, I think that's the tipping point.The other thing is availability.
It's really hard to grow a lot of it right now.Uh, their company, that's all companies are spending their money on right now, scaling.And it's really hard.
I mean, that's really a promise of so many, whether it's chat GPT and AGI or whatever, it's like, it's so expensive right now, but you can actually model out and it will be much cheaper down the road.
That was the idea with a lot of these companies that were starting out.
The promise being it's going to be cheaper, but then the more I asked more people were like, I don't know how it's going to be cheaper if we don't develop new ways of creating a more efficient cost effective strategy.
Because again, the only way this works, if there's no point in doing this at all, if we can't make it cheaper than regular slaughtered meat.
Yeah, you're right.And right now it's at or slightly above like premium cuts.I would say like right now for most, well, again, I still think that's incredible that they've done this in like less than 10 years.
Like it was, there was no scientific knowledge.And then less than a decade later, we, there's a product on the market, like, like several actually at this point, but the problem is there's not a lot of it. That's the problem.
And in order to succeed in food, I mean, the margins are so tiny, you have to make so much food in order for it to be profitable.So that's all people are working on.You're right.Like getting it in people's hands and making a ton of it.
So I'm sure this is an impossible question to answer, but for our casual listeners here, ballpark for us timeline before a we start seeing cultivated meat on your average grocery store shelves.And if you can like how long before you see maybe like
the bespoke product you were talking about, which is like, it's got all the fattiness of pork belly.It has a perfectly easy to crisp skin.It tastes like duck, like whatever it is, you know, like the, the next level of it.
I think we're going to see that first again, I think because you can make, that's a low volume, high value product that people would pay for.Um, and on top of it, it's a, it's like a tent pole product, you know, um, the, the hardest thing to do.
is get on to retail shelves and QSR like to do like be a Subway item on the menu at Subway or Burger King or something.
The luxury bespoke perfect cut of meat is the thing that will probably come first.
People don't realize like McDonald's and these, the standards are exacting to get on their menu and the volumes are staggering.And so that's actually harder to do than anything else.So to answer your question,
Um, the largest plants going to come online, hopefully in North Carolina, Believer Meats out of Israel is building on North Carolina.So that whenever that comes online, that's probably the first retail product that will.
Blue Nalu's got a bluefin tuna plant coming online soon, or it's already in New Jersey.So again, this is all happening.But again, the issue is we still need to make it cheaper and faster.
Not faster in terms of production, but we need to find a way to make the technology cheaper and scalable, which is where we connect paths again.When I met Dennis, who's the co-founder of Prolific, And we were introduced through a mutual friend.
I was like, this guy's fucking crazy.
Number one in the best possible way.So Dennis, one of the things that the companies are doing, the prolific specialist kind of leading the way they're like my like cultivated meat 2.0 upside was like 1.0 and that's, that's a good thing.
Like upside still exists.They're very successful.Um, but 2.0, like they're using their cultivated cells to produce things other than meat to make money now.Like they're making in like bovine cells in cow cells.
Other food ingredients because they're just cellular factories that can produce stuff So they're making food ingredients out of them and then or in the some cases actually like like drugs like antibodies now They're not using that for food, obviously, but things that pharmaceutical companies can use.
What are the food ingredients?You're talking like what?What do you what does that mean?So in this case
like amino acids and like things that like cells need to live, but you don't care about in your diet, like lactoferrin, like you need sources of iron, but in a big lactoferrin guy, I know you are, especially when you're an infant, you need things like that to like basically for yourselves to function properly.
So like you would never know this, but basically that's super important to grow a cell healthily.
So anyway, I value things so they're growing these things using light Using their very big brains and then selling that because is light Trick question like expensive or cheap Hmm
I'm gonna say cheaper than the other way.
That was a good answer.Yeah.Yeah.It's very, it's yeah.Very cheap compared to the way we do it right now.
You have to like, it's like the difference between sending like a, you know, in the wild west, having like a, the mailing delivered on horse versus like today, sending it on a FedEx jet overnight.
That's the difference in terms of like signal speed and precision.Using light instead of what we currently use is like literally molecules to send the signal.And they're very, those molecules are very expensive.Light, much cheaper. That's very cool.
In some ways the light.How does Dennis phrase it now?The light?
Optogenetics.Optogenetics.Yeah.Optogenetics.Photomolecular.That's it.Photomolecular.Photomolecular.That's it.I was like.Well, you have photosynthesis for plants and for animals, it's photomolecular.
I was like, well, that sounds good.Good one, Dennis.Photomolecular. In a way, I, Dumb Dumb Me, understands it like it replaces scaffolding.
With light, which talks to the cells.Right.And telling it how to grow, where to grow, when to grow, like that's what the light is signaling to the cells.
Right, because like right now in your body, you have growth factors, these little proteins, also known as hormones, that talk to make your cells.That's how you talk to each other at the molecular level.Instead, they just use light.
So it just cuts out the middleman, quite literally.
And one of the things that was interesting to me was again, sitting with this, right.It was like, wait. I'm interested in this because of all the reasons you said, right?
I do believe as much as I was joking, I do want my kids and their kids one day to have the same options I have.And in my lifetime, I've seen things literally go almost extinct in terms of fish or certain products that I enjoy to eat.
And that would be a sad thing.So also people don't think about it enough is there's zero suffering. like zero suffering, like not just from animal, but from the labor force needed to call all of these things.It's a very different way of thinking.
I want to say zero suffering, but yeah.Extremely minimal.
So like, there's all these reasons that again, like I like it for the idea that people want to eat meat.You have an option that is not going to be a negative added value type of thing.Right.And I was like, okay, well,
At the time there was 120 plus companies all doing this sort of same project.As Eric said, a little bit smaller now.I was like, well, one can't be better than everybody else.Like we sort of need everybody to win here.Right.
A rising tide needs to live.We do need a rising tide.And I was like, that was the conversation that got me interested in Dennis and prolific is now, how should we say, like sort of a.
They're, they're working with, they're making revenue, working with people, building, building products and they're building meat.
I mean, in some way, maybe it's like, it's like, they're like trying, not trying to be like the Nvidia of cultivated meat.
They want to be powering the cultivators.They want to be the infrastructure layer.They want to power the machines that.
And I guess that's actually a pretty good comp for people if they are just learning what AGI is and everything, whatever.It's like, Oh, why is Nvidia and why do the need these kinds of chips?
Well, it derived because of image and video games and all this stuff.And they took a chance, you know, Jensen make a huge gamble to be like, we're going to fucking just focus on this shit.
It's paid off and also he's famously said to on stage like if he said like if I did do anything and worked on anything in the future that was outside directly outside of this he said it would be biology biotechnology and feeding the world like he himself even gets this and then Dennis was I mean completely different timelines to right, you know when I was talking to Dennis Nvidia should popped off way later, but I can now look back and I was like, oh this is sort of like
You want everybody to win here and you're creating technology that will allow everyone to create cultivated meat more cheaply, more cost efficient, et cetera, et cetera.And I was like, well, and then he joined and I was like, Oh, full circle.
Yeah, it doesn't, you know, what is it?The famous thing, like for the gold rush, you know, I'm not here to like make a fortune on gold.I'm here to sell, pick an axis.
Um, so that's, that's prolific machines and that's like their, their whole thing is like be the infrastructure layer.Um, which is super cool that that's starting to happen now from like literally an idea in Uma Valeti's head.
Um, to now there's a hundred companies, products on market, still a weird idea to most people, but. we're here.And now people are trying to find new ways to like completely innovate in this space.So I'm fairly optimistic.We'll see failures.
That'll happen.But I don't think we'll see like food safety failures, you know, like the things that really... And why would you know anything about food safety?I can't imagine why.So, but we've, I mean, we've talked about this.
So I worked for the US Food and Drug Administration before I went to work at Upside.I was a regulator and a policymaker for novel foods and drugs.
So like I was brought in to like, figure out how the hell are we going to do this with all this new technology coming in?This is an Obama administration.
And I was just we were a little startup with an FDA and it was super fun, like working on like the craziest stuff coming through.This was like 15 years ago.
And now seeing all of that, like all that work pay off and seeing companies sort of flourishing in this space as well.
Well, it's really cool to see, like, to your point, Dave, just lots of companies working towards this scene.I mean, this is how like the world of science works, right?
Like I have a very good friend who is an astrophysicist and I know like the, the big project is try to like prove the cosmic microwave background or observe it or, or, you know, prove its existence.
And I remember going to the lab at Caltech and all these different projects happening.And one guy was like, we're going to fly a balloon really high.That's our thing.And I'm like, we're going to use lasers.We're going to use this.But that's similar.
It's interesting to see different approaches to one.We're going to play Magic the Gathering later.All of them.All of them together.All of us together.We're going to put together a D&D campaign.But I like that.
I like to see everyone taking different approaches to one singular goal. photo, what are we?Photo molecular, like is, is what you guys would probably describe as like the forerunner right now in terms of trying to make this efficient.
And I think this is a briefest of introductions, right?
Yeah.It's been super fun.
Check out prolific machines.
That's right.Prolific machines.Uh, if you want to learn more, there's lots of resources, uh, for cultivate.
If you want a little more about cultivated in general, the good food Institute, uh, has a lot of really good stuff, uh, at science, Eric, uh, Instagram, Snapchat, all that, uh, uh, tick tock, all that stuff.
That's a good handle too.
Yeah.I, you know, where I learned that from, from astronauts, uh, all the astronauts, when they first got on Twitter, we're like, I'm Astro Tom.I'm Astro Dave. And I was like, that's smart.I should just go science, Eric.That's super smart.
I'm food, Chris.Hey, don't knock it.It'd be great.Thanks for having me all.
All right.That was a great interview.Eric's going to be on this podcast many, many times.No doubt.
So more. This is a moif that I feel like Chris Yang has been allergic to, but I've been saying it everywhere, which is why it's a moif.Okay.My opinion is fact.My moif is this.Lavash is in.I don't know what's out, but lavash is in.
And lavash isn't in just because we live on the east side of Los Angeles and Yang literally is surrounded by an Armenian population.
I am enrobed in lavash at all times.It's true.
But I will say I eat a lavash way more than I ever did living in New York city.
Uh, in what form though?So, okay.Lavash. people know from falafel, from a very particular use case, right?
Well, the first time I ever had lavash was at, actually, Wiley Dufresne's WD-50, which was a crispy lavash.But lavash is ultimately a very thin, thin flatbread used to soak up meat juice.
But if you go and eat kebabs, and if you were, say, in Turkey, for example, and you, not always, they'll give you a side of lavash too, but under the rice, which is topped with a lot of kabobs of roasted meats under all of that.
is usually several sheets of lavash.And it's a little bit like eating some, you can tear some off, you can dip some.I love the fact that it's a central component to a meal, but everyone can do whatever the fuck they want with it.
They can dip it in the dips, they can wrap the meats in it.But this started because we do get a lot of delivered lavash and shout out, you know, because- Hamlet's Kitchen.Hamlet's Kitchen, lots of lavash. Most of the lavash is made through bakery.
And you don't get to eat it all.And I'm like, well, I don't want to throw out this lavash.And OK, now I start making like a fattoush salad, right?Now I start making all of this stuff for my kids just to use up the lavash.
But I just want to stop you really quickly for people who don't live in LA or don't live near, you know, aren't lucky enough to live near like a vibrant Armenian community or wherever, Persian, Iranian.Yeah.
Like if you order kebabs, you order takeout from one of these restaurants and you say like, I want lavash with my meat.You're not getting a piece of lavash.You're not getting two.Sometimes you're getting like a fucking bag.
You're getting war and peace.
You're getting 800 pages worth of lavash.And but like, because I think it is that important.It is that essential.
And like, that's how much you are sort of expected to say what what a lot of these kebab shops really master.Just side note, I just want to give a shout out to the triple fucking starch. Not just one!Three!
You got the rice, you got the lavash, and you got fucking potatoes.
Boom.Done.Yeah.But it's similar to, you know, we just did that Octoberfest episode.I remember going and like eating in Germany.You're like, am I supposed to eat all of this sauerkraut?What do I do with all this?
But you end up inevitably with leftovers.
Yeah. So I started cooking up lavash in a lot of different ways.And, you know, again, literally I started with like, Oh, I'm just going to pan fry it and turn it into chips and add it to a salad.Then it was like so much like, you know what?
I'm going to just like, because of that, if you pan fry it, pan toast, like toast in olive oil, it gets super fucking crunchy, super crispy.Right.Great bite. And you don't really have to use that much oil to get it that texture.
But it was that kind of bite where I was like, you know what that reminds me of?Domino's thin crust pizza.And I was like, Oh, if I just put a little leftover canned or, you know, marinara sauce and some mozzarella or any cheese, I put it in the oven.
I got thin crust pizza.Boom.Easy.I can give that for my kids.I was like, Oh, you know what would be good too?That turned into, it's like, Oh, I could just make a quesadilla.
I still use tortillas all the time, but now it's like, cause I have it in my fridge all the time.It's like, I can make that into a quesadilla.I can turn that into a breakfast roll up.I can turn that into lasagna.Right.
As an, a layer, instead of having pasta, I can just use two or three sheets.
And if you do make that thin crust style pizza, I recommend brushing it, so it's almost like a brick pastry, where you're brushing it, or what's the other one, phyllo, where you're brushing with oil or butter, and then you're placing another sheet on of lavash, brushing that with oil, and you sort of smash that together.
So it's almost like a double laminated pastry.
And then you put the sauce and the cheese on.It's 10 minutes and you have something my kids will eat. Again, what I like is versatility.Sometimes I'll just do like a dan bing that way, right?
Reverse, sometimes I'll put the egg in it and then I'll put cheese or whatever and then I'll take it out and my kids are shaped, they only eat shapes, so I'll cut out the squares.
So I'll turn it into like a breakfast pizza that I didn't put in the oven, gets really crispy.Or I'll turn it into dan bing and sometimes I'll put the egg first in a non-stick pan.
And then almost like coat the outside of the lavash.
Yeah, like the Meyer pan is perfect.And then I'll put the lavash on top. I can't think of, I'm sure there are other breads, and I just happen to be enamored with this bread because it's so fucking versatile.
And not to say that other breads aren't, it's the fact that I can stack it, number one.Number two, it doesn't go bad.It's hard for it to go bad.It lasts in the fridge for a long time.Three, it's supple if you just want to put it in the microwave.
It gets super crunchy and crispy, like crazy crunchy and crispy.It doesn't have the heft of pita, so you can actually use it in different ways, right? And if I still want to make it a sandwich, I can do it.I can do a fold over.
I can make it like a quesadilla.I can turn it into like a crepe.I just, maybe I'm just coming into something that people that have long eaten lavash have always understood.I'm just telling you, I didn't fucking know.And now I buy lavash.
That's it.That's it.No more moif.
No more fucking moif.Give us five stars and uh, Sign up for our YouTube channels and again, stay tuned for a Recipe Club update very soon.
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