Cultivated Just a little Getting a chance to try cultivated meat is still relatively rare. The most high-profile public tasting, hosted by Upside Foods, took place in Miami in 2024, just days before the state’s ban on cultivated meat went into effect. Public tastings, one attendee told re-searchers from Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture during the event, are important for mainstream cultivated meat acceptance because “all that trepidation, all that fear goes away when you realize that it tastes great.” “It’s important that consumers have the opportunity to try this,” another attendee told the team from Tufts, according to the paper published in the journal npj Science of Food. “If they did, a lot of them who are TASTE squeamish about the idea of cultivated meat would probably change their mind.” After tasting cultivated meat, some attendees did, in fact, change their minds. At the start of the event, most said they were looking forward to trying cultivated meat and would be willing to pay more money for the opportunity to eat it in the future. Some said that, though they were excited to try the alt-meat, the likely high price would make cultivated meat a “spe-cial occasion” food. But, as Upside CEO Uma Valeti said while addressing the crowd during the event, “tasting is believing.” After the tasting, a portion of the 73% of respondents who said they’d eat cultivated meat again in the future also suggested that Upside’s chicken required “substan-tive product reformulation for sensory qualities.” One attendee called it “just okay,” saying, “It’s a good vegan alternative for the vegans that are looking for that.” Of the 20% of respondents who said they wouldn’t eat cultivated meat following the taste test, at least one-third said the culti-vated chicken just wasn’t good. “It looked more like a muscle, but the texture was just rubber,” an attendee is quoted in the study. “Not chicken, not a nugget, just rubber.” The other two-thirds who said they wouldn’t eat cultivated meat again learned during the event that Upside used fetal bovine serum to produce their cultivated chicken. This, they said, didn’t align with their values. CULTIVATED MEAT TASTERS ON WHETHER THEY’D EAT CULTIVATED MEAT AGAIN IN THE FUTURE. Would not eat again 20% 33% Willing to try again Would eat on special occasions 7% Would purchase regularly 40% “Publicly tasting cultivated meat and socially constructing perceived value politics and identity.” npj Sci Food 9, 94 (2025). 40 Alt-Meat August 2025
Alt-Meat August 2025: Page 40
