A lab-grown chicken nugget  Credit: Nicholas Yeo/AFP/Getty

Consider a steak. When it hits the hot oil in the pan, your mouth can’t help but water at the aroma. That familiar crackle of fat beginning to fry and render is the sound of the maillard reaction: that wondrous molecular dance of the steak’s amino acids and sugars as they caramelize during the searing process. When you pull it from the pan—it’s only a few moments away now—and your teeth sink into the medium-rare flesh, you will experience the textural contrast of the unctuous interior and the crispy crust. But you won’t be thinking about chemistry. With the aroma, the texture, and the savory juices coating your tongue, you will be absorbed. This is what it feels like to eat a perfect steak, and it feels good.

Now imagine that no animal suffered and died to provide you with this pleasure. In early February, the Israeli company Aleph Farms announced that it had 3-D printed a steak from live animal-cell cultures. The approach simulates the vascular system of living animal […]

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