Emerging Materials in Cultivated Meat: Engineering Sustainable Food Solutions - A Review

As the global population grows, the demand for protein-enriched foods like meats is rising rapidly. Traditional farming practices face challenges including animal welfare, waste management, and carbon emissions, harming the environment. Consequently, meat substitutes have emerged as a promising area of research and as an alternative to traditional livestock-sourced meats. Cultivated meat, produced through cell culture techniques, is a key area in cellular agriculture and offers a safe and well-controlled production process for such future foods. The manufacturing of cultivated meat involves several disciplines, including cell culture, media optimization, scaffold design, and advanced manufacturing, along with nutrition, taste and safety topics to meet consumer acceptance and regulatory approvals. Although several review articles have addressed various aspects of cultivated meat, they tend to focus on specific domains rather than a comprehensive analysis of this transformative technology. This review highlights innovative and applied research findings in the field of cultivated meat, with a focus on critical aspects such as nutrition, cells, materials, and scaffold manufacturing technologies. Furthermore, the socio-political and economic impacts of cultivated meat are explored, and practical recommendations for low-cost and large-scale production. Finally, the review also addresses existing challenges and outlines future directions for the development of cultivated meat.