Tender Foods, a food technology startup co-founded by four Harvard-affiliated researchers that produces alternative meats, is preparing for a product launch later this year.<\/p>\n
The company, which produces plant-based meat spun from liquid polymers, is one of 27 startups launched in fiscal year 2021 to commercialize innovations from Harvard research labs. Tender Foods specializes in products that have a unique texture, structure, and ultimately taste, according to its founders.<\/p>\n
A lot of the stuff that tries to mimic meat is textured, but its not fibrous, so its aligned and its a block of stuff, but its not individual fibers, said Luke A. MacQueen, one of the startups co-founders and a Harvard postdoctoral researcher in Bioengineering.<\/p>\n
The Tender Foods products will better mimic the texture of real meat, MacQueen said.<\/p>\n
MacQueen co-founded the company alongside three other Harvard affiliates: Bioengineering and Applied Physics professor Kevin K. Kit Parker, Grant M. Gonzalez 13, and SEAS researcher Christophe Chantre.<\/p>\n
The fibers in Tender Foods meat are made using technology developed by Parker and his colleagues. The research group studied rotary jet-spinning, which uses centrifugal force to elongate liquid polymers into fibers. MacQueen likened the device to a cotton candy machine that works with different kinds of proteins.<\/p>\n
The technology was initially used for various other purposes, including organ regeneration: in 2017, the researchers managed to spin nanofibers into biocompatible heart valves. Two years later, they showed the same could be done with gelatin scaffolds to hold animal muscle cells.<\/p>\n
Every lesson learned from building tissues for regenerative medicine was applicable to building tissue to eat, Parker wrote in an email.<\/p>\n
MacQueen said he is excited to see the variety of meats that might emerge from the startups technology.<\/p>\n
When those fibers are spun and collected into a system, they can be tailored to be like the meat products people enjoy, whether they be as simple as a chicken breast or much more complicated layered structures, he said. Those can all be made in an artisanal way, starting with this very basic building block.<\/p>\n
The research received funding from the Harvard Office of Technology Development and Harvards Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.<\/p>\n
The first efforts to patent discoveries from my lab pertaining to meat were shot down by OTD around 2006, Parker wrote. We kept pushing.<\/p>\n
MacQueen said he is excited to introduce Tender Foods products to the public.<\/p>\n
As a young startup, weve had to kind of stay under the radar a little bit, but theres good things coming down the road, he said.<\/p>\n
I ate some this morning, Parker added in an email. It was delicious.<\/p>\n
Staff writer Felicia He can be reached at felicia.he@thecrimson.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Staff writer James R. Jolin can be reached at james.jolin@thecrimson.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Go here to read the rest: Tender Foods, a food technology startup co-founded by four Harvard-affiliated researchers that produces alternative meats, is preparing for a product launch later this year. The company, which produces plant-based meat spun from liquid polymers, is one of 27 startups launched in fiscal year 2021 to commercialize innovations from Harvard research labs. Tender Foods specializes in products that have a unique texture, structure, and ultimately taste, according to its founders Continue reading
\nCompany Founded by Harvard Researchers to Launch Alternative Meat Product | News - Harvard Crimson<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"