Cultured meat: processing, packaging, shelf life, and consumer acceptance

Abstract

Increasing concern of consumers on sustainability issues leads to high demand for new alternative protein-based products to alter animal origin meat in the market. Meat alternatives, like cultured meat, are new in the market and consumers are skeptical to consume cultured meat, so an improvement in functionality and sensory quality pose to be important information to increase their acceptability by the consumer. Unnaturalness, healthiness, texture, price, and safety are the main considered attributes for consumers and need to be well-promoted to improve the purchasing power of cultured meat. With production in a controlled environment with tissue-engineered technology, cultured meat can be produced to fulfill the demanded and acceptable quality by consumers. Packaging potential for cultural meat to maintain its food quality and improve its shelf life highlights consumer acceptance of cultured meat in different countries and its approach to represent meat in the market. This review shows the current scenario on processing technology, packaging, and shelf life of cultured meat. Consumer acceptance and the future roadmap of cultured meat development have also been discussed in detail.