Demolish Foods Unveils its Gen3 Platform for Plant-based and Cultivated Meats

This patent-pending "precision structuring" technology is implemented across a 1000x scale — Demolish Foods

Image courtesy of Demolish Foods

Demolish Foods unveiled powerful Gen3 platform for the production of alternative proteins. The platform is reportedly capable of scalably producing whole cuts of meat, including chicken breasts, fish filets, beef steaks and pork chops. Further, the company says the platform is flexible and has been used to produce a range of plant-based meats as well as cultivated meat hybrids made using a combination of plant-based materials and cultivated animal cells.

The platform is designed to replicate the chewiness, sustained juiciness and changing mouthfeel of traditionally harvested meat as it is successively chewed and broken down. To do this, it replicates the hierarchical structure of meat, starting from its smallest perceivable structure, the muscle fiber.

This patent-pending "precision structuring" technology is implemented across a 1000x scale—from a muscle fiber that is typically 20µm-80µm thick to muscle fascicles, muscle layers and up to a whole cut which is typically 2cm-8cm thick. The production of the whole cut incorporates connective tissues at each level, the endomysium, perimysium and epimysium.

To produce muscle fibers out of plant proteins that mimic the size, tensile strength, and nutritional profile of slaughtered animal muscle fibers, Demolish Foods' patent-pending "protein chaining" technology is employed. This produces muscle fibers with a precision down to 5µm.

To replicate the thermal transition of meat as it is cooked, Demolish Foods employs its "thermal transitioning" technologies. These techniques ensure that the meat changes its texture, breaks down connective tissue, and releases juices and flavors in specific temperature ranges.

The Gen3 platform is reportedly capable of combining muscle fibers and connective tissues from plant and animal sources. For instance, Demolish Foods has built cultivated meats by combining plant materials with animal cells. This process involves the use of its plant-based muscle fibers as scaffolds to grow animal fibroblast cells which then exude collagen and other extracellular material. Alternately, the fibroblast cells can also be separately cultivated and added to the plant-based muscle fibers.

Demolish Foods is utilizing the Gen3 platform for developing its own products and for collaborating with partners to develop products that use all or part of the modules and technologies embedded in the Gen3 platform.