https://www.wired.com/story/gelatin-fibers-lab-grown-meat/

When Cypher is selling out his compatriots over dinner with Agent Smith in The Matrix, he muses: “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”

In a simulation like the Matrix, ones and zeroes represent every nuance of that steak—the texture, the smell, the flavor. Here in 2019, scientists are still stuck in the lab, racing to reverse-engineer animal flesh component by component, with the goal of one day feeding the carnivores among us in a (theoretically) more sustainable way. To that end, Harvard researchers have taken inspiration from a cotton candy machine to develop a kind of meat scaffold made of thin strands of gelatin that mimic muscle fibers, on which animals cells grow. It’s a step toward steaks, chicken breasts, and pulled pork grown in a factory instead of a field, but before you get too hungry, know that it’ll be quite some time before slabs of lab-grown meat land on your plate.