Cook’s Science: How did you get inspired to research food and how we decide to eat?

Dr. Brian Wansink: I grew up in the least cool place to grow up—Iowa. There were lots of farms, and I sold vegetables door to door. As a little boy, I always found it interesting that one house would buy everything I had in my little wagon. The house next door—which was identical in all ways—would look at me like I was selling kryptonite. Your smartest friend that can answer every question you could ask can’t answer why they ate what they ate today. We really can’t explain most of why we do what we do. The things around us are what nudge us into doing things. Our research found that the typical person thinks they make 25 to 30 decisions a day about food. But in reality, we make over 200 decisions every day.

CS: What’s the most common misconception about food and psychology?

BW: First, that we are the master and commander of all our food decisions, and second, that we know what we like. We found that labeling something as a “succulent Italian fillet” rather than a “fish stick” makes an incredible difference. Participants rate the food as better, even if they ate the exact same thing.

CS: What do you think has been one of your more successful findings that has changed the way people eat?

BW: Insistence on wanting to believe that we’re smarter than a plate or a bowl, and that we’re [in control] of every one of our decisions has [had] the biggest influence. It’s been what’s led to the adoption of a ton of our stuff. While the majority of people we’ve done studies on accept that there are external factors leading to their food choices, findings show that around 4 percent of our subjects still refuse to acknowledge that whatever influenced them actually has influence on them. If we show, for instance, they serve themselves 22 percent less food because they had a 9½-inch plate instead of an 11-inch plate, they’ll just say they weren’t as hungry.

When you realize that most of the people who you want to influence—family members, kids—are not going to acknowledge they have a problem, it makes it easier to implement design. In terms of specifics, we designed the 100-calorie pack, and I introduced it to Nabisco and Mars and Kellogg’s. People thought it was stupid, saying, “We’re in the business of selling more food, not less food.” I argued, “You’re in the business to make money, you can make more money selling less food.” Once that got traction, it really moved.

CS: What do you think the effects are of photographing your food?

BW: Day-to-day life really isn’t that exciting and taking a photo of a meal makes it more eventful. Whether a person decides to post it on their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, it ends up doing a similar thing to what was done 500 years ago. We recently did this article where we looked at paintings over the last 500 years. The point of that was there are a lot of public health critics that criticize this obsession with our food culture and people worshipping the food on their plates, that it’s the sign of the decline of civilization. Our research suggested that back then, people were painting ridiculous things that were almost impossible for them to find or eat. Fifty-one percent of the paintings in the Netherlands had lemons in [them]. Lemon trees were a long ways away from the Netherlands. Thirty percent of the paintings in Germany had lobster and shellfish. Less than 1 percent of Germany’s [landmass] is coastline. The extreme view that we portray something aspirational or more exciting than your typical meal is something that follows for a long, long time, and is no more the decline of Western civilization today than it was in Rembrandt’s time.

CS: What do you think the next generation will be eating that we’re not eating today?

BW: I think what’s going to happen in the future is people are going to feel more in control of what they’re eating. Cooking isn’t dying. Maybe it’s going to be more restaurants where you build your own meal, or more of these assemble at home sort of things like Blue Apron. But I think there is going to be a regression toward people believing they have more control over their food environment. Many people don’t think they can cook, but they don’t realize they are 10 dinners away from being a competent cook.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photography courtesy of the Food and Brand Lab.

Cook’s Science: Can you describe the moment that the idea for this invention came to you?

Mark Oleynik: It’s not a one-minute idea, it’s a process. You see a problem and you find the optimal way to solve it. First, you need to understand what’s the service you want to have in the future. If you wake up 100 years [from now], what would you like to see around you? [My] main expectation is to have any kind of dish immediately when you want it.

CS: How does the robot learn to cook?

MO: We are tracking the motion of the chefs. [Ed note: One of the first recipes they recorded—crab bisque—was with Chef Tim Anderson; they are developing their software library of recipes with different chefs]. There are cyber gloves, motion capture cameras with markers, the video recognition. We use many technologies to make high-precision identification of each motion of the chef.

CS: And the robot moves in real time?

MO: One part of the motion capture is to keep timing the same as the chef. To build the identical dish, you need to have the same initial conditions and same process. [The system comes with special containers for ingredients, which the robot can recognize.]

CS: The recipes that the robot comes with are pre-programmed. Would the owner be able to teach the robot new recipes?

MO: Initially, the recipes are coming from the lab. We need to prove they work perfectly. You need to have enough expertise for that. But we will integrate some self-learning algorithms.

CS: The Moley comes fully stocked with appliances and tools. What about groceries?

MO: When you choose a recipe, there is a database inside. All the ingredients are well-defined and [with the correct] quantities. Users don’t need to make their own list. When you choose the recipe, you can place the order for the ingredients [online], depending on the logistic chain.

CS: Do you like to cook?

MO: Maybe, sometimes, but unfortunately, I’m not talented in this area.

CS: What recipes have you tried that you liked a lot?

MO: It’s confidential—we are preparing the launch for [2018], and will present all the recipes then.

CS: For many people, cooking is an expression of affection. Have you found any resistance to the idea of a robot creating a home-cooked meal?

MO: Are you sure that everyday you make food with love? There is no limitation to the Moley kitchen. You can use it as a normal kitchen anytime you want. In case you don’t have time, you can use the robotic mode.

CS: Now to the last and most important question—who is doing the dishes?

MO: Actually, we are going to integrate a dishwasher. The robot can place the dishes inside and press the buttons.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photographs courtesy of Moley Robotic Kitchen.

It was lean—made just from muscle—with added beet juice for color. While the texture was slightly below the mark, the price point was way above it, coming in at $325,000 to create the one and only such patty.

This year, Dr. Post proclaimed that, as soon as 2020, customers will be able to buy lab-grown burgers for $10 apiece.

The idea of eating lab-grown meat is still hard to wrap one’s head around. But it’s an intriguing one, particularly in light of inhumane treatment of livestock, cattle producing greenhouse gases linked to global warming, and the world’s growing population leading to food insecurity. Dr. Post recently spoke to Cook’s Science about the project.

Cook’s Science: What is the current timeline and price for the cultured burger?

Dr. Mark Post: In the face of what we still need to do—scale up, get regulatory approval, change some of the production system—in 3-4 years, it’s going to be about $10 for a hamburger. I was a little bit conservative in 2013, but in the back of my mind I thought it was not going to be 10 years, but more like 5.

CS: What might slow you down?

MP: Scaling up. It’s completely new technology. The systems that allow us to scale up are already there, but they’ve never been used for these types of cells or this type of production. The process consists of two phases. One is cell production. The technology is very similar to when you do this for bacteria or yeast: it’s a fermenting process. In this case, the products from the cells aren’t the product; the cells are the product.

The second phase is more tissue formation: you allow the cells to make tissues, and that requires automation, replacing mechanical handling [by humans with] robots. It will look a bit like a pipetting robot and automate transfer of the tissue to a maturation module, and from there [it will be] automatically harvested.

CS: Where are the stem cells coming from? Can they be taken from any muscle tissue of the cow?

MP: They come from an adult cow. It doesn’t matter [what part of the body they come from] in terms of efficiency. Whether it matters in terms of taste or structure of the muscle fibers, we don’t know that yet.

CS: What is the current timeline from stem cell to edible meat?

MP: It’s more [about] capacity. It takes 3 months to grow 1 hamburger. Because every cell doubling takes approximately 1 day, then it takes 3 months and a day to grow 2 hamburgers, and 3 months plus 2 days to grow 4 hamburgers. It’s an exponential process. I also say 3 months, because now we grow fat tissue [separately, for added flavor and texture], and fat tissue takes a little longer than muscle tissue.

CS: The 2013 cultured burger was made with an animal-derived growth medium, fetal bovine serum, that provided nutrients to the cells. Will the burger that comes to market be made totally without animal inputs?

MP: The two components you require for tissue formation are feed for the cells: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, sugars, that sort of thing. And then, there is also a blood component to make the cells happy. That, we want to get rid of. We have achieved cell cultures in the absence of serum [one component of blood], so it can be done, but it’s not quite as efficient yet. We want to [try using photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria] not only as a source for amino acids and sugars, but perhaps also as a source to replace serum.

CS: While the cells absorb their nutrients, they need to grow into three-dimensional meat. What kind of scaffolding is used to allow them to do that?

MP: This process for a hamburger relies on self-organization of the cells. Meaning, we put them in a soft gel and let them find each other, align, start to attach to each other, start to contract, and start to produce a fiber. The cells bind to components of the gel and start to ‘contract’ the gel, so that the cells come close until they are attaching to each other, thus forming a tissue. The gel we are currently using is what we call a functionalized alginate, with small peptides [amino acid chains] the cell can attach to.

CS: Is the muscle being exercised while it grows?

MP: They already exercise themselves. It’s kind of weird to see—but [the fibers] start contracting even if there is no particular reason and no one is telling them that they should. We are still thinking of some level of [exercise] to speed up the process of cell maturation.

CS: In 2013, you added beet juice to make the burger more red. Is that still happening?

The color of meat comes from a protein called myoglobin: it turns red in the presence of oxygen and it turns blue in the absence of oxygen. When we were culturing our cells in a conventional way—they were exposed to the regular air that we are breathing—they don’t express this protein very much, so that makes the cells yellow. We have not looked into the mechanism, but there are many signalling pathways in the cell that respond to oxygen levels. So what we started to do is culture our cells under lower oxygen conditions, and they start to express this myoglobin. And they turn nicely pink. It’s a pretty simple intervention that can now make cells that have their natural color, and the natural nutritional value of heme iron.

CS: Do you know when the next burger tasting will be?

MP: I hope it’s going to be in the next year and a half, a scientific tasting with a panel and blind tasting.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photography by David Parry/PA