Your Favorite Celebrity Might Just Be Turned Into Your Favorite Sausage
We've certainly heard of celebrity-endorsed food products. But, what about the celebrity as food products? This is what a new, shadowy company called BiteLabs has proposed as a weird hypothetical. And it's made us throw up a little bit in our collective mouths.
The Los Angeles Times food blog has a story about how meat made in a test tube using the cells of celebrities is not too far off. We're talking about Sean Penn soppressata and Julie Roberts rillettes. Ew.
So how does this exactly happen? The Times spoke with a guy named Martin from the company (no last name was given due to the controversy of the subject matter). And the explanation is not too far off from science fiction:
A sample of tissue containing myosatellite cells (the type of cells that help repair and regrow damaged muscle) will be taken from a person during a biopsy. Those cells are multiplied in a lab using a medium that acts as an artificial blood to grow muscle. Once the cells are mature enough, they will be ground and mixed with different kinds of meat, spices, fats and oils for flavor using one of the company's "time-honored recipes" for the creation of fine cured meats.
The company already has a few samples in the works, including one from rapper Kanye West (they include a button to "Tweet at Kanye and help make the Kanye salami real." This is what they have to say:
The Kanye Salami will pull no punches: heavy, and boldly flavored, pure Kanye West meat will blend with rich, coarse-ground pork. Hungarian paprika and worcestershire give Kanye an underlying smokiness, spiced up with hints of jalapeno. The Kanye Salami is best paired with strong straight bourbon.
Ok, this is obviously either a very complicated joke or the work of individuals looking to spark a test tube meat discussion (the Times suggest this as well). And with that, we think about Jennifer Lawrence summer sausage and barf a bit more in our mouth. Martin, we guess you've done your job.
Ellen DeGeneres salami? One company's quest to make meat from celebrity tissue samples [Los Angeles Times]