In 2023, the U.S. government approved the sale of “lab-grown” chicken after it passed food safety tests.
Lab-grown meat, also called “cultivated” or “cultured” meat, is meat grown in a lab instead of on a farm. Scientists take a few cells from an animal and put them in a tank called a bioreactor with nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. The cells grow and multiply until they form muscle tissue—the same stuff that makes up the meat people eat.
Because no animal has to be killed, cultivated meat is better for animal welfare. The environmental impact is still debated: cultivated meat could be better or worse for the planet depending on the type of energy used to power the factories that make it.
But what about the big question: Is it actually healthy to eat?
Lab-grown meat is nutritionally similar—but not identical—to conventional meat
Lab-grown meat is designed to be as close to the real thing as possible in terms of look, taste, and nutrition, but it’s not a perfect copy.
Conventional meat contains all nine essential amino acids (protein building blocks), which the human body cannot produce on its own, as well as various non-essential amino acids. It is also a source of B vitamins and several mineral nutrients, including iron and zinc.
According to Dr. Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King’s College London and co-founder of the nutrition science company ZOE, “the protein quality and amino acid profile of cultivated meat is generally similar to conventional meat, with all essential amino acids present but with varying ratios.”
And what about the vitamin and mineral content? “There is still limited published data on how closely real-world cultivated meat products match conventional meat for these micronutrients,” Spector says.
Early research suggests that some nutrients may be lower in lab-grown meat, while others could be equal—or even higher, says Noah Praamsma, a registered dietitian nutritionist and a nutrition education coordinator with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
One study found that, compared with regular chicken meat, lab-grown chicken had less protein, lower amounts of most essential amino acids, less magnesium, and less vitamin B3. However, it had more total fat, more saturated fat, more cholesterol, and higher levels of vitamins B5, B6, and A. Lab-grown chicken also contained higher amounts of several minerals, including calcium, copper, iron, potassium, manganese, sodium, phosphorus, selenium, and zinc.
In conventional meat, nutrients build up in animal tissues over the animal’s lifetime through diet, microbes in the animal’s gut, and normal metabolism, explains Spector. Replicating that complex process in a lab environment is difficult, although technology is making great strides.
Lab-grown meat could be healthier than conventional meat
One of the biggest promises of lab-grown meat is that, unlike conventional meat, its nutritional content can potentially be fine-tuned during production.
“In practice, this might mean aiming for less saturated fat and more unsaturated fat and enriching the product with beneficial fatty acids such as omega-3,” says Spector. This may come with a few trade-offs, as fat plays a major role in how meat tastes and feels, he says.
Another benefit of cultivated meat comes from the way it’s produced—in a sterile lab environment. This contrasts with traditional meat farming where manure is present and can—potentially—come into contact with meat. Lab-grown meat might improve the food safety concerns associated with large-scale animal farming, Praamsma says.
Lab-grown meat falls under the ‘ultra-processed food’ umbrella
Because of how lab-grown meat is made—through an industrial process, and with added ingredients—it would probably count as an ultra-processed food, says Spector.
“But ‘processed’ doesn’t automatically mean unhealthy,” he says. “What matters is the quality of the final product, what’s added, how it affects the gut microbiome, and what it replaces in the diet.”
Nutritionally, lab-grown meat is much like regular meat: low in fiber and high in saturated fat. “But in theory, it could be designed to have an improved nutrient profile,” Spector says, for instance with more iron or vitamin B12 and less saturated fat.
Still, tweaking the nutrient mix doesn’t erase the health concerns linked to eating meat. “Decades of research shows that diets emphasizing whole plant foods are consistently associated with better long-term health outcomes than diets high in meat, whether conventional or novel,” says Praamsma. Simply swapping conventional meat for lab-grown versions isn’t likely to deliver the same benefits as adding more fruits, vegetables, and legumes to your plate, he points out.
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Its long-term impact on health is unknown
At the moment, we don’t yet know how eating lab-grown meat affects health in the long run.
“Studies evaluating its long-term health outcomes relative to traditional meat do not yet exist,” says Praamsma.
Spector agrees. “No clinical trials have been conducted to date, which means we don’t have data on its impact on any health conditions or allergies. This includes the impact on our gut microbiome.”
The bottom line
Nutritionally, lab-grown meat is much like regular meat, though it isn’t an exact copy. On the upside, it could be designed to be healthier, and because it’s made in a clean lab, it may lower the risk of contamination compared with farm-raised meat.
But we still don’t know how eating lab-grown meat affects our health long-term. Based on what we know now, diets rich in whole plant foods are still the best way to improve overall health.
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