In the years ahead, children will visit zoos to see cows and understand what their parents and grandparents drank as milk and ate as meat. Cows will no longer be needed to produce food, so the huge amount of greenhouse gases that the animals release from their bodies will be eliminated.
This is the prediction of Dr. Gilad Gome, who teaches at Reichman University’s School of Entrepreneurship in Herzliya and earned his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He led research resulting from a collaboration with Dr. Sharon Schlesinger and Prof. Oded Shoseyov from HU’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food, and Environment.
Aloe vera, a deep-green, cactus-like plant whose gel is known – but not always scientifically proven – for its soothing and moisturizing properties – is said to help relieve sunburn, reduce skin irritation, promote wound healing, and improve overall skin health. Many of these claims are based on anecdotal evidence or small studies. As such, it is difficult to draw conclusions about its efficacy in many instances.
However, the team has found a genuine, proven new use for the Aloe vera leaf, after the gel has been extracted – as a natural, sustainable scaffold for producing cultured meat. By repurposing Aloe vera, the researchers cultivated fat-like lipid chunks that could enhance the taste and texture of alternative proteins. Combined with a single-use “bioreactor,” this approach offers a scalable, cost-effective solution for cultured-meat production using a sustainable agricultural byproduct.
“Aloe vera has long been claimed to have medicinal and nutritional benefits, but our study shows it also holds great potential for sustainable food production,” Schlesinger commented.
Bioreactors are made of plastic, glass, or stainless steel that is sterilized with heat and the scaffold put inside with media (liquid) to grow the cells into tissue. They can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by themselves, without human interference.
A study recently published in the Nature Partner Journals’ Science of Food under the title “Cultivation of bovine lipid chunks on Aloe vera scaffolds” reveals their breakthrough in cultured meat production.
How does aloe vera help make cultured meat?
“We created tissue from stem cells that were isolated from the umbilical cords of live cows that gave birth to a calf,” Gome said. “The process is a world’s first. The cells are grown on the chunks, creating an animal tissue-like structure on the plant skeleton. The fatty acids can be used to create meat flavors. All this is a key feature of the bioprocess system, and the way in which we grow it is patented; we are looking for Israeli entrepreneurs to actually produce it, and we could decentralize food production and promote food security.
Gome told The Jerusalem Post in a phone interview from South America that “scaffolds are not new; they have been used for tissue engineering with stem cells. A pioneer is Prof. Shulamith Levenberg, head of the Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Many of her alumni are involved in the industry.”
Macrofluidic single-use bioreactors were first developed at Reichman University by Dr. Jonathan Giron and his team to promote cost-effective, large-scale production, thus, making cultured meat more commercially viable while reducing reliance on animal-based materials.
Unlike synthetic or polymer-based scaffolds, Aloe vera’s natural structure retains high liquid absorption properties, creating an optimal environment for cell growth without requiring additional reinforcement.
“It could also produce chicken- and fish-like food, even using ‘vertical agriculture’ like lettuce grown in buildings in Manhattan in the winter. Our label will list the ingredients simply as cow stem cells and Aloe vera,” Gome noted.
THE TEAM wanted to grow a steak, and Aloe vera is a wonderful, edible plant that grows in the desert, needs little water, and holds what it has like a camel.
“Our project was not aimed at producing plant-based meat now with a specific taste. We wanted to show that cells can proliferate on a scaffold and develop fat. We need time to create a ‘steak,’ but what we have done paves the way. Many people want to eat healthful food that is not processed and is not made from powders or meat. We obtained five huge leaves of Aloe vera from a large plantation in Ein Yahav in the Arava,” he said.
Gome added that in the future, the process will involve no suffering of animals, as it involves cellular agriculture and oleic acid, like that in healthful olive oil. The body is better off with liquid oil instead of solid fats that can clog arteries. There are also no bacteria that give real beef its odor, as our tissue is grown under sterile conditions, without hormones. The texture will be soft; it will melt in [your] mouth.”
Cellular agriculture aims to revolutionize traditional farming practices by addressing environmental, animal welfare, and sustainability concerns, the researchers wrote.
“Cultured meat is the cultivation of animal cells in vitro to create edible tissues, but achieving cost-effectiveness and reliability for large-scale food production remains a critical challenge in scalability, cost efficiency, and structural integrity.”
Cellulose – nature’s most abundant polymer – is a key structural element of the cell wall of plants, which gives the cell its mechanical strength and rigidity,” the team explained.
“Due to its biocompatibility and mechanical properties, cellulose is commonly used as a scaffold material in tissue engineering. By incorporating oleic acid, the team successfully encouraged the formation of fat-like tissue that could improve the sensory experience of plant-based meat substitutes.
Aloe vera’s status of being approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as a food additive further supports its potential for industrial application in cultivated meat, the researchers said.
“With global Aloe vera production reaching up to 500,000 metric tons annually, its use as a renewable, edible scaffold aligns with the growing demand for sustainable food solutions. This pioneering work not only enhances the feasibility of cultured meat but also presents new opportunities for food technology, tissue engineering, and the alternative-protein industry.
“We hope this innovation will pave the way for more accessible and environmentally responsible protein sources, shaping the future of food production,” the team said.