Why Did the Cell Cross the Road?

Singapore's Efforts Towards Food Sustainability and Security

by Keri Matwick

"WHAT THE CLUCK!"

The name alone will draw your attention before the price does. For $18, the GoodBurger truck, parked near Coronation Plaza, makes a “Southern-style crispy fried TiNDLE ‘chicken’ burger, topped with a slice of cheese, crunchy pickles, and special homemade sauce with a garlicky kick!.” I ordered one, hungry after a morning run in the Botanic Gardens with the AWA Running Group but mostly curious. While deliciously hot and greasy, the ‘chicken's’ taste was lost under thick breading and mayo-ketchup sauce.

Plant-Based "Chicken" Burger

The plant-based chicken burger is among the innovative foods starting to appear on menus and in the grocery stores in Singapore. With over a dozen novel food companies in Singapore, the list includes Gaia Foods (Cultivated red meat cuts), Shiok Meats (cell-cultured seafood), and TurtleTree Labs (cellcultured milk). These are lab-grown meats, which refer to proteins that are derived from animal cells but grown in test tubes outside of the animal, i.e., in a lab. Not all of these foods are available yet; Shiok Meats is still in the development phase of shrimp, crabs, and lobster.

The Goodburger Food Truck

Receiving the most international press is the arrival of Eat Just, a San Francisco-based private company that partnered with Singapore in December 2020. The debut meal was prepared by restaurant 1880, a members-only restaurant in Riverside Quay, becoming the first in the world to have made commercial sale of cell-cultured meat. The taste, though, appears acquired as it is not a regular on the menu.

Why is Singapore supporting this revolution in the food industry?

The recent pandemic revealed the island-nation’s vulnerability to global food trades and limited natural resources. In 2019, Singapore created its “30-by-30” plan, an ambitious plan to produce 30% of its nutritional needs by 2030. Water insecurities are being addressed with large-scale water desalination and wastewater recycling (Marina Barrage!), and unconventional spaces are turning over to farming (rooftops; restaurant patches, i.e., OpenFarm; and vertical farming). So, part of Singapore’s plan for the future of food sustainability is also making it, cell-by-cell.

While it may be harder to find a lab-grown meat to try, plant-based foods are more available. Different from lab-based meat, plant-based foods replicate the taste and texture of meats without using animal products. Beyond Meat, for example, uses peas as its protein and beet juice as its “blood.” The Impossible Foods’ burger uses protein from soybeans and potatoes.

Curious to Try?

Privé Group has an extensive menu offering plant-based meat options.

Potato Head in Tanjong Pagar offers five different Sustainable Burgers that are quite indulgent.

Little Farms, ColdStorage, and Fairprice Finest have nutbased cheeses and yogurts and frozen patties.

Fairprice, Giant, Redmart, Shopee are all online food deliveries that offer a limited selection of alternative meats (just search ‘veggie burger’ and you’ll get a surprising variety!)

There's also talk that “chicken” will be available at Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice, Tiong Bahru hawker center, this year. Besides making innovative foods accessible at a lower price, this will truly be an example of Singapore pushing hard to make these new foods not so “new”, by reinventing heritage food.

My favorite?

Dr. Praeger’s veggie burgers.

Keri is a linguist and teaches writing at Nanyang Technological University. Active in the AWA Running Club and Java Junkies, Keri enjoys running and meeting up friends at cafés.