How far can you go with lab-made food substitutes? This reporter found out.

How far can you go with lab-made food substitutes? This reporter found out.

How far can you go with lab-made food substitutes? This reporter found out.Mushroom ravioli was filled with cream cheese made with a protein extracted from whey. Lab-made labneh and bacon made from the root systems of fungi went with a salad.Credit...Amy Lombard for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021, 5:05 a.m. ETA slew of venture-backed companies envision a world where we sit down for dinner and brag that no animals were harmed in the production of this carbon-neutral porterhouse steak. They want to Impossible Burger our entire diet.It's beginning to work. Consumer sales of the increasingly impressive simulacra of meat, eggs and dairy products grew 24 percent from 2015 to 2020, according to the market research company NPD Group — and 89 percent of those buyers are not vegetarians.Joel Stein wanted to see just how realistic the lab-to-table future could be, so he threw a dinner party filled with bleeding-edge products that don't bleed. The carefully chosen guest list consisted of his wife and their 11-year-old son.The menu:A whiskey sour served on a coaster made of soft fake leather produced from mycelium, which was grown on a bed of sawdust and mixed with cornstalks. Beta-lactoglobulin, the main protein in whey