For years, Alex Shirazi has helped tell the story of the cultivated meat industry through conferences, podcasts, and public-facing education. But as these once science-fiction-y products slowly moved from labs toward early commercialization, he began to feel that something was missing.
“While there is plenty of discussion about cultivated meat, very little attention is paid to how it actually shows up in everyday life,” Shirazi said on The Spoon Podcast.
That realization ultimately led to A Scientist’s Cookbook, a Kickstarter-backed project designed to explore how cultivated meat might actually be cooked and used in real kitchens. Rather than leaning into futuristic speculation, Shirazi said he wanted the book to feel grounded and familiar.
“We’re not talking about some far-off future,” he said. “These products are coming to grocery shelves soon, and now is the time to start cooking with them. This cookbook focuses on that missing step.”
A Scientist’s Cookbook is Shirazi’s second book, launched via Kickstarter this week. His first, Where Do Hot Dogs Come From?, was a children’s book designed to introduce the concept of cultivated meat to younger audiences at a time when commercial timelines were still highly uncertain.
“The idea was that if this technology is actually going to be out in the next 10 to 15 years, a children’s book would allow us to get early readers interested in this technology,” Shirazi said. “And then by the time they’re making food decisions, it will actually be in their grocery stores.”
The cookbook originally started as an idea aimed at teenagers and young adults, but that distinction quickly fell apart.
“I realized that there are a lot of teenagers who have way more advanced skills than some of the adults I’ve talked to,” Shirazi said. “So the line kind of blurred, and it didn’t really make sense to create something that is just focused towards teenagers.”
Instead, Shirazi framed the cookbook as a resource for anyone curious about how cultivated meat could realistically fit into existing cooking habits. The book will be supported by a digital component designed to evolve as products become available, including plant-based stand-ins and future updates as cultivated meat enters new markets.
Shirazi also reflected on the future of the Cultured Meat Symposium, the conference he co-founded in 2018. After several years of organizing the event independently, the founding team decided it was time for a transition.
That evolution led to the sale of the Cultured Meat Symposium brand to the UK-based FutureProof Group, which plans to continue hosting the event in North America and Europe.
“They were really excited to actually continue the brand,” Shirazi said. “For us as a founding team, we saw that they wanted to continue it, and now I’m actually really excited to say that the first Chicago edition of CMS is taking place at the end of this month.”
For Shirazi, the handoff allows him to stay connected to the space while freeing up time to pursue new projects, such as a cookbook focused on making cultivated meat more tangible and accessible.
“Food can be made like this,” he said. “I think it’s actually a good thing to show people that.”
