Brown Foods garners acclaim from MIT for their launch of “UnReal” Milk, world’s first lab-grown whole cow milk
By Ada Jain
Although lab grown meat has been criticized for its lack of scalability, environmental hazards and pricing concerns, Brown Foods, a Y-combinator backed startup did not hesitate from experimenting with lab-grown whole milk.
Founded in 2021 by a trio of Indian Americans including Sohail Gupta, Bhavna Tandon, and Avhijeet Kapoor, their recent launch of UnReal Milk claims to present a significant breakthrough that’s environmentally sustainable and cruelty free. The trio of founders consists of Stanford, Rice, and IIT Delhi alumni with over 30 years of combined expertise in synthetic biology, bioprocess engineering, and food innovation.
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According to an old Cornell study, “If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million.” Although the finding is old, in the United States, only 10% of cereals are for human consumption, the rest is for animal feed and a little for biofuels.
Around 50% of agricultural land globally is used for livestock farming while in 2024, the CAFB-NORC general population survey found that 37% of households experienced food insecurity in the year prior to the survey (May 2023 to May 2024) which was found higher amongst children.
According to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication, cows are considered the least energy efficient, followed by lamb, pigs and poultry as some of the feed is meant to sustain the animal. For example, beef, which primarily comes from dairy cows, has an energy efficiency of about 2%. Dairy farming also releases 30% of the world’s methane gases. Besides, cows release stress hormones and antibiotic residues that percolate milk mostly when farmed by non-organic methods. Another problem is adulteration with starch, water, thickening agents like maltodextrin and other thickening agents.
To tackle this, UnReal Milk is produced using mammalian cell culture— replicating the nutrition, taste, and texture of traditional dairy. It can be processed into butter, cheese, and ice cream, whilst offering to reduce the carbon footprint by 82%, water use by 90%, and land use by 95% without relying on livestock.
The brand’s whole milk has been confirmed to match 99% of nutrients found in conventional cow milk by the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, affiliated with MIT, including proteins like Alpha-S1-Casein, Alpha-S2-Casein, Beta Casein, Kappa Casein, Alpha-lactalbumin, Beta-lactoglobulin, Lactotransferrin and Albumin.
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The Brown Foods site includes multiple illustrations that share a glimpse into the core brand values of veganism. Veganism, although still unpopular in the U.S., is a concept that involves abolition of animal products in all forms, including dairy. This is opposed to lacto-vegetarianism which can include dairy products.
According to Sohail Gupta, co-founder at Brown Foods, “The market potential extends beyond milk, to butter, cheese, yogurt, and even non-food industries like pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, where dairy ingredients play a role. Long term, this technology isn’t just about the earth— it’s about food security anywhere, whether in extreme climates, disaster-stricken areas, or even space travel. We are just getting started.”
The plan going forward for Brown Foods involves bringing UnReal Milk to consumers for tasting in late 2025, with what it called version 2.0, followed by a market pilot in late 2026. Using bioreactor systems, their unique selling point focuses on producing mass volumes of whole milk for human consumption in a cruelty-free, sustainable way. This is likely to disrupt the dairy industry, which Dr. Richard Braatz, chemical engineering professor at MIT calls a “Scientific and technological breakthrough.”