May was national burger month, but we don’t think Americans ate any more, or less, burgers last month than they do the rest of the year, although it is a month when back yard barbecues and picnics get underway in earnest.

We’re burger fanatics in this country, consuming an estimated 50 billion per year. Some surveys claim that 95 percent of us eat burgers at least once a month, and we’re demanding better and better burgers as time goes on. It should come as no surprise, then, that some are predicting that supply won’t be able to keep up with demand, considering that consumers the world over also share our burger cravings.

One recommended solution: cultured meat. Two Dutch professors are convinced that we should be looking toward lab-cultured stem cells as a future hamburger source. Say, what?

They maintain that the global consumption of meat will force us to consider lab generated protein with some vegetable products substituted for meat. They foresee a day when individual towns and cities will support their own cultured meat facilities, producing muscle stem cells from animals such as pigs, chickens, cows, fish and other protein producers. These cells would supposedly grow and produce in large processing tanks.

The rest of the explanation of how burgers would be produced is a bit unsettling. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, when cell population is sufficient, “an enzyme and binding protein are added,” and “the agitation stops and the tissue cells form small clumps and settle to the bottom of the tank.”

Once the tank is drained, the remaining “meat slurry” is pressed into cakes and sold.  This type of system has the potential to produce an estimated 28 tons of meat a year to feed more than 2,500 people,  and the energy savings and minimal impact on the environment overall are reportedly worthy of note.

As we read the news story, we couldn’t help but feel that we were being catapulted into the  animated world of The Jetsons: Press a button and out pops a pill for breakfast before we jump in our private vehicle and zoom off across the sky on our way to work.

Research on the concept of test tube beef continues, and, in our case, we pray it will never “catch on” in our lifetime.

Admittedly, we’re all eating foods on a regular basis these days that have been produced in a manner we wouldn’t really care to know about, but for the present, we’d like to think that a nice, thick, juicy burger, cooked just right, from “real” meat, will be a viable option for many years to come.