An invention that could trick fussy children into eating meat while revolutionising the pasta market was accidentally created by an AgResearch scientist in Hamilton.
The country's foremost pastoral research and development company has found a way to make meat spaghetti.
While testing the binding strength of meat, Mustafa Farouk unexpectedly found meat spaghetti - made from sheep or beef but transformed into colourful spaghetti-like strips.
"It tastes like meat and it can look like meat but we can actually change the composition of the product quite a lot so we can mask the meaty flavour," Mike North from AgResearch says.
And with busy families demanding more convenient yet healthy foods AgResearch believes it is on to something.
Kids love spaghetti but for many parents it's hard to get them to eat meat - so the meaty, protein saturated, pasta version could be an innovative way of providing youngsters with vital nutrients and iron.
"We'd really love to see this product on the supermarket shelves," says North.
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