Chances are you will have seen or read about science's latest ground-breaking effort: producing meat in a test tube. It got its first showing last week in the form of a hamburger pattie. Shmeat, they call it, and the taste testers gave it a resounding thumbs down.

Shmeat means "a sheet of meat" but I suspect you could make a case for another definition, going by the taste test.

Another challenge is what many call the "yuck" factor. Cultured meat has already been dubbed "Franken-meat" or even "schmeat," though it may be appealing to some vegetarians and others who oppose using animals for food.

Vladimir Mironov, a biologist at the Medical University of South Carolina, is among a handful of scientists culturing meat from animal tissue. His work involves turning formless, textureless patches of the stuff into mass-produced form — like meat sheets, or what one might affectionately call "shmeat."