No more farmers, lab grown food! Better for the environment, better for animals. Win win. Farmers in The Netherlands are seriously fucked up, going as far as threatening politicians with murder at their private home. So fuck meat, dairy and egg farmers. We only need fruits and vegetables, and lab grown meat is a nice addition.
I didn’t find an answer in my very limited search for what is actually used to grow the meat, so depending on what makes up the “stuff” that brings nutrients into the growing part, we may still need a lot of farmers for something like this. There’s also no way the growing environment, which seeks to create an artificial “animal”, is energyefficient.
I’ll celebrate the day we don’t need farmers, and I’ll celebrate the day it’ll be at least environmentally equivolent, but until I see evidence of those things, I’ll be very sceptical of this stuff.
My thought process is that if you have to mimic a living environment, you still need to include most of what the natural environment needs. The one artificial meat I’ve read about had the meat growing in vats of some “solution” that mimics the natural environment of the meat (so like a body). Granted, the process in the post may not function like this, but if it does, that process would include:
Heating, because the meat is actually meat, and the cells require heat to function, which still isn’t all that efficient.
Getting rid of the artificial meat’s dead cells and natural waste.
The “solution” itself I imagine is a funny chemical mix of some sort. So getting those chemicals extracted from their sources. (This one is a bit more iffy, I have no idea what the “solution” is, could be demineralised water with beef stock mixed in for all I know).
I can’t imagine keeping the “solution” as clean as needed for food safety laws around the world is an easy feat coupled with the other points I’ve listed.
These are all just speculations, please feel free to prove me wrong on any of them, and be sceptical of my list. But this is what I’m sceptical about with the very lacking information in the post.
Cows right now isn’t even grass, they’re fed mostly grown crops. The trophic energy loss at each stage is generically 10% , so plants to cow to human you lose 90% of the energy each time. So for eating meat you only get 1% of that energy from the sun. If you ate wolves who ate cows it would be .1%.
For energy this will, once it’s at scale, be able to be more energy efficient pretty easily. Because for one cow you have to have the entire life of the parent animal then wait 2 years for the animal to grow up. It has to eat and move around and waste energy that entire time. Less than half of that animal has the desired final product, so you waste more there. So the idea is that with growing this you just start with some cells and then increase their size until you get enough and then package that.
The biggest challenge is the bio-reactors, they are hard to scale and require more delicate care than other cultured products because growing muscle, fat and tissue cells is a lot slower than say, getting yeast to reproduce. This a challenge but not a deal-breaker, there are some places already selling cultured meat but it’s still expensive (like, $40 for a burger) because of the scaling problems, which again, come from lack of funding and political pressure.
That said, most other challenges are either overcome or there are companies with solid methodology but no investment capital, and since many places are actually banning or outlawing the sale of cultured meat, we likely won’t see much actual progress until we get corporations out of politics, so maybe never.
I didn’t find an answer in my very limited search for what is actually used to grow the meat
If you’re referencing how cultured meat used to require amniotic fluids to grow meat, those days are long-since passed and there are multiple companies that have proven methodology for production, the only thing preventing large-scale cultured-meat operations is commercial investment and public sentiment.
Your skepticism here is a product of the pushback against lab-grown meat, they have injected endless lies and hyperbolic ideas into the public discourse because it threatens the beef industry, which is currently our least efficient protein source by far, so as the climate changes and as our tarifs turn into gulag-like isolation from the international market, you’re basically going to have to choose between $40.00 burgers and laboratory-grown beef that tastes the same but is healthier and cheaper.
Since humans are so easily swayed by the most pathetic arguments and propaganda campaigns, and are so incredibly to make scared, disgusted or hateful of literally anything, I don’t expect to see lab-grown meat in my lifetime sadly.
I mean, I hope I’m wrong, but my point is that without more information, I would have to see some actual data to compare this stuff. I am however aware that we won’t get reliable data until large-scale production is both possible, and profitable.
It’s the same scepticism I have when a new building material says it’s much better for the environment, but then it turns out it’s either not possible to upscale to the point that it’s actually environmentally friendly, because it uses a very limited by-product from a different production. Or it turns out they don’t count the materials needed for the underlying construction to make it possible to use, because it’s not directly part of the material.
I just want some proper articles about this stuff, with actual numbers and calculations made public, instead of a picture shared on some social media.
I just want some proper articles about this stuff, with actual numbers and calculations made public, instead of a picture shared on some social media.
It’s a commercial venture, so a lot of it is kept behind some level of secrecy because this is capitalism baybeeeee. That said, if you are actually interested in the numbers, you can probably look up organizations like The Good Food Institute who are giving millions in grants to scientific methods for alternative protein sources and they have a public outreach where you can read up on their science and scientists, but if you want technical specs… well, see every other technology like AI, microprocessors, the formulas for popular snacks and and sodas.
I reckon it doesn’t taste as well, but even if it tasted exactly the same, I would still prefer normal meat. It needs to taste better if you want me to eat it.
No more farmers, lab grown food! Better for the environment, better for animals. Win win. Farmers in The Netherlands are seriously fucked up, going as far as threatening politicians with murder at their private home. So fuck meat, dairy and egg farmers. We only need fruits and vegetables, and lab grown meat is a nice addition.
I didn’t find an answer in my very limited search for what is actually used to grow the meat, so depending on what makes up the “stuff” that brings nutrients into the growing part, we may still need a lot of farmers for something like this. There’s also no way the growing environment, which seeks to create an artificial “animal”, is energyefficient.
I’ll celebrate the day we don’t need farmers, and I’ll celebrate the day it’ll be at least environmentally equivolent, but until I see evidence of those things, I’ll be very sceptical of this stuff.
Why not, could you elaborate on this?
My thought process is that if you have to mimic a living environment, you still need to include most of what the natural environment needs. The one artificial meat I’ve read about had the meat growing in vats of some “solution” that mimics the natural environment of the meat (so like a body). Granted, the process in the post may not function like this, but if it does, that process would include:
These are all just speculations, please feel free to prove me wrong on any of them, and be sceptical of my list. But this is what I’m sceptical about with the very lacking information in the post.
Cows right now isn’t even grass, they’re fed mostly grown crops. The trophic energy loss at each stage is generically 10% , so plants to cow to human you lose 90% of the energy each time. So for eating meat you only get 1% of that energy from the sun. If you ate wolves who ate cows it would be .1%.
For energy this will, once it’s at scale, be able to be more energy efficient pretty easily. Because for one cow you have to have the entire life of the parent animal then wait 2 years for the animal to grow up. It has to eat and move around and waste energy that entire time. Less than half of that animal has the desired final product, so you waste more there. So the idea is that with growing this you just start with some cells and then increase their size until you get enough and then package that.
The biggest challenge is the bio-reactors, they are hard to scale and require more delicate care than other cultured products because growing muscle, fat and tissue cells is a lot slower than say, getting yeast to reproduce. This a challenge but not a deal-breaker, there are some places already selling cultured meat but it’s still expensive (like, $40 for a burger) because of the scaling problems, which again, come from lack of funding and political pressure.
That said, most other challenges are either overcome or there are companies with solid methodology but no investment capital, and since many places are actually banning or outlawing the sale of cultured meat, we likely won’t see much actual progress until we get corporations out of politics, so maybe never.
If you’re referencing how cultured meat used to require amniotic fluids to grow meat, those days are long-since passed and there are multiple companies that have proven methodology for production, the only thing preventing large-scale cultured-meat operations is commercial investment and public sentiment.
Your skepticism here is a product of the pushback against lab-grown meat, they have injected endless lies and hyperbolic ideas into the public discourse because it threatens the beef industry, which is currently our least efficient protein source by far, so as the climate changes and as our tarifs turn into gulag-like isolation from the international market, you’re basically going to have to choose between $40.00 burgers and laboratory-grown beef that tastes the same but is healthier and cheaper.
Since humans are so easily swayed by the most pathetic arguments and propaganda campaigns, and are so incredibly to make scared, disgusted or hateful of literally anything, I don’t expect to see lab-grown meat in my lifetime sadly.
I mean, I hope I’m wrong, but my point is that without more information, I would have to see some actual data to compare this stuff. I am however aware that we won’t get reliable data until large-scale production is both possible, and profitable.
It’s the same scepticism I have when a new building material says it’s much better for the environment, but then it turns out it’s either not possible to upscale to the point that it’s actually environmentally friendly, because it uses a very limited by-product from a different production. Or it turns out they don’t count the materials needed for the underlying construction to make it possible to use, because it’s not directly part of the material.
I just want some proper articles about this stuff, with actual numbers and calculations made public, instead of a picture shared on some social media.
It’s a commercial venture, so a lot of it is kept behind some level of secrecy because this is capitalism baybeeeee. That said, if you are actually interested in the numbers, you can probably look up organizations like The Good Food Institute who are giving millions in grants to scientific methods for alternative protein sources and they have a public outreach where you can read up on their science and scientists, but if you want technical specs… well, see every other technology like AI, microprocessors, the formulas for popular snacks and and sodas.
I reckon it doesn’t taste as well, but even if it tasted exactly the same, I would still prefer normal meat. It needs to taste better if you want me to eat it.
Just a serious question here because I’m concerned about public attitudes.
Why exactly do you assume it doesn’t taste as well? (Assuming we’re talking about current generation cultured meats)
It just seems like a natural way to think: an imitation is worse than the original.
But I never tried it, and maybe I will, but I would probably prefer normal meat anyway.