Recently tried an Impossible burger and nuggets and thought that if nobody told me it wasn’t meat, I’d have thought the patty was made out of a weird kind of meat, rather than make a connection with the taste and texture of plants. Honestly, I might not complain if that was the only kind of “meat” I could have for the rest of my life.
Well, maybe I’d miss bacon.
I’ve yet to find the opportunity to try lab-grown meat, but I for sure would like to try it out and don’t see much wrong with it as long as it’s sustainable, reasonably priced, and doesn’t have anything you wouldn’t expect in a normal piece of meat.
Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I’d no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices) or biting into gristle. I’ll happily devour a hot dog, but something about an unexpected bit of cartilage gives me a lingering sense of revulsion.
Imitation meats have never impressed me. They get close, but they inevitably fall just enough short of tasting and feeling like real meat that it feels to me like a wasted effort. I think I’d like them better, oddly enough, if they didn’t even pretend to be meat - if they were marketed as something else entirely.
I love the concept of lab-grown meat, and it seems as if it should be without issue, since it basically is meat in all senses, except that it’s grown in a vat instead of inside an animal’s skin. But since I haven’t had a chance to try it, I can’t say.
That’s basically the approach of gardien. You can tell it’s not the real deal but it’s so good you don’t care
Completely unnecessary. Vegan chefs are wizards nowadays, and can show you how to make replacements for everything you need.
I make vsteak, and vchicken in large amounts about once per week, and use it in recipes. I can share the recipes I use if you like. I make vbacon about once per month, its a bit more labor intensive, but it tastes great.
Even apart from ethics, its 10x cheaper, and doesn’t contain any of the puss, blood, and feces that come in your meats currently.
My spouse and I are foodies and both vegetarian. We’ve had several chefs put together some absolutely incredible vegan/vegetarian dishes.
One of the chefs told us that being a plant-based chef has recently become much more respected in the culinary world. He thought we were at the start of a plant-based revolution in the culinary world. Younger folks are reducing meat consumption more than any previous generation, and there are beginning to be a lot of dedicated vegetarian/vegan restaurants popping up in most medium to large cities.
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Please share! This is on my list of things to learn
Some of my favs
Imitation meat and lab-grown meats are quite different. I would be more psychologically uncomfortable eating lab-grown meat knowing that it’s real animal cells, not plant cells, even if it was never sentient. Not to mention that the disgust factor you mentioned would still be present for lab-grown meat as it’s supposed to be biochemically identical.
Imitation meat is ok and I will eat it from time to time, but I don’t like how much vegan eating is centred around mock meats. I prefer stuff that doesn’t try to imitate animal products; it generally tastes better to me, and it’s way cheaper. Nothing against imitation meat; if you like it, go eat it. Just not huge on them myself.
I’m sceptical that lab-grown meat can ever become sustainable, but if they can pull it off I won’t try to stop them.
If it was never sentient, what’s the fundamental difference between eating the animal cells as opposed to plant cells? Not trying to argue, just genuinely curious what the issue would be
I’m not saying there’s an ethical issue. Just for many people who haven’t eaten meat in a long time, the idea of eating meat in any capacity feels disturbing. The same way a lot of western meat eaters would feel uncomfortable with eating dog meat despite it not being ethically different from other commonly eaten western meats (pigs are generally considered more intelligent than dogs), or you’d be uncomfortable with consensual cannibalism, because it feels wrong regardless of actual ethical implications.
Fair enough, I see your point
They’re good for cravings, and absolutely help keep cultural foods alive even when going vegan. However, these days I’m very tofu-pilled (and tempeh-pilled), and don’t really rely on imitation meat.
If they’re tasty, no less unhealthy, and affordable, I’ll eat ’em. Grown muscle tissue isn’t connected to a nervous system, never mind a brain. They’re no more “animal” than tofu as far as I’m concerned.
But I can think of a couple of major likely problems:
- They’ll probably still require more resources (energy, water, etc.) to produce than plants, so I’d probably limit my consumption.
- Given the history of capitalism and the meat industry, I’d be suspicious of them still harming animals behind the curtain somewhere, somehow. The industry ought to be heavily regulated to ensure they aren’t doing that, but again, history shows that under late capitalism they probably won’t be.
I’m very much not up-to-date on the lab grown meat industry (so take this with a grain of salt), but I have done cell culture.
There’s a reason most scifi with food grown in vats references bacteria, yeast, and algae. Single celled organisms have to be relatively self sufficient. You can grow more yeast/bacteria by feeding plain sugar to it. There are other nutrients eventually needed, but they can be given in simple forms (e.g., oxygen, inorganic salts, etc.) that you can isolate or create through simple chemistry alone.
Vertebrate cells are part of a highly complex system where they require sugars/salts/etc, but also growth factors, antibodies, and a whole host of other proteins, fats, steroids, etc. Some of those can be created in a lab with chemistry or special bacteria/yeast, but for the most part, scientists use fetal bovine serum. It’s a byproduct of slaughtering pregnant cattle, and it contains a lot of those things that are just too hard to create otherwise.
Cells also need to be given the right niche do grow and differentiate into the target cell type, so muscle needs to exercise, arteries need pulsatile fluid flow, nerves need electrical signals, etc. Without an immune system, everything needs to be done in a sterile environment.
All of that adds up to an ecological footprint that’s extremely difficult to reduce below the natural product.
Lab grown muscles don’t need exercise, nor do they need arteries or nervous systems
Your conclusion is simply wrong. Much of the resource requirements in a natural product is the non-muscle portions of the animal, and most importantly the cost of keeping all those cells alive until slaughter
It’s incredibly easy to reduce the ecological footprint, because most of it is not necessary for lab grown meat
I, personally, have grown muscle tissue in a laboratory environment, so I know what it takes to actually grow muscle tissue. What I’m not familiar with is what the lab-grown meat industry practices are, but I just looked into it briefly.
There are 2 companies currently with approval to sell a lab-grown meat product in the US: Upside Foods and Good Meat.
Both sell chicken. Upside Food’s process is outlined in their FDA submission. They specifically state: “several media protein components (e.g., bovine serum albumin, growth factors) are required for sustaining cell viability and growth during the culture process” i.e., they rely on albumin from cattle like I suspected.
Unfortunately, since the “creation of chicken cells” is FDA regulated, but “production of chicken meat” is USDA regulated, that document doesn’t actually go into detail on how the cells are turned into the final product. This Wired article, however, says that they are basically just laying out sheets of the cells, and then manually stacking them to give some structure, which is not a scalable solution. Also, it seems like they are somewhat falling apart as a company not that they are running out of VC money. It looks like they are also trying to pivot into producing some sort of primarily plant based sausage with a little chicken cells thrown in. I’m assuming that’s a last gasp to produce something profitable.
Good Meats, on the other hand, I can’t find as much information on. The equivalent FDA document is on the other side of a link that seems broken. According to what they publish on their site, they are essentially vat growing cells, straining them off, and then extruding them into a shape.
In both cases, I don’t think it’s accurate to call the product “meat” since the cells will not have the structure of muscle cells (long strands), and there isn’t any tissue organization or adhesion to an extracellular matrix. It’s more of a pate even though they called a fillet.
The ecological footprint of both of the companies is greater than just conventional chicken production. I know this because both websites try really carefully to make it seem like they are better, but they can’t say that they are.
Upside foods phrases all of their claims as “what if we could do x, y, and z?” Rather than saying that they can do it. Good Meats similarly has an FAQ of “is it better than conventional?” and their response is “we believe it will be”.
no less unhealthy
Yeah, given the history of capitalism, that will not happen. Look, they even made real meat unhealthy just to increase the profit (meat “yield” from animal), with lab-grown meat they would cut corners even further.
Chickens we are given today weight at least 5 times more than chicken 50 years ago (or “heritage breed”) and reach that weight in 6 weeks vs a year. To even buy a heritage breed chicken you need to have time, money and know-how, and you’re still likely to get just a 100 days old chicken.
I can’t even predict how they will enshittify lab-grown meat if it’s ever perfected.
I don’t like fast food, beyond/impossible meat is factory produced slop. They even made a South Park episode about it.
Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I’d no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices)
Could it be you were never taught to respect the animals we eat? I find that common in people who grew up in big cities / never spent time in the countryside / are young enough to have never seen a pig being dismantled / never fished.
My another point against lab grown meat is that so far any time we tried to manufacture food, within 30 years it turned out to be very bad for us (e.g. obesity epidemic is mainly caused by UPF).
I’m a vegetarian. I’m just going to continue eating beans.
I find it so strange that people think handling meat and biting grissle is revolting, but not the fact that you’re eating a dead creature that had a life. There is clearly some weird compartmentalization happening separating “meat” from living creature.
I think part of it is the fact that raw meat gets you sick, and people are afraid of the germs more so than the ethics of it.
the كبة نية enjoyers would like to have a word with you.
As far as I understand it’s best to eat raw meat on the same day it is cut to lessen those risks. And speaking of cuts, it may also be that not many people witness the animal being killed, skinned and cut to be turned into food, so it’s easier to consume.
Why would you write in Arabic and link to the Arabic article?
To low-effort quip, I recognized the OP. Next question.
Plants are living creatures as well
If living and creature are the characteristics we have issue with, we’ll be left with mostly fruits and nuts to eat. Is there a more specific description to your objection? It feels overly broad otherwise
I’d like to experiment more of those “not really” vegetable meats, but they’re expensive. Like, the price for 300g is what I’d pay for 1kg of pork sirloin
It’s a nice off-ramp for meatbrains to adapt a plant based diet, but should be treated as such, like nicotine gum and not relied on as true substitute. At this point, I much prefer tempeh, mushroom and bean burgers that dont bother pretending to be meat and cant ever imagine actually eating any real meat anymore, lab grown, synthetic, or otherwise
They were really helpful in my transition into Vegetarianism. When I first became vegetarian, I pretty frequently craved meat, Impossible/Beyond meat alternatives were great for those times.
Pretty quickly the cravings lessened, after a few months I rarely craved meat at all.
Almost 5 years later, I crave something meaty maybe 3 times a year. Sometimes I want a heavy savory burger during the summer. Impossible meat patties are great for that.
They are also useful for entertaining family and friends who still eat meat. I’ve cooked vegetarian burgers, brats, breakfast sausages, etc. And most people give them pretty rave reviews. I even have had some family members say “I didn’t know you are eating meat again.” because the taste/smell was so close, they thought it was real meat I was cooking.
I can’t speak for lab meat, but it would be pretty cool if we were able to grow authentic meat from cell cultures that were acquired ethically, like painlessly from already dying/dead animals.
At this point, I can’t see myself ever going back to even totally ethically synthetic meats, I just don’t have a strong taste for it anymore. I prefer the health benifits I get from eating cleaner anyways.
I do wish they had a really good Impossible fish, I still often miss a hearty fish and chips with fresh tartar sauce and nice balsamic vinegar dip.
if they were cheaper and with near same nutrition, what’s there to not like? thing is that they’re just not economically viable atm.
Have you tried mushroom bacon? I havent, but seems like an alternative.
Meat is meat, and growing it in a lab means cattle won’t have to suffer the conditions of the average meat farm. Also means less greenhouse gasses from cattle.
Animals don’t have to suffer to make a steak taste good.
Can’t wait for a future, where all livestock is raised on free-range farms, and treated like pampered pets, with all their earthly needs, more than satisfied. All that would ever be required of them, is to provide the occasional tissue sample to keep the cloning stock fresh. But other than that, they would live long and happy lives, under the care of kind and gentle human attendants.
Sorry, best I can do is the sci fi dystopian option where we grow entire cows in vats, but we make it humane by just growing them without brains.
