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.
I’m all for it.
Gimme that vat grown cloned shit. I don’t care. Meat is meat. If my guts recognize it as protein then that’s all that matters.
If I had my druthers I’d get rid of industrial meat farming entirely. It is a major contributor to climate change. Plus all the death involved.
And while I was at it I’d end industrial farming all together. We could convert a state or 2 worth of farmland into hydroponic and feed the world. Instead we engineer scarcity and guarantee starvation for profit. It’s fuckin disgusting.
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.
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’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”.
I would rather eat a meal that doesn’t pretend to be meat and just be it’s own tasty thing. I don’t need a steak, but I do want a delicious savory thing.
Well it doesn’t really pretend to be meat, it is meat. It just grows differently.
And I’m cool with that! But my kidneys won’t let me enjoy red meat so let’s do lab grown tuna or chicken!
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
I’m a vegetarian. I’m just going to continue eating beans.
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.
Lab-grown meat can’t come fast enough.
I’ve never seen it being sold in the supermarkets,
but I agree with what one tv show host has said it best:
“Why would anyone have more contanimation concerns of meat grown in a clean lab when this person eats meat cultivated in a dirty stall with poop on every wall?”For imitation meat, the stuff that’s cheaper is not better.
It’s cheaper nonetheless.
And the only better-than-the-real-thing imitation meat out there is a more expensive hamburger.I love a good impossible burger over a normal burger for the big reason of how I feel after. Eating a normal burger as I am getting older means that I feel full in a gross way after, like I can feel the fat from the burger slowing me down, and I feel tired both physically and mentally and I sometimes feel borderline sick for an hour or so after. But with the impossible burgers I can just feel full in a healthy way. I love it. I will admit to also getting it with bacon though for that extra flavor.
I an pretty anti factory farm and love the idea of cutting out at least burgers from their industry. I also enjoy their sausages. Highly recommend them if you have not tried them. I try to cut out bulk meat eating for the environment and keep it to occasional, smaller portions, and even then it is normally chicken. Impossible meat helps scratch that itch if I want some meat but don’t want to commit to blowing my personal weekly allotment of red meat.
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.
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.
Have you tried mushroom bacon? I havent, but seems like an alternative.
The few imitation meat products I have tried have been ok, I guess. Impossible burgers aren’t terrible and I could probably make do with them, if meat were removed from the market completely. I have yet to taste any non-pork bacon which didn’t taste bad (meat or no meat). And I doubt I’m going to find anything to replace a good rack of pork ribs. Really, the best place I’ve found for imitation meats is in dishes where ground meat is used as a protein and is so heavily spiced that you’d have a hard time identifying the type of meat anyway. Once the flavors are all mixed up, the meat is mostly about protein and texture.
Lab grown meat could be a complete game changer, if it’s ever more than a novelty product. A lab grown hamburger, which costs significantly more than one sourced from a cow isn’t it. Sure, you might get a bunch of rich, privileged yuppies eating them, just to show off their smug superiority. It will never have mass market appeal. I do think we’re seeing some interesting advancement in higher end meats though. Lab grown steaks seem like a place where the cost could be competitive and, if they are close enough to, or indistinguishable from cow sourced steaks, then that would be great. I’d be perfectly happy to slap a lab grown rib eye on the grill. I’m not squeamish about raw meat or it’s sourcing from dead animals, but I do recognize the impact that ranching has on the environment and that needs to be reduced.
Overall, I see lab grown meat as a net positive, assuming the costs can be brought in line with other options. This may require subsidies or taxes to skew the market in that direction. But, the government using its power to deal with large, complex problem is kinda the point of government. Stopping more climate change isn’t profitable in a way which will favor it in the market, but it does have a negative impact on society. So, the only real solution is going to be government action to reduce the harm, before the tragedy of the commons comes for us all. Lab grown meat can be one part of a broader solution. And hey, if it means more rib eye, without all the climate harm those bring to the table, that’s fantastic. Though, I’d probably still keep lab grown red meat to a sometimes food, just for health reasons.
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
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.
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.
