I am not a vegetarian but do try to reduce meat consumption for environmental and health reasons and eat closer to a "Mediterranean diet." I'm curious what others think about the concept of lab-grown or deathless meat
I'll definitely be staying far, far away from lab-grown meat, just like I do animal-grown meat, and lab-grown fruits & veggies.
Mother Earth provides more fruits & vegetables than most of us will ever even hear of, no reason to start creating strange, unnatural, potentially dangerous substances to eat.
I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. "Mother nature" doesn't provide anything. We humans artificially selected a plethora of foodstuffs, and now grow them and cultivate them and reap them. There's nothing "strange" or "unnatural" about lab-grown meat.
I agree with you, @tychoxi. People have been tinkering with genes since the dawn of farming. Our cows, corn, etc. are nothing like their ancestors. My dog is great, but thank goodness, she's nothing like her wolf ancestors. Through mate selection, we're also probably quite different than our "wild" ancestors.
Tinkering with nature is what we do. In that way, it's also entirely natural. Even Neil D. Tyson changed his stance on GMOs. It's like any other tool - it's what we do with it -- but there's nothing inherently bad about it. In fact, we have always needed to do it.
If this lab grow meat is safe and helps curb some current abuses that hurt both animals and people, why not? And yes, I made some pretty good "faux" meat patties yesterday with sweet potatoes and flax seeds yesterday. But that's me.
People have been tinkering with genes since the dawn of farming
True, but there is a HUGE difference between helping select which (of the same species) get to breed, and the current model of extracting genes from one species to put into another.
Neil D. Tyson changed his stance on GMOs
All the more reason not to trust them. NDT is a bought & paid for mouthpiece for the corporate structure. That exact video is the one that first proved to millions of us that he is absolutely not to be trusted, thanks for including it :-)
If this lab grow meat is safe
Exactly, if. Personally, I'm not going to be one of the ones who pays for the right to be a guinea pig to see if it's safe. (as "safe" as meat that is, which is not very safe, unless only consumed in very small amounts)
Mother nature does provide fruit & vegetables. You can go into a forest and pick berries and all other types of fruits and nuts. Humans didn't wake up one day and create vegetables, we found them in nature then learned to cultivate them. Meat grown in a lab just sounds wrong, why don't we just make our meat healthy. We can having such large farms where the animals are stuffed with hormones and forced to live in their filth.
We do it because people want cheap meat. If they didn't do those awful things, meat would cost more. Of course, that would help curb consumption, so it would be more like the old days when meat was more of a luxury and people ate more vegetarian sources of protein. My father said they'd often eat lentil soup when he was a child (so often, he got sick of it), but he grew up fine.
You are right about, "the old days when..." in those days the poor people that rarely could afford to eat animal products had better health and the wealthy often were unhealthy and died younger than their servants. BTW going vegan saves me an easy 50.00$ or more on my grocery bill.
Mother Nature provides all the food we need to stay well nourished and healthy. There wasn't always GMO's, pesticides, food cloning, etc etc. People were living off of Mother Nature's fruits, veggies, seeds, grains, nuts, herbs, etc. before all of these killer foods, poisonous water and drinks, preservatives, additives, steroids, artificial this and that were added. Those are the things that are killing us. Oh yes, lets not forget about synthetic drugs that are killing everyone also....which they didn't need way back then either because they used Mother Nature's natural healing foods. Mother Nature is where the "real" cures for diseases are. Don't let the gov't and Big Pharma fool ya. They are the ones controlling the population and they do it by putting poison in our foods and water. Why do you think doctors who have found cures using Mother Nature products mysteriously die? It's been going on for years. They don't want us to know the truth because it will take money out of their pockets and they'd rather have us walking around like zombies.
Water... air... mycelium, sunlight, worms, et al. All of the things needed for even human cultivation of plants comes right from our environment. Plus you can live on wild plants even if you aren't cultivating anything yourself.
There's nothing "strange" or "unnatural" about lab-grown meat.
Well, looks like you want to argue about semantics. I re-read my reply and I think the point's clear: whether you want to say that nature "provides" our foodstuffs or not, it's irrelevant, I can accept that yes nature is "providing" that which we take from the environment. But lab-grown meat is no more "unnatural" than the tomato I grow in my pot or the high-fructose syrup, assembly line-made, preservatives-filled "cereal" bar I buy. Some are healthier than others, yes, but their "healthiness" is not reliant on them being "provided" by nature or the lab. Nature can "provide" contaminated water and soil the plant you eat absorbed to the rim, while the lab can provide the perfect, safest, healthiest foodstuff to ever have been consumed by a human.
I wasn't trying to argue semantics, I was asking you to re-read the sentence where you said that "there is nothing strange or unnatural about lab-grown meat" which is clearly a false statement.
1. Unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain. 2. Not previously visited, seen, or encountered; unfamiliar or alien.
Moving on...
But lab-grown meat is no more "unnatural" than the tomato I grow in my pot or the high-fructose syrup, assembly line-made, conservatives-filled "cereal" bar I buy.
By any definition of natural, both the cereal bar, and the lab-grown meat are far more unnatural than the tomato is. In one case you are simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways; in the other you are creating something that does not (and cannot) exist in nature.
while the lab can provide the perfect, safest, healthiest foodstuff to ever have been consumed by a human.
Theoretically, yes. But as we've seen with that high-fructose corn syrup, the GMOs, the "artificial sweeteners", and all of the other food-stuffs coming out of laboratories, that is not the case. In a world without corporations, corrupt governments, and where people are actually responsible for their actions (like poisoning millions), laboratory-made "food" wouldn't necessarily be a problem. However, we currently don't live in that world.
There is nothing strange or unnatural about growing humans in a lab, feeding them their liquefied dead, and then raising them in pods hooked up to a virtual reality simulator to extract their life force to power an autonomous robotic army.
I thought your problem was with "strange" and "unnatural" foodstuffs. Now you say the problem is greedy corporations.
in the other you are creating something that does not (and cannot) exist in nature.
Artificial meat, if a replica of the animal tissue, does indeed already exist in nature, you would just be "simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways," ie. grow muscle tissue. But now the semantic discussion of what is "natural" and "unnatural" is irrelevant as you admit that theoretically there's no reason to think that "natural" foodstuffs are better or worse. Your problem is with corporations and governments.
I thought your problem was with "strange" and "unnatural" foodstuffs. Now you say the problem is greedy corporations.
You make it seem as though it's impossible to have a problem with both... even though the one is created exclusively by the other...
Artificial meat, if a replica of the animal tissue, does indeed already exist in nature, you would just be "simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways," ie. grow muscle tissue.
Except that nature only works in systems, and would never be creating muscle tissue outside of an organism that requires it to function.
But now the semantic discussion of what is "natural" and "unnatural" is irrelevant as you admit that theoretically there's no reason to think that "natural" foodstuffs are better or worse.
That's not what I said at all. You said that labs can produce healthy, safe food. I said that theoretically they can, though we have never seen it. Even if it had been what I said, that wouldn't make the argument of natural vs synthetic a non-issue.
Your problem is with corporations and governments.
Again, that is one problem. And since these laboratory-made food-replacements are only created by governments & corporations...
We also wouldn't have any need to look for ridiculous solutions like this if it wasn't for those corporations (governments are simply corporations with guns) creating the illusion that there isn't enough food readily available for everyone and forcing children to go to indoctrination camps that conveniently train them to think food must be "bought"
I agree. Lab-grown meat involves genetic engineering of the cells and there aren't any studies on our how it might impact our health. The idea itself is interesting but I'll pass for now. Besides, growing food is fun :)
Lab-grown meat does not necessarily involve genetic engineering. As far as I could find, lab-grown meat produced so far has been free from genetic engineering.
I was Vegetarian for a couple years, then i became a selectarian after having nothing but steak to eat one night on a tree planting mission to replant the animal corridor in West Australia.
After that blood craving i realized how much my O blood type required some form of meat every now and then.
So now i selectively eat meats again but ONLY from my Organic Butcher with humane practices.
Why would strange and unnatural be a problem? And if it were dangerous, it wouldnt be aproved.
Either way, i hope you make sure to get enough lab created vitamin B12 (i think its still created by the same bacteria which usualy create it, just not inside an animal, i might be wrong and i dont care either way). I dont want to hear more stories about crazy people besmirching vegetarian or vegan diets due to their esoteric nonsense.
That's just hilarious. The FDA has approved literally hundreds of things that prove to be quite toxic, and doesn't even bother to pull most of them off the market.
make sure to get enough lab created vitamin B12
Our bodies create b12, probiotic foods (kraut, pickles, kombucha, etc) contain b12, and eating produce from soil that hasn't been Monsanto'd to death gives b12 as well. The only way to not get enough B12 is to eat only dead food and not keep healthy gut flora.
I've been vegan for over 4 years now, and have never taken any supplements that were not 100% raw and totally plant-sourced (like Garden of Life)
Actually, "urban farms" are a growing trend. More and more people are giving up on the animal products and/or buying as much locally sourced organic or "grown with organic methods" as possible. Smart people are giving up their 2nd day job to grow food. Modern agriculture is really more of a problem than a solution but I do agree that to feed our large populations we need to keep the best of the modern technology and apply as much of it as you can to organic and more natural practices.
Not exactly true. There were plenty of cultures pre-modern-agriculture who lived on little to no animal products whatsoever. There are even still places where you can do that, in the wild, right now.
There is a WIDE variety of "modern agricultural technology" like greenhouses, aquaponics, hugleculture, etc. that is perfectly harmless, but those don't involve messing with DNA itself. Working in tandem with the plants & environment is a whole different story from trying to play god.
You did, and that is the proper term. My point though, is that any time someone references "not enough protein", it's clear there is some level of misunderstanding nutrition and nurtritional sources. (not necessarily you, as I assume you're giving an example of something they said in the documentary)
Stop using the majority of farmland to produce grains for cattle (most of which cannot actually process those grains), and there's no shortage. And/or stop throwing away 50+% of the food produced for humans, and there's no shortage. And/or stop cramming humans into "cities" that are physical incapable of supporting them, and there's no shortage.
OMG did you just say even cows are having a hard time growing real meat? Actually, let's think about this now... mother gives birth, baby fed _____ but not fed mother's milk ever because we drink it (not me). So if the baby cows that do get to live more than a few weeks don't drink mother's milk then the mother only grew the first half of that cow, everything after birth we grew with... whatever we grow them with.
I might be a weird person and this might just be me, but as someone who chose to avoid eating meat from 4 legged land animals (I still eat fish and chicken) I just don't find the taste of those kinds of meat appealing.
The saying "It is the best thing since sliced bread." would be unusually accurate in case of artificial meat tissue.
Sure, clumps of muscle cells can be grown in a lab at a high cost, and sure enough, that's a necessary step towards actual artificial meat but that is not very interesting in itself.
Well, I'm thinking of the good ole "it's unnatural." If people complain about GMOs (GMO's have a couple of valid criticisms, but I'm talking about those who complain basically about what they don't understand), I would consider this to be even "worse." Actually, your critical thinking series could help with all of this!
I'm suuuuuuper excited for fake meat. But I'm also in the interim excited to try BEYOND burgers too, which you can't get where I live. I'm not a vegetarian, but still am super open to eating animal-less meat.
I think eating labgrown meat in exotic forms like kangaroo-, chimpanzee-, etc.-meat wouldn't be immoral. In the opposite.
If this process still needs cells from animals, it could even be more reasonable to use the cells from animals living in the region to grow meat than importing them from animals from other regions in the world. Using local animal-cells in combination with a decentralization of lab-grown-meat-production would save us a lot of logistic-costs and a lot of CO2-emissions.
This process would be more reasonable in my opinion then importing meat from all over the world, but likely we even won't need to extract cells from animals in the future. Even today there are already successful experiments to greatly extend, not just modify, the genetic code of E coli-microbes ( https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/23/organisms-created-with-synthetic-dna-pave-way-for-new-entirely-new-life-forms ) which could pave the way for completely newly created lifeforms possibly including completely artificial meat-cells.
If completely artificial meat-cells without the need to extract them from other animals should become produceable then moral questions about the form of meat won't matter anymore in my opinion.
While it's true that countless genetic manipulations are possible with E. coli, I wouldn't use it as a basis for synthetic meat, mainly because it's a single-celled organism. You would need to put an unreasonable amount of effort into teaching E. coli how to build multicellular structures. I don't think it has ever been done before and I presume it would take decades if anyone even wants to pursue that path. It's much more practical to use cells that already know how to form multicellular structures. All you have to do is convince them to grow outside of an organism. And you could get the inital cells from biopsies that don't do much harm to the animals, so I don't think there would be any ethical problems.
I am vegetarian, and I honestly would not eat lab-grown meat. Just the concept of the word meat makes my mind just say no. But this could be a huge debate for vegetarians!
I just can't get jiggy with lab-produced meat, something about it sounds off. I can't imagine it being good for you, I may be jumping to conclusuions, but if something is made in a lab I will assume it has dangerous chemicals and other things that are generally not conducive to our health. I'm not the biggest fan of meat, but I'd much rather eat natural meat than something grown in a lab. I think if we stop the mass production of meat and go back to small farms raising healthy animals it will ease the harm of meat. A lot of the bad parts of meat come from the additives, terrible living conditions, and hormones placed into the meat.
If we stopped the mass production of meat, it would become so expensive that you would probably stop buying it altogetther. Low-cost lab meat could be the answer to this. You don't need to worry about harmful chemicals, the meat is grown in a solution of nutrients that are completely healthy. The name 'lab' meat is a bit misleading, it just means it was developed in a lab, but it will be produced in a factory like every other processed food. Maybe they should call it 'cultured' meat or something.
no me parece consumir esta carne, procedente de laboratorio, prefiero comer vegetales. Aquí en venezuela, estamos lejos de consumir carne, por lo incomprable y menos de laboratorio. muy interesante tu publicación.
It's a interesting idea i guess, it would definitely help the environment and less animals would be treated badly. I mean the way they abuse them on slaughter farms makes my stomach turn.
On the other hand though anything created artificially usually isn't as good as the real thing so we'll have to see how it plays out
So here's my lentil burger recipe -- cook lentils per package instructions, cool, stir in egg (also a deathless animal product), season as desired (onion powder & salt or soysauce work well), spoon out in a pan with some olive oil and fry. Actually a pretty hearty meal.
Hi suzannel, I wouldn't call eggs a deathless animal product. I don't know if you're aware of this, but since male chicks are useless for the egg industry, they're killed immediately after birth. Also as soon as the hens don't lay enough eggs to be profitable anymore, they're slaughtered too, way before the end of their natural lifespan. Maybe if you buy eggs from a local farmer the situation might be different, but these are the standard practices in the industry.
Everybody seems to be dead certain that there will be health risks that come with the lab-grown meat, and I don't really know why. I understand a healthy dose of skepticism, but these meats would of course be subject to testing and FDA regulations and all that. I think this well-poisoning is symptomatic of the anti-science, anti-intellectual notions that permeate our society. New technology scares people beyond reason.
On the one hand, if it results in less suffering it's got to be a good thing.
On the other hand, I think a lot of the additives are somewhat harmful - I think the earliest iterations of this are not simply 'meat grown in a lab', but rather 'cells grown in a lab', with additives, to make it taste like 'meat'. There are properties of meat which go beyond being merely animal cells cloned - the marbling that results from the growth and development of an actual animal results in a different taste. So in an attempt to recreate this taste, it could end up being more harmful to the consumer than regular meat.
That said, I welcome the initiative (tentatively).
Not really, what's being grown is literally muscle cells. Of course the slice of meat you get from the actual animal has different cells other than muscle cells and the specifics can be altered even further due to the animal's diet. With more work and iteration, recreating the same cell-types in the same ratios and emulating different animal feeds in vitro should lead to meat that's virtually identical to the real thing.
As I recall when they tasted the first lab-grown burger back in like 2013, the verdict was that it wasn't too tasty as it was very lean. Makes sense that it wouldn't have much fat as it was relatively pure muscle cells. Furthermore, commercial veggie alternatives to meat (talking like Quorn, Tofurkey, meatless sausages, etc) also employ all manner of tricks to simulate something similar to real meat so you are singling this out just because lab-grown is something new.
I agree, yeah - and the vegan / vegetarian meat substitutes are in some ways horrible options - eg. it seems that around 5% of people have an allergy-like reaction to the mycoprotein used; some of which can leave them hospitalised.
Everything needs to be done in moderation. Cutting something off completely is not healthy. The Mediterranean diet is the healthiest for a reason. It doesn't restrict anything, and puts everything in moderation.
works for me - do the same thing you do in terms of reduction of consumption - another thing I have been doing and really enjoying the benefits of for the last 6 months is intermittent fasting
I'm vegan and I don't miss meat at all, but I would definitely try lab-grown shrimps if no animals were harmed in the production :)
If you define vegan as "animal-friendly" or "cruelty-free", synthetic meat is definitely vegan and I don't get the scepticism in the vegan community when it comes to this epoch making innovation.
that sounds cool but i don't like meat so i'm still going to to be eating veggies I might try it to see how it taste, but this is probably going to be good for everyone.
Well theoretically, #vegans shouldn't have any objections against labgrown meat, at least not moral objections. But in practice, I think that they're so ideologically driven that they will still find some reason to keep pestering people about not eating meat. It's like some sort of religion, really.
Personally, I am neither #vegetarian nor #vegan, but I will switch to labgrown meat once it becomes affordable for both ethical and environmental reasons. I'm sure at one point, lab meat will eventually become even cheaper than organic meat, but the latter will stick around as some high-quality gourmet food.
Why not. We eat genetically modified food ever day. There is no such thing as a "Natural Grown" banana any more. They are all genetically modified to be a better food. I'm sure 100 years from now we will be eating things that we never dreamt of.
Not true. I have a banana tree in my garden all organic like the rest of my produce. I always went to the dole banana plantation in costa rica and theyre completely organic and use non toxic pesticides.
Fun fact: banana trees are ~90% water, and full grown weigh ~10-20 lbs MAX.
@pinballman1 Totally false, the most common banana eaten in the world is the Williams, or Cavendish variety is absolutely NOT GMO. There are only a couple varieties of GMO banana being developed , and none are available for sale at the moment. Please use google before making outrageous claims like this.
I am a foodie by heart. Anything that is edible and healthy I am willing to chow down on! I am a huge carnivore however so I have not had much in the way of vegetarian stuff. Any recommendations fellow Steem members?
This is indeed interesting. I believe it's the term "lab-meat" that may turn a few heads. Although the actual product may not be produced in a mad scientist lab that our imagination like to run towards, the unknown facts of what this product is actually made of may be a bit alarming. However this is where marketing and great advertisement come in and wrap it with a pretty bow. I'm a fan of Morning Star and Quorn products which are also meatless products and not once have I questioned "I wonder what chemicals were used to put this fake burger together". Just as others who do eat may not question the "meat glue" that's used to hold their breakfast sausage together.
I think Im very positive about it. Am an omnivor but was quite shocked by how much methane (is it?) polutes from the production of beef and lamb, nevermind the ratio of land needed to cultivate these meats versus beans.
Sometimes I think we only need to progress at the edges to make a real differences. 3-5% less land on meat would create a great increase in the number of those hectares availabe for sustainable crops.
I'm a vegan. I got useful information from this book The China Study, T. Colin Campbell He is a professor at the Department of Food Biochemistry. I advise you to read this book. I follow you.=))
Well I've been so aquinted to eating me, didn't even know until lately the vast hazard that comes with some, but don't you think any lab grown food, would have certain chemicals that might in a long run be harmful to the body. My thought though
Wow, that's awesome.
But the nutrients and all would be up for questioning. ➕ Will it be yet another company food manufactured food with chemicals and stuff?
Or would it be a better alternative to 'red meat'?
I eat for two reasons, nutrition and pleasure. Meat technically is a super food in my eyes, but I rarely will eat meat. I actually go really far out of my way to eat things I do not particularly like just for the nutrition alone. For this reason, I still eat for pleasure, and I would eat this deathless meat if it tasted good and didn't decline my health. I don't see it having the same nutritional benefits of game meat, which animals accrue by foraging off the land. For this reason reason I'd have deathless meat things like a slice of pizza or a burger once and a while, but I'm not plopping a roast in a crock pot and deviating from a raw living vegetarian lifestyle.
I always stand away Of cultivated meat
For environmental and health reasons
Thank you for this information
I'll definitely be staying far, far away from lab-grown meat, just like I do animal-grown meat, and lab-grown fruits & veggies.
Mother Earth provides more fruits & vegetables than most of us will ever even hear of, no reason to start creating strange, unnatural, potentially dangerous substances to eat.
I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. "Mother nature" doesn't provide anything. We humans artificially selected a plethora of foodstuffs, and now grow them and cultivate them and reap them. There's nothing "strange" or "unnatural" about lab-grown meat.
I agree with you, @tychoxi. People have been tinkering with genes since the dawn of farming. Our cows, corn, etc. are nothing like their ancestors. My dog is great, but thank goodness, she's nothing like her wolf ancestors. Through mate selection, we're also probably quite different than our "wild" ancestors.
Tinkering with nature is what we do. In that way, it's also entirely natural. Even Neil D. Tyson changed his stance on GMOs. It's like any other tool - it's what we do with it -- but there's nothing inherently bad about it. In fact, we have always needed to do it.
If this lab grow meat is safe and helps curb some current abuses that hurt both animals and people, why not? And yes, I made some pretty good "faux" meat patties yesterday with sweet potatoes and flax seeds yesterday. But that's me.
True, but there is a HUGE difference between helping select which (of the same species) get to breed, and the current model of extracting genes from one species to put into another.
All the more reason not to trust them. NDT is a bought & paid for mouthpiece for the corporate structure. That exact video is the one that first proved to millions of us that he is absolutely not to be trusted, thanks for including it :-)
Exactly, if. Personally, I'm not going to be one of the ones who pays for the right to be a guinea pig to see if it's safe. (as "safe" as meat that is, which is not very safe, unless only consumed in very small amounts)
Mother nature does provide fruit & vegetables. You can go into a forest and pick berries and all other types of fruits and nuts. Humans didn't wake up one day and create vegetables, we found them in nature then learned to cultivate them. Meat grown in a lab just sounds wrong, why don't we just make our meat healthy. We can having such large farms where the animals are stuffed with hormones and forced to live in their filth.
We do it because people want cheap meat. If they didn't do those awful things, meat would cost more. Of course, that would help curb consumption, so it would be more like the old days when meat was more of a luxury and people ate more vegetarian sources of protein. My father said they'd often eat lentil soup when he was a child (so often, he got sick of it), but he grew up fine.
You are right about, "the old days when..." in those days the poor people that rarely could afford to eat animal products had better health and the wealthy often were unhealthy and died younger than their servants. BTW going vegan saves me an easy 50.00$ or more on my grocery bill.
Mother Nature provides all the food we need to stay well nourished and healthy. There wasn't always GMO's, pesticides, food cloning, etc etc. People were living off of Mother Nature's fruits, veggies, seeds, grains, nuts, herbs, etc. before all of these killer foods, poisonous water and drinks, preservatives, additives, steroids, artificial this and that were added. Those are the things that are killing us. Oh yes, lets not forget about synthetic drugs that are killing everyone also....which they didn't need way back then either because they used Mother Nature's natural healing foods. Mother Nature is where the "real" cures for diseases are. Don't let the gov't and Big Pharma fool ya. They are the ones controlling the population and they do it by putting poison in our foods and water. Why do you think doctors who have found cures using Mother Nature products mysteriously die? It's been going on for years. They don't want us to know the truth because it will take money out of their pockets and they'd rather have us walking around like zombies.
Water... air... mycelium, sunlight, worms, et al. All of the things needed for even human cultivation of plants comes right from our environment. Plus you can live on wild plants even if you aren't cultivating anything yourself.
Re-read that sentence
Well, looks like you want to argue about semantics. I re-read my reply and I think the point's clear: whether you want to say that nature "provides" our foodstuffs or not, it's irrelevant, I can accept that yes nature is "providing" that which we take from the environment. But lab-grown meat is no more "unnatural" than the tomato I grow in my pot or the high-fructose syrup, assembly line-made, preservatives-filled "cereal" bar I buy. Some are healthier than others, yes, but their "healthiness" is not reliant on them being "provided" by nature or the lab. Nature can "provide" contaminated water and soil the plant you eat absorbed to the rim, while the lab can provide the perfect, safest, healthiest foodstuff to ever have been consumed by a human.
I wasn't trying to argue semantics, I was asking you to re-read the sentence where you said that "there is nothing strange or unnatural about lab-grown meat" which is clearly a false statement.
Natural, from Oxford:
Strange, from Oxford:
Moving on...
By any definition of natural, both the cereal bar, and the lab-grown meat are far more unnatural than the tomato is. In one case you are simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways; in the other you are creating something that does not (and cannot) exist in nature.
Theoretically, yes. But as we've seen with that high-fructose corn syrup, the GMOs, the "artificial sweeteners", and all of the other food-stuffs coming out of laboratories, that is not the case. In a world without corporations, corrupt governments, and where people are actually responsible for their actions (like poisoning millions), laboratory-made "food" wouldn't necessarily be a problem. However, we currently don't live in that world.
There is nothing strange or unnatural about growing humans in a lab, feeding them their liquefied dead, and then raising them in pods hooked up to a virtual reality simulator to extract their life force to power an autonomous robotic army.
I thought your problem was with "strange" and "unnatural" foodstuffs. Now you say the problem is greedy corporations.
Artificial meat, if a replica of the animal tissue, does indeed already exist in nature, you would just be "simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways," ie. grow muscle tissue. But now the semantic discussion of what is "natural" and "unnatural" is irrelevant as you admit that theoretically there's no reason to think that "natural" foodstuffs are better or worse. Your problem is with corporations and governments.
You make it seem as though it's impossible to have a problem with both... even though the one is created exclusively by the other...
Except that nature only works in systems, and would never be creating muscle tissue outside of an organism that requires it to function.
That's not what I said at all. You said that labs can produce healthy, safe food. I said that theoretically they can, though we have never seen it. Even if it had been what I said, that wouldn't make the argument of natural vs synthetic a non-issue.
Again, that is one problem. And since these laboratory-made food-replacements are only created by governments & corporations...
We also wouldn't have any need to look for ridiculous solutions like this if it wasn't for those corporations (governments are simply corporations with guns) creating the illusion that there isn't enough food readily available for everyone and forcing children to go to indoctrination camps that conveniently train them to think food must be "bought"
I agree. Lab-grown meat involves genetic engineering of the cells and there aren't any studies on our how it might impact our health. The idea itself is interesting but I'll pass for now. Besides, growing food is fun :)
Lab-grown meat does not necessarily involve genetic engineering. As far as I could find, lab-grown meat produced so far has been free from genetic engineering.
Should've rephrased. You're right, the labs aren't using genetic engineering now but they may in the future.
( ＾ω＾)
I was Vegetarian for a couple years, then i became a selectarian after having nothing but steak to eat one night on a tree planting mission to replant the animal corridor in West Australia.
After that blood craving i realized how much my O blood type required some form of meat every now and then.
So now i selectively eat meats again but ONLY from my Organic Butcher with humane practices.
Me too, probably won't venture into eating something Nature hasn't worked out over time.
Why would strange and unnatural be a problem? And if it were dangerous, it wouldnt be aproved.
Either way, i hope you make sure to get enough lab created vitamin B12 (i think its still created by the same bacteria which usualy create it, just not inside an animal, i might be wrong and i dont care either way). I dont want to hear more stories about crazy people besmirching vegetarian or vegan diets due to their esoteric nonsense.
That's just hilarious. The FDA has approved literally hundreds of things that prove to be quite toxic, and doesn't even bother to pull most of them off the market.
Our bodies create b12, probiotic foods (kraut, pickles, kombucha, etc) contain b12, and eating produce from soil that hasn't been Monsanto'd to death gives b12 as well. The only way to not get enough B12 is to eat only dead food and not keep healthy gut flora.
I've been vegan for over 4 years now, and have never taken any supplements that were not 100% raw and totally plant-sourced (like Garden of Life)
@doodlebear Spoken like someone who has truly never grown their own food.
and I grew up surrounded by tech factories... doesn't mean I know how to manufacture a microchip
Actually, "urban farms" are a growing trend. More and more people are giving up on the animal products and/or buying as much locally sourced organic or "grown with organic methods" as possible. Smart people are giving up their 2nd day job to grow food. Modern agriculture is really more of a problem than a solution but I do agree that to feed our large populations we need to keep the best of the modern technology and apply as much of it as you can to organic and more natural practices.
Not exactly true. There were plenty of cultures pre-modern-agriculture who lived on little to no animal products whatsoever. There are even still places where you can do that, in the wild, right now.
There is a WIDE variety of "modern agricultural technology" like greenhouses, aquaponics, hugleculture, etc. that is perfectly harmless, but those don't involve messing with DNA itself. Working in tandem with the plants & environment is a whole different story from trying to play god.
Lost any credibility there, as protein deficiency is almost impossible unless you aren't getting enough calories to survive anyway.
You did, and that is the proper term. My point though, is that any time someone references "not enough protein", it's clear there is some level of misunderstanding nutrition and nurtritional sources. (not necessarily you, as I assume you're giving an example of something they said in the documentary)
nice one!
I'm not scared to test new things, we need to be forward thinking about food consumption, due to the fast increase in population globally.
Stop using the majority of farmland to produce grains for cattle (most of which cannot actually process those grains), and there's no shortage. And/or stop throwing away 50+% of the food produced for humans, and there's no shortage. And/or stop cramming humans into "cities" that are physical incapable of supporting them, and there's no shortage.
They have meatless meat at McDonald's they call it a big mac
OMG did you just say even cows are having a hard time growing real meat? Actually, let's think about this now... mother gives birth, baby fed _____ but not fed mother's milk ever because we drink it (not me). So if the baby cows that do get to live more than a few weeks don't drink mother's milk then the mother only grew the first half of that cow, everything after birth we grew with... whatever we grow them with.
I might be a weird person and this might just be me, but as someone who chose to avoid eating meat from 4 legged land animals (I still eat fish and chicken) I just don't find the taste of those kinds of meat appealing.
ah, well that's a different story altogether
Way to self upvote your reply %100 and the comment 5% @davidpakman Bro - do you even STEEM?
You did WHAT now?
I'd definitely eat it if it was like real meat and the price was right.
Developing it will further tissue engineering, too.
indeed it will!
The saying "It is the best thing since sliced bread." would be unusually accurate in case of artificial meat tissue.
Sure, clumps of muscle cells can be grown in a lab at a high cost, and sure enough, that's a necessary step towards actual artificial meat but that is not very interesting in itself.
I really hope this takes off, the anti-intellectuals and anti-vaxxers and etc will probably fight it all the way.
You think? What justification would they use for fighting it?
Well, I'm thinking of the good ole "it's unnatural." If people complain about GMOs (GMO's have a couple of valid criticisms, but I'm talking about those who complain basically about what they don't understand), I would consider this to be even "worse." Actually, your critical thinking series could help with all of this!
I'm suuuuuuper excited for fake meat. But I'm also in the interim excited to try BEYOND burgers too, which you can't get where I live. I'm not a vegetarian, but still am super open to eating animal-less meat.
I've heard those are good but have never tried them
I think eating labgrown meat in exotic forms like kangaroo-, chimpanzee-, etc.-meat wouldn't be immoral. In the opposite.
If this process still needs cells from animals, it could even be more reasonable to use the cells from animals living in the region to grow meat than importing them from animals from other regions in the world. Using local animal-cells in combination with a decentralization of lab-grown-meat-production would save us a lot of logistic-costs and a lot of CO2-emissions.
This process would be more reasonable in my opinion then importing meat from all over the world, but likely we even won't need to extract cells from animals in the future. Even today there are already successful experiments to greatly extend, not just modify, the genetic code of E coli-microbes ( https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/23/organisms-created-with-synthetic-dna-pave-way-for-new-entirely-new-life-forms ) which could pave the way for completely newly created lifeforms possibly including completely artificial meat-cells.
If completely artificial meat-cells without the need to extract them from other animals should become produceable then moral questions about the form of meat won't matter anymore in my opinion.
very interesting take, thanks!
While it's true that countless genetic manipulations are possible with E. coli, I wouldn't use it as a basis for synthetic meat, mainly because it's a single-celled organism. You would need to put an unreasonable amount of effort into teaching E. coli how to build multicellular structures. I don't think it has ever been done before and I presume it would take decades if anyone even wants to pursue that path. It's much more practical to use cells that already know how to form multicellular structures. All you have to do is convince them to grow outside of an organism. And you could get the inital cells from biopsies that don't do much harm to the animals, so I don't think there would be any ethical problems.
I am vegetarian, and I honestly would not eat lab-grown meat. Just the concept of the word meat makes my mind just say no. But this could be a huge debate for vegetarians!
It might become a great debate topic for school, who knows?! lol
I just can't get jiggy with lab-produced meat, something about it sounds off. I can't imagine it being good for you, I may be jumping to conclusuions, but if something is made in a lab I will assume it has dangerous chemicals and other things that are generally not conducive to our health. I'm not the biggest fan of meat, but I'd much rather eat natural meat than something grown in a lab. I think if we stop the mass production of meat and go back to small farms raising healthy animals it will ease the harm of meat. A lot of the bad parts of meat come from the additives, terrible living conditions, and hormones placed into the meat.
I think that's part of the current "ick factor" because it's not something we're used to, but I can't help but think that will fade over time
If we stopped the mass production of meat, it would become so expensive that you would probably stop buying it altogetther. Low-cost lab meat could be the answer to this. You don't need to worry about harmful chemicals, the meat is grown in a solution of nutrients that are completely healthy. The name 'lab' meat is a bit misleading, it just means it was developed in a lab, but it will be produced in a factory like every other processed food. Maybe they should call it 'cultured' meat or something.
Mediterranean diet is the best thing ever. As a doctor I always tell my patients to try it and I myself try to practice it everyday :)
Thanks Doc!
I have been a vegetarian for 26 years now, this concept I will not be trying, I mean I would not try whale because it was not real whale .
ah, gotcha
no me parece consumir esta carne, procedente de laboratorio, prefiero comer vegetales. Aquí en venezuela, estamos lejos de consumir carne, por lo incomprable y menos de laboratorio. muy interesante tu publicación.
Podes darnos una idea de cuanto cuesta un bife de carne en Venezuela en este momento en el contexto del salario promedio?
Mas de un sueldo mínimo, la carne está desde 300 a 500 el kilo.
.sueldo esta en 430 mil
It's a interesting idea i guess, it would definitely help the environment and less animals would be treated badly. I mean the way they abuse them on slaughter farms makes my stomach turn.
On the other hand though anything created artificially usually isn't as good as the real thing so we'll have to see how it plays out
It doesn't have to be as good as the 'real thing'. I would eat it, if it is half as good.
Lab grown meat horrifies me more than actually killing a chicken does. Why? Because I don't trust scientists not to foist human meat on us.
They're already culturing about a third of all vaccines in aborted human fetal cell tissue for us to inject.
CDC vaccines ingredients list (anything listing "human diploid"):
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf
Making cannibals out of us seems to be some kind big corporate sport.
I'm sure this is something that will concern others as well
So here's my lentil burger recipe -- cook lentils per package instructions, cool, stir in egg (also a deathless animal product), season as desired (onion powder & salt or soysauce work well), spoon out in a pan with some olive oil and fry. Actually a pretty hearty meal.
Hi suzannel, I wouldn't call eggs a deathless animal product. I don't know if you're aware of this, but since male chicks are useless for the egg industry, they're killed immediately after birth. Also as soon as the hens don't lay enough eggs to be profitable anymore, they're slaughtered too, way before the end of their natural lifespan. Maybe if you buy eggs from a local farmer the situation might be different, but these are the standard practices in the industry.
Yes, I was aware of some of this, although I had thought roosters were raised by the big poultry industry just for their meat. No, huh
Everybody seems to be dead certain that there will be health risks that come with the lab-grown meat, and I don't really know why. I understand a healthy dose of skepticism, but these meats would of course be subject to testing and FDA regulations and all that. I think this well-poisoning is symptomatic of the anti-science, anti-intellectual notions that permeate our society. New technology scares people beyond reason.
It's possible there'd be FEWER health risks since you'd not need to feed a real animal antibiotics, for example
Exactly. If we can control the environment the meat is raised/created in, we don't have to worry about illness, injury, exposure to chemicals, etc.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, if it results in less suffering it's got to be a good thing.
On the other hand, I think a lot of the additives are somewhat harmful - I think the earliest iterations of this are not simply 'meat grown in a lab', but rather 'cells grown in a lab', with additives, to make it taste like 'meat'. There are properties of meat which go beyond being merely animal cells cloned - the marbling that results from the growth and development of an actual animal results in a different taste. So in an attempt to recreate this taste, it could end up being more harmful to the consumer than regular meat.
That said, I welcome the initiative (tentatively).
Not really, what's being grown is literally muscle cells. Of course the slice of meat you get from the actual animal has different cells other than muscle cells and the specifics can be altered even further due to the animal's diet. With more work and iteration, recreating the same cell-types in the same ratios and emulating different animal feeds in vitro should lead to meat that's virtually identical to the real thing.
As I recall when they tasted the first lab-grown burger back in like 2013, the verdict was that it wasn't too tasty as it was very lean. Makes sense that it wouldn't have much fat as it was relatively pure muscle cells. Furthermore, commercial veggie alternatives to meat (talking like Quorn, Tofurkey, meatless sausages, etc) also employ all manner of tricks to simulate something similar to real meat so you are singling this out just because lab-grown is something new.
I agree, yeah - and the vegan / vegetarian meat substitutes are in some ways horrible options - eg. it seems that around 5% of people have an allergy-like reaction to the mycoprotein used; some of which can leave them hospitalised.
Hopefully the chinese and Charlie Sheen can lab-grow some tiger penis meat so they can quit killing tigers, etc.
Would you eat lab-grown human meat?
Would you eat lab-grown meat from the cells of a pet?
I would eat only the finest of apex predators.
Everything needs to be done in moderation. Cutting something off completely is not healthy. The Mediterranean diet is the healthiest for a reason. It doesn't restrict anything, and puts everything in moderation.
Some things should be in more moderation than others though!
works for me - do the same thing you do in terms of reduction of consumption - another thing I have been doing and really enjoying the benefits of for the last 6 months is intermittent fasting
I'll stick with organic whole live foods.
No food tech, Thanks but no thanks.
Meatless meat? Labgrown? That has GMO and Monsanto/Bayer written all over it. No thanks 👎
I have a hoodie (a perk from a crowdfunding campaign) from a company that produces synthetic meat and it reads "Memphis Meats :)
https://soundcloud.com/best-of-tech-startups/waking-up-with-sam-harris-meat-without-misery
I think I am going to go find some free range cows to eat. All this meat talk has got me hungry
I'm vegan and I don't miss meat at all, but I would definitely try lab-grown shrimps if no animals were harmed in the production :)
If you define vegan as "animal-friendly" or "cruelty-free", synthetic meat is definitely vegan and I don't get the scepticism in the vegan community when it comes to this epoch making innovation.
that sounds cool but i don't like meat so i'm still going to to be eating veggies I might try it to see how it taste, but this is probably going to be good for everyone.
excelent vlog
post a nice. I like the concept of healthy eating. healthy body started with a healthy diet.
Well theoretically, #vegans shouldn't have any objections against labgrown meat, at least not moral objections. But in practice, I think that they're so ideologically driven that they will still find some reason to keep pestering people about not eating meat. It's like some sort of religion, really.
Personally, I am neither #vegetarian nor #vegan, but I will switch to labgrown meat once it becomes affordable for both ethical and environmental reasons. I'm sure at one point, lab meat will eventually become even cheaper than organic meat, but the latter will stick around as some high-quality gourmet food.
Why not. We eat genetically modified food ever day. There is no such thing as a "Natural Grown" banana any more. They are all genetically modified to be a better food. I'm sure 100 years from now we will be eating things that we never dreamt of.
Not true. I have a banana tree in my garden all organic like the rest of my produce. I always went to the dole banana plantation in costa rica and theyre completely organic and use non toxic pesticides.
Fun fact: banana trees are ~90% water, and full grown weigh ~10-20 lbs MAX.
@pinballman1 Totally false, the most common banana eaten in the world is the Williams, or Cavendish variety is absolutely NOT GMO. There are only a couple varieties of GMO banana being developed , and none are available for sale at the moment. Please use google before making outrageous claims like this.
This is disgusting, barf.
Hmm Will it even taste the same? And is it even healthy for the human body?
Let's eat some steaks! Who is with me? :-D
Apparently - NOONE lol
I am a foodie by heart. Anything that is edible and healthy I am willing to chow down on! I am a huge carnivore however so I have not had much in the way of vegetarian stuff. Any recommendations fellow Steem members?
omg, just give us the astronaut shakes of the future that we drink 3x a day and we have to stop all this non-sense about meat culture
This is indeed interesting. I believe it's the term "lab-meat" that may turn a few heads. Although the actual product may not be produced in a mad scientist lab that our imagination like to run towards, the unknown facts of what this product is actually made of may be a bit alarming. However this is where marketing and great advertisement come in and wrap it with a pretty bow. I'm a fan of Morning Star and Quorn products which are also meatless products and not once have I questioned "I wonder what chemicals were used to put this fake burger together". Just as others who do eat may not question the "meat glue" that's used to hold their breakfast sausage together.
I think Im very positive about it. Am an omnivor but was quite shocked by how much methane (is it?) polutes from the production of beef and lamb, nevermind the ratio of land needed to cultivate these meats versus beans.
Sometimes I think we only need to progress at the edges to make a real differences. 3-5% less land on meat would create a great increase in the number of those hectares availabe for sustainable crops.
Nice post.I respect you very much because you contribute to steemit.I will do activities like you.I would like to extend the steemit.
I'm a vegan. I got useful information from this book The China Study, T. Colin Campbell He is a professor at the Department of Food Biochemistry. I advise you to read this book. I follow you.=))
thanks sir for sharing the news about dtube
carry on sir
Very nice dtube
The blog is really amazing.. thanks for sharing
Well I've been so aquinted to eating me, didn't even know until lately the vast hazard that comes with some, but don't you think any lab grown food, would have certain chemicals that might in a long run be harmful to the body. My thought though
I like eating very well. You have said something valuable which will help me a lot in the future Thank you
very well news
i read your full post, i resteemed your post
Wow, that's awesome.
But the nutrients and all would be up for questioning. ➕ Will it be yet another company food manufactured food with chemicals and stuff?
Or would it be a better alternative to 'red meat'?
i'm vaguely, vaguely, vaguely intrigued.
I eat for two reasons, nutrition and pleasure. Meat technically is a super food in my eyes, but I rarely will eat meat. I actually go really far out of my way to eat things I do not particularly like just for the nutrition alone. For this reason, I still eat for pleasure, and I would eat this deathless meat if it tasted good and didn't decline my health. I don't see it having the same nutritional benefits of game meat, which animals accrue by foraging off the land. For this reason reason I'd have deathless meat things like a slice of pizza or a burger once and a while, but I'm not plopping a roast in a crock pot and deviating from a raw living vegetarian lifestyle.