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RE: Steemit vegetarians, "deathless meat" is almost here...what do you think?

in #news7 years ago (edited)

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).

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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.