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Cloned Beef Coming Soon?
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at Popular Science cloned beef may be coming soon. It talks about using meat within 48 hours of slaughter to allow cloning the best possible specimens, something that is not possible to determine while the animal is still alive. Apparently only 1 in 8000 animals is truly the best. Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal. That would end all the ethical issues with raising an animal for food, potential issues from mad cow disease, bird flu and whatever the next media induced panic is."
Unless you can exercise the meat that is "grown" it will be mostly tasteless.
Actually, it's exactly the opposite. It's fat that gives meat flavor, not lean "exercised" meat. In fact, Kobe Beef, which is widely recognized as tender and flavorful uses steers that are specifically fattenened up and never exercised.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
So few people understand this today!
Tender cuts are NOT tasty cuts. They're much easier to cook, and they're *tender* of course, easy to chew, and traditionally favoured for those reasons.
You want a tasty cut of meat, go get a brisket. Tough as hell, takes about two days to cook it right because you want to marinate it and slow-cook it to overcome the toughness so you can chew the sucker, but it's tasty beyond belief. Tenderloin can't compete at all, for taste, it's just a lot easier to prepare.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Vegan advocates love to trot this out in their "fact-sheets", and it's always interesting to see which particular Pimental source they use. It's like they draw it out of a hat or something, because it's always a different citation (same author, same factoid, but worded ever-so-slightly differently). A long while back I tracked down the article it was from (at the time) here. (pdf) That one is from 1997, I believe. There is also a 2004 edition. (another darn pdf)
(from the latter article) [....] [....] [* The previous article put this at 150 to 200 mm per year, a range of 1.5-2 million liters/ha, but also noted that "production is low under such arid conditions"...which only means that fewer head/ha is supported, not that it is a less efficient use, since those "arid conditions" wouldn't support much of anything. Maybe nopalitos.]Now for the quote-mining:
As I recall from my childhood when my grandfather was raising cattle, he never irrigated. And even though he doesn't have cattle anymore, he still grows and cuts hay for his neighbors who do. No irrigation. But it would be rather disingenuous to point out how much water that actually uses vs. how much it would have required to produce a comparable amount of a given crop (assuming it could survive the heat and the depredations of the deer, hogs, rabbits, etc). The water requirement for the former is spread out over a larger area and can be met by limited rainfall with the proper selection of grasses, but for the latter it is not spread out and would most certainly require additional input. It's therefore a more efficient use of the land and water resources, and not at all "wasteful and irresponsible". Quite unlike "Vegsource".
"The 'dangers' of fat are vastly overrated, the body needs fats to function properly"
Yes, we need very little fat though. Most people eat FAR more than needed, and we don't need any saturated fat, which is much worse for us, and is what you get from meat.
"You'll find that excessive carbohydrates will do you more harm than anything."
No, excessive calories from any source will make you fat. Excessive carbs that break down to glucose very quickly will spike your blood sugar, and its theorized that that may increase the risk of diabetes. The vast majority of the people in the world live almost entirely on carbs, and the human race has lived that way for thousands of years. Meat has been an added boost to our diet, only available in small quantities. Grains like rice have sustained people.
"You can eat 200g of protein a day without ill effect, but eat less and you end up losing significant strength."
No, you will need to increase your calcium intake if you do something stupid like this. Protein is broken down into amino acids for use. They are not stored however, and since even marathon runners and body builders do not need more than 70-80g of protein per day, the rest is broken down further from amino acids into, *gasp*, sugars. The process of breaking down proteins releases acids however, which your body neutralizes with calcium. So increased protein can lead to weak bones. This is why all the "eat more calcium" studies are done with calcium suppliments, not milk which has little to no benefit due to the protein.
"but eat less and you end up losing significant strength."
Protein does not magically make you strong. Your body only makes muscle if it wants to. It only wants to if you use what you have, or have a rare disease that makes your body go nuts and always build your muscle. Even still, nobody needs more than 70-80g a day. You only need to eat as much as your body needs to repair your existing tissues, and create any new tissue it wants to create.
"You only have to look at the sagging arms of most Americans to see they're not eating too much protein!"
Again, protein does not make you strong. Its simple one of the basic building blocks required to create tissues. Excercise makes you strong. And most americans already eat far more protein than they need, as the RDA is 50-55g for women, and 60-65g for men. That means 98% of americans would get enough protein eating that amount. At many restaurants, a single burger contains more protein than that.
"The general health of Americans would be better if they cut out the donuts, cokes cakes, breads etc. and replaced them with more natural foods like steak, chicken and lamb"
They already eat fucktons of meat. They need to cut out the shit you mentioned, cut back on their meat, quit deep frying all their meat (and potatoes), and start eating vegetables and fruits. Replacing high calorie foods like donuts with high calorie foods like steak is not going to make people lose weight.
"Meat is not expensive or inefficient. There is enough land for everyone to have enough meat, no-one in America is starving."
Yes, it is very expensive and inefficent. We would get 10 times more calories from the land we use for raising beef cattle if we used it for crops like corn, rice, wheat, legumes, etc. We are filthy rich compared to other countries, so we have the luxury of being greedy and wasteful while they starve.
Go read any basic intro to biochem and you will see how incredibly stupid your comment was.