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Meat the Food of the Future
Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC reports that rising food prices, the growing population, and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have food futurologists thinking about what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it. In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets as some in the food industry prognosticate meat prices could double in the next five to seven years, making meat a luxury item. 'In the West many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat,' says Morgaine Gaye. 'Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap.' Insects will become a staple of our diet. They cost less to raise than cattle, consume less water and do not have much of a carbon footprint. Plus, there are an estimated 1,400 species that are edible to man. 'Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers.' But insects will need an image overhaul if they are to become more palatable to the squeamish Europeans and North Americans, says Gaye. 'They will become popular when we get away from the word insects and use something like mini-livestock (PDF).' Another alternative would be lab grown meat as a recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, energy consumption and water use. Prof Mark Post, who led the Dutch team of scientists at Maastricht University that grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, says he wants to make lab meat "indistinguishable" from the real stuff, but it could potentially look very different. Finally algae could provide a solution to some the world's most complex problems, including food shortages as some in the sustainable food industry predict algae farming could become the world's biggest cropping industry. Like insects, algae could be worked into our diet without us really knowing by using seaweed granules to replace salt in bread and processed foods. 'The great thing about seaweed is it grows at a phenomenal rate,' says Dr Craig Rose, executive director of the Seaweed Health Foundation. 'It's the fastest growing plant on earth.'"
The EU has a deliberate policy of remaining self sufficient for food. Euro haters love to rage about the huge grain mountains and heavy farm animal subsidies, but the whole point of them is to make sure the EU will always have enough farming capacity to feed itself should the need arise.
We will never allow ourselves to get to the stage where we don't have enough meat. Yeah, India's population will keep on increasing, but it won't matter much to us. The population of Europe is stabilising and even falling in some places. The third world will carry on starving until they have enough education to limit the number of children they have, but the EU will just keep transferring money from the rich to subsidy for farm animal meat for the rest of us.
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Who apparently weren't too happy about it:
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/history-maine-lobster-21560.html
During colonial times, lobster was food for the poverty stricken, prisoners and indentured servants. In the Massachusetts colony that encompassed the land that became known as Maine, indentured servants protested and had instructions written in to their seven-year contracts that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than three times a week.
It's not bullshit. If you ate nothing but salad every day, you're not going to get the same nutrition that you would from eating a lot of meats.
False dichotomy. If you ate nothing but steak every day then you'd also be dead in short order. If you eat a moderately balanced diet then you'll be fine. For a vegetarian, the big issue is making sure that you get the full set of amino acids. If you eat cheese, that's done. If you're a vegan it's a bit harder, but eating both rice and lentils will give you them all, as will several other well-known pairs. You have to have a pretty monotonous diet as a vegetarian to avoid getting all of the nutrients that you need.
Mind you, the same is true for omnivores, and in the USA a lot of them seem to manage to suffer from malnutrition (and obesity at the same time), so perhaps it is too much to expect...
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Slaves hated Lobster for much the same reasons that people today prefer things like beef or "rabbit starvation" is named after rabbits.
Lobsters, like rabbits, have very low fat content. If your meat does not have fat, you are going to have to figure out how you're going to get fat into your diet.
Substituting starches for fats is not going to help you long-term. Your body will convert those starches into fat, yes - but the body will store it and not use it directly. You'll end up being hungry shortly after eating. You'll also end up suffering mental disorders due to fat nutrient deficiency over time.
But yeah. Lobster's great and all, but there's a damn good reason people dip it in butter sauce.
Eating a diet of bugs will suffer the same problem. They have zero fat.
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