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Lab-Grown Meat Is In Your Future, and It May Be Healthier Than the Real Stuff (smh.com.au)
An anonymous reader shares an article on The Sydney Morning Herald:Scientists and businesses working full steam to produce lab-created meat claim it will be healthier than conventional meat and more environmentally friendly. But how much can they improve on old-school pork or beef? In August 2013, a team of Dutch scientists showed off their lab-grown burger (cost: $435,000) and even provided a taste test. Two months ago, the American company Memphis Meats fried the first-ever lab meatball (cost: $23,700 per pound). Those who have tasted these items say they barely differ from the real deal. The Dutch and the Americans claim that within a few years lab-produced meats will start appearing in supermarkets and restaurants. And these are not the only teams working on cultured meat (as they prefer to call it). Another company, Modern Meadow, promises that lab-grown "steak chips" -- something between a potato chip and beef jerky -- will hit the stores in the near future, too.
If they can get this to work it will also be better for the environment in terms of energy use, CO2 and methane production. Right now, my wife and I are both not complete vegetarians but very rarely eat any form of meat. This is for ethical, environmental and financial reasons. In her case, she'd be probably pretty happy never eating meat, whereas I've got a strong craving for it generally that is a little annoying. I'm really looking forward to vat meat.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the public, especially in areas such as the EU that have come out strongly against GMO foodstuffs. Will they accept completely synthetically produced food? I would imagine farmers would oppose this simply because it threatens their very existence; with some producing "real" food at expensive prices so that having a real steak becomes a luxury item.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Pretty sure in the future we will probably be eating each other. Human will be the cheapest & readiest available meat to be found.
Be seeing you...
The article says it would cut down land use for farm animals by 99%, but you can't make meat without some raw materials. Its hard for me to imagine they don't require some equivalent biological feed into the process, so that matter has to come from somewhere. Fish?
chews cud and split hooves: genetically or directly?
kosher slaughtered: actually slaughtered or is a lab tech shochet
blood remove: probably can be done
utensils and packaging: probably can be done
Currently all parts of an animal are used, so we get all the different cuts, and lower grade meat too. We won't stop killing animals until we get all the products we need from other sources.
Obviously, with cultured meat, nobody need suffer the lower grade cuts! But when cooked correctly, they can have their own unique flavours.
Also, I hope it will be more than just beef being made, in the long run. We can open up manufacturing of all types of meat that are rarer now - Zebra, Alligator, Sloth, Human, etc.
However I fear it will lead to less choice in the long run, unless you pay a lot lot more for real meat. Good for the environment though, meat production isn't exactly an efficient use of agricultural resource.
I wonder just how low the cost of cultured meat can go?
If it tastes the same, I'd probably eat it.
But at $435,000 per burger, I might have to go for the combo-meal deal.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Every last bit of lab-created swill that has been released has had the phrase "May be healthier than the Real Stuff" attached to it. It's all been a lie, every time.
* Heart-Attack inducing trans fat (margarine vs. butter)
* Low-Fat anything (with sugars and thickening agents added in to replace the missing flavor and texture)
* "Vegetable" Oil - industrial crap like cottonseed oil
* Nutrasweet
Seriously, just eat real food. There's too many people to afford real food? Maybe we should be aggressively attacking the other side of that equation.
It would make sense that manufactured meat could be healthier and tastier than meat slaughtered from animals.
Quality meat comes from animals which are Happy and Healthy (Who should only have one bad day in their life) (Less toxins from stress), and live a rather passive life without much exercise (more tender meat). This is hard combination to perform. Lab Grown meat can be grown without stressing an animal and exercising it. creating a good quality meat without the bad stuff.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yes goyim, frankenmeat, just as our frankenwheat, is great for you and your family! We will, however, keep to organic grass-fed beef, thanks. There will be plenty of carcinogenic, toxic soylent green-style crap around for you to eat. Or do you prefer a flatworm Big Gulp slurry? It also frees you of your carbon sins against the environment! Isn't it wonderful?
Yeah. Just like Monsanto don't serve their own products in their canteens, don't hold your breath for the proponents of this crap to actually eat it. It's mass produced garbage pink goop for the masses, your rulers will still eat natural, healthy food just as God intended. You're supposed to ingest their carcinogenic rubbish and die as soon as you hit retirement age you useless eaters.
Meat flavor is about the fat. Go make a burger witb steak tartar if you don't believe me. Cook it without oil in a teflon pan, and no mayo or cheese.
This "perfect burger" is completely gross.
I even had a perfect, fatless, medium rare filet mignon from a snooty but clueless restaurant, no bacon wrap, no blue cheese crumbles, no cream sauce.
Completely gross.
These lab guys even said they had to add fat to the lab grown meat the first time this came up last year.
Lose the meat and come up with some other much tastier and healthier and no-calorie substrate to pour fat on.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But sure as hell not in mine.
Not sure about the rest of us though
You should try the app that tells you this joke stopped being funny
"barely differ from the real deal" just like manufacturers that would like to claim that their margarine taste just like butter?
Will it really be healthier? or will it's lab grown nature actually be terrible for us in the long run, I'm thinking along the lines of the bacterial diversification we are finding we need in our gut to be truly healthy, or the way we're finding growing up in overly clean environments compromises our immune systems.
I think growing meat is a great step forward, but I'm not free of concern.
No thanks. I'll stick with the real thing. I'm not eating anything that was born in a petri dish. How many times have we heard over the years that this or that man made thing (ex. margarine) is supposed to be better for you only to find out the opposite? Yeah....gimme a grass fed steak any day.
Perhaps we should stop calling it "lab-grown" meat (or even worse, "in vitro" meat). Perhaps "cultured" meat might be a better term.
Proverbs 21:19
Moo, moo. Cows.
Have gnu, will travel.
Mankind has a bad track record with food "replacements". Let's see...margarine is good for you. Oh wait, no it's not. It's actually really really bad and now essentially banned due to the trans fats. Next, sugar substitutes are good for you. Oh wait, no they're not. Next, let's fill everything with soy. Oh wait, too much soy is actually bad. Next, ...synthetic meat? You betcha.
I like this idea for creating ground or processed meat products: hamburgers, brats, chicken strips, chicken nuggets, bacon, jerkey. I don't think we will get to a point where you are lab-growing a pork chop, a steak, or an entire turkey leg. Would these products be kosher? vegan? Is it still an animal product if it doesn't come from an animal?
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Feeding livestock chemically synthesized feed would also cut environmental impact. https://slashdot.org/journal/2...
gelatin!
it's made from hooves!
tell them!
gelatin is made from hooves!
Would you like to add fries and a soda to that for only $0.49 more?
No way; everyone knows that's where they rip you off and make most of their profit!
Numbers of real world tests have shown the need for real world herbivores to inhabit valleys to keep the vegetation growing properly on the land. Introducing herds of sheep roaming a rather vegetation depleted land resulted in dramatic vegetation growth.
Of course, when you fence off, kill off and replace herbivores with chemical agents for plant growth, fungicides, herbicides, etc, then you don't need the herbivores.
Life is increasingly becoming 'artificial.'
This is worth it only to spur those pesky vegans/vegetarians.
Their argument is always "think of the animals", its "immoral" and all that shit.
Of course some of them even believe that its bad for you, i always say 100000+ years of evolution is against them. Thats when they leave in a hissyfit.
GMOs are bad enough, and with the GMO genie already having escaped from it's bottle, it's too late to even worry about anymore (GMOs will either ruin us or they won't, nothing can stop that now). 'Lab-grown meat', though? At least it can't infect the genome of meat animals. We'll just have to wait and see if this lab-grown stuff ends up ruining people's health.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
How will this contribute to MeatHab?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I like this idea for creating ground or processed meat products: hamburgers, brats, chicken strips, chicken nuggets, bacon, jerkey. I don't think we will get to a point where you are lab-growing a pork chop, a steak, or an entire turkey leg.
I think you're getting at a major point I think about: texture. Meat gets its texture from exercise and marbled fat. Meat cells passively grown in a vat will lack definition. Think "pink slime" or meat that's been in the food processor for too long. Probably would make an excellent Swedish meatball, okay burger or sausage, but horrendous steak. I love the flavor of beef liver, but hate the texture due to lack of long muscle fibers.
Would these products be kosher? vegan? Is it still an animal product if it doesn't come from an animal?
In-vitro meat is manufactured by placing existing meat cells in a bath of nutrients causing them to multiply. The new cells will be genetically identical to the original. It will not be vegan nor vegetarian. As for kosher, the Jewish authorities would have to decide.
... getting all hot under the collar, because they're SCARED that 'their' food will be changed. As if they made a mental decision to be non-vegan all their lives - clue: you didn't. Your society, your parents, your family, almost everybody around you, and the entire media, told you, all your life, that it was 'normal' to torture and kill innocent beings so that you could blindly follow the herd. Eating meat is completely unnatural for human beings, and drinking the milk of another species is even more unnatural.
Lab grown meat will be disease free, no growth hormones, no antibiotics, no cancerous tumours, no pain, no suffering, and you will be able to grow it in your own kitchen. But still non-vegans will cry like babies about it. Are they able to face one tenth of the pain and suffering that just ONE of the animals they eat will face? Of course not, they are gutless cowards who would rather watch the whole world die in agony, than face the slightest bit of fear themselves.
http://i.imgur.com/4cYlOWw.jpg
Found the LUDDITE!
I disagree, definitely worthy of an Appley Award.
Yea, our science of nutrition has not steered us wrong yet. I'm sure whatever they invent will be healthful. We've had 2,000,000 of meat-eating, and I'm sure evolution hasn't really done a good job making it good for us, I'm sure there are no unknown nutrients that we'd be missing with the artificial stuff, and I'm sure they'll put in all sorts of stuff that'll make it more healthful than the real thing. We're that smart, our science is that good, and 2,000,000 years of evolution is that lame! In fact, why wait? I'm gonna order me a big batch of Soylent right now!
Chicken! Hmm...
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Lem: Maybe the meat blob's not taking in enough nutrients. I guess I could try and give it a mouth. Ted: I'm gonna say no to the meat blob getting a mouth. Mostly because I don't want to hear what it has to say : : Jerome: It tastes familiar Ted: Beef? Jerome: No Linda: Chicken? We’ll take chicken. Jerome: [Shakes head.] Ted: What does it taste like? Jerome: Despair. Ted: Is it possible it just needs salt?
... but i don't *want* germ-free food. i want food for myself and my children that encourages our immune systems to fight and become stronger, so that we become HEALTHIER. vat-grown food will have no such challenges for our immune system, thus actually make us WEAKER.
this is fast getting to the point where the clear disadvantages - the FAILURE - of the three laws of robotics - is actually rolling out in real-life. it took several decades for asimov to explore the three laws fully to the point where he felt comfortable eventually spelling it out, but the "Calvanist" 3 Law Robots were actually a danger to humanity's evolution and advancement. why? because there were literally billions of checks and assessments PER SECOND being performed by the robots, calculating which nearby humans were POTENTIALLY going to be harmed... without any kind of restraint, limit or safeguards on what the robot(s) decided constituted "risk" or "danger".
with no risk comes no challenge. with no challenge, comes no evolution. i do not understand why people do not understand this.
I've been growing meat in a lab in my back yard for years.
Agriculture is one of the most high-tech industries on the planet and has been for a long time.
You think that chicken you enjoy is natural?
I guarantee you that every gram you eat was part of a control group or a test group of some kind. All the inputs are measured and analyzed. All the outputs are measured and analyzed. Feeding times, quantities, ingredients, application methods; sleeping patterns, cell structure, light exposure, ambient humidity... You name it, it is controlled, monitored, and experimented with.
Some people just don't recognize a lab when they see one.
At least, good old Sir Arthur thought he knew the next step, as related in his history "The food of the Gods" :-)
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I have been wondering why in the future everything tastes like chicken. This explains it perfectly.
Dude that one is funny
But does it taste any good?
If a meat ball is what I think it is, the majourity of the taste comes from spices.
I ate a burger last night in a restaurant that has a burger day once a week. I usually don't eat burgers, did not eat one since 20 years, and that one ruined my interest for the next 20 years (the meat actually was ok, but the way of how sweet it was spiced was hard to get down into my stomach). How can it be that people think some "sweet" ketchup or a super thin "artificial cheese" on top of it makes meat tasty?
Meat that is "sweet"? Hellllllo? If I want sweet meat I put into a "sause" over night (don't know the american term, we call it marinade). Or I paint it in honey before I grill it, or grill it a bit, paint it in honey and grill it again.
So artificial meat is good enough to make burgers (meat balls) from it? Wow, who would have doubted that? There are people who make vegetarian "meat balls" and an average customer would not taste the difference.
If you like meat you only need a few spices: some herbs like Thymian or Rosmarin, a good oil like olive oil and then depending on taste gallic, pepper, perhaps chilly ... and if you want salt: most meats you salt after cooking, not before.
A piece of meat without any spices at all put on a grill is 10 times better than a meat ball full with spices and sugar.
Call me back when you have an artificial steak, preferred lamb, beef is ok, I don't eat pork, goat is ok, too, a steak that tastes good with simple cooking/BBQ without ketchup or other stupid sauces.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I understand logically how the thought of killing another living thing and eating it can be stomach turning. I am surprised at my own reaction--that eating artificially-grown flesh is creepy to me. OTOH, using real meat to make busts does creep me out whereas I would have no problem with artificial meat sculptures.
I worry about the exact same things being done there as with any other artificial product; cut corners and addictive additives specifically designed to fuck us up. However, other than that, if it can be delicious, nutritious and just happens to be better for people or the environment in some way, great.
As long as we get our goddamn meat and not some soy-lentil greens made of equal parts rotted vegan and rotted beans that exists purely to rape-murder our ability to enjoy food.
I like my steak rare enough that if you applied electricity, it would jump off the plate. No chance of that happening now.
Look, lab grown cow is not worth it. Cow depends on fat and salt to taste good. If you the fat and salt, it doesn't sell well. With the fat and salt it is horrible for you.
But lab grown fish on the other hand... Fish is far healthier for you than beef - except for the mercury. It has none of the fat issues that beef has. Yes, we generally prefer it with salt, but some varieties can do without.
More importantly, fish tends to be much more expensive than beef - we can't 'grow' it where the people live, but have to ship it to coastal areas, then truck/train/fly it to the heartland.
So fish makes a far better choice than beef for lab grown.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
As one who relishes eating meat, I can't wait for this to happen. I'd rather have a sufficiently convincing meat surrogate than the real thing, for ethical reasons.
What you want is a wet aged steak...yuck, no accounting for taste.
Just buy beef in a sealed slaughterhouse pack and forget it at the back of the meat drawer for a couple of weeks. Assuming your meat drawer maintains sub zero C, but above freezing point of meat.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You watch. Vegans won't eat GMOs, but they'll expect us to eat this sh*t.
Would these products be kosher?
Kosher is more a question of cooking as in mixing milk with meat etc.
However regarding the "bleeding out" some die hard fundamentals might subject as the meat is not from a bleed to death animal. (The background however is simple: in hot climates you don't want meat lying around to long that is full with coagulating blood. This actually a scientific issue and not religion.)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Given the state of "real" meat in commercial food, it wouldn't take much for "fake" meat to beat it in taste and healthiness.
I will be able to, as soon as I finish registering the required account login, facebook pairing, internet-of-things static IP, and give it full router DMZ.
Of course, I'll have to wait for my/their/every network/cloud to deliver packets (and phone home (and authenticate)) every step of the way, since I'm doing also doing all of the above Through An App like an enlightened apper does.
How does this work if I want to smoke a slab of ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, etc.? The structure of the cut of meat (muscle, fat, bone) all contribute to the result. Will I end up smoking 'blobs' of meat in my Big Green Egg?
I don't think that people fully understand that the vast majority of people really don't like killing animals for food. The advertising for these cultured meat products will be easy. Just remind people that slitting Betsy's throat is required to get the burgers out. Show poor Mrs Piggy squashed into a pen with no room to move, etc. Then point out that they can have all the benefits of meat with none of the negatives. Vegetarians have long pushed this same thing, but with little profit motive. Now there will be a profit motive.
I presently pay double normal meat prices to get grass fed, no hormone, no antibiotic beef. So as long as they can convince me that the meat is equally healthy as that, then I will pay a premium for cultured beef. The key is that there can't be compromises other than price.
Another win will be a more stable supply which ought to make the distributors quite happy.
"...our coffee-rubbed Kobe beef is read the book Are You My Mother by a Guatemalan child." -- Patton Oswalt
If it can be done without the fetid stink of feed lots (which we that live near them call 'The Smell of Other People's Money'), then I'm all for it.
Well?
I dare you to Google "factory farms" and look at some photos or read stories. Than order a nice burger. Animal tears give it this nice flavor. (Note – taking photos in factory farms is actually illegal. Meat industry is not that stupid to allow it). Or you can munch on severed arms from meat factory workers. It gives chicken nuggets just right crunchiness. But even if you don’t care about any of that, factory farms are one of the biggest water polluters, green gas emitters, energy intensive and reason why fewer and fewer antibiotics are effective. In short, they are not sustainable. I'm glad somebody is thinking ahead. Fake meat – you are welcome on my table!
Would these products be kosher?
That discussion has already started amongst some of the legal authorities, and it's going to be a very interesting discussion. If the starting cells had been entirely synthesized, then it wouldn't be an animal product at all, and it would almost certainly be classified as pareve (neither meat nor dairy). Since this cultured meat is starting from animal cells, it might be classified as being derived from meat; in that case, the next issue is whether the starting cells came from a kosher animal that was slaughtered accordingly. There's also the possibility that there wouldn't be enough "animal" in the cultured meat for it to count as being an animal product, though personally I doubt that's what the ruling will be.
http://www.terrybisson.com/pag...
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
This is real meat. It's simply cultured from stem cells. But I do wonder if they could make it "cancerous" and eliminate the death mechanism they could probably culture it more easily. The more difficult part is getting different types of muscle, fat and structure cells to grow together. When it comes to meat we do care about the texture. And we need gelatin and cartilage in our diet So I guess I sort of answered my own question as to why not use cancerous cells. Stem cells are programmed to grow into something with it's supporting structure. Eventually we will be able to dictate that structure.
Science aside people will still be able to get traditional animals raised in natural ways as a luxury. But it will be the end of industrial beef and chicken farms. Milk farms too eventually. The food should be much cheaper. Fifteen cents for a pound of hamburger anyone? $2 tenderloin anyone?
At least a hundredfold reduction in methane for the meat. No more grazing land needed. It can be turned into farm land or made into homes for people where the weather is nice. Alternatively it can be turned into nature preserves and just let the animals live as they use to. All the forests cut down for grazing land can be regrown with trees again.
This also means we can produce meat for space voyages.
I can't see such meat ever really being "healthier" if it is grown in a soup of antibiotics and antivirals to compensate for the fact that real meat grows under the protection of an immune system.
... This exists right ? We aren't just saying something is safe for human consumption without a nice long test are we ?
Now. Time to change the sig.
...is people!
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain