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Vegan Mayonnaise Company Starts Growing Its Own Meat In Labs, Says It Will Get To Stores First (qz.com)
Chase Purdy reports via Quartz: The maker of vegan mayonnaise has been working on getting lab-made meat onto dinner tables everywhere. It's just that nobody knew about it. Hampton Creek -- a company that built its name on plant-based condiments and vegan-friendly cookie doughs -- today revealed that, for the last year, it has been secretly developing the technology necessary for producing lab-made meat and seafood, or as the industry likes to call it, "clean meat." Perhaps even more surprising is that Hampton Creek expects to beat its closest competitor to market by more than two years. Since it was founded in 2015, Memphis Meats has raised at least $3 million from five investors for the development of its meat products, according to Crunchbase. By contrast, Hampton Creek -- just a 20-mile drive from its Silicon Valley rival -- has raised more than $120 million since 2011. It's one of Silicon Valley's unicorns -- a company that has a valuation that exceeds $1 billion.
Growing meat in their Axlotl tanks......
The Gholas... They're made of meat!
Huh?
...when you have perfectly good animals that are already made out of food?
Still nature.
> or as the industry likes to call it, "clean meat."
I mean just call it what it is... artificial or fake (shorter, and more precise) meat. So annoying this "industry", always have to imply that something they do is "better", cleaner, or moral (implying at the same time, that what we do is the opposite and wrong).
What's up with this ?
Also, if you don't eat meat, why make (or EAT) fake meat ? Why not stick to grass, nuts, carrots and potatoes and just leave it be ?
It's like mormons. Going around the world and trying to make people think same way they think (the correct way, mind you)..
Just another religion. Keep it to yourself.
"Memphis Meats is a food technology company headquartered in San Francisco"
I'm totally going to try this stuff, but I think I'm going to call it decepticon meat instead.
Calling it fake meat would be inaccurate. Soy deli slices are fake meat. This would be meat, just not from an anaimal.
As for "if you dont eat meat why eat this?", anyone who doesnt eat meat because they have an ethical issue with killing an animal but still enjoys the taste and values the level of nutrition provided by meat would be very interested in this.
On top of that, there are many of us who love eating meat but recognize that it's a very inefficient means of making food in a world where food and water scarcity is becoming more and more of an issue and who believe this could be a great way to get meat with less resources used.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
People are vegan for different reasons. Some are vegan for health reasons, Some are vegan for the environment, but most are vegan because they are against killing animals that feel pain.
And I would say to you those people are just copying a real substantiated philosophy and picking the parts they like best and don't know any better.
This test-tube semi-animal creation is a step into insanity.
They are still torturing and exploiting the device of life in an artificial situation.
So does plowing a field.
The real point of vegetarianism/veganism is to live in harmony with the Earth, reducing your consumption of energy by choosing the simplest path available to sustain yourself.
Maybe you don't eat anything that casts a shadow, bit other people make different decisions.
Spending tons of energy and cash to grow flesh in a laboratory is antithetical to this in every way.
Maybe to your weirdly concocted ideology, but others don't have a problem with it.
Funny how that works.
No, only psychopaths kill animals for fun. Fortunately 99.999 percent of the general public do not have that major psychiatric malfunction. Ima guessing you do.
so the computer can understand what meat is.
Nope, they got the right to sell it as mayo after the industry challenged them. It also tastes just like the stuff.
Vegans, annoying the rest of us forever...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
dyslexic jihadists get 27 vegans.
Table-ized A.I.
No, Vegans are all doing it for the same reason... so they can feel Superior.
People who don't eat meat for other reasons are simply people who don't eat meat.
Plants bleed when you cut them.
I had the idea for this shit first -- I should have started a company back then and got VC money ... Oh well. I even posted a comment on slashdot https://m.slashdot.org/story/6...
Scroll to the bottom and click load more then search for the word steak or back slashdot.
Cows consume grass -- and in very high volumes. What is the lab grown meat consuming?
I would want to make sure the "lab grown meat" is similar to the real meat, not fed a chemical stew.
Real meat has small quantities iron, zinc and magnesium. Where is lab meat getting these trace contents?
So, if we breed animals that don't feel pain then it's ok to eat them? Ok.
Those essential amino acids are plentiful in high-protein plants like legumes, nuts, seeds, and grains. There's no single plant that will provide you will all of them, but it's really easy to pick a combination of two that will, usually a grain and a legume, or a nut and a seed. That's why large swaths of the world, most of whom are too poor to afford meat, live off staples like rice and beans. Be it the rice and pinto beans of Latin America, the rice and soy beans of east Asia, the wheat and garbanzo beans of the middle east, the maize and tepary beans of indigenous North Americans, etc.
About the healthiest (albeit most boring) diet you could eat would be to lightly snack on the widest variety of nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains you can find slowly across the day, maybe supplemented with some fruits and green leafy vegetables (mostly for the vitamins, not the macronutrients or essential amino acids that are all provided by the "trail mix" core of the diet). Which shouldn't be surprising, because that's largely what our pre-agricultural ancestors evolved to eat, wandering around foraging all day. Meat was a rare treat that we could only begin to eat in quantity a significant way into the invention of civilization (look at our bodies, we are not natural-born hunting machines, we had to invent tools first to enable us to hunt), and then for a large part it was still reserved for the upper classes only.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Superficially it will look like meat, but when you study the details, I'm sure you'll find plenty of differences. The chemicals that make up a piece of steak, for instance, are not all made locally in the muscle that it's cut from. For instance, the iron comes from red blood cells that are made in the bone marrow. The B12 vitamins are made by bacteria in the gut of the animal. Other things are made in the liver, spleen, gut, kidneys, and even the skin, and all transported through the bloodstream, where they infuse the muscle. Other things come the animal's food, or are made by microorganisms that form a symbiotic relationship with the animal. For instances, cows can survive on grass, but grass contains very little protein. The cow's stomachs work as fermentation tanks, using fungi and bacteria to create proteins (among other things) from grass. If you do a chemical analysis, you'd probably find thousands of different chemicals, made in different places. Some of these chemicals may be vital for our health. Some of them, we haven't even identified yet.
The problem with "fake meat" is that all these nutritional deficiencies are hidden. People just a piece of meat by taste, smell, and texture, not by availability of nutrients. At the same time, the industrial producer is only interested in profit, so they have every motivation to cut corners and produce a cheap but tasty piece of food, with little regard for nutrition.
Soon I'll be able to sell regular meat as lab meat to those dirty vegans.
look at our bodies, we are not natural-born hunting machines
Well trained humans are among the best long distance running animal in the world, especially in the heat. By chasing down an animal, until it's overheated and completely exhausted, you can kill it with simple tools. Some tribes still use the technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It is also not necessarily efficient because it very well can be that more calories were burned running, than a dead animal can provide.
Humans are not carnivores, fruits, roots and seeds were an important part of human diet - at least 50%.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
it very well can be that more calories were burned running, than a dead animal can provide.
No way. That animal weighs about 250 kg, and will easily provide 125 kg of edible meat, at about 3000 kcal/kg. I'm guessing the 8 hour run would cost somewhere between 3000 and 6000 kcal, depending on how fast he was going.
Humans are not carnivores
Humans are omnivores, eating both meat as well as plants, roots, nuts, and seeds. Meat is high in calories and high in nutrients, and it's much easier to get all your essential nutrients from meat.
You assume that a sole hunter would hunt one animal for himself only. This assumption is false and an animal as large as you describe would give a sole hunter the finger. You also assume that the hunter would be able to find and kill a large animal every day, which is even more ridiculous.
Lean meat is certainly not high in calories and humans can only metabolise a few hundred grams of protein per day without getting problems with their health. Ever heard of "rabbit starvation"?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
But current research indicates that humans burn appr. the same amount of calories doing nothing or performing intensive ways of obtaining food. This was tested in current hunter/gatherer societies. So, yes, it is worthwhile doing this.
The real point of vegetarianism/veganism is to live in harmony with the Earth, reducing your consumption of energy by choosing the simplest path available to sustain yourself.
Do vegans/vegatarians think that predatory animals are not living in harmony with the Earth ?
You assume that a sole hunter would hunt one animal for himself only
No I don't.
You also assume that the hunter would be able to find and kill a large animal every day.
No I don't.
Lean meat is certainly not high in calories
I never said "lean meat", I said "meat". The kudu in the video isn't just lean meat. It's the whole animal.
But current research indicates that humans burn appr. the same amount of calories doing nothing or performing intensive ways of obtaining food.
Not really. Doing nothing burns about 2000 kcal/day. Top athletes can burn up to 1000 kcal/hour.
... still torturing and exploiting the device of life in an artificial situation. The real point of vegetarianism/veganism is to live in harmony with the Earth
So they're pissed about the Neolithic Revolution, too, I assume?
Ezekiel 23:20
You assume that a sole hunter would hunt one animal for himself only. This assumption is false and an animal as large as you describe would give a sole hunter the finger. You also assume that the hunter would be able to find and kill a large animal every day, which is even more ridiculous.
The typical size of a hunting party is 3-4 men. So at 125*3000 ~ 375.000 kcal/kg per carcass out of which the hunters would consume 9000kcal/kg to recoup the 8 hour run there is plenty left over for the rest of their group. The average size of a hunter gatherer band can range between ~12 to 50 individuals. If we assume a meat consumption of one kilo of meat per day for each individual in a group of 30 hunter gatherers, one carcass like that would last them for four days. However, a group of 30 would easily be able to field two hunter teams of 3-4 men each (or women, since women hunted in some of these societies) with, one group hunting and one either preparing for a hunt, or inbound with a carcass. At the same time these 6-8 people are out hunting the rest of the group would be out gathering fruits, vegetables, seeds roots herbs to supplement the diet and easily matching the contribution of the hunters while others are making equipment, clothing shelters etc... in short religionofpeas numbers seem perfectly plausible to me, especially since hunter gatherers ate every scrap of the animal down to the offal and the marrow in the bones and then used inedible parts including bones to make arrowheads, harpoons spear heads, knives and sinew to make rope, thread and as a component in bow making. Leather of course would not have been wasted either nor would horn or the wool of the animal if any. Many apex predators leave that stuff behind, a large animal killed by humans was likely to completely disappear simply because every bit of it's carcass was used up for some purpose.
Lean meat is certainly not high in calories and humans can only metabolise a few hundred grams of protein per day without getting problems with their health. Ever heard of "rabbit starvation"?
I think that if hunting was an inefficient activity humans would not have continued doing it for millions of years. Rabbit starvation is also one of the reasons why the women would be out gathering fruits, vegetables, seeds roots herbs to supplement the diet while the hunters were doing their thing. There is a good reason why hunting and gathering is a package deal. I live in a region where there are still aboriginals who largely live off of hunting and let me tell you something, these are supremely practical and no-nonsense people who would not bother with hunting if meat was not a viable source of nutrients. They certainly would not hunt animals purely for the fun of, many of them still pray for the spirit of the animals they kill.
"There's no single plant that will provide you will all of them". There are many plant based foods which provide all of them. Off the top of my head soya beans, lentils, kidney beans, tempeh and tofu. http://jacknorrisrd.com/comple... http://www.veganhealth.org/art...
The big misconception going on here is that Hampton Creek is developing lab meat for vegan consumption. Actually this will be a totally different market, sold first to environmentally conscious meat eaters and then, as the process scales up and comes down in cost, as a replacement for meat in the regular marketplace.
Vegetarians might eat lab meat because their objection to meat is specifically the idea of killing for it, but veganism is a religious movement that is going to automatically reject it as being 'artificial' and therefore objectionable as a cheat around the pose of self-denial inherent in eating nothing but plant matter. Hampton Creek is in this because the company is already a supplier of those vegan products that are made to resemble meat in cuisine, without being close enough for vegans to consider it cheating.
That's true, but the ones objecting to mayonnaise are not going to be of the pragmatic sort.
Well, we're looking at a serious problem: Growing meat is expensive. Less so in terms of money, but in terms of energy. Animals waste a lot of the precious energy we pump into them to live rather than to grow meat. Unfortunately animals need to live to grow meat. Classic catch 22.
If we find a way to create meat in a way that consumes less energy than it takes to grow meat in animals, that's a huge step forward. Simply because more and more people want (and can afford) to eat meat. And we simply cannot produce that much. The choice is probably going to be growing meat in tanks or not have meat at all, because with more people wanting to eat, food prices will go up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're chipping in to pay farmers to collect semen and artificially inseminate cows, goats and sheep every time you buy meat and dairy.
A lot of vegetarians can't handle meat without getting sick because their body stops producing enzymes to help digest it. A lot of people are going to get sick and confirmation bias kicks in. It will be the new MSG.
I think that if hunting was an inefficient activity humans would not have continued doing it for millions of years.
Exactly. And if you look at our physical differences with other great apes, pretty much everything you see makes us better (long distance) runners. Humans have lost most of their body hair, to make sweating more effective. We have less muscles overall to save weight and increase flexibility, efficient bipedal motion, bigger buttocks, more flexible neck, and long tendons to act as springs to store energy. This suggests that persistence hunting was not a fad. It was a major phase in our development as a species.
but most are vegan because they are against killing animals that feel pain
[Citation needed]. Of all my vegan friends none of them give a shit about animal killing. Perceived health reasons seem to be the number one reason I have witnessed, but I'm happy to be proven wrong by a study.
1) You don't get to tell other people why they act the way they do. Different people are vegetarian for multiple reasons - health, moral, and simply taste preference are common reasons in addition to the incredibly smug reason you proclaimed. Your attitude is a stereotype that many vegans despise.
2) You are describing a minimalist stoicism, not vegetarianism.
3) Growing meet in a lab is still better for the environment than doing it on the hoof. Brains, bones, hooves, hair, organs, etc are all nutritionally expensive that labs avoid. We can do it in the middle of the city, avoiding transportation costs. We can grow it in steak sections, avoiding butchering costs.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You're an animal. A perfectly good one. Made out of food. But we don't eat you. Why? Because we respect the life and potential and feelings you represent, and find the idea of causing you pain, or harm, or loss of life, to be repugnant.
Some of us extend that to other animals. Consequently, we don't want to eat those other animals any more than we want to eat you.
For us, "clean meat" as TFS has it, is very welcome.
So that's the point.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
People are vegan for different reasons. Some are vegan for health reasons, Some are vegan for the environment, but most are vegan because they are against killing animals that feel pain.
Actually I think you mean this:
... but most are vegan because they are crazy.
I've known vegetarians who fit your reasons, but vegans are basically vegetarians' crazy cousins who nobody wants to talk about. People rarely become vegan because they are against killing animals. They'd be vegetarians in that case. They become vegans because they've gone off the deep end of the non-meat eaters segment of people.
Off the top of my head it seems to me these guys were caught doing some pretty heavy channel stuffing in the last few months.
For hire.
It's only fair to warn you, Mr. Chairman, that much of my evidence will be highly nauseating; it involves aspects of human nature that are very seldom discussed in public, and certainly not before a congressional committee. But I am afraid that they have to be faced,; there are times when the veil of hypocrisy has to be ripped away, and this is one them.
You and I, gentlemen, have descended from a long line of carnivores. I see from you expressions that most of you don't recognize the term. Well, that's not surprising-it comes from a language that has been obsolete for two thousand years. Perhaps I had better avoid euphemisms and be brutally frank, even if I have to use words that are never heard in polite society. I apologize in advance to anyone I may offend.
Until a few centuries ago, the favorite food of almost all men was meat-the flesh of once living animals. I'm not trying to turn your stomachs; this is a simple statement of fact, which you can check in any history book...
Why, certainly, Mr. Chairman, I'm quite prepared to wait until Senator Irving feels better. We professionals sometimes forget how laymen may react to statements like that. At the same time, I must warn the committee that there is very much worse to come. If any of you gentlemen are at all squeamish, I suggest you follow the senator before it's to late...
Well, if I may continue. Until modern times, all food fell into two categories. Most of it was produced from plants-cereals, fruits, plankton, algae and other forms of vegetation. It's hard for us to realize that the vast majority of our ancestors were farmers, winning food from the land or sea by primitive and often back breaking techniques; but that is the truth.
The second type of food, if I may return to this unpleasant subject, was meat, produced from a relatively small number of animals. You may be familiar with some of them-cows, pigs, sheep, whales. Most people-I am sorry to stress this, but the fact is beyond dispute-preferred meat to any other food, though only the wealthiest were able to indulge this appetite. To most of mankind, meat was a rare and occasional delicacy in a diet that was more than ninety-percent vegetable.
If we look at the matter calmly and dispassionately-as I hope Senator Irving is now in a position to do-we can see that meat was bound to be rare and expensive, for its production is an extremely inefficient process. To make a kilo of meat, the animal concerned had to eat at least ten kilo's of vegetable food â"very often food that could have been consumed directly by human beings. Quite apart from any consideration of aesthetics, this state of affairs could not be tolerated after the population explosion of the twentieth century. Every man who ate meat was condemning ten or more of his fellow humans to starvation...
Luckily for all of us, the biochemists solved the problem; as you may know, the answer was one of the countless byproducts of space research. All food-Animal or vegetable-is built up from a very few common elements. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, traces of sulphur and phosphorus-the half-dozen elements, and a few others, combine in an almost infinite variety of ways to make up every food that man has ever eaten or will ever eat. Faced with the problem of colonizing the moon and planets, the biochemists of the twenty-first century discovered how to synthesize and desired food from the basic raw materials of water, air and rock. It was the greatest, and perhaps the most important, achievement in the history of science. But we should not feel too proud of it. The vegetable kingdom had beaten us by a billion years.
The chemists could now synthesize and conceivable food, whether it had counterparts in nature or not. Needles to say, there were mistakes-even disasters. Industrial empires rose and crashed; the switch from agriculture and animal husbandry to the giant automatic processing plants and omniverters of today was often a painful one. The danger of starvation has been banished forever, and we have a richness and var
Just gross.
Not just top athletes. A 90 kg man running at a slow to medium pace will burn around 1000 kcal/hour.
While we did evolve to eat meat, we weren't designed for it. We could change our diets, adapt to the new conditions, and eventually evolve to be efficient without eating meat.
I have no plans along these lines, but it could be done.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really. Doing nothing burns about 2000 kcal/day. Top athletes can burn up to 1000 kcal/hour.
Your logical fallacy is moving the goalposts. A lot of the time spent "hunting" is actually spent sitting still. And meat is so energy-dense that you don't necessarily need to do it every day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This will allow people objecting to slaughter of actual animals to eat the necessary protein, which is good.
However, there is no mention of the "carbon footprint" of this method — how much electricity, labor, and materials is it going to take per pound? The (real) meat is wasteful, we are told. Will this be better?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Artificial insemination is perfectly reasonable, it's common for humans to do to other humans (my kids were actually produced this way due to some fertility issues we were having).
You want something to make a stink about?
What if we put portals into cow's bodies so we could just reach in to collect samples to analyze their digestion?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
There are videos of this, it's rather gross (OK, very gross is more accurate).
Full disclosure, as a child my family raised, butchered, and ate cows, pigs, chickens and rabbits. But we didn't put portals in our cows...
BlameBillCosby.com
And I would say to you those people are just copying a real substantiated philosophy and picking the parts they like best and don't know any better.
You can't eliminate all pain just like you can't not buy from all companies that supports X. Everything is completely interconnected. That being said, voting with your dollars is still a good way to help bring about change. Whether it is attempting to not support sweat shops, child labor, environmental exploitation, or animal cruelty, you can help make a difference by attempting to buy ethically sourced items. Eliminating meat and leather is the bulk of the profit for factory farms. Likewise, if you are against veal, the number 1 way to stop veal production is to not drink milk. Same goes for eggs. Where did all the male chickens go? I think vegans that look at ingredient lists and/or won't eat someone's birthday cake because it is made with eggs and milk are probably taking it too far but by not buying meat, leather, eggs, and milk, vegans significantly reduce the amount of animals that have to suffer and die for them to live.
That lied on the label, and was accused of buying up their own product off store shelves to boost their standing?
A lot of the time spent "hunting" is actually spent sitting still
I was commenting on the GP who said "performing intensive ways of obtaining food", such as running for 8 hours after the kudu, as from the link to the youtube video I posted up the thread.
The switch from hunter/gatherer to farmer caused humans to actually shrink in length, and that's been explained as due to the far less varied diet of the farmer, especially far less meat. Those hunter/gatherers did get a good amount of meat in their diet, the main reason to switch to farming is that your food supply becomes so much more reliable even if it's less nutritious and definitely less varied.
Well, you need to run about 7.5 mph, which I wouldn't call "slow". And very few 90 kg men can keep that up for long enough to burn a large amount of calories.
Muslim companies start creating "artificial depictions of Mohammed" which combine light in such a way that there's never actually a full image of Mohammed in one place, but when you look at it you see what looks like an image of Mohammed anyway.
We can follow up with special Amish computers built out of wires instead of transistors because computers built that way can do exactly the same thing as normal computers while being less objectionable to Amish principles.
Maybe instead of creating artificial meat, they should figure out that their aversion to real meat has gone just a little bit too far? If you're making fake meat out of soy, that's a little weird, but people grow soy all the time. If you're developing a complicated and obviously inefficient laboratory growing process just so you can indulge in eating meat that doesn't violate your taboo against meat, things have gotten out of hand and you probably should take a second look at your taboos.
If it becomes cheaper to artificially manufacture meat, what are we going to do with all those obsolete cows? The species will go extinct in a generation if it's not economical to keep them.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Humans are designed to eat meat. We require large amounts of unique amino acids that are virtually impossible to get from plants. Why cater to those idiots?
Actually it's very easy to get amino acids from plants. Any one grain + any one legume = the complete complement of amino acids.
As for humans being designed to eat meat- the communities that have the longest living populations (such as various Mediterranean regions, and parts of Japan) have always eaten very little meat., and usually just fish when they do have meat.
I eat meat, I like meat. I'm not coming at this as a vegetarian, just pointing out that you're incorrect. We don't require huge amounts of meat. We can get amino acids very easily from plants. Vegetarians most certainly are not idiots- they just have a different lifestyle to you and I. (and they'll probably live longer as a result of it)
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
a lot quicker and cheaper than shipping it all the way from Vega (26 light years)
No, only psychopaths kill animals for fun. Fortunately 99.999 percent of the general public do not have that major psychiatric malfunction. Ima guessing you do.
You should try stepping outside of your metropolis "utopia" sometime. Plenty of decent country folk enjoy hunting; none of which I've encountered showed signs of being "psychopaths".
Then, they still wouldn't want to eat meat (as ignorant as that is).
And, as we all know, processed food (and that's what this is) is always better than natural. *rolls eyes*
It's still not clear that laboratories manufacturing "meat" on a large scale would be any better for the environment. The labs may claim it is, but that does not make it so.
Not just killing -- harming. Tell me, where did the seed tissue for growing this "meat" come from? Some animal had to be harmed along the way to enable this manufacturing process.
sig: sauer
Citation provided - the definition of the Vegan Society, who coined the term in 1944 states:
"Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism
Veganism is better described as a philosophy, or a mindset. If someone is eating vegan food only for health reasons, then they technically aren't vegans but 'strict vegetarians'. You can't be vegan and accept the exploitation of animals. It'd be like calling yourself a feminist but being okay with exploiting women.
Not just killing -- harming. Tell me, where did the seed tissue for growing this "meat" come from? Some animal had to be harmed along the way to enable this manufacturing process.
This is the kind of thinking that makes people hate vegans. Many of our modern medicines can be traced back to experiments done by the nazis and many of our technologies can be traced back to slavery. The goal shouldn't be to not cause any harm. That's impossible. Plowing a corn field likely harms a ton of animals living in the soil. The goal should be to reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the world not eliminate it. You can't eliminate it. You should also definitely not worry about stuff twice removed. Everything can be traced to something horrific if you talk about stuff twice removed.
Tell me, where did the seed tissue for growing this "meat" come from?
Voluntarily donated by the lab assistant.
Calorie approximations are pretty approximate, but IIRC the Harvard study puts a 185 lb man (approx 80 kg I think) running 7.5 mph (about 12 km/h) at 1000 kcal/h. 90 kg can get away with a little slower. 10 km/h is pretty standard for those 10k learn to run groups, so although it's (sadly) not something the average person can just get off the couch and do, it's a long way from elite athlete status.
I ran 10 km up a hill once with a semi-elite marathoner. She was very encouraging.
For people to think THIS is a good idea and GMOs are an evil scourge on the face of the planet just proves that they are nuts. Organic, free-range, fair-trade, locally-sourced, non-GMO nuts.
the communities that have the longest living populations (such as various Mediterranean regions
Meat has always been popular around the Mediterranean. Beef, lamb, goat, and plenty of seafood. For some reason (I blame Ancel Keys, who visited the area during Lent), people have popularized the idea that the Mediterranean diet was low in meat. That's just wrong.
The Vegan 'philosophy' (if you can call it that) states that Vegans may not eat, own, or use anything with an even remotely animal origin. Therefore this vat-grown 'meat' cannot be Vegan: they had to get the DNA from an animal.
the communities that have the longest living populations (such as various Mediterranean regions
Meat has always been popular around the Mediterranean. Beef, lamb, goat, and plenty of seafood. For some reason (I blame Ancel Keys, who visited the area during Lent), people have popularized the idea that the Mediterranean diet was low in meat. That's just wrong.
And not all Mediterranean communities have especially long lives; but the ones that do have lower meat intake. (they eat some, mainly seafood when they do). Same with Okinawa in Japan which is also home to the oldest living people, It's common with every one of the communities on earth with large numbers of people reaching 100. They all eat very little meat. (although they also all eat at least some meat).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's still not clear that laboratories manufacturing "meat" on a large scale would be any better for the environment. The labs may claim it is, but that does not make it so.
1. There is a possibility of it being better for the environment - their claim may or may not be true, which has a "may be true" component.
2. There is a lot of energy wastage in animals. They think, move around needlessly, want to have sex, sometimes even run around. All of this also wastes water and needs real estate. Of course, the lab will have its own energy / environmental costs - but if overall costs for the lab are lower we win environmentally. Again, possible but not necessarily.
3. Companies developing this kind of lab meat might go for the "cheap meat", as the traditionalists, "appeal to nature" fallacists, general ignoramuses might make it difficult to sell it. Cheap has won many battles in the world of technology over quality - there is no reason it may not be true in this case too. And one good way to produce cheaply is use less resources, and that in turn might harm the environment less.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
In the US, to be called mayonnaise, the food must contain eggs. If it's vegan, then it's not mayonnaise.
Citation failed. A definition of a group no one has heard of is utterly irrelevant in a world where the vegan diet is trumpeted and supported by various health nutters promising everything from better sex to curing cancer.
Your citation is completely meaningless as the existence of a society is no reason to change a lifestyle and not in control of that lifestyle.
So give me a citation or a study of reasons from people, not from some definition no one other than a few pedants know.
So vegans want to promote centralized big corporate industrial production at the expense of local sustainable economies. Not a wise choice.
I can produce tons of meat on pasture locally without the need for industrial or petroleum inputs.
Stick with the real meat.
I'm with you all the way on this one, except that meat is high in calories. Wildlife typically has very little fat, and meat itself has about 1200 kcal/kg. Not much compared to e.g. nuts and seeds.
(randomly chosen source: http://matvaretabellen.no/beef... )
Meat could also be preserved and stored, a valuable property. Animals provided much more than just meat. Tendons, fur, minerals (in bone), omega-3 fatty acids (the brain), to mention a few.
Of course humans are omnivores. Only idiots say otherwise.
Good comment.
Just to add to the discussion: People used traps, snares, pits, and nets to catch their prey thousands of years ago. It's not like humans had to spend eight hours running after animals to get their meat.
I've seen natives in Africa make bird traps out of bushes and bark. Took'em less than five minutes without using any tools, and the bird supply was endless.
Except industrial chemicals are notorious for causing Cancer and all sorts of other fun stuff.
You think your ranch grown ones fed on hormones, antibiotics and feed-that-isn't-the-natural-diet is free of carcinogens or other harmful substances? You think that nice sizzle on your steak isn't carcinogenic? Enjoy your illusions.
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Today its about protecting animals.
There are judges in Europe who are calling them "people".
There are science fiction shows where "Holograms" and AI are called people.
After AI, ordinary rocks and ideas will be considered people.
Eventually everything will be "protected" equally in that nothing will be protected.
Perhaps - but it is probably easier if you grow a horn first.
Today its about protecting animals.
There are judges in Europe who are calling them "people".
There are science fiction shows where "Holograms" and AI are called people.
After AI, ordinary rocks and ideas will be considered people.
Eventually everything will be "protected" equally in that nothing will be protected.
If AI or holograms can suffer and feel pain then why shouldn't it be protected? The new show Westworld is exploring some of that. At one point slaves were considered "just animals" and were treated like animals. How much protection different animals should receive is debatable. We have plenty of laws already making it illegal to abuse dogs and cats and what constitutes abuse. We have ethic boards which decide which experiments are ethical and which are not whether it includes humans or other animals. Just like almost any ethical decision, some people are going to take a harder stance than others but most people can agree that you shouldn't torture small furry animals just for fun and that, yes, animals can feel pain.
What part of simplest path do you not understand
Learn how to read
On the other hand, we have people who are currently subjecting themselves to be lab rats, testing whether we can survive without meat.
You might want to check out the millions (now hundreds of millions) in India who have done fine without meat from before Christ was born. 30-40% of India is vegetarian and has been for much longer than most long-term tests if you open your eyes.
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You assume that a sole hunter would hunt one animal for himself only. This assumption is false and an animal as large as you describe would give a sole hunter the finger. You also assume that the hunter would be able to find and kill a large animal every day, which is even more ridiculous.
The typical size of a hunting party is 3-4 men. So at 125*3000 ~ 375.000 kcal/kg per carcass out of which the hunters would consume 9000kcal/kg to recoup the 8 hour run there is plenty left over for the rest of their group. The average size of a hunter gatherer band can range between ~12 to 50 individuals. If we assume a meat consumption of one kilo of meat per day for each individual in a group of 30 hunter gatherers, one carcass like that would last them for four days. However, a group of 30 would easily be able to field two hunter teams of 3-4 men each (or women, since women hunted in some of these societies) with, one group hunting and one either preparing for a hunt, or inbound with a carcass. At the same time these 6-8 people are out hunting the rest of the group would be out gathering fruits, vegetables, seeds roots herbs to supplement the diet and easily matching the contribution of the hunters while others are making equipment, clothing shelters etc... in short religionofpeas numbers seem perfectly plausible to me, especially since hunter gatherers ate every scrap of the animal down to the offal and the marrow in the bones and then used inedible parts including bones to make arrowheads, harpoons spear heads, knives and sinew to make rope, thread and as a component in bow making. Leather of course would not have been wasted either nor would horn or the wool of the animal if any. Many apex predators leave that stuff behind, a large animal killed by humans was likely to completely disappear simply because every bit of it's carcass was used up for some purpose.
A small comment about everyone's assumptions: It seems that most hunter-gatherers consume far more of the animal than muscle tissue. Which just means that hunting is even more efficient than the numbers you give.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Huh? They coined the term in 1944. This is the group that invented the term 'vegan'. It didn't exist before they made it up. This is where veganism started, generally credited to Donald Watson (and his wife) in the UK. Do a little research, just because you haven't heard of something doesn't mean it isn't known by others.
People like you think that it's just some random word, and define it as they want, but that's not what history dictates. Ask any other significant vegan organization where the term came from, they'll all say the same thing.
No you don't understand. I asked for reasons for people to become vegan, not some definition from a group no one cares about.
What a word means and the reason for adopting its lifestyle are two different things. Vegan may have a definition, but as I said in my original post veganism is proclaimed as the panacea to a wide variety of health problems, from health to environmental problems. There are many vegans around the world that couldn't give a shit about animals dying. Hell I even know a vegan who is a big game hunter who proudly displays trophies on his wall yet refuses to put any animal product in his fridge.
A dictionary definition is not a motivation.
No big game hunter is a vegan. Even if they call themselves a vegan. The definition is relevant. I can't go calling myself a lawyer or a priest or a big game hunter since I don't subscribe to the definition of any of those terms. The person you know is some perverse kind of vegetarian.
If people don't know what vegan means, chances are they're not a vegan. Just like someone isn't going to become a lawyer one day if they don't understand you need to go to school and follow particular ideas. Not saying you have to go to school to be vegan, but if you don't understand the term (it's not a 'diet' for starters), then you can't define yourself by it. I also know people who eat plenty of meat and call themselves vegetarian, what does that say? Are they vegetarian? No. Can they call themselves that? I guess so. Are they correct? Again, no.
People start eating a *vegan diet* for many reasons, yes. But if they don't believe that animal exploitation is wrong, they aren't vegan. They don't subscribe to a vegan ideology. They're just eating vegan diets (and probably better described as vegetarians, since there is no firm definition of that.)
This is true - but we didn't know that until very recently. And it's not why we don't eat each other; resistance to doing that has been in place for longer than anyone remembers, free of knowledge or common experience with consequences to health. Free enough, in fact, that cannibalism keeps showing up in various forms, just as do other unhealthy but socially disfavored practices such as bloodline incest. There's been no inherent knowledge of the unhealthy nature of the act until someone actually engages in it, which, being very rare, hadn't been in the general knowledge base of the people until very recently.
Avoidance of cannibalism has been about empathy, primarily. For the victim, for the victim's relations. Knowledge about prions is, relatively speaking, a brand new factor. In one sense, it's good we know; in another, we don't have to, as cannibalism represents an obvious failure of empathy, a critical factor in healthy socialization, and the vast majority of people integrate the idea without needing a medical justification.
Also, just as an aside, there are plenty of red health flags WRT eating meat of other species. That should be sufficient to start up several relevant chains of thought that support what I've described here.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's a very recent bit of knowledge, and one that was not available for most of history - yet we still didn't eat each other. Even the most ignorant and isolated peasants didn't do it. Try again. This time, think about empathy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The ability to feel pain is not what makes you a person. Agency is the quality of being able to make choices reflecting your values and priorities and fighting for them over time. You know how you can be certain AI's are not people? AI has never come even REMOTELY close to winning a Turing test ... to the point where AI competitions have made it a forgone conclusion that can't be the criteria they use ... since all AI's will always fail that way. And, btw, why is it fetus's are not viewed as people? It's so the more powerful (their dark, dark parents) can rule over and murder those who aren't capable of protecting their own interests.
No big game hunter is a vegan. Even if they call themselves a vegan.
Sure, if you follow the vegan society's definition. However the general accepted term on the other hand has to do with the food you eat.
The definition is relevant. I can't go calling myself a lawyer or a priest
Of course not, there's a certification that comes with it. On the other hand vegans can call themselves vegan whenever they want. There's no certifying board of vegan. You don't need to go to someone to get approval to use the name. You don't need to show pieces of paper to people who ask.
If people don't know what vegan means, chances are they're not a vegan.
Probably not by the "official" definition, but they are most definitely vegan by the common accepted "definition" which in the English language is the only one that matters unless a title is protected under law (like e.g. lawyer). But to go back to your original assertion of what those people are: Show me restaurants that cater to vegetarians. Then show me restaurants that cater to strict vegetarians, that's right they don't exist because people call it by what they serve: Vegan food. Likewise there are plenty of restaurants that have vegan offers but also serve meat. Maybe you should go on a war against the rest of the world and tell everyone to change their definition. But you won't because that battle is lost, both by you and by the vegan society. While you're at it maybe you should call all the health food experts and those people who do studies on the subject and get them to change vegan to strict vegetarian simply because you can't cope with the way people use the word.
People start eating a *vegan diet* for many reasons, yes.
Good. Thanks. Not sure why you had to go through 2 days worth of no true Scotsman fallacies to get to this point. We'll just leave this conversation with this very line you just said since that's exactly what the fuck this conversation was about in the first place.
I think a better description is apt for vegans. No true vegan is vegan unless they are infuriatingly painful to talk to because they can't hold a conversation without splitting hairs, going on tangents, and then complaining about everyone else who isn't precisely as "vegan" as them. Whatever the hell the rest of the world thinks that means.
The ability to feel pain is not what makes you a person. Agency is the quality of being able to make choices reflecting your values and priorities and fighting for them over time. You know how you can be certain AI's are not people? AI has never come even REMOTELY close to winning a Turing test ... to the point where AI competitions have made it a forgone conclusion that can't be the criteria they use ... since all AI's will always fail that way. And, btw, why is it fetus's are not viewed as people? It's so the more powerful (their dark, dark parents) can rule over and murder those who aren't capable of protecting their own interests.
Current AI is nowhere close to any level of sentience (or Agency). A housefly or earthworm has a million times more sentience than current AI. That doesn't mean that if we ever crack the "what makes a person conscious", we won't be able to have AI that have that same quality. As far as your fetus comment, there are plenty of people that do view fetuses as people which is why we have double homicide laws for pregnant women and the whole prolife/prochoice debate.
But they have no problem with killing a bunch of animals (that certainly feel pain) for their precious vegetables:
Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet." The animals in this case are mice and moles and rabbits and other creatures that are run over by tractors, or lose their habitat to make way for farming, so they are not as "visible" as cattle, he says. And that, Davis says, gives rise to a fundamental question: "What is it that makes it OK to kill animals of the field so that we can eat [vegetables or fruits] but not pigs or chickens or cows?"
I guess a small ugly hidden-from-view animal like a mouse doesn't count.
This argument would hold a lot more weight if 80% of crops grown weren't feed to animals. It's impossible to live in a world without suffering but that doesn't mean that you can't try to minimize it. Also, there is a huge difference between a mouse or deer living a free and natural life until it's untimely demise and a chicken raised in a cage where it can't move and then scheduled to be killed before it's even reaches adulthood.
Sigh...you're just being argumentative - those were just examples, I could say I couldn't call myself a feminist while mistreating women, etc.. There's no certifying board there either.
There are plenty of vegetarian restaurants, what are you talking about? Vegan restaurants are far and few between. India is a country full of vegetarian restaurants with few vegan ones.
Terms are misunderstood all the time, thanks for making a case that whatever some dope on the internet thinks 'makes it so'. Words should be defined by what the majority thinks they mean, not how they came about or are actually defined as! Now go give Donald Trump a big hug, because he's your current word champion.
I think you are confusing vegan with vegetarian. Vegan is more about using animals for any means. Even honey is not allowed because it had to be stolen from the bees. It does not matter if they make extra, what matters is that they did not say you could have it. Vegetarians eat eggs and milk and sometimes fish. That is where the health stuff is a main focus. When you go further into vegan, you are doing it for much more extreme reasons.
This is how I understand the two terms and how they differ.
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