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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?
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.
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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.
dyslexic jihadists get 27 vegans.
Table-ized A.I.
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
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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
cows can produce it all from a few plants,
No, there are lots of things cows cannot make from plants. That's why they have 4 stomachs, where they get a lot of help from a bunch of microorganisms to do all the hard work for them.
as you can get everything you need from a varied vegetarian or vegan diet.
Deficiencies in vitamin D, calcium, iron, zinc, and especially B12 are pretty common among strict vegans. And that's just the obvious things we know. To get enough B12 as a strict vegan, you basically need supplements, as it is not naturally found in plants. For the other nutrients, you need to spend considerable effort to get a diet that's balanced and varied enough. Just for a fun challenge: try to come up with a vegan menu that contains all nutrients that you can find in a 1 oz serving of liver (that's one good bite)
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.
Cows consume grass -- and in very high volumes.
Not American cows. They eat grain, lots of it. And probably washed down with 32oz cups of HFCS.
Maybe you should realize that _good_ quality "artificial" meat could have many benefits for normal people? There could be reduced costs, reduced environmental impact and better control of meat properties.
In theory that is. To reach the point where factory grown meat can have those qualities there is a need for research, if anybody want to eat the expensive _bad_ quality meat possible to produce now so that everyone can benefit in the future I'll applaud those heroes!
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.
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.