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Italian Bioengineer Develops 3D-Printed Vegan Steak From Plant-Based Proteins (dezeen.com)
Italian bioengineer Giuseppe Scionti from Spanish startup Novameat has invented the "world's first" 3D-printed meat-free steak made from vegetable proteins, which mimics the texture of beef. From a report: Vegan ingredients such as rice, peas and seaweed, which provide the amino acids needed for a healthy diet, are turned into a food paste that is 3D-printed to form a raw, steak-like substance. Despite an abundance of meat-free products already on the market that taste similar to animal meats, Scionti found that these are limited to imitation burgers, chicken nuggets or meatballs. None of the offerings reproduce a piece of "fibrous flesh" such as steak or chicken breast. In an effort to reduce the impact of animal agriculture and to improve people's nutrition, the Milanese researcher set out to create a plant-based alternative to "fleshy" meat products.
1) It takes 30 minutes to print a 100g "steak" which appears to be a little larger than a quarter.
2) No information on it's taste or consistency. Being translucent is not a good sign.
I really want someone to make a replacement for meat, not because I give a shit about the animals but because they are heavily subsidized and damaging to both the environment and our bodies. This isn't going to cut it.
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Some people, like myself, are omnivores who know animals - sentients - suffer and die so I can have a meal. I don't like that, so I started minimizing my meat-eating. I love meat however. So if someone could give me something that tastes exactly like meat, I'd devour it.
As far as vegans (no dairy or eggs): the egg industry keep chickens in battery cages. If you understand what the battery hens endure, and you're smart enough to care, then you might try to avoid battery eggs. But that's easy to do because there are lots of cage free eggs out there nowadays. Dairy...? Veal comes out of the dairy industry, and the calves are separated from their mothers way early. Veal is a brutal industry. When the Millenium comes, I imagine veal farmers will be hanging outside their empty barns. I don't have the force of will to avoid dairy though, though I should IMO. Eggs I only eat the non-battery kind. Meat... like I say, if they can give me a suffering-free alternative, I'm all over it.
Not everyone cares. Most don't I suppose. Gotta have the intellectual firepower to think about this stuff, be able to model the existence of other sentients. Hyena doesn't care about what the wildebeest thinks. Nature is in fact brutal. But if I can avoid being brutal, I'll do it because I like to reduce the level of suffering on the planet.
Why are vegans obsessed with making stuff that isn't meat into something they can call "meat"?
Mostly, they aren't. Many vegans aren't interested in fake meat. It is more for non-vegans that crave meat but want a healthier, greener, more humane, or whatever, option.
Most vegan "beef" is pretty bad, but fake chicken is pretty good.
It is very sustainable and only an engineering problem to make more meat.
Everything is only an engineering problem. The question is, when does the cost become too high to continue?
I looked into your past posts because I had a feeling you might be one of the many people worthy of the label "foe" but I found you to be an intelligent and interesting person. You are rough around the edges like rusty razor blades but not the typical "out of your fucking mind" extremism that fails to comport to logic that's become the staple of post-2008 Slashdot. Congratulations, you win nothing.
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On the 1 hand, I love meat. On the other, I am aware of my cholesterol levels and other health issues. You come up with a good enough meat alternative (dripping juices, crispy edges, suitable for BBQ) and I'll tell you to "shut up and take my money".
Vegan's aren't interested, it's us meat eaters who are. I've tried some of these non-meat burgers and they are excellent. Environmental concerns aside, if I can eat something as delicious as that but more nutritious, lower calorie, doesn't require so much infrastructure to enforce animal welfare... Well it's a huge benefit to me.
Between vegan steak and lab grown meat we could enter a new age of delicious meat products that are healthy to eat regularly and offer new culinary delights.
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I'll bite. I eat meat. Meat is yummy. Your body has evolved so that things that are good for you taste yummy. By not eating meat, you are depriving your body of nutrients it needs to survive. Vegetarians and especially vegans have to be careful to supplement their diet with pills or sufficient quantities of specific plants which provide those nutrients. Thus indicating that theirs is the diet which is innately unnatural and unhealthy. You can make an argument against eating too much meat, but that does not translate into an argument for eating no meat at all.
The argument that eating meat is cruel is easy to shoot down too. If your reasoning is based on minimizing the amount of cruelty animals suffer, consider that the fate of nearly every living thing is to be eaten alive. It just happens out of our sight most of the time. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Living to a ripe old age and dying of natural causes (organ failure) is something almost unique to humans and the few animals we adopt as pets. Nearly all wild animals die young, painfully, and frequently with what most people would consider close to the "maximum" amount of suffering possible. In contrast, the way we dispatch domesticated animals for meat is quick, painless, and humane. So you actually reduce the total amount of cruelty suffered by animals by replacing wild animals in the environment with domesticated ones, protect them from predators and disease with our fences and medicines, then dispatch them painlessly when you're ready to slaughter them.
Then there's the argument that meat is too resource-intensive. That the world's human population is growing beyond the land's capability to feed it, so we need to start eating lower on the food chain. Except that's false too. Nearly all of the world's population growth is happening in developing nations. The developed countries (where most meat eating happens) have close to zero population growth; some even have negative population growth (their population is shrinking). So they're clearly able to feed their populations using the land and resources they have. If you want to reduce population growth, the key is to help all countries on the planet become economically developed. Regressing to an agrarian society is actually counterproductive, and will result in even faster population growth.
The only argument for vegetarianism / veganism I've heard which makes sense is the energy intensity one. You can feed the population using less energy per capita if everyone eats plants (even after accounting for supplements to make up nutrients normally obtained from meat). But the entirety of modern civilization is based on being able to generate more energy per capita than in the past. As a nation develops, the percentage of its economic output devoted to food production decreases. Since everyone still must be eating (the same amount of food is being produced per capita), that means the country is producing more energy per capita than before. And that excess energy is being spent on productive tasks other than food production. If there's plenty of excess energy, why not use some of it to raise meat if you want?
Note that if the scientists researching this are able to produce something which tastes like meat but requires less energy to produce than raising animals, I will have no qualms about switching to it. Less energy to produce translates into lower cost, so it'll be a simple economic decision. Contrary to the imaginations of vegetarians / vegans, knowing an animal died to feed you is not a part of the enjoyment from eating meat.
You give no reason why conscientious meat eaters shouldn't try to create vegetable based meat alternatives. I eat meat and of course enjoy it, I also eat a couple of 'fake-meat' products that taste good but still aren't as tasty as the meat versions, as a meat eater I'd like them to create fake-meats that taste as good as the real thing, are more humane and are better for the environment.
The clock is ticking for the human race and we're not doing much to slow it down, our species won't last long at this rate.
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Or it could just be that that person likes the taste of meat but not the harming of animals and don't actually have any interest in what other people do. People who don't eat meat don't force anything on you, I really don't understand these tantrums from meat eaters about us.
I'm an unrepentant carnivore, but if you gave me something where the cost and flavor was about the same but it came without the need for animal husbandry and the associated environmental effects, I'd be very open-minded.
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