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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.
if it isn't meat...
Really? If a paste going through a nozzle counts as "3D printed"
No, it's but everything being made in it's entirety from a robot controlled extruded is pretty much going to be labeled "3d printed". The correct term is additive manufacturing. Feel free to flip a table or two because it's not going away.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you try to apply logical and rational thought to a vegan die-hard, you are going to be really disappointed.
I know this is slashdot, but that's an absurd rant. The machine in the article looks very similar to the 3d printer on my desk. It just extrudes a different material to the plastic mine extrudes. Why the problem with the term 3d printed ? It's a perfectly useful term with a clear meaning, which in my view is used quite suitably in this context. Some here say the "correct" term is additive manufacturing - well I'd say that's just an alternative term. There's nothing incorrect about calling something 3d printing if it's coming from a machine that extrudes a material to create three dimensional objects layer by layer. And it's not a hype. It's an extremely useful technology that is now becoming cheap enough to be available domestically. It's like calling smartphones a hype ten years ago. Or the internet. Is that a hype ? I genuinely believe that all of these new and innovative applications of 3d printing, particularly with new kinds of materials, like in this article, are examples of they way manufacturing is being turned on its head. Extraordinary things are happening, and I for one am really interested in reading about them.
3D printed steaks have been around for years.
The question is if this new method using vegetable proteins is any improvement over polyamide or ABS. Double-blind taste tests have been inconclusive.
The problem with faux meat is replicating the structure and the fat distribution. Textured protein does an okay job at the filamentous part, but can't distribute fat through the produced chunks. Also the chunks are limited in size.
With fused deposition modeling (ie. 3d printing) you can replicate that structure to some extent and distribute fat throughout, in far larger chunks than can be produced by textured protein extrusion.
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.