Lab-Grown Meat Exists (But Nobody Wants To Eat It) (mydigitaldive.com) 209
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2013, scientists unveiled the first lab-grown burger at a cost of $330,000. By 2023, the FDA approved cultivated chicken for sale. The price had dropped to around $10-$30 per pound, and over $3 billion in investor money had poured into more than 175 companies developing meat grown from animal cells instead of slaughtered animals.
The promise is straightforward: real meat, no slaughter required. You could eat beef without killing cattle, chicken without industrial farming, steak without ethical compromise. The technology works. Federal regulators approved it as safe. And nearly a third of US states have banned it or are trying to. Not because it's dangerous -- because it threatens something deeper than food safety.
Start with a small sample of animal cells -- a biopsy, not a slaughter. Place them in a bioreactor with nutrients. The cells multiply, forming muscle tissue identical to conventional meat at the cellular level. Nutritionally comparable, same protein content, but grown without raising and killing an animal.
The process uses 64-90% less land than conventional meat production and drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions. No factory farms, no slaughterhouses, no ethical compromise for people who love meat but hate industrial animal agriculture. For vegetarians who gave up meat for ethical reasons, it offers something impossible before: guilt-free steak.
[...] Here's where the dream hits reality. Consumer surveys show people perceive conventional meat as tastier and healthier than lab-grown alternatives. Fewer consumers are willing to try cultivated options than expected. The words "lab-grown" and "cultivated" don't exactly make mouths water.
Something about meat grown in a bioreactor triggers deep discomfort for many people, even those who claim to care about animal welfare and environmental impact. It's the same psychological barrier that made "Frankenfood" stick as a label for GMOs. Meat is supposed to come from animals, raised on farms, connected to land and tradition. Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate.
The promise is straightforward: real meat, no slaughter required. You could eat beef without killing cattle, chicken without industrial farming, steak without ethical compromise. The technology works. Federal regulators approved it as safe. And nearly a third of US states have banned it or are trying to. Not because it's dangerous -- because it threatens something deeper than food safety.
Start with a small sample of animal cells -- a biopsy, not a slaughter. Place them in a bioreactor with nutrients. The cells multiply, forming muscle tissue identical to conventional meat at the cellular level. Nutritionally comparable, same protein content, but grown without raising and killing an animal.
The process uses 64-90% less land than conventional meat production and drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions. No factory farms, no slaughterhouses, no ethical compromise for people who love meat but hate industrial animal agriculture. For vegetarians who gave up meat for ethical reasons, it offers something impossible before: guilt-free steak.
[...] Here's where the dream hits reality. Consumer surveys show people perceive conventional meat as tastier and healthier than lab-grown alternatives. Fewer consumers are willing to try cultivated options than expected. The words "lab-grown" and "cultivated" don't exactly make mouths water.
Something about meat grown in a bioreactor triggers deep discomfort for many people, even those who claim to care about animal welfare and environmental impact. It's the same psychological barrier that made "Frankenfood" stick as a label for GMOs. Meat is supposed to come from animals, raised on farms, connected to land and tradition. Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate.
Deeper than food safety (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Convince us it tastes the same.
2) Obviouslty this threatens ranchers everywhere and they're not going to go quietly
Re: Deeper than food safety (Score:2)
3) And don't tell me it's lab grown meat or 1) can never be true
Re: Deeper than food safety (Score:5, Interesting)
4) Wait until it costs less.
When it is significantly cheaper than natural meat, there will be plenty of people willing to eat it. Some of them will even consider the nutritional statistics and long-term side effects.
This is mostly an expression of disappointment with the FP branch. These topics got plenty of play in the later parts of the discussion.
But let me go for informative to close. Not lab-grown meat, but non-meat patties created using processing techniques developed in laboratories. I'm referring to a non-beef burger offered by Mos Burger. I've eaten it and enjoyed it and it's been on the menu for a while, so they must be making some money from it. The raw ingredients are vegetables, probably mostly beans, but it tastes like some kind of meat and has the right "mouth feel". If the primary ingredients were algae or bacteria grown in a big vat, I'm sure some people would be willing to eat it if the price was right. Quite a popular fast food chain locally, but of course the real test will be when McDonald's adds the option. (But I don't eat at burger places very often these years, and when I eat at Mos Burger I prefer an option with jalapenos..)
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Is a Mos Burger completely the nutritional equivalent of meat, including amino acids and such? If not, then count me out.
Precisely nutritionally equivalent is a bit tricky. Tofu (which I think is an ingredient), for example, has all nine essential amino acids, just like beef. The ratios are not going to be exactly the same, but you should be able to get enough of all of them from either. You don't get carnatine or creatine from the plant sources, but your body can make those on its own. It can be argued that the high concentration found in beef is much better for muscle building. Of course, the reality is that anyone that con
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You could certainly bioengineer microorganisms to produce all the components of milk. Or, like the vat meat, you can just grow animal lactocytes in vats and produce milk that way. Which is already a thing, btw.
Re:Deeper than food safety (Score:4, Insightful)
no, this is not enough. I expect something engineered by man to taste BETTER than something made by random processes in nature.
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something made by random processes in nature.
Cows aren't derived from random processes in nature, they were bred into existence from another animal. Still, I'm not going to eat lab-grown meat. I do, however, support developing the technology. For one, it puts en end to vegan douchebags, and two, for space travel. You can't bring a cow with you to Mars. You can bring a mechanism that grows meat with you if it's small enough. I imagine the first voyages to Mars are going to require a large enough space station to make it work.
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I imagine the first voyages to Mars are going to require a large enough space station to make it work.
A space station would be great, but that's a lot of mass that you either have to send there or find there and then turn into a space station. It's a lot less mass to take enough food for a mission.
If you're planning to actually stay, then you don't need a station, you need to build structures on the planet.
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Well... kind of. Most animals have small breeds. Cows remain one of the hardest, as their miniature breeds [storybookfarmwv.com] are tstillabout 1/4th to 1/3rd the adult mass of their full-scale relatives. But there are lots of species in bovidae (the cow/sheep/antelope family) and some of them are incredibly small - random example, the royal antelope [s-nbcnews.com]. As for sheep and goats, you have things like dwarf Nigerian goats [wixstatic.com] which are quite small, and a good milk breed. Horses, you have e.g. te
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Besides, you never have to ask somebody if they're vegan. Believe me, they'll tell you.
You mean like when you go out to a restaurant and people are looking to get appetizers for the table, etc.? I mean yeah, why wouldn't they?
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We evolved to enjoy meat, because it's efficient to eat it.
Those processes both are and aren't random. That is to say, they are orderly and work based on rules. This is not different from vat-grown "meat", except that the rules are different. An animal grows in an egg or a womb, the conditions differ from a vat (or another container) even if you put in all the same stuff, which they don't.
My concern about vat-grown "meat" is that when the proteins go wrong the animal becomes nonviable and probably isn't eve
Re:Deeper than food safety (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect there may be some legitimate corner cases about "free range", "corn fed", and similar dietry or lifestyle things that will have at least some effect on the texture of the meat (e.g. buff animals vs. couch potato animals), but maybe there are ways to replicate at least some of that in the lab too?
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Well the entrenched concerns don't want to even give you the opportunity by straight up banning it before you get a chance to try it. If it truly sucked they'd let the market take care of it and billions of venture would evaporate. But all the free market, small government "don't tread on me" types are quick to go after this as fast as possible because certain donors got their feathers ruffled.
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I don't think ranchers are feeling threatened. Very, very few people are vegetarians for "ethical" reasons. The vast majority still want actual meat.
Taste, is certainly an issue. We've all tasted highly processed meat products like bologna and hot dogs. While many people eat such products, no one would say they could replace "real" meat. This "cultured" meat is likely to be more like highly-processed meat products, than actual meat.
Re:Deeper than food safety (Score:5, Insightful)
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Grown in plastic.
Fed probably some crap sugar solution.
Flooded with chemicals.
All true, but natural beef is so delicious it's worth those compromises.
Don't worry, I'm sure that the lab-grown stuff won't make those same mistakes.
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Wait until you find out that cows evolved to eat grass and not corn.
Don't try to say its meat (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't try and market it as meat, and I'll give it a chance. You lie and market it as meat and I'll avoid forever. The definition of meat is the flesh of a living being. Just because it is protein simulating meat doesn't mean that it's meat. Also, I have just as much of an issue with frozen dinners calling something beef or chicken or pork when it has fillers in it. In my opinion to be able to legally use those terms (meat, beef, pork, chicken) it has to be 100% of those things except for possible hydration and spicing. Fillers should automatically force it to be called meat substitute or at least something understood to have fillers like meatloaf or something like that. Pressed and formed meat like substance can F right off.
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Don't try and market it as meat, and I'll give it a chance.
Except it literally IS meat, it even follows your own definition. This very much is living real protein. In taste tests people have found them to be delicious. It's nothing at all like the frozen dinners you compare them to. There's no reason to call it anything other than meat.
Lab grown meat is the EV of food industry. A bunch of ney-sayers without experience afraid of something they've never used or tried.
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It is not meat. The definition of meat is flesh of a living organism. No living organism, no meat. Lab grown meat is alive only in that cells divide, there are no other components that work together to make a living being. If they call it meat, it is dishonest and deserves to be shunned. Call it what it is and I'll give it a chance. Lab grown meat substitute, or heck even make up a new name for it, but don't call it meat. Also, the usage of the word protein to describe meat is about as hoity toity as it get
How is it not meat? (Score:2)
This isn't even like calling a veggie burger a burger when colloquially we refer to a burger as a beef patty in America. Never mind the fact that burger as a word has its own meaning I do understand that people in general hear the word burger and they think ground beef. Which is why you proceeded with the word veggie just like you proceed chicken burger and turkey burger and bison burger...
I'm just saying that
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Today only! Flame broiled, quarter-pound lab-burger topped with delicious non-dairy cheese and served on a Keto bun. Comes with a side of oat milk for only $8.99!
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Truth in advertisement would go such a long way to solve so many different problems the modern world has.
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Is there any longer-term study of people eating lab-grown meat (nearly) every day?
It's not animal meat, and it will surely have differences, either things missing or substances in it that animal meat doesn't have.
I'd be wary that I'm eating something that might be found to be harmful or anti-nutritious over time.
You can probably season it, in a curry or in a stew, so the taste isn't a factor (might even find some dishes that compliment it!), but I'd want to know it's not going to harm me.
Confusion (Score:4)
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I think that the public just gets the two confused.
Just going by some of the other comments here I'd say you are correct.
Price (Score:5)
Re: Price (Score:2)
It was also worse for you in a lot of ways, so that only left vegans that didn't care about their health or their wallet as the market.
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Slightly different, but a few years ago in Canada there was a push for plant based meat replacements. The problem was not that I wouldn't be willing to eat it, it was the price. In fact, I was curious as one of my siblings is a vegan, so it would be nice if there was something we both could enjoy. "Beyond Meat" for example would sell 4 burger patties for $18. Whereas I could buy 8 ground beef patties for $15. When the company starts by charging double the price for a "meat substitute" it's hard to get people on board.
When lab-grown or plant-based meat substitute taste the same and cost half as much as real meat, people will find that their concerns about it not being "natural" subside and their concerns about the morality of eating "real" meat increase. Motivated reasoning FTW. Oh, there will still be some qualms for a while about whether it might not be as good as the real thing, but those will subside over time.
The real question is whether the stuff can be made and sold cheaply enough without economies of scale.
Re: Price (Score:2)
Exactly this.
It's economics.
It's always economics.
If they can offer this stuff at a discount compared to ground beef - USD $5/lb or better - they will get sales.
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In Finland, the local burger chain Hesburger has been coming up with plant-based patty. They have been doing it for many years now, one press release (in English): https://www.hesburger.com/abou... [hesburger.com]
Anyway, prices (PDF, in Finnish) https://www.hesburger.fi/mello... [hesburger.fi] says that the "Veke" cheeseburger is 1,80 euros, while regular beef cheeseburger is 3 euros exact. They are probably selling it as a loss leader but someone must have come up with the math anyway to sell it at a *cheaper* price point than a regular
Re: Price (Score:3)
Canadian here. My family mostly eats Beyond burgers and we pay about $2/patty from Costco. I can get beef patties for less but not by much and they wonâ(TM)t be great. For anything Iâ(TM)d care to eat itâ(TM)ll be more like $3-4.
Visual Appeal (Score:2)
It has to *look* like a nice juicy steak at the grocery steak.
And smell and taste like one.
If it's in a tub or a frozen cube, forget it.
The lie is the problem, not the meat. (Score:2)
Traveled to the mecca of NotMeat (California) some years ago. Tried my first Impossible Burger then. It actually tasted decent. The claimed environmental impact was "95% less land, 74% less water, and creates 87% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional ground beef." The problem wasn't trying to sell the product with those environmental savings, which 99% of city slickers living in the concrete jungle barely give a shit about beyond a social media post. The problem was the lie sold with
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I've had quite a few impossible (or similar) burgers. At first I was really impressed (taste wise), but after a while I don't know I found they started to pall a little? I've ended up deciding I prefer a good spicy bean burger or my local place's "burgaloo 2" (the place is called Meatliqor, their meat and veggie burgers are excellent). I think to me, it's better to have a really good veggie burger that's the best veggie burger it can be rather than an uncanny valley one.
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Ethically dubious (Score:2)
Call it something different, not meat. (Score:2)
If it is called meat, people will compare it with that. Get some marketing people and call it something appetizing with a marketing slogan, "You can't get fat with our stuff, fresh from the vat."
Start selling it in high end restaruants. Slap some French sounding name on it, get people to pay Veblin good prices for it. Then start opening the market.
This is how lobster went from common food to being viewed as expensive.
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If it is called meat, people will compare it with that.
And they should, ... because it *IS* meat, and it is directly comparable to meat in taste tests. This is nothing like your vegan fake burger patty, or a veg sausage. Lab cultivated meat tastes like the real thing because it is actually the same.
Sure there's slight difference in taste and texture, but that is true of actual meat as well, an Angus burger tastes different from a Blonde d'Aquitaine burger which tastes different from a Wagyu burger, etc. too.
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Call it "Soylent."
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Friend, did I hear you say no one meet can satisfy you?
Try this: Poreef!
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And yet escargot exists on the menu because people enjoy it enough to actually pay to eat it. What you think about meat you eat and dicks you've sucked isn't magically transferable to others.
Decade long project (Score:2)
It's not enough to make it, you need decades. Don't just say it is good enough. You need:
1) Improvements in taste and health. Show us it tastes better and is healthier. Exact right amount of fat, salt, etc.
2) Cost reduction - make it cheaper than real steak.
3) A decade long marketing campaign. Talk about how cows are intelligent. Talk about the cruelty of the slaughter house.
You do any 2 of these things, then you can take over. Till then, the market is just not there.
It's the price! people want protein! (Score:3)
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If it's edible, inexpensive, and nutritious, there's a MASSIVE market among the food is fuel crowd.
This is why people everywhere eat beans.
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Lentils as well (which i guess are really just different beans), also seitan, tofu, quinua.
The high protein thing is as much cultural as it is anything about health or nutrition, not saying about OP but for many it's about the virtue signal of eating meat, it's become a social signal.
Culture hasn't changed, but fitness has. (Score:2)
The high protein thing is as much cultural as it is anything about health or nutrition, not saying about OP but for many it's about the virtue signal of eating meat, it's become a social signal.
What you're talking about has been around forever. What is new is that a lot more people embrace it. 10 years ago, high protein was for bodybuilders and serious athletes. It wasn't adopted by housewives who 20 years ago were doing yoga and pilates. Now they're squatting, doing crossfit, deadlifts, etc.
A lot of recent news and publications have indicated the health benefits of strength training and it's quite popular and rapidly growing. Men are embracing it more. Nerds are really into it now. Man
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That's great but doesn't address my first point, have we seen a relative increase in consumption of high protein non-meat products which have been around forever or is it mainly meat based protein? They are cheaper and more convenient than a steak without as many of the health side effects.
I was not making a judgment on the actual health one way or another, just how the whole thing is muddled in culture war. How many high protein body bros also swear off seed oils despite there really being no actual scie
Beans are bullshit protein - they're 80% carbs (Score:2)
If it's edible, inexpensive, and nutritious, there's a MASSIVE market among the food is fuel crowd.
This is why people everywhere eat beans.
Beans are absolute bullshit for protein. I fucking love them and think they taste amazing...black beans are in my top 10 of all foods..but they're not good for you. I am sick of vegans chiming in about that. They're 80% carbs. You'll get fat as fuck if you rely on them for your protein needs. For me, they're a carefully controlled special treat, like cheese.
No serious nutritionist will endorse a vegan diet, especially if you work out. It's a religious cult. Vegans have 2 options: nutritional deficie
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Read the news + go to the grocery store (Score:2)
Your "use case" is not normal at all and does not make for a market. You should understand that at a fundamental level before you go making suggestions based on the weirdness you have going on.
Read the news & go to the grocery store and you'll see it...endless articles about people getting into strength training and high protein diets. Look at your supermarket...they are marketing high protein pop tarts....breakfast cereal, fake protein bars (regular granola/candy bars with peanut butter).
Have you really never been in a grocery store or target/WalMart in the last 2 years?
Why the fuck is this downvoted? (Score:2)
my family is quite sick of pork chops.
Pork is awesome. Beyond pork chops (try sous vide-ing with a pan or grill finish), you can make pan con lechon, Cuban sandwiches, bacon, ham, roast pork loin, pulled pork with any number of regional BBQ sauces, pork curry or nearly any other Thai dish, tonkatsu, schnitzel, al pastor, tenderloin medallions in wine, and on and on.
I'm doing that Forrest Gump shrimp thing, aren't I?
Pork is awesome. It tastes good on it's own and can adopt many nice flavors, both Southwestern and Asian (probably more, those are just the 2 type I know how to cook). If you have no religious objection, it's cheap and sustainable....much lower environmental impact than red meat.
Who the fuck would downvote someone expressing their personal love of pork?
Headline needs an update (Score:5, Insightful)
"Lab-Grown Meat Exists (But Nobody Can Buy It)"
It isn't available in stores -- only in restaurants, and a very select few.
I just did a search, and there is nothing available in my state. Sorry, I am not hoping on a plane to go try lab-grown meat...
Lastly, there are people that I know that *SWEAR* Diet Coke tastes EXACTLY like normal Coke. They are full of shit, the two taste NOTHING alike.
So, if this lab-grown meat is like Diet Coke, HARD FUCKING PASS. But, it looks like I want get to find out anytime soon because you can't fucking buy it.
Fish (Score:3)
This always made complete sense to me, yet I've only ever seen plant-based steak and burger alternatives. Lab-grown fish meat seems absolutely perfect since it doesn't have to reproduce the marbled texture of land-based meat, something that the process struggles with today.
As an aside I'd love to switch to lab-grown if it were widely available and similarly priced. I'm never going to become a vegetarian, and if there's a way of supporting that without affecting actual animals...yep, sign me up please.
Well yeah, it's not ready yet (Score:2)
This is like saying nobody want's electric cars back in 2009, it's still too early and nowhere near mainstream yet so most people answering are answering a hypothetical, it's not like I can go find some lab meat in the freezer case yet, at least for myself I haven't seen that yet.
So we are left with a new product, with still unproven attributes (taste, environmental concerns, nutrition profile) and which is still more expensive than what it's looking to supplant and it's a shocker it's not gaining acceptanc
Nearly impossible to get (Score:3)
The perception is just nonsense, given that practically nobody has tried this stuff yet, and there are potentially many thousands of variants with different taste and structure coming.
The article really glosses over that key fact: It is effectively impossible to buy right now.
Even in this thread you see people thinking that soy burgers (like impossible burger) are the same thing, but they are quite different.
Lab-grown meat is real meat. It might be a type and consistency of meat that is different from any other meat on the market now, but it is very much meat.
Lets see what happens when it actually reaches store shelves in any kind of volume.
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Actually impossible burger...
But I'm game to try it if it were actually available...
The point about plant based burgers is that they have to some extent poisoned the well. Their marketing efforts got all sorts of internet content claiming it's just like meat, and people who actually tried could generally obviously see that it wasn't true. So now if someone says 'honest, this time it will be good', they have pretty recent history telling them otherwise.
Hard to conclude anything about consumers... (Score:2)
The product isn't in grocery stores.. How do you know they don't want it if you don't even have a potential data point of people buying it? There's like a handful of restaurants in the entire nation that have served it, and it's treated as some exotic dish rather than a staple.
People would be understandably skeptical, both in general and particularly after people overstated beyond/impossible's "meat-like" character.
The reality is that they don't have scale and thus can't compete broadly on price. If it sca
work on price point (Score:3)
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Who gets 'snowballed' are high-maintain women shoppers who must keep up with the pack from Coach hand-bags to baby diapers. Cost is no object to them , except higher prices are precious commodity doled out to those women with filthy rich husbands. They will buy anything at any price that sets them apart. So really jack-up the pri
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This. Ideally price it an order of magnitude less, and place it by the meat. People will try it.
Have they actually been selling it? (Score:2)
I live in a state that its not banned in yet I have never seen it in any store. Searching around apparently the only places you can find lab grown meat here (at least from what Ive found online) are maybe one or two butchers, and a single restaurant that offers it. Its hard to say no one wants it when you aren't selling it in the place 99.999% of people go to buy meat.
The EV of the food industry (Score:2)
A bunch of people who have never tried it, never seen it, never tasted it, with no information calling it bad refusing to eat it for reasons they have zero possibility of actually justifying with facts.
And just like EVs there are those who have tried it who think the stuff is directly comparable in taste and texture to the real deal. The fact people eat burger patty shaped shit like McDonalds shows that lab cultivated meat consumption has nothing to do with taste or quality and everything to do with ignoran
Wrong target market (Score:2)
8X the price (Score:2)
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Where's the Beef? (Score:2)
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flawed concept (Score:2)
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So... (Score:3)
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Where do I get human animal cells? Asking for a friend...
Neither you nor your friend is a human?
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Vegetarian here (Score:2)
Good old dualisms (Score:2)
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Only wankers and nekbeards and monsters see value in anything else. Think of lambs silence
Meat derives its flavor from.. (Score:2)
What the animal eats, and how much exercise the animal gets.
Lab grown meat has had no exercise, and hasnt eaten anything to acquire other flavors.
Not to mention meat that has done no work is extremely soft and has no texture.
I dont see it having the same flavor, nor the same texture as a steak, porkchop, or chicken breast.
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in other words ... (Score:2)
Growing it in a facility feels wrong to people in ways they struggle to articulate.
... superstition, selfishness and entitlement, as 95% of posts eloquently corroborate. slashdot never disappoints!
i don't care because i've done away with meat years ago anyway. i used to love it but i long don't crave it anymore, it actually started to disgust me pretty soon after withdrawal. physically i'm fitter than i ever was in my lifetime despite my age. however, turn that vat meat it into some spicy chorizo or llonganissa or some tasty morcilla or jabugo (shouldn't be hard, if you manate to get the
Me! (Score:2)
I'll eat it.
Plenty of people will eat it.
That's not the problem.
The problem is: Why would I pay more for something worse than just cheap meat?
It's the PRICE that needs to change. I'll eat synth-meat if it's half the price of normal meat, and doesn't result in malnutrition if I eat a lot of it, no problem at all.
reality came knocking (Score:2)
Consumer surveys show people perceive conventional meat as tastier and healthier than lab-grown alternatives.
Let's assume that they are right, because why wouldn't they? It does make sense that muscles grown in a lab are not identical to muscles constantly used by the animal. That there's more to biology than cell division. We already know that what the animal eats has an effect on the taste of its meat. Of course there's a difference if it never ate anything and isn't actually an animal.
And then there's the idiots who tried to turn us all into vegetarians by labelling their non-meat products as "steaks" or "burge
Ethical vegetarians? (Score:2)
What principle makes meat-eating, unethical?
Animals have been eating animals, since animals were a thing. Why is it suddenly unethical now? Do ethical vegetarians believe that humans are somehow superior to other animals, and therefore are bound by more stringent rules of ethics than other animals? Generally, "ethical" vegetarians argue that humans are *not* superior to other animals, and that we have no right to eat them. But if we are not superior to other animals, why should we be bound by different ethi
Doesn't scale well (Score:2)
Place them in a bioreactor with nutrients.
And where do these nutrients come from? Highly processed products of plant material? Derived from petrochemicals? We harvest and grind up "undesireable" species?
Cattle (and many other grazing animals) obtain their nutrient inputs largely from wild ecosystems. Where the biodiversity is not damaged to the extent that other types of farming produce. They spend most of their lives grazing in open fields with little more than fences erected.
Because it tastes funny! (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, this is a complaint that no one has yet posted a Funny comment on this extremely active story. The obvious low-hanging fruit is that they can't make fake meat from clowns because it would taste funny.
And yes, I searched for the obvious joke and it isn't hear yet, so it isn't just because the moderators are too slow. If I were an actual comedian I'd be able to think of some other candidate jokes to look for, but...
Tumors (Score:2)
Put it in shit like Hot Pockets. (Score:2)
Seriously, is anyone who's eating those things reading the label?
Niche product (Score:2)
The only people who are really interested in this kind of meat, are those who believe it is unethical to eat meat. Every other group of people will choose real meat when they want meat, though some might choose to *reduce* their meat consumption for various reasons, such as environmental impact. But for those motivated by environmental impact, they wouldn't generally choose lab-grown meat, they would instead choose to eat *less* meat or to find ways to reduce the environmental impact.
So the product solves a
Target ground meats (Score:2)
I'm fine with it in theory (Score:2)
In practice, last time I checked there were price issues and texture issues. It made for an expensive sub-par ground meat product.
If that's changed, let me know. Even if it's just on par with 'real' ground meats. Same price (or better) and equivalent quality. Get there and I'll switch.
I just can't find it (Score:2)
Printing (Score:3)
Several years ago, someone 3-D printed an edible cheesecake. (Yes, they ate it.) I'm waiting for 3D foodprinters.
Re:Does it have the structure of meat? (Score:4, Funny)
Steak smoothie...
Re:Does it have the structure of meat? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably way closer to "mechanically separated beef" (a.k.a. bone scrapings). Except without as much cellular diversity (e.g. fats). Even ground beef isn't ground that much. A solid block of this stuff would be really unappetizing but technically possible.