Plant-based meat substitutes are getting pretty good days, but it will be interesting to see how soon we can sustainably produce lab-grown meat at scale. I've been a vegetarian for about two years now for both environmental and ethical reasons, but I would be perfectly alright with eating meat again if that tech matures enough to enter the market at a reasonable price.
Agree, and I don't understand any of this lab-grown meat hype when there are so many plant based alternatives. It doesn't seem that lab grown meat will be cheaper or have a better carbon footprint than plant based foods.
I'm very skeptical of the benefits of lab-grown meat. It might taste the same, but I don't see how it can have all the same nutrition as an actual animal breaking down good plants with a real digestive system.
We hardly know a thing about what's good for our bodies. I doubt scientists will be able to produce a food that won't hurt us somehow in the long run.
Lab-grown meat sounds dystopic. Imagine a giant machine shitting out nutrient bricks forever.
Plant-based meat substitutes are ridiculous. Americans, North and South, eat way too much meat (Europeans eat much less). To cut down on the extravagant amounts of meat consumed in the Americas is a great idea, but why do those need to be replaced with meat substitutes? Teach people to cook good food with plants, otherwise you're just keeping them dependent on the food industry that just wants to sell them cheap overprocessed shit that makes them sick and sad.
Given the issues with "whole" organisms which are genetically modified, and our continuing "tiny keyhole" understanding of nutrition, it seems very unlikely that lab grown meat will be nutritionally comparable as real meat.
Fair enough. But the reality is that lab grown meat doesn't exist, so we are not certain how it will taste. Plant-based meats have come a long way in the past 5 years. Let's see where they are in another 5 years, at which point lab grown meat still won't exist at a scale and price point that's available to the mainstream consumer.
I don't have anything against people pursuing lab grown meat research. I'm just a bit pissed that "futuristic" solutions get so much more mainstream media attention than practical solutions that already have an impact today.
I've been relatively convinced that, in the absence of some very major tech breakthroughs that are not even yet on the horizon, lab grown meat will not make sense except in extremely niche applications, perhaps even to the extent of it only being a thing where rich people buy lab grown versions of endangered/extinct animals.
Modified plant proteins like Beyond Meat and/or the kinds of organisms you describe seem to be a much closer, easier, and more likely near-to-medium term solutions. And I say that as someone who would love nothing more than for lab grown meat to succeed and someone who has made a variety of sacrifices and to both eat less meat and when I do eat more sustainable and ethical meat (to the satisfaction of my own personal morals).
100% agreed here, I am very hopeful that lab-grown meat will become the norm (when it gets affordable), and that as older generations die off and more environmentally and health conscious younger people make decisions, the average consumer eats little to no animal products. Lab grown meat will absolutely be a huge help to this transition.
We simply do not have a choice - we're either going to have massive climate change and mass displacement, animal-borne viruses wiping out chunks of the population, fishless oceans by 2050, etc. We can't feed the population with animals anymore.
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