Honestly, I think conventional vegetarian food manufacturers will produce quality substitutes far before lab meat is even a rate luxury, much less commonplace. Beyond Meat is already excellent.
Scaling back labmeat targets to simple liquid slurry gravies that could be used as flavor additives to fakemeat products seems more achievable.
I agree. As a vegetarian, I think those alternative products are very good and close enough to meat for burgers, sausages, nuggets etc. How is lab grown meat going to compete?
While Beyond and Impossible meats are great alternatives, I don't think artificial meat will truly take off until "lab grown" actual meat becomes mass-produceable and sustainable.
I know it's far off, but I really look forward to that world.
Most every day-priced synthetic meats fall short in taste. Over time, I've adjusted, and now my brain perceives the taste of meat substitutes as the new norm for meat.
However, what I find quite interesting is that the meat substitutes often lack the nutrients, taste, texture, and the overall experience of eating real meat. Yet, they might cost more. Many people talk about substituting our meat consumption long-term with synthetic meats. I can't say we're going in that direction. To me, the substitutes are less long-term replacements and more a method to transition off meat. And I tried a lot of substitutes over the last decade - certainly low hundreds of products; I would like them to be better and I'm looking for the better ones.
I'm not dismissing the industry; I hold it in high regard. Some pricier alternatives come close in terms of taste, smell, and texture. Lab-grown meats are indeed promising, especially in nutrients, but still, they'd cost about $40 a pound, even with a slim profit margin.
Things are changing, though. The price of lab-grown meat is falling rapidly — it was unobtanium a few years ago. So I remain optimistic. Lab-grown could be our future, especially in space diets or in the looming climate crisis on Earth. Perhaps we'll even recycle the... unused... nutrients from these meats, much like how we recycle water in space. Or we could improve their nutrition, create "super-meats", that are healthier than the real thing. The shift away from animal farming might be as revolutionary as the start of farming animals itself, there is potential for this to change our lives very substantially.
We're not entirely there, but the path is clear. In many parts of the world, it's becoming feasible for people to gradually transition off meat using these substitutes, if they choose to.
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.
"Grow meat in a lab" is missing a whole lot of middle steps, technologically.
Fakemeat is getting better every year, and synthetic heme and lab-grown protein promise meaty liquids that can be mixed into the veg-based solids to make even more convincing fakemeat in the future.
We may never get to the true "rib eye steak grown in lab" but there's a lot of middle-ground we can still cover.
The alternatives market is going to be quite something in the coming decades. Given that HN thread from several weeks back where it was clear that lab-grown meat isn't going to happen any time soon, I'll be curious about alternatives that aren't gross processed frankensteins like the current offerings.
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).
Personally I'm assuming I won't see that in my lifetime. I suspect lab-grown meat will be good enough for fast food/processed food use within 2 decades, perhaps eventually something as good as a cheap, frozen supermarket steak/chicken breast, but I doubt we'll see something that can hold it's own against high end meat within 5 decades.
Honestly I suspect the fake meat people will produce something I'd want to eat instead of a really nice steak before the vat meat people.
Just throwing one option in here, if lab-grown meat can be grown cheaper than regular meat is produced, there's definitely a market. I like beef. Beef is getting VERY expensive where I live. If I could get lab-grown beef that's, say, 80% the experience at 50% the cost, I'd happily do that.
I think achieving a future where eating real meat is treated like a special occasion, but lab-grown meat is the norm is possible.
Finally, very few people would eat nutrition bars as regular meal replacements. Maybe there's a (vaguely dystopian) future where people replace most their meals with joyless supplementation, but I think a lot more success will be found in replacing real-meat with lab-meat.
There can be ethical issues surrounding lab grown meat, mostly around how much energy it takes to produce lab grown meat, and the nature of that energy production.
My guess is that beyond will soon be cheaper than regular meat, but that the requirements for creating lab grown are simply going to be too great to be able to compete economically or ecologically. I'm going to be very happy to be proven wrong someday, but that's my initial, knee-jerk reaction.
Regarding meat, I think lab grown meat will replace "real" meat. I guess it can be produced more cheaply, it's ethically clean, and it's a lot less disgusting to think about where it comes from.
I think before lab meat, we're going to see an explosion in both volume and diversity of plant-based meats. Discount chains in Europe and NA are jumping on the bandwagon and creating all sorts of plant-based products and bringing the price way down - already cheaper than meat sometimes. Plant-based raw materials are the cheapest, we just need to improve processes and scale up. And unless governments increase meat subsidies even more, it's likely that meat, specially beef becomes too expensive for some people to eat regularly in the next 10 years.
Hey if they can develop lab-meat cultures with the same(ish) makeup of real meat then yes I'd love that stuff. If I can get the same product but without suffering of animals then I'm 100% on board.
What I don't like is this current crop of fake meat. I don't know what it's made of and I don't want to eat something with a list of ingredients as long as my arm pretending to be something else.
Cultured meat is supposedly getting pretty close, maybe the next few years, though maybe longer. https://www.memphismeats.com/ is one company doing it.
I'm vegetarian and I would definitely eat it, and most of my vegetarian friends would as well (assuming they figure out how to produce it without fetal bovine serum, which isn't vegetarian). But certainly everyone is different. I imagine some people will still have ethical qualms, and I know a number of vegetarians who don't like the impossible burger because they don't like the taste and texture of meat, so presumably they wouldn't like lab-grown meat either.
You're making the assumption that the laboratory meet will somehow automatically be worse, and that it is whatever "is most conveniently and cheaply produced".
I eat a lot of meat. I could not conceive of giving up meat. Not going to happen. I don't care if I have to slaughter the animals myself to get it.
But if there was a high enough quality "laboratory meat"? I'd try it. I'd even be willing to pay more for it in certain circumstances:
- Consider custom-adapted marbling.
- Arbitrary sized cuts. Want a fillet larger than any real animal?
- New types of "meat"? Yes please.
- Healthier versions? If they can come up with variations that taste as nice while being better for me, sure, I'll pay a premium for that.
While there undoubtably will also be attempts to make cheap replacements, there's no reason to automatically assume that the fact it is "faux-meat" means it can't be just as healthy - or better - than the real thing.
Scaling back labmeat targets to simple liquid slurry gravies that could be used as flavor additives to fakemeat products seems more achievable.
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