7 ms·

I sometimes get called a luddite, but I am honestly quite pessimistic about lab-grown meat. It seems like not that long ago we thought to "hack" unsaturated fa

• st1x7 6y ago
  I get being sceptical. But "a different food technology turned out to be harmful so this one must be the same" - that's a bad argument.
  • basman 6y ago
    Also a bad argument: rephrasing GP's "We don't know enough to be sure this is safe" as "This is definitely unsafe".
    • allannienhuis 6y ago
      However, a sibling comment makes a really good point - that's exactly how we treat pharmaceuticals. We don't allow consumption (except in dire cases) until the product is proven safe (with a very conservative definition of proven safe). One could argue we should have the same approach with foods - the health food supplement industry has had a lot of criticism for not having enough controls. 'artificial food' of this sort seems like it should be in a similar category.
  • omginternets 6y ago
    That's an example, not an argument. The argument is that we're taking a major public health risk on the basis of low-quality science, in an industry with a questionable track-record. This isn't just a new food product. This is more directly comparable to a new pharmacological compound, and ought to be treated as such.
    • st1x7 6y ago
      > we're taking a major public health risk on the basis of low-quality science Are we? (I really don't know the answer to this.) What's the science behind it and what are the gaps in it? This is the first time lab-grown meat is being sold and so far it's happening only in one country on the planet.
    • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      But I'd argue the difference is just that we're willing to give foods that seem "natural" more latitude. Bacon and sausages are believed to cause cancer at a rate of about 1 per thousand - not quite as dangerous as trans fats are for heart disease, but still a major public health issue.
    • jcoq 6y ago
      That's a proposition, not an argument. An argument would be evidence for this claim about "low-quality science". Comments upon comments of fear-mongering, and not a single one has managed to reference a scholarly work.
  • numpad0 6y ago
    “none of advanced food technologies turned out not massively harmful”
  • tcbawo 6y ago
    How long will it take before we know the long term effects of any subtle changes in food chemistry, especially if this becomes the primary diet of some individuals? This seems wildly complex and unpredictable. It wouldn't surprise me if it took decades.
• grawprog 6y ago
  Honestly, it's the synthetic novel proteins part that worries me. Prion diseases are real and not well understood. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion >Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals.[3] It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, A lot of them take years to even be discovered once your infected and we're still not sure what causes them to misfold. We're making proteins in a lab, have done only a few years of study on the safety and have approved them for human consumption. We may not see or understand the consequences for decades.
  • soco 6y ago
    Maybe I misread the article but I missed the point about "synthetic novel proteins". They're dividing chicken cells, right? Not even genetic mutations involved...
  • generalizations 6y ago
    I wonder if DeepFold (or whatever it's called) will help us understand Prions better.
  • Bedon292 6y ago
    They are just growing fetal cells in a vat are they not? There doesn't seem to be anything novel or synthetic about it. They are actual animal cells, just grown in a vat instead of a traditional animal.
    • numpad0 6y ago
      Is that not enough to cause the misfold in question?
      • setr 6y ago
        Only so far as it would occur naturally, assuming their vat simulates reality sufficiently
• JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  L̶a̶b̶-̶g̶r̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶t̶ Meat substitutes (corrected) are mostly made of vegetable matter, which humans have been eating for our entire existence. > According to Beyond Meat's website, ingredients for its plant-based patties include water, pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein and other natural flavors, including apple extract and beet juice extract (for color) Safety concerns with respect to innovation are understandable. But they should be grounded. We know things like pea protein don't hurt us.
  • silvester23 6y ago
    I don't think Beyond Meat is lab-grown meat, as far as I'm aware it is not made from actual animal cells but just a mix of plant-based ingredients like the ones listed.
  • cmrx64 6y ago
    beyond meat is plant based meat substitute, not lab grown meat.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Parent is still kinda right though. The original animal makes its meat by consuming and processing vegetable matter. All the lab-grown process does is replace the animal's process for doing this with a different one.
  • Bedon292 6y ago
    Beyond is not culturing cells in a vat though. They are not 'Lab-grown meat' they are a meat alternative made from stuff we do understand. Things like Impossible and this article are a whole different category of new stuff we may not fully understand yet.
  • stronglikedan 6y ago
    > mostly It's the non-mostly other stuff that worries me.
  • st1x7 6y ago
• luc4sdreyer 6y ago
  > I also can't help but to notice that the agro-dietary industry is a pretty low-margin business. It seems like driving up profit margins requires convincing people that existing foods are somehow unsuitable, and that "innovative" products are needed. You're right, it is a (literal) cut-throat business. But the price of synthetic meat has been falling exponentially [1]. Hopefully it'll drop far below traditional meat. This is not a product you'd want to adopt if you're interested in high margins. > I think vegan and ecological sensibilities are being instrumentalized to this end. Organic is a better example. It's simply a marketing concept designed to capitalize on the appeal to nature fallacy. It's not healthier or cheaper or better for the environment [2]. Veganism is different: it's the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products. [1] http://www.rosiebosworth.com/blog/2017/8/2/price-will-trump-all-as-the-synthetic-meat-train-leaves-the-station http://www.rosiebosworth.com/blog/2017/8/2/price-will-trump-... [2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience-sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...
  • mercutio2 6y ago
    Certified organic food is not healthier or cheaper, certainly. Whether it's better for the environment is much less clear; the USDA organic requirements are pretty watered down, and modern pesticides responsibly applied are pretty safe, but synthetic fertilizer, as typically applied on commercial scale farms, is pretty darn bad for ecosystems.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • luc4sdreyer 6y ago
      > but synthetic fertilizer, as typically applied on commercial scale farms, is pretty darn bad for ecosystems. True. It's a big problem. However, the biggest environmental problem _right now_ is habitat loss. As in, massive habitat loss has already happened. We won't feel the really bad effects of climate change for another 100 years. Clearing forests also contribute to climate change. > Habitat loss is perhaps the greatest threat to organisms and biodiversity.[5] Temple (1986) found that 82% of endangered bird species were significantly threatened by habitat loss. Most amphibian species are also threatened by native habitat loss,[6] and some species are now only breeding in modified habitat So how do we reduce habitat loss? Well, clearing habitats for agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction [1]. So we should try to be efficient with the land we have. Unfortunately organic farming does the opposite [2]: > The Oxford meta-analysis of 71 studies found that organic farming requires 84% more land for an equivalent amount of harvest [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_destruction#Impacts_on_organisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_destruction#Impacts_on... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Land_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Land_use
• ageofwant 6y ago
  Most all modern agricultural produce are modified way beyond "natural". There is very little 'natural' about a plowed and fertilized field. And the produce being grown there has been selected and modified and optimised way beyond what you would find in nature in reaction to 'natural' selection bevery and pest pressure. So 'lab meat' is just progression on this. Dunno why you would arbitrarily skip fad 'lab-meat' but the rest, which is as 'natural' as that is ok... Dunno, seems stupid to me.
• crazygringo 6y ago
  Indeed. I'm also worried about nutrition -- meat and fish are absolutely packed with all sorts of compounds our body makes use of, different meats and fish having different sets of them, making variety important as well (e.g. beef vs. salmon vs. chicken). And it's not reducible to just a handful of vitamins and minerals. Is lab-grown meat going to have anything like that variety? We have a long history of thinking we've identified all the important ones, only to make new discoveries of important things, whether it's omega-3 fats, or compounds that fight free radicals. It remains to be seen whether lab-grown meat will be equally nutritious.
  • hansvm 6y ago
    > We have a long history of thinking we've identified all the important ones, only to make new discoveries of important things, whether it's omega-3 fats, or compounds that fight free radicals. It remains to be seen whether lab-grown meat will be equally nutritious. Don't most of these kinds of things wind up being marketing jargon which later gets largely debunked? Taking antioxidants as an example, we manufacture most of what we need already, you only need trace amounts of nutrients like vitamin C to satisfy the rest of your needs. Attempts to supplement those sources further with "superfoods," pills, etc have approximately zero affect on any metric of interest.
    • WalterSear 6y ago
      > pills, etc, have approximately zero affect on any metric of interest. On the contrary. Artificially large doses of antioxidants disrupt signaling systems, preventing exercise recovery and wound healing. They are simply not a good idea. However, the parent comment is mistaken in thinking that we don't understand nutrition reasonably well, and might 'miss' something in artificially cultured meat.
      • crazygringo 6y ago
        Can you explain how I'm mistaken? The science of nutrition is still in its infancy, with very basic questions still unanswered, and we're very, very far from having catalogued all the nutrients in meat and vegetables and understanding their effects on our body. I mean, even with macro nutrients, just look at the flip-flopping and debates over the past few decades on saturated fats, trans fats, carbs vs fats, etc. Then when you get to micronutrients, we don't even know what we don't know. You can see the other comment I made on how, for example, we know chicken soup helps fight colds, but don't have the slightest idea what compound is responsible. Will lab-grown chicken do the same?
• scarmig 6y ago
  Luckily we would never pump traditional meat full of exotic chemicals with unknown effects on the human body...
  • bun_at_work 6y ago
    XD
• antris 6y ago
  I thought the whole point of cultured meat is that it is the exact same product? It literally just as much as meat as a meat cut from a whole animal, just without the rest of the animal. Therefore it would be just as safe as meat cut from an animal.