Context: I became vegetarian for "ethical, and resource consumption" reasons 25 years ago. So family remains so. We are vegan-leaning but definitely not strict.

Context: I became vegetarian for "ethical, and resource consumption" reasons 25 years ago. So family remains so. We are vegan-leaning but definitely not strict. I am not "nauseated" by meat per se; I grew up on it. Au contraire, I have patiently waited out the availability of higher-quality meat proxies. Beyond and Impossible were a significant step in some narrow niches toward satisfying my ongoing interest in, say, a good grilled burger. I try each new pretender to fake-bacon and am duly disappointed. "Vat beef" has been a running joke in my family and circles; it has always seemed like scalable fusion or FSD in being "just a few years away." Perusing this, I find myself asking the same squicky philosophical question I return to... what is the best "line" to target between conventional animal (with its baleful gaze and obvious capacity for suffering), and scifi vat-beef (cultured cells growing in a fortified gel or something)? I say squicky because I wonder if the sweet spot so to speak is closer to brainless animal, than fermentation tank. A lot of the optimization and engineering has been solved to spec for us, why not just breed headless animal horrors with digestive systems and other details tweaked to not belch methane, to accept Huel as input, and maybe ditch the keratin and the like as unnecessary in a controlled environment? It's pretty easy to imagine something that looks like a Human Centipede/Expanse nightmare of a banana or grape cluster comprised of budded legless meat-beanbags which have conventional vascular systems and kinda-sorta digestive tracks, and maybe lungs/maybe outboard oxygenation, optimized for producing electrode-stimulated meat meat meat. The optics are a branding problem, yes, but when it's this or insect-protein, I dunno. The decision may take longer. Just a thought.