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Is Cultivated Meat for Real?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- reify 2y agoI sincerely hope not. I have incisor teeth passed down to me from generation upon generation of my previous kin all the way back to my stoneage ancestors. Incisors are specifically designed for tearing and ripping meat. I eat real meat!
- ofalkaed 2y agoCows have incisors, should cows also eat real meat? Incisors are more for cutting than tearing, canines do the tearing but human canines are too short to effectively tear. Cows also have canines. I would give cultivated meat a try but I don't see it becoming a staple of my diet. A hamburger sounds good about now.
- InfiniteRand 2y agoDon't kid yourself Jimmy, if a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about.
- guhcampos 2y agoI'm a carnivore, but that's a very weak argument. Even if it were true - it isn't, incisors are for cutting grass and fruits too - humans are more than anything, adaptable, and our survival and evolution sits on the top of that adaptability. We are who we are because, between other things, we eat whatever is available and plenty. If meat becomes a luxury product, and/or becomes even more dangerous to the environment to the point it's even less sustainable, the proper naturalist argument would be we shall need to adapt and stop eating meat altogether. Às I said, though, I'm quite fond of my Picanha, and sincerely hope I can get to eat a sustainable version of it at some point in my life so I can do it with a bit less of a guilt.
- Beijinger 2y ago"I eat real meat!" Cultivated meat IS real meat from meat cells, it is not a meat imitation based on soy, wheat or whatever. Potentially much safer. Think of dead zombie disease or suspected cancer risk of beef. https://www.gesundheitsindustrie-bw.de/en/article/news/new-pathogens-in-beef-and-cows-milk-contributing-to-the-risk-of-cancer https://www.gesundheitsindustrie-bw.de/en/article/news/new-p... https://publichealth.gmu.edu/news/2024-03/should-you-be-worried-about-zombie-deer https://publichealth.gmu.edu/news/2024-03/should-you-be-worr... Why do animals have to suffer for our meat supply? “As long as there are slaughter houses there will always be battlefields.” ― Leo Tolstoy (The quote sounds batter in other languages, since battlefields are "slaughter fields") Best, Beijinger, not a vegetarian
- silon42 2y agoMy dad preferably (to meat) eats cartilage, collagene, etc... off the bones (using a knife)... his dog then eats whatever is left. Anyone working on that?
- dotancohen 2y agoProverbs that rely on word play are fun, but not profound.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoAnimals are part of this thing called the cycle of life that has been going on since near the beginning of the earth and will go on long after humanity has faded to dust. Being eaten is normal, it's part of how ecosystems are regulated, and everything dies anyhow so why not be a meal on the way out so that something else can live. If you want to direct your rage somewhere, direct it at the people who force these animals into concentration camp like environments to maximize production. That's the true evil, not eating meat.
- Beijinger 2y agoTrue, but I hoped we could become more than animals in the future.
- trhway 2y agowhy do you think that cultivated meat would ultimately be different? It will definitely be more customizable - Kobe, Angus, Wagyu - just select the corresponding option in the app. And i see at some point convergence of technologies - human transplant growing would be pretty much the same tech, just the options in the app would be different, like how much kevlar to add into the heart muscle.
- Larrikin 2y agoCool. The strongest argument for a boring diet is your teeth.
- a-french-anon 2y ago"Boring"? Small lapsus, maybe? I mean, I know veganism is quite fashionable in some circles, but still.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoYeah, the people who have a more diverse diet are the ones with a "boring" diet. Interesting logic there friend.
- ben_w 2y ago(1) Are meat diets really any more diverse? If you 1-1 substituted chicken for quorn, beef for soy, etc., that seems basically the same to me. (2) If cultivated meat becomes affordable, it's actually made of meat. The same stuff, just from a vat rather than a body. This can easily be much more diverse, because suddenly all the endangered species, a few extinct species, and human flesh(!) legally get on the menu.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoIf the variety of foods you consume is the diversity of your diet, how can a diet that willfully excludes a large number of possible choices be more diverse? Whatever diversity you think your diet has, add meat and eggs and it's more diverse. So you'd rather have a giant industrial facility with vats where people toil away in artificial light, than a beautiful natural field with wild grasses and animals who get to enjoy living a portion of their natural existences? Pretty ironic to think that to save cows from suffering, vegans would cause cows to become nearly extinct.
- ben_w 2y ago> If the variety of foods you consume is the diversity of your diet, how can a diet that willfully excludes a large number of possible choices be more diverse? If you replace a D6 with a D20, you have a more diverse range of numbers. If you take a D6 and add 3 pips to each face, you don't have reduced diversity despite having excluded the numbers 1-3. I was replying to the claim of reduced diversity, so substituting is sufficient. Quorn and a few others would not be available options (at all, and certainly not in supermarkets with limited shelf space) if not from people trying to introduce new things to replace old things. > So you'd rather have a giant industrial facility with vats where people toil away in artificial light, than a beautiful natural field with wild grasses and animals who get to enjoy living a portion of their natural existences? First: You mentioned eggs before. Battery chickens are worse than your attempt to portray vats as dystopian. Second: We've had vats since we began deliberately making alcohol. "Toiling" implies it's a task people would be forced to do rather than, y'know, just a job. > Pretty ironic to think that to save cows from suffering, vegans would cause cows to become nearly extinct. First, some will be kept as pets. Second: even if they did as you say, the goal is to end suffering. I could do an equivalent and opposite rhetorical flourish to yours with cows, who are forcibly impregnated from bovine puberty to bovine equivalent of menopause, most of their children taken from them and slaughtered, and the whole time their udders ache from generations of selective breeding to our ends rather than their own, relieving themselves by walking into automatic milking machines. When they reach the end of their economically useful life, they too are shot in the head by a bolt gun intended to knock them unconscious — but if it doesn't, who gets blamed for the cow's suffering as they are hooked into a conveyor belt towards a chainsaw, watching helplessly as all who came before are ripped and sliced apart? I comsume milk and milk derivatives when I don't remember that; so probably not for the next week.
- ben_w 2y agoI've had five teeth removed because my mouth is too small. Kept one and turned it into a necklace.
- Galicarnax 2y agoTell that to gorillas.
- NoGravitas 2y agoOh, yes, look at the incisors on a rabbit for instance. Huge, clearly rabbits are terrifying predators.
- ben_w 2y agoI remember that documentary. The one with the Famous Historian. ;)
- FerretFred 2y agoIf economy of scale is a problem, I look forward to seeing home-tanks that sit on the counter top like slow cookers and produce the meat-alike overnight. Go to the store and buy bags of concentrate just like any other grocery ingredient.
- aziaziazi 2y agoYou can make Tempeh at home: the colonisation is ~24/72h. Super nutritious and if well cooked strong umami taste like wild/farm meat, compared to sweetysweet nugget.
- jajko 2y agoSoy products contain high levels of plant-based estrogen, not something you want to pump your body with continuously. Or does the process of creating Tempeh somehow removes/inactivates this?
- ben_w 2y agoMy understanding is there isn't much evidence of a link between soy an almost anything positive or negative (unless you have an allergy). "Plant estrogen" is different enough from human estrogen to be at most a weak form of the same. Consider for example that it's highly popular in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, and Japan has one of the highest life expectancies, second only to an autonomous region of China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
- aziaziazi 2y agoThey do, but are mostly armless if consumed reasonably: don’t eat the same meal every meal! A sheep got complications in the 40´s although no strong adverse effect have been found off human despite many studies and big consumption in Asia since a long time : 40mg/d in Japan/China while 3mg/d in EU/US (1): you may safely x13 your soy consumption if you live in the west. Don’t worry either if you’re a men, you’ll be just fine (2) 1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316622132049 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002231662... 2 https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(09)00966-2/fulltext https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(09)00966-2/full... Post scriptum: you can make Tempe with a variety of grains, not only soy.
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]
- cik 2y agoWe currently have a restaurant here in Tel Aviv (The Chicken, https://thechicken.kitchen/ https://thechicken.kitchen/), that acts as the test kitchen for a local startup called SuperMeat. This is definitely something that is happening, and even in the nearish (sub 10 year) term. The dream is that this is always around the corner, however.
- barrenko 2y agoHow the hell does Israel do this?
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoBillions in foreign aid certainly helps
- loceng 2y agoRegardless if there is voluntary long-term adoption of such technologies by a relatively free market vs. regulatory capture that leads politicians to arguably poorly-wastefully investing in technologies and companies pulling from the public coffers politicians have been entrusted with protecting; instead of the company and their technology, their offerings, gaining "votes" by consumers one-to-one buying the products, giving them profits and building more competent investors' confidence that the startup/technology is a actually good bet; of course the VC industrial complex has the whole hype up process for pump and dump, onto the public markets, so end consumers may become invested into bad investments if their stock broker and them aren't aligned properly incentives wise. There's already a battle between mass produced and arguably unethical-inhumane living conditions/processes of the chicken industrial complex vs. small-organic farm raised chickens [of which overall arguably is losing and will remain suppressed even if it's what consumers prefer due to things like economies of scale and government subsidies that stack in favour to industrial complexes], and so adding a cultured "meat" into the food industrial complex landscape becomes more of a competitive battle between the existing handful of centralized incumbents and this new method of producing "food" [whether healthy or not] - which has the lowest manufacturing-distribution costs, and is policy structured to allow the general-mass population of people to have enough money to afford more than what is the cheapest. There is also arguably a war within this industry, and perhaps foreign bad actors who may also be attempting to destroy our food production hoping for various outcomes, whether causing a reduction in supply and so an increase in price-profits, or other; I'll let your own creativity and imagination take you there, extrapolate further if you're connected to and spent much time already integrating the shadow. P.S. The above of course isn't specific to Israel, many, if not most governments seem to do this to various degrees to "support" industrial complexes.
- kjellsbells 2y agoThe idea of cultured meat sounds wonderful. Its real meat, but without the guilt. But there is the cold reality of enshittification and the numerous sketchy practices of the industrial food industry. So one has to make a choice: the traditional "Iowa" meat industrial complex or the new "valley bro" meat industrial one? For now at least I feel safer with the former.
- bell-cot 2y ago> But there is the cold reality... THIS. Plus, so far, it's looking like both the dollar cost and total carbon footprint of a pound of cultured beef are far higher than what is easily accomplished with sustainable old-fashioned cattle farming. And if the real (vs. VC-subsidized-'till-bankrupt) costs of cultured meat stay extremely high - then it's just another ultra-luxury good for the 0.01%. With an added dose of "reassure yourself that the 99% are moral degenerates, who deserve whatever you do to them".
- aziaziazi 2y agoFor the sake of completeness : one also have the choice to not eating meat, with sub choices of various nutriments sources from wholegrain to heavily industrial processed stuff.
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]
- kjellsbells 2y agoYes indeed. There are many choices. One is to switch to a different meat, one is to cut down, one is to give it up. My point is only that if one chooses to continue to eat meat, then one has to decide which of the two industrial complexes, neither exactly known for their transparency and honesty, is the better choice. The cliff or the abyss. Vegetarianism or veganism will be the only rational choice for some, but not all.
- meowfly 2y agoFunny. I share your skepticism somewhat but I was thinking about cultured meat as the solution to those problems. I'd imagine no need for antibiotics. Cynically, they probably would still have to bleach the meat or something. Though the US does that to chicken now.
- debacle 2y agoCultured meat is the ultimate processed food. It is to meat what a pop tart is to bread and fruit.
- deepvibrations 2y agoBut when 95% of animal products are factory farmed globally, the processes already take away from the nutrition and heavily harm the environment. Surely reducing the harm to the environment and animals is worth it...Not to mention the horrible conditions for the people who's job it is to kill animals all day in abattoirs?!
- debacle 2y agoWhere do you think the nutrients for cultivated meat are going to come from? Where do you think the byproducts are going to go? Sustainably raised meat is the most environmentally friendly way to feed people.
- jacknews 2y agoCultured foods are a huge opportunity, but meat, at least steaks etc, or even mince, probably need much more work. In the meantime, oils, juices, dairy, pulps and perhaps flours seem like prime candidates for cultured production, either biologically by fermentation, tissue culture etc, or just direct synthesis (esp. oils, fats).
- jmyeet 2y agoI'm not convinced lab grown meat will ever be economical because real meat is subsidized, but not in the way you think (ie government subsidies). If you think about the Earth, it receives a large amount of solar energy. While it makes the world habitable it does a lot of other things. A big one is that the Earth stores this energy in various ways. Plants are an example of this. Photosynthesizing plants, in particular, convert solar energy into sugars. Animals come along and eat those plants and convert the plant's stored energy into protein. You can think of the plant and animal kingdom as just a massive funnel that converts solar energy into the smallest organisms that successively collects into the largest animals and plants. Traditionally, we would eat wild animals that were essentially "free". So if you have to create that much proetein and energy from scratch in a lab, you're suddenly paying for all the steps leading up to that that being a grown animal. Obviously we have farm-raised cows that do require inputs but they're still largely eating grown feed. It's oddly similar to creating people to work. If you had to pay for and build a person it would be incredibly expensive and time-consuming. Like imagine if Amazon had to "farm" people to work in their warehouses. They'd be spending millions of dollars for one person and it would take 18+ years. It just wouldn't be economical or make any sense. Butinstead we create new humans all by ourselves, pay for their eduction (either directly or indirectly), pay for their food and shelter and so on. So by the time that person becomes an adult, Amazon can pay them $15/hour to work in their warehouse. So while we create new humans for reasons of our own, from the perspective of a company who really only views you as a labor unit to create value for them, we're "subsidizing' the creation of those new labor units. That means it's really difficult for an AI/ML system or a robot to compete with a human because that human is "subsidized". Obviously automation happens but, so far at least, it's only really for the most menial of tasks. You can buy a calf for like $100-500 IIRC. Put it in on some land with somne grass and fresh water and in a small number of years, it'll be a cow that will produce hundres of pounds of meat. It's taken a lot of energy to get there but most of that energy is free. Lab-grown meat will have to pay that energy cost. That's why I think it'll have a difficult time competing.
- Retric 2y agoThere’s not enough land for cows eating grass to make enough meat to satisfy humanity. Net result you get feedlots where cows consume the majority of the calories in their lifetime from optimized crops. That involves a great deal of labor and 80% of global agricultural land, but results in more meat from the same land. The ~10 billion people in 2060 who will on average be better off than we are today are going to want a great deal more meat than we can produce using current methods because land is ultimately finite. Lab grown meat is simply the next stage of industrial agriculture where you need less feedstock and thus less land to produce the same amount of meat. Cost is currently a major issue, but supply and demand means it’s not going to compete with current meat prices but where prices end up when scarcity becomes an issue.
- dbcooper 2y agoTalk to anyone who has real experience in biotechnology and mammalian cell culture, and they will point out that this fantasy. The epitome of ZIRP. You should regard any companies in this space with extreme scepticism, and look for signs that they are scams.
- valgor 2y agoIncluding those that work directly on cultivated meat? There are literally companies out there selling cultivated meat right now. Regressive countries like Italy and conservative states in the US like Florida and Alabama have banned the sell of cultivated meat. Did they buy into the fantasy? Or are they scared cultivated meat will impact traditional animal farming?
- valgor 2y agoI like thinking about space colonization. Whether it be a the first colony on Mars or a robust space station orbiting Jupiter, what do you think their food is like? Do you think they have farms growing cows and pigs and dogs? Or do they have a bioreactor that uses substantially less water and organic inputs to output whatever meat they want without fear of zoonotic diseases and PETA? I'm willing to bet Star Trek rings true here in that there are no farms on spaceships growing animals, therefore, this is the future we should be working for. Why waste time tearing down the rain forest to make room for cattle and the soybeans the cows will eat when we could instead use our resources to bring about cultivated meat faster? Few people say cultivated meat is impossible. It is only a matter of research which means time and money. But given the benefits, we should be all in on this research.
- silverquiet 2y agoI'm doubtful of any future space colonization, but given likely resource constraints, any sort of meat would be a serious luxury. As far as I know, plants are far and away the most efficient way we have of converting energy into a format compatible with human metabolism (though now that I type that out, I wonder how plausible creating synthetic carbohydrates from in-situ resources might be).
- valgor 2y agoI completely agree with you. HN is very anti-vegan, so mentioning not eating meat always comes with a torrent of downvotes. I imagine any self-sustainable colony would not have meat in their diet because there is no need for it.
- jhanschoo 2y agoAll that is required for the skeptics to be right is for the selectively bred cow to be the most efficient bioreactor for beef, wasteful as it is, and I nevertheless consider that to be a very realistic possibility.
- oliwarner 2y agoI think the most important part of getting "real" engineered meat to market, even if it's hella expensive is it again shifts the conversation. Once people consider an engineered meat, they might consider an enhanced mycelium for a tenth the price for their daily protein requirements. I think all these products will develop over time but engineered meat will always have cost against it. Too many sensitive processes.