Recently tried an Impossible burger and nuggets and thought that if nobody told me it wasn’t meat, I’d have thought the patty was made out of a weird kind of meat, rather than make a connection with the taste and texture of plants. Honestly, I might not complain if that was the only kind of “meat” I could have for the rest of my life.
Well, maybe I’d miss bacon.
I’ve yet to find the opportunity to try lab-grown meat, but I for sure would like to try it out and don’t see much wrong with it as long as it’s sustainable, reasonably priced, and doesn’t have anything you wouldn’t expect in a normal piece of meat.
Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I’d no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices) or biting into gristle. I’ll happily devour a hot dog, but something about an unexpected bit of cartilage gives me a lingering sense of revulsion.
Apparently food scientists did the research and found out that people liked the imitation chicken nuggets more than real chicken nuggets. I didn’t fully believe it at first so I gave it a try, and promptly got hooked on veggie nuggets lol (I only stopped since no one sells it at where I live now)
Personally I do support reducing meat consumption for environmental benefits. I find meat substitutes a bit of a roundabout way to be vegetarian/vegan especially since some other cultures (e.g. a lot of Indian food) have been making delicious vegetarian food for a long time without needing meat substitutes. But I guess meat substitutes did indeed work?? As long as there is a demand for it I don’t see an issue. Maybe having to make sure ppl have adequate vitamin B intake (which might be less of an issue for lab-grown meat), but that’s pretty much it
That vegan fake meat is one of the most processed foods ever.
Lab grown meat will, for the foreseeable future be hamburger at most. Maybe we’ll see lab-grown bacon or steak in the next century.
If I do something vegan, I do real vegan dishes. There is a lot you can do with mushrooms, fruits, and veg without acid regulators, thickeners, emulgators, stabilizers, and artificial aromas and colors.
Mushrooms are awesome when cooked like meat. I think I don’t need any weird non vegan lab meat thanks.
I do like Costco’s fake chicken legs and the impossible burger and the impossible chicken nugget. I agree those things are over processed foods and I’ll explain my worries. First of the machines all have stainless components rubbing around plastic components and food that may be acidic. That’s it. All the acid, rubbing, cooking etc can released hexavalent chrome from the machine parts and slowly poison you with plastic particles. In the end you don’t know if it was chrome, plastic, radiation, pesticides etc. You just get untreatable cancer and die.
My vegan life is better served with fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts etc. All natural and if the pistachios ever become sentient we’ll have a real phaking problem.
I went through a phase of beyond/impossible meats and they’re ok. I generally don’t object but they didn’t hit the same as actual meat or actual veggies. Plus they’re awfully expensive and sold in small packages with excessive plastic packing. I gave up in favor of either meet or plant based.
Except breakfast sausage. My grocery hasn’t reliably had breakfast sausage in over a year and the beyond stuff doesn’t work for me
Meat doesn’t have to be imitation or lab cultured to be sustainable.
As a meat eater, I consider it an abomination.
why do you yuck someone else’s yum?
I won’t stop eating meat, eggs, or dairy, but if we can take the whole killing and torturing animals out of the process, I’m all for it.
Once we’ve got affordable synthetic equivalents (and I mean equivalents; synthetic milk you can make proper cheese with, cold meats, steak, ribs, eggs, anything you can make with an animal), we should outright ban using animals for food.
(Except for birds, of course. Fuck birds. Should’ve gone extinct 65 million years ago with the rest of the dinosaurs, the bastards.)
I assume it’s like normal ultra processed foods full of chemicals that kill us because it’s cheaper for the company and they profit more.
Lab grown 👍 Imitation 👎
Cause lab grown is actual meat, and I like meat; I’m not vegan or vegetarian, so my only argument against cows is the environmental impact
I’m not vegan or vegetarian
It’s not that binary. It’s not either meat or vegetables and that’s it. You can skip meat for like 75% of your meals. You don’t have to be a vegetarian to like vegetables.
I actually do eat a lot of vegetables. I don’t eat sugar or starch so I have to have lots of greens
Lab meat seems like a great idea for those who know nothing about tissue culture. lab-grown meat production traditionally relies on animal serum, particularly fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is a nutrient-rich liquid extracted from the blood of slaughtered cow fetuses to stimulate cell growth. It’s all bullshit.
Some companies are trying to find alternatives, but nothing else is working and all this tech will produce meat only smug Hollywood celebrities can afford.
There are other options and substitutes, known as chemically defined media(CDM), because ultimately FBS is just a chemical slurry that can be replicated via any other ingredients like Gatorade.
The reason FBS is used extensively is because of the long history of it’s use and when trying to do something new limiting variables is critical. It’s an issue of there needing to be a new standard, but that one XKCD mentality is preventing it.
The two major drawback of FBS is that, ironically, it’s a biological product and the composition can vary wildly between batches, and that it’s stupidily expensive at ~$1500 USD per liter. You will not be purchasing a lab grown burger made with FBS unless you have thousands of dollars to spend per burger.
However, without oversight, certification programs and forced transparency it can be expected that these companies are going to cut corners, but it’s going to be via other low cost animal product additives like gelatin, eggs, chitin etc.
Hmmm… it’s definitely promising, that’s for sure. We already use up a lot of food and land for cattle so being able to lessen the amount of resources used in favour of helping poorer humans sounds great. . . The vegan sausage rolls from greggs will always be better than the meat ones imo
I love Impossible meats. Their nuggets taste better than chicken to me. Their burgers taste good, not quite as good as beef, but still very good.
I would eat lab grown meat given the opportunity. I hope we can get to the point where we can stop killing animals and still have delicious meat.
In practice, I have no idea how lab grown meat tastes so idk if I like it.
In theory, the only things I care about are flavour and texture, and meat gives me the flavour and texture I like. I’d love it if something more ethical gave me those things, and if lab grown meat can do that, then I’ll be happy to switch once it comes to my local grocery store.
Some immigration meat isn’t bad. It doesn’t taste like any meat I know, but I’m ok with that. I haven’t figured out how to use it well in recipes though.
I love Beyond Meat products, but lab grown still freaks me out a little. It’s hard to articulate, but I don’t know that I could eat it without imagining some kind of wet, pulsating mass of slimy flesh sitting in a bin of some sort in a lab, with tubes and wires hooked up all over it. I know damn well that’s not what it is, but the image is there. I hope I get over it.
I’d rather just give up meat entirely and stick to plant-based alternatives.
But would you eat a meat leaf? https://youtu.be/JNfQCRzcr3o
Since I figured out that I have digestive problems regarding fruit and gluten, and that I get elevated blood pressure when eating certain oils (canola, rapeseed, corn) I‘d probably turn hunter.
While I certainly do like the flavor of meat imitations, I only want to deal with the aftermath when I’m really expecting it.
Maybe lab grown meat could help here, but I think that it’s a long way there.
