I didn’t find an answer in my very limited search for what is actually used to grow the meat, so depending on what makes up the “stuff” that brings nutrients into the growing part, we may still need a lot of farmers for something like this. There’s also no way the growing environment, which seeks to create an artificial “animal”, is energyefficient.
I’ll celebrate the day we don’t need farmers, and I’ll celebrate the day it’ll be at least environmentally equivolent, but until I see evidence of those things, I’ll be very sceptical of this stuff.
I mean, I hope I’m wrong, but my point is that without more information, I would have to see some actual data to compare this stuff. I am however aware that we won’t get reliable data until large-scale production is both possible, and profitable.
It’s the same scepticism I have when a new building material says it’s much better for the environment, but then it turns out it’s either not possible to upscale to the point that it’s actually environmentally friendly, because it uses a very limited by-product from a different production. Or it turns out they don’t count the materials needed for the underlying construction to make it possible to use, because it’s not directly part of the material.
I just want some proper articles about this stuff, with actual numbers and calculations made public, instead of a picture shared on some social media.
I reckon it doesn’t taste as well, but even if it tasted exactly the same, I would still prefer normal meat. It needs to taste better if you want me to eat it.
My thought process is that if you have to mimic a living environment, you still need to include most of what the natural environment needs. The one artificial meat I’ve read about had the meat growing in vats of some “solution” that mimics the natural environment of the meat (so like a body). Granted, the process in the post may not function like this, but if it does, that process would include:
Heating, because the meat is actually meat, and the cells require heat to function, which still isn’t all that efficient.
Getting rid of the artificial meat’s dead cells and natural waste.
The “solution” itself I imagine is a funny chemical mix of some sort. So getting those chemicals extracted from their sources. (This one is a bit more iffy, I have no idea what the “solution” is, could be demineralised water with beef stock mixed in for all I know).
I can’t imagine keeping the “solution” as clean as needed for food safety laws around the world is an easy feat coupled with the other points I’ve listed.
These are all just speculations, please feel free to prove me wrong on any of them, and be sceptical of my list. But this is what I’m sceptical about with the very lacking information in the post.
Cows right now isn’t even grass, they’re fed mostly grown crops. The trophic energy loss at each stage is generically 10% , so plants to cow to human you lose 90% of the energy each time. So for eating meat you only get 1% of that energy from the sun. If you ate wolves who ate cows it would be .1%.
For energy this will, once it’s at scale, be able to be more energy efficient pretty easily. Because for one cow you have to have the entire life of the parent animal then wait 2 years for the animal to grow up. It has to eat and move around and waste energy that entire time. Less than half of that animal has the desired final product, so you waste more there. So the idea is that with growing this you just start with some cells and then increase their size until you get enough and then package that.
I didn’t find an answer in my very limited search for what is actually used to grow the meat, so depending on what makes up the “stuff” that brings nutrients into the growing part, we may still need a lot of farmers for something like this. There’s also no way the growing environment, which seeks to create an artificial “animal”, is energyefficient.
I’ll celebrate the day we don’t need farmers, and I’ll celebrate the day it’ll be at least environmentally equivolent, but until I see evidence of those things, I’ll be very sceptical of this stuff.
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I mean, I hope I’m wrong, but my point is that without more information, I would have to see some actual data to compare this stuff. I am however aware that we won’t get reliable data until large-scale production is both possible, and profitable.
It’s the same scepticism I have when a new building material says it’s much better for the environment, but then it turns out it’s either not possible to upscale to the point that it’s actually environmentally friendly, because it uses a very limited by-product from a different production. Or it turns out they don’t count the materials needed for the underlying construction to make it possible to use, because it’s not directly part of the material.
I just want some proper articles about this stuff, with actual numbers and calculations made public, instead of a picture shared on some social media.
deleted by creator
I reckon it doesn’t taste as well, but even if it tasted exactly the same, I would still prefer normal meat. It needs to taste better if you want me to eat it.
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It just seems like a natural way to think: an imitation is worse than the original.
But I never tried it, and maybe I will, but I would probably prefer normal meat anyway.
Why not, could you elaborate on this?
My thought process is that if you have to mimic a living environment, you still need to include most of what the natural environment needs. The one artificial meat I’ve read about had the meat growing in vats of some “solution” that mimics the natural environment of the meat (so like a body). Granted, the process in the post may not function like this, but if it does, that process would include:
These are all just speculations, please feel free to prove me wrong on any of them, and be sceptical of my list. But this is what I’m sceptical about with the very lacking information in the post.
deleted by creator
Cows right now isn’t even grass, they’re fed mostly grown crops. The trophic energy loss at each stage is generically 10% , so plants to cow to human you lose 90% of the energy each time. So for eating meat you only get 1% of that energy from the sun. If you ate wolves who ate cows it would be .1%.
For energy this will, once it’s at scale, be able to be more energy efficient pretty easily. Because for one cow you have to have the entire life of the parent animal then wait 2 years for the animal to grow up. It has to eat and move around and waste energy that entire time. Less than half of that animal has the desired final product, so you waste more there. So the idea is that with growing this you just start with some cells and then increase their size until you get enough and then package that.