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.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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.
I find it very promising. As much as I love meat, its pretty undeniable that raising livestock is super inefficient. It takes so much food to raise livestock that, iirc, more farmland in the US is dedicated to growing food for our food than to growing food for us. Lab grown meat doesn’t completely solve this - there are still lost calories in the process to my knowledge - but its way more efficnient. Plus less land usage, less fossil fuel emissions, overall it would be more sustainable.
I see 2 big problems facing it right now:
The first is scale, which is the more significant. We’d need to figure out how to grow meat on a truly massive scale. Definitely doable though, just needs more research.
The second is “realism” or how close it seems to natural meat. Lab grown meat has the advantage over like plant based stuff because it is actually meat. However, ifnits too perfect or uniform, or maybe doesnr have enough fat or variety, it might be seen as unnatural by many (even just subconsciously) and push them away from it.
But yeah, could be awesome.
Many of the claims of improved efficiency over natural meat are based on projections and rely on technology that doesn’t exist yet, or they just ignore things like heating (most of the calories mammals eat go to keeping them warm, but incubators for lab meat need heating electrically, so if you leave out the electricity cost, it gives lab meat an unfair advantage.
It might be more efficient eventually - there’s more wiggle room to change things with a machine, but a cow is a cow - but it isn’t yet.
I believe cultured meat is the future.
I don’t mind the plant-based substitutes and eat them occasionally, but:
- I don’t like that they’ve named them meat-related names (I have the same issue with plant “milk”). This marketing strategy causes an expectation of flavour and texture that disappoints people and puts them off. If the product is good enough, give it its own niche, like tofu.
- Part of the reason vegan / vegetarian diets are healthy is because the food is largely unprocessed, whereas many of these products are highly processed. I’d rather just eat actual vegetables.
Cultured meat has real potential to replace farmed meat because it can provide things no plant-based alternative can, while removing many of the disadvantages of animal farming:
- The taste and texture should eventually be identical to farmed meat.
- It’s kinder to animals than farming - not vegan, but not cruel, no-one dies, and far fewer animals are needed.
- It’s better for the environment in many ways: less emissions than animal farming, less land required than both animal and plant-based farms, can be produced close to urban centres so less transport should be required.
- It can be fed to pets that are obligate carnivores, like cats. I will never put my dog on a vegan diet but I am following the UK company Meatly, that is specialising in cultured meat for pet food, with interest.
Once cultured meat is a similar price to farmed meat, I believe the ethical and environmental advantages will give it the edge. Many people that will never go vegan or vegetarian will hopefully switch.
I do not believe it is possible for cultured meat to ever be cheaper than industrially farmed meat. An animal as an integrated system has too many inherent efficiency advantages over a lab culture, even an industrially-scaled lab culture.
- Animals have immune systems. Lab cultures have to be grown in a sterile environment, which increases costs.
- Animals have digestive systems and can extract only the needed nutrition from common plant materials. Lab cultures have to be fed pre-digested and carefully proportioned nutrients, which increases costs.
- Animals have extensive circulatory systems that efficiently get nutrients to cells and remove their waste. Lab cultures are centrifuged, which doesn’t scale as well.
- Animals have integrated waste processing and excretion systems. Lab cultures have to run external kidney loops, which not only increase costs but are less efficient.
Cultured meat will come down in price, maybe from 10x animal meat to 2-3x, but it’s always going to be a novelty/luxury and will never compete on price as long as industrial animal farming practices are legal.
I agree there are still technical challenges ahead, I’m just optimistic about innovation. There are a lot of companies investing heavily in this field, so there must be many technical experts who are similarly optimistic.
I’d also like to point out that current agricultural practices are heavily subsidised. Plus there are the unpaid environmental costs. If agricultural subsidies were no longer applied, and all businesses had to start paying an emissions tax, so that consumers paid the actual cost of farming meat, any financial comparison to cultured meat would look very different.
I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next 5 years, but 15 years from now? Maybe.
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.
Imitation stuff made from pea protein and coconut oil is surprisingly good. It pan fries just fine. It’s chewy and meaty. It doesn’t have the exact taste and texture of beef but it makes a burger.
I tried some mycelium based bacon recently. It was interesting. I’ve since bought it like 3 more times. It scratches the bacon itch without tasting like death. I hear that there are more mycelium based products out there that are gaining traction and I submitted requests to my local grocery store to carry those products.
Quorn is awesome for chicken nuggets. Frankly I prefer them to the real thing.
Beyond as a brand needs to fucking die. Their products suck. Their markup is excessive and makes their products cost far more than the equivalent meat products. Their stock is teetering on the brink of oblivion and I say end it. I recall them pushing for beyond orange chicken at panda express and they wanted to charge a premium for it. Then they wondered “why didnt anyone want this?” Because you charged more for an inferior product you fuckheads. Price your products *below* the meat products you replace and you’ll see astronomical sales - especially when herds are culled because of sickness.
Their products suck. Their markup is excessive and makes their products cost far more than the equivalent meat products.
This seems overly harsh to me. I’ve bought plenty of Beyond products (and Impossible, and Morning Star, and many other plant-based meat alternative brands) over the years and I’ve found them to be fine in terms of quality. I haven’t bought them in a while, but I don’t recall them being particularly more expensive than the other plant-based meats in the grocery store. Though I virtually always wait for those to go on a good sale before I buy them.
Since plant-based alternatives are competing with the meat industry, which is heavily subsidized to keep meat costs artificially low, I wouldn’t say it’s fair to say Beyond’s products being more expensive than regular meat is why their business is failing. Other plant-based meats I’ve tried have generally always been more expensive than regular meat.
I’d rather eat a plain block of uncooked tofu than those beyond italian sausages
I agree about their marketing strategies, but if I couldn’t buy Beyond Mince anymore I’d be seriously frustrated. It’s by far the best vegan minced meat on the market (at least here in Germany).
Do you happen to know the brand of mycelium bacon you had? I’d be interested to try it
Hmm I started ordering until I saw an ingredient listed as “natural flavor”, which feels like a red flag.
Any idea what that is?
Something like liquid smoke?
No, but I’m confident it isn’t a product derived from animals. They’re pretty clear on their mission statement that they are trying to replace animal products with mycelium/
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
Other people have already mentioned how it feels like in your mouth, but I’m going to address a different angle: Ethics and environmental impact.
Modern industrial meat production is incredibly cruel. If you wanted to do the same thing in a more ethical way, the final product would end up being much more expensive, even if you had the economies of scale working in your favor. Meat alternatives would solve that issue.
Producing meat results in a lot of CO2 emissions, so a plant based alternative should be more environmentally friendly. Don’t know about lab meat though. Keeping everything sterile is not cheap or easy, so I guess the LCA of the resulting product should be very interesting to read.
Meat alternatives would solve that issue.
For a price.
Can we all afford lab grown meat? The people making it are all trying to maximize profit by giving the least while charging the most. Keep in mind, that money has to come from somewhere.
As with any new business being built on “ethics,” they should be willing to put their money where their mouths are. If they care so much about stopping animal abuse, then they should be charging the lowest price they can tolerate, not the highest price for their customers.
I don’t expect most fake-meat companies to do this because they care more about maximizing profit than stopping animal abuse.
Fair enough. No doubt there’s some greed in it as well, but the immature production technology and small scale can easily explain most of the astronomical price. If they ever make it to large scale production, optimize every step along the way, you should be able to see the economies of scale reducing the price. Obviously, we’re nowhere near there just yet.
Also, the technology itself will always set a certain floor to the price nobody can change until you change the underlying production technology. For example, electricity, equipment, labor and materials will always cost something, but an optimized process will need less of each.
If the taste, texture, and price are good, I’ll eat it.
That goes for plant based stuff and meat replacements, too. I’ve tried the Impossible burger on a BK Whopper and thought it was plenty passable as a fast food burger patty… But it was a few bucks extra, so now that my curiosity is sated, I probably won’t buy another until it’s the same price as or cheaper than its animal-product counterpart.
There are some very good plant-based bacon alternatives. The problem is that they are priced like luxury products, rather than having common sense cheaper-than-meat pricing. Nearly all of bacon’s flavor comes smoke and seasonings, and the texture and crisp can be easily reproduced. Try Thrilling Bakon if you have the chance.
I would be more than willing to eat lab grown meat, though I’d prefer the creation of healthier plant-based alternatives. Even lab grown meat will have “bad” things like cholesterol, and plant-based alternatives should theoretically be able provide more nutritional value at lower prices than “real” or lab grown meat.
I’m an omnivore, so I will eat anything that tastes good. I just think we should be trying to make delicious, nutritious food affordable for normal people, whatever route that takes. I’m not convinced that lab-grown meat is a path to that goal. If reducing environmental and ethical harm is only for the rich, then fuck that approach, we need another.
I used to unsure about the idea of lab grown meat … but now I think they would be fine. I haven’t seen any in my area yet.
Lab grown meats couldn’t be any worse than the horrendous things we feed and do to the animals (large animals, birds and fish) we eat already.
