The truth about lab-grown meat [video]

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p09s518l/the-truth-about-lab-grown-meat

by hiddencache • 5 years ago

20 54 5 years ago

bserge• 5 years ago

The truth about lab-grown meat is hidden behind a dozen third party scripts and is in a video format. Guess I'll never find out.

marliechiller• 5 years ago

Im a vegan but Ive noticed that most other vegans are not really looking forward to lab grown meat. I on the other hand am optimistic and hopeful. I still miss the taste, texture and nutritional benefits of meat and this will hopefully tick those boxes (with plenty of other bonuses as well). The biggest challenge it seems to me though, is once price parity is achieved, how do you convince meat eaters to choose this chicken nugget over the perceived 'healthier' flesh of a dead chicken. That to me, will be the watershed moment. Perhaps its just a case of removing subsidies on real meat or getting the price point of cultured meat to be even less than real meat so people dont have to make the decision in the first place - their wallets will make it for them

jatone• 5 years ago

long as its truly indistinguishable price will win out. don't worry about it too much.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 5 years ago

The biggest challenge it seems to me though, is once price parity is achieved, how do you convince meat eaters to choose this chicken nugget over the perceived 'healthier' flesh of a dead chicken.

By pushing beyond price parity. If it tastes the same, actually has the same composition, and costs less, people will buy it, and economies of scale will make real meat a lot less attractive very quickly.

People will also stop having an (easy) choice because McDonalds will almost certainly jump on the wagon train and advertise that their chicken nuggets are now "cruelty free" or whatever marketing term they use to mask the fact that they did it because it's cheaper.

What I'm not going to do, as a meat-eater, is pay 5x as much for the privilege of eating a shittier burger, that will also kill me unless I take vitamin supplements on top.

gamerDude• 5 years ago

I'm hoping that we go beyond taste and nutritional parity.

Instead of matching flavor, in theory we can make it even better. For steak, that may be fattier. For chicken, it could be way more flavorful.

And in terms or health. It could be the healthiest meat you could eat, not only for the environment but for the consumer. Either higher protein or more essential nutrients. No reason to just try and mimic once they have achieved a matching taste/cost.

phkahler• 5 years ago

> Either higher protein or more essential nutrients.

So it turns out that Glycine is an important amino acid. It's primarily (but not only) used to build connective tissues. Turns out a great source of it is eating connective tissue, so get bone-in wings and eat those things clean. This is just one thing you probably won't get from lab-grown meat. OTOH most people avoid eating the icky parts anyway.

seandoe• 5 years ago

Once price parity is remotely close, I believe a lot of people (myself included) will recognize all the auxiliary benefits and opt for cultured meat. Once price parity is achieved and succeeded, there'll be no looking back.

earlyriser2• 5 years ago

I'm omnivorous, but I'm investing in this kind of companies. From my perspective this is a future with less suffering and more sustainability. Those things are important drivers of my mental health, and also eating less antibiotics sounds like a good idea.

xdennis4• 5 years ago

I think it's telling that not even vegans want it.

You wouldn't get sex advice from a nun, so why eat laboratory meat from a vegan?

wutbrodo2• 5 years ago

Why would current-day vegans want it? Most of the vegans I know gag at the idea of eating meat.

The real target market is current-day meat-eaters who wish, for ethical or environmental reasons, that they ate less meat.

Or my position: that the industrial-scale torture of factory farms is a stain on humanity, but most people's consciences are too stunted to even engage with moral questions if it means changing their own behavior. In the presence of indistinguishable lab-grown meat, this argument against more ethical practices evaporates.

wutbrodo2• 5 years ago

Perhaps its just a case of removing subsidies on real meat

Or simply deciding as a society that the horrific torture the modern meat industry engages in is unconscionable. As with cars, once you remove the "necessity"[1] of a consumer choice, the argument for subsidizing it or compromising other values to expand availability disappears. People who prefer real meat over hypothetically indistinguishable lab-grown meat can pay full-price for the environmental and ethical costs; this seems like it'll be more than enough to shift the market.

[1] This is taking for granted the position that abstaining from meat is unviable. I don't see this view changing much.

dangerface• 5 years ago

how do you convince meat eaters to choose this chicken nugget over the perceived 'healthier' flesh of a dead chicken.

Meat eaters aren't as picky eaters as vegans, putting meat in front of them is all the convincing they need. I eat McNuggets fully knowing they are just ground up baby chicks, beak and all, I don't care I eat animals because they taste good. I would happily eat dog if it tasted like chicken, Ill happily eat meat from a lab I don't care about my food being "organic".

wintermutestwin• 5 years ago

Im a vegan but Ive noticed that most other vegans are not really looking forward to lab grown meat.

I would hope that most vegans would be looking forward to a massive reduction in animal cruelty. I despise factory farming, but I thrive best on a high protein diet. The vast majority of vegan protein sources come with too much carb, fat or both. There is simply no vegan alternative that compares with lean meat.

Tabular-Iceberg3• 5 years ago

I still miss the taste, texture and nutritional benefits of meat and this will hopefully tick those boxes

To vegans I have to say "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

You can have all those things with actual chicken, you just have to spend more or eat it less frequently to mitigate the harmful effects of factory farming. Really, adding yourselves to that customer base may well result in a net improvement in animal welfare and food safety.

And don't forget that the more accurate you want the taste and texture, the more of the actual chicken you have to grow in the dish, and at that point, is there really a big ethical benefit?

kiliantics• 5 years ago

The real question for me is whether this "meat" will result in less carbon emission, which seems highly unlikely. Legumes will probably remain the cheapest and most ethical source for proteins for a long time and there are lentil and bean dishes that are a lot tastier than most of the ways people eat chicken (in my opinion as someone who still eats chicken)

alistairSH• 5 years ago

most other vegans are not really looking forward to lab grown meat

I've had the same experience. Not vegan myself, but eat mostly vegetarian for health reasons (continue to eat fish and dairy, and a burger every blue moon).

Vegetarian/vegan cooking (whether or not you add dairy and eggs to the mix) can be quite tasty, hearty, and fulfilling on it's own.

I personally hope the "lab meat" stuff is just a stop-gap to get western eaters used to a reduced- or no-meat diet. But, if lab meat ends up economical and environmentally friendly, I'll be happy.

armoredkitten• 5 years ago

I'm vegan, and I'm on board with lab-grown meat. Or at least, I don't have any ethical issues with it, provided the energy costs are not insane.

That said...after six years of being vegan and maybe another six (I think?) as vegetarian before that, at this point I've found plenty of other dishes that don't involve meat. I really don't crave meat, and I really don't feel like it's missing in the dishes I make. So while I'm on board with lab-grown meat, and will try it when it's available, I'm really not the target market. I agree with you that the big question is how appealing it will be to meat-eaters. But I presume they've done their market research on that.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 5 years ago

The fake adversity and theatrics make the video feel really dishonest.

TL;DW: It's grown from cells off a chicken feather, using "the same nutrition", is still too expensive, looks like ground chicken, and is indistunguishable when turned into a breaded/fried chicken nugget.

zerof1l• 5 years ago

Clickbaity title IMO. Video summary: the reporter visits some company that makes lab-grown chicken meat. They use some cells from the chicken feathers. They feed them with nutrients and grow them into something that looks like a minced chicken.

At the end of the video, the reporter is trying a deep-fried chicken nugget out of it and saying that it tastes just like a real thing.

cassianoleal4• 5 years ago

it tastes just like a real thing

Well, given that chicken is mostly tasteless, and nuggets are highly flavoured to make them appealing, that's not surprising at all. Might have been made out of cardboard if you can mix it with the right things to get the consistency close.

asdfasgasdgasdg3• 5 years ago

Even if it's true that you could make non-chicken things taste like chicken, the important bit is that in this case they made lab-grown chicken meat taste like chicken. That is an important distinction. I also question whether making things taste like chicken is quite as easy as you describe. If it is, then all the folks making vegetarian chicken substitutes that don't taste very much like chicken have some explaining to do.

gnagatomo• 5 years ago

This already happened. The Federal Police uncovered that Brazilian company JBS, the largest meat processing company in the world[0], was selling rotten beef and minced meat mixed with minced cardboard[1][2]. People didn't noticed until news came in.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBS_S.A.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39311336

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/americas/brazil-foo...

archibaldJ• 5 years ago

given that chicken is mostly tasteless

This is a huge misunderstanding. Chickens only are tasteless if you are eating tasteless chickens.

Despite cooking it the same way, the Kampong chicken in Malaysia tastes very different from the chicken served in an osteria chilometro zero in rural Italy, which once again is distinct from the HuNan mountain chickens found in rural China.

And don't get me started on chicken in the Kyoto countryside, which was one of the most surprising things in my trip to Japan. Never knew chicken can taste like that.

t0rt01se• 5 years ago

The cells in chicken feathers are live?

hairofadog• 5 years ago

I am vegan and very excited about this topic, however in the interest of setting expectations I'd like to say that the truth they reveal in the video is: lab grown meat is a thing.

wonderwonder4• 5 years ago

if this was available in a store today I would prefer it over most offerings. Likely anti-biotic free, no added hormones, vastly reduced risk of contamination. It reduces the threat of swine flu and bird flu. Vastly better for the environment. No idea why anyone would have an issue with it besides the initial mental gymnastics of accepting where it comes from.

CountDrewku4• 5 years ago

There are a lot of studies that need to be done to show it has the same nutritional value as real meat.

The food industry has managed to completely obliterate the nutritional value of bread so I'm not going to just trust some lab grown meat will be fine.

davemp• 5 years ago

Is there any information about the economic viability of lab grown meat? I can't imagine it's cheap to supply whatever nutrients they're using.

earlyriser2• 5 years ago

Resource usage: https://agronomics.im/benefits-of-clean-meat/

laumars• 5 years ago

If most people saw how their meat was processed then I think they’d be converted to lab grown meat (or turned vegan).

xdennis4• 5 years ago

How is raw meat processed?

Tabular-Iceberg3• 5 years ago

Likely anti-biotic free

I wonder how they solved that problem, because traditionally lab grown meat has had to be full of antibiotics, since there is no immune system.

Feeble• 5 years ago

They grow in a sterile environment

xdennis4• 5 years ago

No idea why anyone would have an issue with it besides the initial mental gymnastics of accepting where it comes from.

People are fine with the way things are. If it's not broken don't fix it.

wonderwonder4• 5 years ago

To be fair though, it is very broken. we get new virus strains every year due to mass poultry and pork farming. Mad cow was not super fun. Mass meat farms are a large driver in climate change. Not to mention the ethical issues in killing millions of animals a year if there is an alternative not too.

ddek• 5 years ago

Can we have a [video] tag on this please?

hiddencache• 5 years ago

Thanks, you're right, I'll add a tag next time

CountDrewku4• 5 years ago

I want to know how it can be nutritional at all since meat from actual animals gets a lot of its value from the fact that the animal actually eats stuff from the ground.

The truth about lab-grown meat [video]

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