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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes get called a luddite, but I am honestly quite pessimistic about lab-grown meat. It seems like not that long ago we thought to "hack" unsaturated fats in order to give them a buttery texture. Fast-forward 20 years and it turns out biological systems are unimaginably complex, and trans-fats are quite probably inflammatory agents and carcinogens.

There's always some risk in innovation, but it seems like synthetic nutrition is an absolute minefield. It's not just the raw complexity of the field, either. It's also that much of nutrition is junk science, even in the peer-reviewed literature.

On a more conspirational note, I also can't help but to notice that the agro-dietary industry is a pretty low-margin business. It seems like driving up profit margins requires convincing people that existing foods are somehow unsuitable, and that "innovative" products are therefore needed. I think vegan and ecological sensibilities are being instrumentalized to this end.

In any case: this anonymous internet stranger plans on skipping the lab-meat fad.

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> I also can't help but to notice that the agro-dietary industry is a pretty low-margin business. It seems like driving up profit margins requires convincing people that existing foods are somehow unsuitable, and that "innovative" products are needed.

You're right, it is a (literal) cut-throat business. But the price of synthetic meat has been falling exponentially [1]. Hopefully it'll drop far below traditional meat. This is not a product you'd want to adopt if you're interested in high margins.

> I think vegan and ecological sensibilities are being instrumentalized to this end.

Organic is a better example. It's simply a marketing concept designed to capitalize on the appeal to nature fallacy. It's not healthier or cheaper or better for the environment [2]. Veganism is different: it's the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products.

[1] http://www.rosiebosworth.com/blog/2017/8/2/price-will-trump-...

[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...

> Organic is a better example. It's simply a marketing concept designed to capitalize on the appeal to nature fallacy

It's not clear what exactly are you referring to with "organic", as one can refer to both agricaltural products and processed food.

At least in relation to processed food, I do read and compare labels, and very often, there are 1. less additives 2. natural additives as opposed to chemical ones 3. less refined ingredients.

This alone is a big deal, and just based on this, organic as a whole is definitely healthier.

I can't talk for processes themselves, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were higher standards in the food chain (e.g. less freezing time, no freezing at all etc.). As a matter of fact, you'll often read that organic is tastier; I personally don't find it so, but that could be very well the cause. Again, organic food is preferrable here (I'm not using "healthier" in a strict sense here).

I'm not based on USA though, which may have looser food standards.

>It's not clear what exactly are you referring to with "organic"

I'm referring to both, and more. All of it. Here is the definition from wikipedia [1]

> Organic food is food produced by methods complying with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming features practices that cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Organizations regulating organic products may restrict the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers in the farming methods used to produce such products. Organic foods typically are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or synthetic food additives

>This alone is a big deal, and just based on this, organic as a whole is definitely healthier.

This is the appeal to nature fallacy I referred to originally. Just so we're on the same page [2]:

> The appeal to nature is a logical fallacy that occurs when something is claimed to be good because it’s perceived as natural, or bad because it’s perceived as unnatural.

> For example, a person using an appeal to nature might suggest using herbal remedies when treating a serious medical condition, despite what research says on the topic, simply because they perceive the herbal remedies as more natural than modern treatments.

> It’s important to understand this kind of fallacious thinking, since it frequently plays a role in people’s internal reasoning process, as well as in debates on various topics. As such, in the following article you will learn more about the appeal to nature fallacy, and see what you can do in order to counter people who use it, while also making sure that you won’t use it yourself.

The linked page has many examples, you can find more here [3]. In response to your points in particular:

1. Additives aren't healthy or unhealthy. It simply describes a category of food. Anything can be an additive: sugar, salt, apples, uranium.

2. The meaning of "natural" and "chemical" isn't well-defined here. Everything in nature is composed of chemicals and chemicals are natural. The meaning you're giving to these words are basically natural is good and chemical is bad. If not, please provide a rigorous definition of the two words.

3. Refined probably refers to "processed"? It's similarly vague, allowing anyone to make it mean whatever they want. So if we go with the definition:

> "Processed food" includes food that has been cooked, canned, frozen, packaged or changed in nutritional composition with fortifying, preserving or preparing in different ways. Any time we cook, bake or prepare food, we're processing food

Then no, it's not bad to process food: [4], [5]. Some forms of processing may be bad yes, but please specify what you mean.

> but I wouldn't be surprised if there were higher standards in the food chain (e.g. less freezing time, no freezing at all etc.)

Again, which standards? My point being that standards enforced by organic farming _are not_ about improving taste, cost, or health. Of course they claim that, but there is insufficient evidence for this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food

[2] https://effectiviology.com/appeal-to-nature-fallacy/

[3] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature#Examples

[4] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/not-all-proce...

[5] https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-processed-food

I'll simplify and generalize the concepts, in order to avoid semantic squibbles.

If one compares a significant range of non-organic food products with organic ones, the latter will correlate with lack of some ingredients, or replacement with comparable ones. This can be verified easily by anybody who lives in a country with a meaningful presence of the organic market/brands (I'm not sure what's the situation in USA; I wouldn't be suprised if the average presence is negligible).

Considering that nutrition is "not really" a science, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that if something has been approved by the food institutions (e.g. FDA), they don't have a negative impact on the body, therefore, organic and non-organic food products have essentially the same.

For the same reason though, the opposite is also reasonable.

If I can choose between, say, packaged bread with and without, say, hydrogenated fats and corn syrup, I prefer the latter, but as I wrote, I don't think that who chooses the former is wrong, ignorant, or so.

Regarding the standards, the same principle holds. Enforcing, there's not absolute truth about, say, crops rotation and forbidding antibiotics/hormones (this are some of the rules dictated by organic organizations) can be believed or not (I don't doubt there's straight snake oil in some practices). There was an Scientific American article on HN correlating modern agriculture practices to lower nutritional properties of crops, therefore practices mandated by the organic standards have a sense, but I doubt that there is a rigorous scientific investigation on this, so anybody can be reasonably reject the argument.

This article on organic food looks like a rather biased piece to me, more like a grab bag of one-sided arguments looking only at bad examples. The author indeed backtracks in the notes at the end:

Based on the responses, I just want to make this clear: this is NOT a comprehensive comparison of organic and conventional agriculture, nor is it intended to be. That post would be miles long and far more complex. My overall belief is that there shouldn't be a dichotomy in the first place - there are a variety of methods and practices that a farmer can use, each with its pros and cons. The main point here is that something "organic" isn't intrinsically better than something that isn't, and that you have to approach all kinds of agriculture critically to achieve optimum sustainability.

I thought so... I would be surprised if the main point (that organic food is not healthier pesticide-wise) applies to all organic labels.

Certified organic food is not healthier or cheaper, certainly.

Whether it's better for the environment is much less clear; the USDA organic requirements are pretty watered down, and modern pesticides responsibly applied are pretty safe, but synthetic fertilizer, as typically applied on commercial scale farms, is pretty darn bad for ecosystems.

> but synthetic fertilizer, as typically applied on commercial scale farms, is pretty darn bad for ecosystems.

True. It's a big problem. However, the biggest environmental problem _right now_ is habitat loss. As in, massive habitat loss has already happened. We won't feel the really bad effects of climate change for another 100 years. Clearing forests also contribute to climate change.

> Habitat loss is perhaps the greatest threat to organisms and biodiversity.[5] Temple (1986) found that 82% of endangered bird species were significantly threatened by habitat loss. Most amphibian species are also threatened by native habitat loss,[6] and some species are now only breeding in modified habitat

So how do we reduce habitat loss? Well, clearing habitats for agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction [1]. So we should try to be efficient with the land we have. Unfortunately organic farming does the opposite [2]:

> The Oxford meta-analysis of 71 studies found that organic farming requires 84% more land for an equivalent amount of harvest

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_destruction#Impacts_on...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Land_use

Honestly, it's the synthetic novel proteins part that worries me. Prion diseases are real and not well understood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

>Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals.[3] It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold,

A lot of them take years to even be discovered once your infected and we're still not sure what causes them to misfold.

We're making proteins in a lab, have done only a few years of study on the safety and have approved them for human consumption. We may not see or understand the consequences for decades.

Maybe I misread the article but I missed the point about "synthetic novel proteins". They're dividing chicken cells, right? Not even genetic mutations involved...

Fun fact: Iomega Zip drives were prone to prion disease. Specifically, a damaged read/write head would damage the surface of the disk, and when the disk was subsequently inserted into a working drive the damage on the disks surface damage the head of the new drive. Rinse, repeat.

this is typically called a "hardware virus". I recall my workplace had a problem over a decade ago with Macbook Pros that had DVI; a bent DVI pin in the mac would mess up the connector to the projector (remember when we used those?) and then subsequent macs plugged into the connector would get their pins bent, propagating the problem to more computers.

The article says they are simply replicating chicken cells taken from live animals, not creating "synthetic novel proteins."

They are just growing fetal cells in a vat are they not? There doesn't seem to be anything novel or synthetic about it. They are actual animal cells, just grown in a vat instead of a traditional animal.

Is that not enough to cause the misfold in question?

Only so far as it would occur naturally, assuming their vat simulates reality sufficiently

I wonder if DeepFold (or whatever it's called) will help us understand Prions better.

Luckily we would never pump traditional meat full of exotic chemicals with unknown effects on the human body...

I thought the whole point of cultured meat is that it is the exact same product? It literally just as much as meat as a meat cut from a whole animal, just without the rest of the animal. Therefore it would be just as safe as meat cut from an animal.

Most all modern agricultural produce are modified way beyond "natural". There is very little 'natural' about a plowed and fertilized field. And the produce being grown there has been selected and modified and optimised way beyond what you would find in nature in reaction to 'natural' selection bevery and pest pressure. So 'lab meat' is just progression on this. Dunno why you would arbitrarily skip fad 'lab-meat' but the rest, which is as 'natural' as that is ok...

Dunno, seems stupid to me.

Indeed. I'm also worried about nutrition -- meat and fish are absolutely packed with all sorts of compounds our body makes use of, different meats and fish having different sets of them, making variety important as well (e.g. beef vs. salmon vs. chicken). And it's not reducible to just a handful of vitamins and minerals.

Is lab-grown meat going to have anything like that variety?

We have a long history of thinking we've identified all the important ones, only to make new discoveries of important things, whether it's omega-3 fats, or compounds that fight free radicals. It remains to be seen whether lab-grown meat will be equally nutritious.

> We have a long history of thinking we've identified all the important ones, only to make new discoveries of important things, whether it's omega-3 fats, or compounds that fight free radicals. It remains to be seen whether lab-grown meat will be equally nutritious.

Don't most of these kinds of things wind up being marketing jargon which later gets largely debunked? Taking antioxidants as an example, we manufacture most of what we need already, you only need trace amounts of nutrients like vitamin C to satisfy the rest of your needs. Attempts to supplement those sources further with "superfoods," pills, etc have approximately zero affect on any metric of interest.

> pills, etc, have approximately zero affect on any metric of interest.

On the contrary. Artificially large doses of antioxidants disrupt signaling systems, preventing exercise recovery and wound healing. They are simply not a good idea.

However, the parent comment is mistaken in thinking that we don't understand nutrition reasonably well, and might 'miss' something in artificially cultured meat.

Can you explain how I'm mistaken?

The science of nutrition is still in its infancy, with very basic questions still unanswered, and we're very, very far from having catalogued all the nutrients in meat and vegetables and understanding their effects on our body.

I mean, even with macro nutrients, just look at the flip-flopping and debates over the past few decades on saturated fats, trans fats, carbs vs fats, etc. Then when you get to micronutrients, we don't even know what we don't know.

You can see the other comment I made on how, for example, we know chicken soup helps fight colds, but don't have the slightest idea what compound is responsible. Will lab-grown chicken do the same?

> The science of nutrition is still in its infancy, with very basic questions still unanswered, and we're very, very far from having catalogued all the nutrients in meat and vegetables and understanding their effects on our body.

Even calling those compounds "nutrients" in the first place is a bit circular. If something hasn't had enough of an effect on any of our observations to warrant further investigation, or else if all the evidence points to it being largely inert, then it probably isn't much of a nutrient. We've almost certainly missed a thing or two here or there, but pointing to a list of compounds in meat that aren't in a nutrition book and assuming those must be nutrients of some kind doesn't seem like a productive activity.

> I mean, even with macro nutrients, just look at the flip-flopping and debates over the past few decades on saturated fats, trans fats, carbs vs fats, etc. Then when you get to micronutrients, we don't even know what we don't know.

The implication seems to be that macronutrients should be easier to reason about, so if we don't know much about them then we can't know much about micronutrients. In practice though, macronutrient composition doesn't matter much and doesn't have strong effects, whereas many micronutrients are easily testable. The flip-flopping hasn't been one of a vast scientific consensus, but rather small amounts of scientific research and a vast marketing machine.

> You can see the other comment I made on how, for example, we know chicken soup helps fight colds, but don't have the slightest idea what compound is responsible. Will lab-grown chicken do the same?

That seems like a moving goalpost (or a misunderstanding on my part as to what your position is). Is "a reasonable understanding of nutrition" a large enough body of knowledge to tailor a body composition to one's favourite activities and keep it healthy for its normal lifespan barring medical events (aging, cancer, colds, loss of limb), or is it a perfect understanding of every interaction things we can consume might have with our body or any other organisms we're hosting?

Mildly off-topic: We know that chicken soup probably eases cold symptoms, and so do hot water and hot tea. Even assuming a compound is medicinally responsible in the first place doesn't seem like a great starting point.

So you seem to be essentially saying, you think we know pretty much everything already, so it's not productive to continue checking?

Both sides of that are completely false. We have gigantic gaps in basic nutrition knowledge, and the idea that we have a strong idea of all existing important correlations is similarly completely and utterly incorrect.

The idea that flip-flopping is due to a "vast marketing machine" is also completely disingenuous. I'm not talking about pop science articles, I'm talking about disagreement between scientists.

I seriously don't know where people get this idea that human nutrition is this advanced science where we know most of the answers. I can only assume it's wishful thinking? It would be nice if we did... but we really don't. And there's a good reason for it, which is that it's incredibly difficult to ethically perform decades-long controlled experiments with nutrition in people to provide definitive scientific answers, for the obvious reasons.

> So you seem to be essentially saying, you think we know pretty much everything already

Not in the slightest. I've explicitly said we have "a reasonable understanding of nutrition" and not even vaguely implied that we know everything. Am I misunderstanding you that poorly too, and is that why we seem to be in such disagreement?

> On the contrary. Artificially large doses of antioxidants disrupt signaling systems, preventing exercise recovery and wound healing. They are simply not a good idea.

TIL. That's fantastic.

> meat and fish are absolutely packed with all sorts of compounds our body makes use of

I pulled up the nutrition of chicken and salmon. For chicken, I'd say "not really;" it's protein, fat, some B-6, and the rest of the micronutrients are <10% of the RDA per serving. The main notable nutrient difference between chicken and salon is more B-12.

Except for B-12 and omega 3 fatty acids, meat isn't where you're going to get micronutrients.

I'm not talking about the micronutrients we measure, I'm talking about the ones we don't.

Just a super-quick Google search reveals, for example:

> Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He conducted laboratory tests to determine why chicken soup might help colds, beginning with his wife’s homemade recipe, handed down by her Lithuanian grandmother. Using blood samples from volunteers, he showed that the soup inhibited the movement of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell that defends against infection. Dr. Rennard theorizes that by inhibiting the migration of these infection-fighting cells in the body, chicken soup essentially helps reduce upper respiratory cold symptoms. The researchers couldn’t identify the exact ingredient or ingredients in the soup that made it effective against colds.

The idea that we understand and have catalogued all the compounds in meats (or vegetables) and fully understand how they improve our health is far, far from true.

I'm not talking about "magic" compounds or anything... but just that our body functions optimally on a wide variety of nutrients, of which we study only a relative handful.

Even for things we know of, like how important the iron in beef is -- would lab-grown beef contain it as well? Would it come "by default" or would it have to be specifically included?

[1] https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/the-science-of-chi...

I get being sceptical. But "a different food technology turned out to be harmful so this one must be the same" - that's a bad argument.

That's an example, not an argument.

The argument is that we're taking a major public health risk on the basis of low-quality science, in an industry with a questionable track-record.

This isn't just a new food product. This is more directly comparable to a new pharmacological compound, and ought to be treated as such.

That's a proposition, not an argument.

An argument would be evidence for this claim about "low-quality science".

Comments upon comments of fear-mongering, and not a single one has managed to reference a scholarly work.

> we're taking a major public health risk on the basis of low-quality science

Are we? (I really don't know the answer to this.) What's the science behind it and what are the gaps in it? This is the first time lab-grown meat is being sold and so far it's happening only in one country on the planet.

But I'd argue the difference is just that we're willing to give foods that seem "natural" more latitude. Bacon and sausages are believed to cause cancer at a rate of about 1 per thousand - not quite as dangerous as trans fats are for heart disease, but still a major public health issue.

Also a bad argument: rephrasing GP's "We don't know enough to be sure this is safe" as "This is definitely unsafe".

However, a sibling comment makes a really good point - that's exactly how we treat pharmaceuticals. We don't allow consumption (except in dire cases) until the product is proven safe (with a very conservative definition of proven safe). One could argue we should have the same approach with foods - the health food supplement industry has had a lot of criticism for not having enough controls. 'artificial food' of this sort seems like it should be in a similar category.

How long will it take before we know the long term effects of any subtle changes in food chemistry, especially if this becomes the primary diet of some individuals? This seems wildly complex and unpredictable. It wouldn't surprise me if it took decades.

“none of advanced food technologies turned out not massively harmful”

L̶a̶b̶-̶g̶r̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶t̶ Meat substitutes (corrected) are mostly made of vegetable matter, which humans have been eating for our entire existence.

> According to Beyond Meat's website, ingredients for its plant-based patties include water, pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein and other natural flavors, including apple extract and beet juice extract (for color)

Safety concerns with respect to innovation are understandable. But they should be grounded. We know things like pea protein don't hurt us.

You're confusing meat substitutes (plant ingredients made to resemble meat in look and taste) like Beyond Meat, and lab-grown meat (which is live muscle tissue that has been grown in a lab instead of on the body of an animal).

Beyond is not culturing cells in a vat though. They are not 'Lab-grown meat' they are a meat alternative made from stuff we do understand. Things like Impossible and this article are a whole different category of new stuff we may not fully understand yet.

I don't think Beyond Meat is lab-grown meat, as far as I'm aware it is not made from actual animal cells but just a mix of plant-based ingredients like the ones listed.

That isn't a valid comparison. There's a huge difference between a meat substitute and lab grown meat.

Canola oil has only been eaten since the 1970s. My individual existence is older than that.

beyond meat is plant based meat substitute, not lab grown meat.

Parent is still kinda right though. The original animal makes its meat by consuming and processing vegetable matter. All the lab-grown process does is replace the animal's process for doing this with a different one.

> mostly

It's the non-mostly other stuff that worries me.

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