The truth about lab-grown meat [video]
bbc.com
bbc.com
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.
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.
That's not what the video demonstrates. The video demonstrates that they made chicken nuggets made from lab grown meat taste like real chicken nuggets.
> all the folks making vegetarian chicken substitutes that don't taste very much like chicken
Are there really no vegetarian substitutes for nuggets that taste the same?
There are confounding factors. This thread is about taste / flavour alone.
Wrong. The thread that started with my comment was specifically responding to "it tastes just like a real thing".
> That was the word used in one of the comments, but in the video in question, the reporter said she "wouldn't know the difference."
Fair point. I didn't watch the video (unfortunately I can't at the moment), so I was responding specifically to the parent comment. That's on me.
[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...
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.
Flavor-wise, there are 2 things that keep me coming back for more. 1) The chicken doesn't just have flavor, it tastes good. 2) The fat in the pork is freaking delicious.
That's not usually what people mean when they say "tastes like chicked" though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You wouldn't get sex advice from a nun, so why eat laboratory meat from a vegan?
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.
> industrial-scale torture of factory farms
So melodramatic. You can raise your own animals.
> but most people's consciences are too stunted
No, some people are so weak minded that they attribute human characteristics to animals to the point of wincing at the idea of a balanced omnivorous diet.
You only find this permanent state of infantilization in first world countries. Even Buddhists in Tibet are perfectly happy to eat meat.
> Even Buddhists in Tibet are perfectly happy to eat meat.
It is generally true that some adherents of religion X regularly do non-X things, in Tibet and elsewhere.
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.
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".
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Note: Personally I don't see veganism as an alternative for myself but I fully support those that choose it.
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.
You know, solving the classic Trumpian lung disinfection problem.
People are fine with the way things are. If it's not broken don't fix it.
There are plenty of farm animals that live good lives.
People need to drop this weird utopian idea that we can live in this world without death.
I won't be touching lab grown meat until they can prove it has the same nutritional value as meat from an actual animal. I have my doubts since it won't be actual absorbing anything from the food it eats out of the ground like a real animal. I have absolutely zero problem with animal death if they're not treated inhumanely during their lives. Nature provides a far worse death for many of them than what they get being raised on a farm.