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Comment by RustLove | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure muscles that haven't been "used" will taste the same as flesh that is grown and hasn't been out walking around. The texture is sure to be different.

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Isn't that a point against the whole concept, and not in particular against specific options like mammoth or giant sloth, which you replied to?

I think their point is that if a slaughtered animal is necessary for correct taste, the dream of tasting a mammoth won’t be fully realized by this technology.

But that would also apply to the current topic of chicken.

There is no shortage of slaughtered chickens for the curious person to taste.

Right, but we don't even know if their hypothetical concern is relevant yet. The comment could well have been "will this product taste the same as normal chicken?" as a top-level comment on this post. Instead it's "in the hypothetical case that this doesn't taste the same as normal chicken, which we don't know yet, then neither will mammoth or giant sloth taste the same as their ancient walking versions".

The charitable interpretation would be the on-topic one.

  > > > FDA: First-generation cultured meat is not illegal.
  > > I’m excited to taste mammoth!
  > This technology is still too young for that.

Having read a bit about the topic, the chemical profile of slaughtered animals includes some changes due to the stress and fear that the animal's experience just prior to being killed, like increased cortisol levels.

Meat from stressed animals will be "tough, tasteless, and high in pH, and will go bad quicker than unstressed meat." (From: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-scared-animals-tas...)

If you've read about factory farms that most meat comes from, it's a stressful environment.

On the other hand, lab-grown meat sounds would be zero-stress.

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