A vegan leather made of dormant fungi can repair itself

> coming back to a solid mass of mycelium.

So what you are saying is that I never have to buy clothes, or materials again. Long live growable clothes!

Have you read Neverwhere by chance?

Always ask for the mushroom sandwich fully cooked.

The perfect metaphor for Amazon.

You grow into it then it grows into you…

I am not convinced. Until recently I lived with a vegetarian and have been compelled to try most of the meat alternatives available in my market - none have been a convincing replacement for real meat, or compelling by their own merits. The only way I can see this happening is placing a ban on people born after a certain date from purchasing meat, similar to New Zealand's ban on anyone born from 2009 onwards purchasing tobacco.

Besides, the worldwide consumption of cattle is somewhere around 300 million per year [1] - if we aren't eating them to keep their numbers down the land will soon be overrun by a tide of beef.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/chart-of-the-day-this...

Cheap nutrient and tasty vegan "meat" would probably be the most important innovation for civilization going forwards.

Even Star Trek writers didn't seem to think replicator food would be as good as livestock shows it's significance

tl;dr: Reducing meat consumption should not rely on meat substitutes, it's a losing game. It's much better to explore alternative vegan dishes than to expect plant-based or lab-grown products to replace something that the average westerner consumes almost every day.

I have reduced my meat and dairy consumption by well over 90% and I'd say that vegan meat substitutes are the worst option for people looking to reduce (or eliminate) meat consumption long term in terms of taste, texture, nutrition, climate impact (due to food processing) etc.

At best, you get a 'passable' substitute when you could be having a delicious and nutritious meal instead. You wont ever get the taste and texture of a prime cut, cooked chicken skin, bacon or anything of the sort – so why bother? There are countless great vegan dishes that leave you fully satiated and won't bore you like textured plant proteins (TPP) would if you ate them every other day.

Drastically reducing meat consumption required a change of habit and the way our family looked at food. If we ate meat/poultry every day, we couldn't rely on meat substitutes (aside from vat-grown meat, I guess), because you cannot really substitute the variety of cuts, fat to lean meat ratios, cooking versatility, organs (from pig ears to duck liver and beyond) that people consume. I found that consuming different types of TPP seven times a week, made me much more likely to throw in the towel well before someone who expanded their protein sources to chickpea (humus, falaffel), soy (tofu, tempeh), nuts (peanut and almond flour/butter), ate more mushrooms for the meaty flavor etc.

Eliminating cheese from my diet was the hardest part for me. I am not holding my breath for passable vegan cheese substitutes to appear any time soon. Now, I'd say nutritional yeast and peanut butter scratch the itch for basic fermented cheese for me.

To be fair, there is one meat substitute that I actually like – tofu spreads beat most liver pâtés. What I do is just blend some tofu with caramelized onions and nutritional yeast, add soy sauce or salt.

You're right, but I think you're conflating arguments.

Meat eaters should be proud to wear leather, eat byproduct, etc. Anything else would be waste, and it's shameful to act as you describe.

But vegans want all of it to stop. There's nothing to waste to the animal isn't killed. Well, until it does naturally. There's nothing to waste if the animal isn't born though. And it wouldn't be born if we didn't have a culture of harvesting their bodies.

There is also the argument that anything we do to provide additional revenue for the cattle industry is an indirect subsidy for beef. If nobody bought leather, beef would have to be more expensive, which might reduce beef consumption and therefore the footprint of the cattle industry. I don't know enough about the markets involved to say how realistic this is, but it is an argument I've seen.

You could also say the opposite: If nobody bought beef, leather would become much much more expensive, so therefore beef is an indirect subsidy to the leather industry. I've never seen this argument made anywhere though.

>I don't see why there would be more unused disposed cow skin than prior

If the "vegan" product suddenly attains a real value other than "being vegan", for instance self repair, it may decrease the demand for regular old leather.

There is a slowly growing awareness in the public that eating meat is unnecessary for good health, perhaps even a negative. The strain on the environment for meat farming and transportation is massive so I am all for having plant-based options which fulfill and satisfy any need for animal products. If mushroom or plant leather turns out to be better, like cheaper or more durable etc., then there will be much less demand for traditional leather and the price for milk and beef will increase and make alternatives all the more attractive.

I’m a vegan and this sort of stuff is a total win.

We do need to make better use of humans that's for sure.

Organ donation rates are still pretty poor and funeral practices in the west are needlessly inhibitory to decomposition.

There's been rumours of human leather forever, I reckon some people would quite like to be a jacket or suitcase!

If humans were grown in farms for the purpose of using their meat, then yes, we shouldn't waste them.

I never saw a mushroom that I could eat again after I'd eaten it

In my head, it's the same scene, but the soundtrack is now from Mario.