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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

This is so great -- I've been waiting for this for decades. I always felt the tofurky or "impossible burger" approach was a dead end. Also I have trouble getting enough protein with a plant-only diet.

The big question of course is scale. Seems like the kind of thing that can develop an economy of scale better than the meat grown on the animal (farmers spend a lot of effort growing things that aren't salable, or are barely so, like bones and feathers). And the ultimate (scaled out) cost target is probably much better than the "traditional product" if the environmental impact gets priced into food costs.

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> The big question of course is scale.

I personally doubt this is anywhere near being able to compete with real chicken. Chickens are one of the most cost-effective sources of protein.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat...

To put it into perspective beef requires 50x more energy input, than caloric output. Chickens only require 7.7x more input than caloric output, eggs are 5x.

Chickens take in corn and produce fat and protein. I'm unsure of the number of steps for lab grown meat, but I doubt it'll be fewer steps and likely will have more chemicals (and likely be less healthy).

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they add regulations and additional burden on the non-lab grown meats and subsidizing lab-grown meats (they effectively do already subsidize it through grants).

I’m not sure I agree it’ll have more chemicals. First, industrial chicken production is an incredibly chemical and antibiotic heavy industry. The assumption that animals effectively tortured through a life of highly stimulated over growth in crowded conditions then slaughtered in questionable ways produces a healthy protein seems dubious at best. Likewise, consistent growing meat cultures requires an optimal growth environment with no contaminants or extraneous non life inducing substances and the entire process has to be extraordinarily sterile. All I’ve read about cell culture leads me to believe the product will be extraordinarily healthy and higher quality protein than what can be purchased from the super market meat. I’ll wager a true free range chicken is a better option, but they’re absurdly expensive and even “free range” is such a loose term that the reality almost certainly doesn’t match your expectation of the term. Finally the chain of custody from the farm to table isn’t particularly clean. Cultured meat will be sterile when you eat it.

The question of scale and costs is a really good one. I suspect the real savings will not be in growing a chicken but in the whole logistics of getting a chicken into a supermarket packaging for you to buy. The process of taking a chicken from farm to supermarket is highly labor intensive and while it scales unit costs don’t decrease meaningfully with scale. The cultured meat decants ready to pack and could be packed and shipped in a fully automated fashion that decreases in cost as scale increases.

> 7.7x more input than caloric output, eggs are 5x

Fun fact, for octopuses that number is 3x, which (not that I've researched it) is the most efficient number I've found.

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/octopus5.htm#:....

Per their protein content, chicken meat is only 2 to 3 times more expensive than legumes and only 3 to 4 times more expensive than cereals.

Moreover, in legumes and cereals the proteins are mixed with large amounts of starch and if the proteins are separated from starch in industrial processes the cost of the protein extracts is many times higher than the cost of chicken meat.

Only wheat flour is an exception, because the gluten from it can be extracted without special equipment or chemical substances, so wheat gluten is the only source of pure proteins that I am aware of and that is cheaper than chicken meat.

Is chicken production subsidised?

Corn is subsidized, and chickens eat a lot of it.

Lab-grown bone or chitinous materials may become ubiquitous in construction and building materials. Biology makes human engineering look like lego, as we learn more from nature and learn to bioengineer more and more complex forms from the cellular level we can expect to grow more of what we need organically rather than building with simple materials.

> Lab-grown bone or chitinous materials may become ubiquitous in construction and building materials

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

> farmers spend a lot of effort growing things that aren't salable, or are barely so, like bones and feathers

These are the main ingredients in Plant-tone. This product might not be as relevant to folks who live in cities or in rural areas, but folks who live in the suburbs go through it like crazy.

(It's fertilizer.)

After learning more on what these "impossible burgers" actually are, it was a no brainer that it was never going to be the answer. Looking forward to the development of this!

> Also I have trouble getting enough protein with a plant-only diet.

Pea protein has 78/100g protein which sounds like a reasonable replacement for whey protein isolate (89/100g) or other animal sources. Not saying you should eat pea morning 'till evening but supplementing just protein powder is an option, too.

What vegans may have trouble obtaining from non-animal sources are vitamin D3 and Omega3 fatty acids.

At least in Europe, protein extracts like pea protein are much more expensive that chicken meat, e.g. 5 times more expensive.

I do not believe that paying such prices is rational, so for many years I thought about eating only vegan food, but I could not see any way to get enough proteins without gaining weight.

I could switch to vegan food only after I have discovered that I can make a home-made bread that is highly enriched in protein by removing about 75% of the starch during a 6 to 7 minute washing of the dough. With a longer washing time it is possible to separate completely the gluten from the starch, but I am not willing to spend more time every morning with breakfast preparation, and this is enough to provide on adequate protein to calories ratio.

For Omega3, the only good alternative to fish oil is Schizochytrium oil. A few years ago, it was 8 times more expensive than fish oil, but the price has been declining slowly and now Schizochytrium oil is only 3 times more expensive than fish oil (e.g. with taxes and shipping included, EUR 300/L for double concentration Schizochytrium oil vs. EUR 50/L for cod liver oil). This is still very expensive, so hopefully the price will continue to decrease.

Vitamin D3 is normally made from sheep wool, which seems a perfectly sustainable source. There exist products which claim to contain "vegan" D3, but until proven otherwise I believe that this is a scam for extracting money from naive vegans.

The "vegan" D3 is claimed to be extracted from some kind of lichen, but it is irrational to pay money for such a product unless the vendor discloses which is the exact species of lichen, whether it is a wild lichen or a cultivated lichen, how it is cultivated and how the vitamin D3 is extracted from it.

If the lichen is not cultivated, but wild, that is not acceptable. Wild lichens grow extremely slowly and exploiting a species for vitamin extraction is guaranteed to cause the extinction of that species in a short time.

> I could switch to vegan food only after I have discovered that I can make a home-made bread that is highly enriched in protein by removing about 75% of the starch during a 6 to 7 minute washing of the dough. With a longer washing time it is possible to separate completely the gluten from the starch, but I am not willing to spend more time every morning with breakfast preparation, and this is enough to provide on adequate protein to calories ratio.

This is called seitan and has been a meat replacement for at least a thousand years. You can buy it in the store. Hell, you can even buy wheat gluten itself right from the store and make your own without all the washing.

Not to rain on the parade, but I've found pea protein to be one of the least pleasant-tasting plant proteins, at least in beverages and smoothies. Not even chocolate covers it up. I just think people deserve a heads-up before they go and buy a big canister.

I can whole heartedly agree I bought a tub of Naked Mass Pea based protein/weight gainer to compete with my whey based Mass Gainer Tub.

The one benefit of pea protein is that it doesn't foam up like whey based alternatives in a blender and upsets my stomach less than the whey.

Pea protein is chalky/gritty as hell though, even after extensive blending and ingredient mixing. 3/5 stars.

K2 and creatine as well.

K2 is produced by humans from K1.

Humans also produce creatine, choline and taurine, but for these three there is convincing evidence that the internal production is not sufficient, so for vegans it is beneficial to take supplements with them.

It is likely that the internal production of K2 is also insufficient, but I have not seen yet any conclusive research results about this, because it is very difficult to control all confounding factors.

Even if it is not certain that this is needed, it is prudent for vegans to also take vitamin K2 supplements, along with the other substances known to be missing or insufficient in vegetables (vitamins B12, D3 and K2; DHA and EPA; creatine, choline and taurine; iodine, selenium, calcium and sodium).

However for any nutritional supplements the daily intakes must be chosen carefully, because on the labels of many such supplements the recommended daily dosage may be appropriate for someone who prepares for a sports competition or for someone who is treated to recover from a deficiency, while the normal daily intakes may be significantly lower than that.

And B12.

B12 is one of the least problems, because there are several kinds of bacterial cultures that produce it with high efficiency.

The research for improving the production of other kinds of vitamins is more active, by trying to either discover or create bacterial strains suitable for this purpose.

A serious problem is that unlike the production of traditional food, the production of vitamins and nutritional supplements is concentrated in a few countries, and mostly in China.

So if overnight everybody would become vegan, then suddenly most of the world would become nutritionally dependent on China.

Ideally every bigger city should be able to produce the vitamins needed by its inhabitants, like it is able to produce other staple foods, but we are very far from this when entire countries may not have any vitamin production facility.

And taurine

Bones are pretty sellable; they improve the flavor of meat and are an integral component of soups and stocks.

Some kinds of feathers are as well. They're often used in soft goods like pillows as stuffing. Also they're dyed and used as decoration.

The bones actually have most of the micronutrients, and people used to eat marrow like butter to avoid wasting it.

“Bone meal” and “feather meal” are commodity byproducts of the meat industry. You can find them used in animal feeds and even pet foods.

Moreover, bone meal is also sold as a human nutritional supplement, but curiously under disguised names, e.g. "Calcium Hydroxyapatite" (while bone meal does indeed contain hydroxyapatite, it also contains other minerals and a large amount of proteins), presumably in order to not scare the vegans, who are the main people who need such a nutritional supplement.

While I eat almost only vegan food, I make an exception and I add to some of my food small quantities of such bone meal. However, unlike most people, I read very carefully the small print, so I am aware that this supplement is in fact made from cattle bones, even if its label does not suggest this.

I would think that if they can grow meat, they can grow the things that bones contribute to flavor and stock.

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