Soya beans made more meat-like by adding genes for pig proteins | Hacker News Reader

Soya beans made more meat-like by adding genes for pig proteins

newscientist.com

17 pointssampo22 comments

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Sounds like an obvious decision for those who are allergic to meat.

Maybe less obvious for serious "animal rights" vegetarians & vegans.

And all too "interesting" for those who avoid meat (or pork) for religious reasons.

Wait, this won’t work for people allergic to meat.

i know nothing about how allergies work, how would a soybean with 25% pork proteins not trigger a pork allergy?

Allergies are to specific proteins, or sub-sections thereof.

So the only question for the pork-allergic person is "does my immune system take offense to any of the pork proteins which they put into this soya bean?".

(Well, okay - if "no" to that first question, then you still may want to ask "is my immune system going to start taking offense to what is in this soya bean?", and "might they suddenly change which pork proteins are in the beans, blindsiding me?".)

CORRECTION: Looks like I'm wrong on this one, and findecanor is correct. Vote me down and his(?) response up.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syn...

There is no specific "pork allergy". People can be allergic against a carbohydrate called "alpha-gal", which is present in all mammalian meat, which includes pork. People with "meat allergy" are not sensitive to poultry, reptilian meat or shellfish (the same way).

As long as this soy plant produces only the protein and not the carbohydrate, it should be fine.

This "brilliant" idea had to've been the result of at least one acid trip.

Problem: your soybeans taste too much like soybeans. Solution: make them taste more like pork!

Would this be halal or kosher? I'm really hoping it isn't.

> Would this be halal or kosher?

Jewis law: "Pigs should not be eaten because they don't chew their cud."

I guess you could go both ways: Soybeans don't have cud to chew, so allowed. Or: Soybeans don't chew cud, so banned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_restrictions_on_the_...

Ok, but what if you installed a series of poles and mounted a wire atop, encircling the field in which these soybeans grew?

Is lab-grown chicken, Vegan? It doesn't contain animal-derived products. All came from a vat.

I'm guessing that comes down to the medium used to grow it, which is often fetal bovine serum, making it non-vegan.

Whether or not it’s vegan is largely unimportant.

There are three main reasons people go vegan - environment, ethical, and health.

Is lab grown meat better for the environment? Absolutely. It takes less space and removes parasitic losses such as movement, body heat etc. It can’t ever be as efficient as eating plants, but it will be orders of magnitude better than animal ag.

Is lab grown meat ethical? Well, it reduces animal suffering to near zero. That’s pretty good in my opinion. But opinions will differ.

Is lab grown meat healthier? Maybe. We should be able to grow higher quality cuts with fewer steroids and antibiotics. But red meat is still carcinogenic. So if someone gave up meat for health, it seems unlikely they’d eat lab grown meat.

What an odd take. Obviously the problem is not that soybeans taste like soybeans.

There are numerous benefits to making plant-based meat alternatives, including:

1. Better for the environment, as animal agriculture is a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.

2. More efficient use of energy and space. Converting plant material into meat isn’t efficient; a lot of energy is lost in the form of heat, movement, waste products etc. The less meat we eat, the more people we can feed.

3. More ethical. Some people don’t like killing animals, but also don’t want to give up meat. Alternatives help these people align their actions with their beliefs.

I was also going to include health, however this isn’t as clear cut. I’m not convinced plant-based meat alternatives are really any healthier.

Fascinating how I get downvoted for responding logically to an illogical comment.

Hopefully these silly experiments won't result in a change to the deliciousness of Edamame. Otherwise I'll be pretty mad.

I suspect taste is not the main problem with meat substitutes. They're already pretty great. The problem is that vegans have such bad PR that one might think cannibalism was more socially acceptable.

And this could make that problem worse.

I disagree. First of all, meat substitutes taste nothing like meat, have often a weird texture and are unhealthy. There are tons of foods which are vegan, taste great, and are healthy. See indian/african/asian food.

Previously heard Cellular Agriculture, TIL Molecular Farming.

It sounds disgusting

Men should not be consuming soy, and the effect on women is equally concerning. Endocrine disruptors are a big problem.

Popular meme, but that’s not what the evidence says.

2020 Meta analysis of 38 clinical trials:

Neither soy nor isoflavone intake affects male reproductive hormones: An expanded and updated meta-analysis of clinical studies https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33383165/

Top google result has a good evidence round up: https://theproof.com/is-soy-safe-for-men/

Phytoestrogens (the ones found in soy beans) have nothing to do with the human hormone estrogen other than the name (and how they look in a chemical context). They do not have any measurable impact on your hormonal makeup and this bodybuilding myth has been disproven dozens of not hundreds of times.

You know what contains actual mammal estrogen? Beef and milk from cows that have been given hormones to give more milk.

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