Lab-meat dubbed one of 2023's biggest technology failures | Hacker News Reader

Lab-meat dubbed one of 2023's biggest technology failures

irishexaminer.com

3 pointspg_12343 comments

It would take a huge scale study to prove to me that the protein and other nutrients are the same as real meat and just as bioavailable. And I'm not replacing real meat with it until we know those things are true. I might try it as a novelty but not at those prices. It's not that I wouldn't eat it because it's somehow gross to me - if it looks like chicken and tastes like chicken, I'm down.

Honestly for me that's almost beside the point, the fundamental challenge with lab grown meat is cost. You need close to sterile conditions, you need a viable, cheap, presumably vegan growth media, you need seriously skilled technicians... and this is all in competition with rearing livestock. You don't need people with PhD's to raise cattle or chickens, you don't need sterile conditions, and the many challenges involved in livestock have been explored by all of humanity for thousands of years. Even more with corporate, large-scale operations, the efficiencies of scale are enormous.

How on Earth anyone thought that lab-grown could compete with that, when price matters so much to people, blows my mind. Sure there are some vegans and some relatively well-off people who might be interested, but that's not a scale that matters.

Then you have to ask about the taste, texture, and nutritional value... none of which appear to be a good match yet.

food is inherently full of confirmation bias to the one with the hunger

witness the reaction to finding a hair in it. and how much worse it is if the hair is only discovered halfway down your throat and you pull it out.

meal now unappetiziing? but it could be Kobe beef ... it doesn't matter. the mind is trying to save you from potential toxins, poisonous spoiled foods. There is only one way to make an animal that's starving suddenly not eat the meal in front of him. so the levers in the head are very heavy-handed.

tldr, this tech has a lot working against it.

Even if it tastes and looks perfect, I doubt I could get it down. So I'm a picky eater? My mom spent a good 15-16 years trying to overcome that. If she can't, no one can.

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