What would be involved with synthesizing meat?

Stay with me for a minute....

What if instead of beef via cow, we could chemically synthesize meat?

How possible would this be?

Let's just say we have no qualms about it being a GMO...

But the food taste argument? Faux meat does not taste good. I've tried it and no, its horrible.

A vegetarian diet is far more interesting than the typical meat-based diet.

And don't even get me started on fast food. My wife teaches kindergarten and when she asks what everyone had for dinner, it usually comes down to Wendy's, McDonald's or Burger King - in the SUV on the way home. She had to explain to a kid who announced that he hates potatoes that french fries were made from potatoes. He still didn't get it. Most of them won't touch any kind of green vegetable. It is pretty sad.

A life without Sushi is a life without meaning...


And as for fast food - I have a bit of a different view than most here on DU - and its not one I can really explain in one post. But I'll give you the net/net: Fast food isn't evil, nor is it good - of course its not healthy, but neither is eating an entire pint of ben and jerrys. Fast food should be always thought of as a treat, not a meal.

Damn good, too!

I loves me some raw fish

And - I can see an ethical exception for fish. They don't have the same kind of nervous systems as Cows, Chickens and Pigs. Same with insects and reptiles.

You can really be creative!

or better yet - an iSalmon!

How do you clean it after downloading a raw fish?

absolutely. Goddawful stomach-churning terrible. It's why after years of not being a gourmand, I rediscovered my inner-chef in order to find ways to eat without violating my conscience.

Some of it isn't bad really, but that tends to be the more expensive stuff. The exception has been certain store brands (Giant, Price Chopper) store-brand veggieburger patties are the only ones I'll eat at all.

I'd had great luck with Gimme Lean soy sausage...taste-testing it, when cooked right, 5 of the hundreds of the omnivores I've tried this on could comfortably tell me which was which. It's that close...a few have guessed wrong because "that one tastes wrong/fake/funny/bad." and then pointed to the real ground sausage. (Normally I would never buy sausage but making this point has converted at least two people to reliably buy soysage over sausage so it's a net gain IMO. It's a strong recommend not only to veg*ns but also to anybody with heart disease who loved sausage that they can no longer eat.)

Soyrizo is good, I've never had chorizo so I can't compare but it tastes good in its' own right.

I avoid all veggieburger, Bocaburger, etc. because I think they all taste bad.

The Boca chick'n patties taste like the chicken patties they served in elementary school...that's a take-it-or-leave it. I do make a pretty f**king amazing Chik'n Parm with them though. If you wanted something where the chicken were unbreaded, then it's Quorn by necessity.(They're only widely-available unbreaded fake-chicken.) Those are also fairly good. In both cases, I would not eat them alone but when in a prepared dish they're fairly indistinguishable. (That's not entirely true...I discovered by mistake that lettuce, cheese and mayo tastes on a Boca chick'n patty tastes more like a Filet o'fish than a chicken sandwich, so I occasionally use the Boca chick'n to make "fishless fish and chips."

Since that's the only kind of veggie food that tastes good

PeTA among them.

The idea being if you can't get people to stop eating meat (and there are some people you cannot get to stop eating meat unfortunately) at least you can get them to stop eating meat from living animals. Personally, I find the idea just as ghastly, clearly you do as well.

It is simply a revolting concept.

:P

I'm all for it - you can have your bean salad if you want, I'm getting me an iSteak

:rofl:

Basically you are removing the ethical quandry of meat eating.

I'm just super-squeamish and I never particularly liked meat to begin with.

Yes, seeing the inside of a butchery kept me vegetarian for a week

it's not even terribly hard to do as you don't care if it's functional tissue...synth-steak is steak whether it's capable of doing the job of a cow-hamstring or not.

The harder part is finding a way to do it cheaply enough and efficiently enough to be viable as a source of food...as neat as the idea is for maybe one-off gimmickry, nobody is going to make a habit of buying the currently-producible product at $91/lb in cost, using 6000cal. of energy per cal. of food produced. That's far more ecologically damaging than the status-quo...which is plenty damaging in its' own right. (about 2500cal. of energy to produce one cal. of beef.)

They are working on growing meat in a lab as we speak. They have already done it, but so far it's not very efficient, and tastes bland. It's a raging debate amongst vegetarians as to whether they'd eat it or not. They all tend to feel it's not a moral issue, but a lot would just feel creeped out by it. I'm keeping my mind open on it--doesn't sound like something I'd want to eat, but it's okay with me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4148164.stm

Scientists aim for lab-grown meat

An international research team has proposed new techniques that may lead to the mass production of meat reared not on the farm, but in the laboratory. Developments in tissue engineering mean that cells taken from animals could be grown directly into meat in a laboratory, the researchers say.

Scientists believe the technology already exists to directly grow processed meat like a chicken nugget.

The technology could benefit both humans and the environment.

"With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health.

"In the long term, this is a very feasible idea," said Jason Matheny of the University of Maryland, part of the team whose research has been published in the Tissue Engineering journal.

Growing the meat without the animal could reduce the need to keep millions of animals in cramped conditions and would lessen the damage caused by the meat production to the environment.

(more at link)

I subscribe to. I wish they would hurry up and do it. I would love to have a pork chop or filet mignon before I die.

I personally prefer actual food. Fruits and vegs from plants grown in the sun, soil and air - meat from actual animals grown the same way. Grains processes as little as possible.

Lots of thought on how over-processed "food" is probably contributing to many of our health problems.

Nothing quite like a pork injection? Mind you, some are quite partial to smoking the beef pipe.

Analog baby!