Animal products are bad for you.
Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
51–60 of 152 posts
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
If fake meats had come first and animal meats were just now coming to market, people would make similar arguments about health effects... and they'd be warranted. With animal meat, one has to worry about salmonella, e. coli, staph, and other pathogens. These food-borne pathogens kill about 5,000 Americans a year and make millions sick.[1] Also, cooking meat creates carcinogens.[2] If fake meats were as dangerous as t…
I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations. Basing the conclusion of safety based on a piecemeal analysis of the components hand-waves away the entire complexity of digestion and metabolization.
> I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations.
It's not that processed foods are particularly safe, but that meat is unsafe in a way we're accustomed to. Again: every year, meat-borne pathogens kill 5,000 Americans and cause illnesses in 1% of the population. Fake meats simply don't cause those rates of illness or death. If they did, the FDA would not allow them to be sold.
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#53Beyond Meat gets name-checked in the article, but I want to emphasize that their burgers are pretty good: https://jakeseliger.com/2017/08/23/beyond-meat-burgers-are-p... and in my view underappreciated right now. If you've not tried them yet, you ought to.
The cat food smell when you cook them is for real. I noticed it independently, and it turns out plenty of people had already observed this. I wonder if this will hinder mass adoption -- it really did make my apartment smell strange! They tasted great though.
I've had a few of them, and the smell was the most noticeable difference from real beef.
At least in cooked form, the smell is more distinctly of beans, not cat food.
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations. Basing the conclusion of safety based on a piecemeal analysis of the components hand-waves away the entire complexity of digestion and metabolization.
> I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations. It's not that processed foods are particularly safe, but that meat is unsafe in a way we're accustomed to. Again: every year, meat-borne pathogens kill 5,000 Americans and cause illnesses in 1% of the population. Fake meats simply don't cause those r…
And coal plants kill far more people than nuclear ones. It's just not as obvious that they're the cause to those who are sick.
Who is to say that eating an equivalent amount of this fake meat product wouldn't cause a far greater number of deaths and reduction in quality adjusted years? It will be much harder to tell, because the problems aren't as obvious/acute, and there are always a huge number of confounding variables when it comes to nutrition.
Unless the problems it causes are acute, the FDA isn't going to have a very good way of comparing the safety of these with normal meat.
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#55This, crispr, and self driving cars are my favorite up and coming innovations that just seem mind boggling and that will make a profound impact in our lives. I think it is realistic to see widespread use of all 3 in the next decade. The social media, apps, cloud, big data, and phone innovations have been neat but I'm looking forward to disruptions in non tech arenas. Space, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, so ma…
It's telling that space, electricity generation, crispr, self-driving cars, and this are thought of as 'non tech', but messaging apps and phones are.
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? As long as its vegan margarine. Its clean of at least a subset of ethical concerns that many foods are not. Clean is a very overloaded word though so I certainly see where you're coming from, but it works just fine for me.
It would probably be illegal to market a product that wasn't butter as "Clean Butter", because there are rules about labeling things as butter. So I won't be surprised if the animal products industry lobbies for rules about what can be called meat (or if such rules already exist). Of course such labeling concerns don't apply to an internet discussion, but they do indicate that people care about what's in a name.
Usually, though, lab-grown meat is actually meat. It's possible that it'd have to be labeled "synthetic" or "lab-grown" (similar to how synthetic diamonds are named), but claiming that meat is not meat is nonsensical.
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#57As a counter point, the CEO of Impossible Burgers thinks that meat grown from cells is "stupidest idea ever" ( http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/arti... ). And I kind of don't see how Memphis Meat can possibly compete with Impossible Burger (or other companies that can produce meat-like products from vegetables + industrial processing). Today Memphis Meat costs "several thousand" per pound and g…
What a dumb idea to base one's argument regarding these things on price. As a new tech it will cost a lot (like computers once did, now you can get one for $5), but the price will eventually go down. Perhaps my generation won't enjoy fake meat like a real steak just because of the idea, but younger people won't mind. Personally, I'll take anything that can stop killing all those animals to then throw away huge quanti…
Well the Impossible CEO has a good point in that if we can grow tissues on demand in a reliable and efficient process the first use will not be for food but for healthcare. Why grow quarter pounders when you could save lives and grow organs?
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#58This, crispr, and self driving cars are my favorite up and coming innovations that just seem mind boggling and that will make a profound impact in our lives. I think it is realistic to see widespread use of all 3 in the next decade. The social media, apps, cloud, big data, and phone innovations have been neat but I'm looking forward to disruptions in non tech arenas. Space, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, so ma…
It's telling that space, electricity generation, crispr, self-driving cars, and this are thought of as 'non tech', but messaging apps and phones are.
If it makes you feel better, only on sites like HN would that ever be the case.
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#59A lot of investors are interested in Memphis Meat. From what I understand, people have been trying to grow meat in laboratories for decades. Does MM have some special technology?
Re: Billionaires and big ag are joining venture investors to fund lab-grown meat
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
If fake meats had come first and animal meats were just now coming to market, people would make similar arguments about health effects... and they'd be warranted. With animal meat, one has to worry about salmonella, e. coli, staph, and other pathogens. These food-borne pathogens kill about 5,000 Americans a year and make millions sick.[1] Also, cooking meat creates carcinogens.[2] If fake meats were as dangerous as t…
I think it's foolish to assume that some novel and highly processed food item is going to be safer than something which we've been eating for thousands of generations. Basing the conclusion of safety based on a piecemeal analysis of the components hand-waves away the entire complexity of digestion and metabolization.
Slaughterhouses and packaged meat are a pretty recent invention, certainly not one we’ve evolved with over thousands of generations. Is it really more natural to open a cellophane package of ground meat that comes from who knows how many animals?