311–320 of 350 posts
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There are amino acids you can't get from plant protein.
All essential amino acids are found in plants, and some plant proteins (soy or hemp for example) contain all the essentials in a single protein.
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Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and se…
> animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. I disagree. Average caloric and protein efficiency is 7%–8%. For beef specifically, it is only 3%. I don't know how efficiently a cultured meat factory could convert grass into beef, but I bet it could do a better. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/1...
No one doubts that chicken is more efficient than beef. I have not argued that beef is the best animal.
I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance. How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown m…
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Animals are extremely efficient at converting inedible food to edible nutrition. For example, goats eat almost any plant, including many natives. Unless you think humans are going to be able to eat chaparral. The fact is that modern edible agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuel and mined fertilizers. Until we solve that problem, it's better to stop growing too many plants, let native vegetation regrow and se…
It's true that most of the food consumed by livestock isn't edible by humans - [0] says 86% - but livestock are so inefficient at converting food to edible nutrition that they still generally consume more than 1 human-edible Calorie per Calorie of meat produced. For cattle, Diet for a Small Planet [1] cites 16 Calories per edible Calorie of meat and 8 grams of protein per edible gram of protein produced, other source…
Two things. Firstly, those are 16 Calories that would otherwise quite literally go to waste. They would be metabolized by bacteria, used to grow a bacterial mat in a compost bin, and then be released into the air in the form of CO2.
Secondly, I'm not sure what 8g of protein per edible gram of protein produced means. Ruminants like cows convert carbs and other compounds into protein by hosting gut bacteria. Without a cow or chicken or something in between, these amino acids would have to come from somewhere else. Same with B12.
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It's possible, but I think that is a very difficult market to compete in. I'd wager most ethically minded buyers are wealthy enough to prefer buying free range organic chicken breast than lab grown meat, if they're purchasing meat at all. The long term play for this is almost certainly at beating factory farms on price, which has an added benefit of ethical and environmental gains. If economies of scale exist, this i…
> I'd wager most ethically minded buyers are wealthy enough to prefer buying free range organic chicken breast than lab grown meat. I would easily pay more for lab grown chicken. Partly because I believe it's even more ethical, partly because I really don't trust so-called "free range organic" chicken (I already buy it when I can, but I expect the difference is minuscule).
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His (undoubted) role in the Trail of Tears aside, it's not at all clear why Andrew Jackson belongs on money anyway. As far as I've read, it's not even clear how the decision to put him on the $20 was made, except that one fan of his at the mint thought he should be. All that not to mention, it's ridiculous to be putting someone who didn't think the US should have a central bank on the US's money. Statues, money, and…
> it's not at all clear why Andrew Jackson belongs on money anyway He's the reason the Democratic Party exists, sure that's worth something…
It's also not clear to me that, its whole ~200 year lifespan considered, the Democratic Party has put its average in the green relative to historical atrocity (nor, for that matter, have the GOP).
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> I'd wager most ethically minded buyers are wealthy enough to prefer buying free range organic chicken breast than lab grown meat. I would easily pay more for lab grown chicken. Partly because I believe it's even more ethical, partly because I really don't trust so-called "free range organic" chicken (I already buy it when I can, but I expect the difference is minuscule).
Would you do so if it was cheaper to purchase from a local farmshare? Because it probably would be. I think I would not.
(To be clear, I eat meat now, but as far as I'm aware there's no easy way for me as a consumer to consume only meat from non-factory-farming methods.)
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I understand this conversation is about Beyond Meat kinda stuff, but it's isn't no for the two oldest and most popular fake meats--tofu and seitan. And yet tofu especially gets beat up in terms of fake vs natural.
As an omnivore, I love seitan - it's pretty common in Chinese and Japanese cuisine. I wish more vegetarian places in the US would use it, but it seems that only tofu has crossed over, which is a shame, because tofu generally doesn't have the texture and bulk of meat, but rather of soft, non-meltable cheese, and is not even as filling as that.
I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance. How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown m…
I suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly cont…
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How is it a catastrophe? Why does the environment need domesticated livestock? Why does the food chain need us to be a predator?
To be able to produce the calories currently made by meat using relatively meh land, we'd have to heavily increase our fertilizer use and deforestation to be able to grow enough human edible plants (grains or legumes really, since tubers are difficult to transport).