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Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#261

Post by CalRobert »

bluGill wrote: post #175
CalRobert wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead, we made our cities so unpleasant and poorly designed that walking doesn't make sense.

But we made it possible to get to a lot more things in our cities than you can by walking, and enjoy a lot more space. A walk only city is not a pleasant place to live. Your counter to the above should be building more transit. However in the English speaking world we are incompetent in that these decades, and we refuse to learn from anyone else.

Transit, and bicycle infra. But sadly you're not wrong regarding incompetence in the English speaking world, which is why I'm visiting Freiburg in a week to help decide whether to move there or Utrecht.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#262

Post by its-summertime »

pibechorro wrote: post #248
deergomoo wrote: post #13

This seems no different than the ridiculous laws proposed in some US states recently that would ban EV sales to protect the oil and gas industries. I’m sorry that people could one day lose jobs over this, but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe and cost/energy/carbon efficient alternative to raising and killing animals, then it would be insane to not pursue that.

There are many factors. First is trust, I trust an organism even if pumped full of hormones more than a lab cell culture. Then there is the issue of dependency, raising livestock nad hunting is low tech with no supply chains breaking down. Quality is also a factor, i will believe it when I see it that lab grown meat is nothing more than glorified ground meat. There is a lot to the unique properties of meat (fibers, f…

I can hardly trust my own body, let alone the body of a different animal. I doubt that we'll see much of mad cow disease in lab meat on shelves.

wrt supply chains:

> Specifically, the livestock sector and its related industries are among the most impacted sectors. This is mainly ascribed to the limitations of animal movement and the decrease of production inputs' availability.

> The availability of animals', feed ingredients, either through foraging or concentrate ingredients, was an additional challenge confronting the sustainability of the livestock supply chain. Data presented in our overview illustrated that one of the livestock supply chain's major disruptors was the inability of farmers to access animal feed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7593325/

And unless I'm rich enough to eat choice cuts regularly, the marbling et al is not going to be amazing regardless, so...

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#263

Post by mrpopo »

Retric wrote: post #125
pella wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if lab-grown meat is proven to be a safe We need to fully understand its safety, nutritional content, and long-term health effects. Our understanding of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets is still limited. Therefore, it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat. Long-term effects: Si…

That’s a wildly misleading take on nutrition. Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on. Where you need to care about each individual molecule is if we where creating food one molecule at a time via a replicator or something so we could have wildly unusual ratios of these individual components…

We are losing many basic nutrients in our food content simply because of farmers selecting their produce for taste and appearance. Even if all foods were cells (not true), even then not all cells are equal.

75% of people in the US are overweight or obese, do you really believe that we are doing a good job with what we are putting in our bodies?

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#264

Post by golemotron »

illiarian wrote: post #240
golemotron wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some reason we demand significantly stricter controls over anything "lab-grown" than on anything "natural". The reason is simple. We haven't co-evolved with lab-grown food for several billion years, or had transmitted cultural experience with it for tens of thousands of years. The recent discovery that artificial sweeteners have unforeseen health effects (hyper-clotting / glucose intolerance) should point out t…

> We haven't co-evolved with lab-grown food for several billion years, or had transmitted cultural experience with it for tens of thousands of years. Trust me, you haven't co-evolved with a single plant you pick up at the supermarket today. None of the hybrids you eat evolved naturally.

We'll see how it goes.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#265

Post by 9dev »

zpeti wrote: post #236
9dev wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't have to burn everything good and old to the ground to make way for tech bros of HN creating fake meat. No. But maybe we can become a species smart enough to avoid the suffering of other beings just for the joy of eating something that tastes nice.

Can you please explain this to the lions of the sahara? They relish the suffering of other species for the joy of things that taste nice.

So you're on the intellectual level of a lion, or what?

In contrary to lions, you have the brain to think about this, the alternatives to choose from, the digestive tract to handle plant-based food, and the moral capability to understand why killing living beings is bad.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#266

Post by goldfeld »

illiarian wrote: post #183
pella wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: """ I am scared of living in a society that doesn't find it obvious that things perfected by nature over millions of years are scientifically speaking, safer than things made by some "scientists" in a lab. Statistically, the "large n" of nature makes it > scientific. """ https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1172495876717273088

> I am scared of living in a society that doesn't find it obvious that things perfected by nature over millions of years are scientifically speaking, safer than things made by some "scientists" in a lab. This is the "natural corn" you consume vs. the actual natural corn: https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/670657 Same goes for all "natural things" you eat.

Yes, lab corn, the greatest heritage invention of america since the great depression of the gilded age! Corn even looks like gold.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#267

Post by andsoitis »

goldfeld wrote: post #260
andsoitis wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a GPT comment, but I’ll bite: > it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat Why?

"important to ensure", "complex array", I've been working with GPT a lot and this GPT-speak is so blatantly weasel worded. Maybe GPT doesn't know any better because the world is so weasel worded into being, with trendspeak and buzzfeeding, poor thing.

for me, it is the condescending tone that gives it a away many times

feels more like PR/corporate-speak than human speak.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#268

Post by orangepurple »

9dev wrote: post #63
nemo44x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not Italian but think it’s a step in the right direction, but overreaches. I think they should make it law that synthetic meat can’t be called “meat” and that insect ‘flour’ can’t be called “flour”. And should have to be prefaced with “unnatural food product” or similar on all sides of packaging.

This whole insect flour debate is so braindead. We have billions of people to feed. Dried and shredded insects provide a great protein yield, can be produced incredibly efficient, and aren’t as destructive to the planet as lifestock. Many cultures have been consuming insects for ages. There is nothing unsafe, unnatural, or otherwise „bad“ about using insects for food - other than an embarrassing, unreflective revulsi…

> We have billions of people to feed.

I was not aware that you have billions of people to feed.

Re: Italy moves to ban lab-grown meat to protect food heritage

#269

Post by _zpij »

9dev wrote: post #123
quenix wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gross. That's it. Why should I, or anyone else, have to explain personal food choices to you? If finding insect-eating to be repulsive is embedded in a culture, who are you to question it or demand change/an explanation?

I didn't demand anything, but merely ask if you'd like to provide a little more detail. I see that you're not open for intellectual discussions that question your beliefs though, so I guess we can cut this thread here.

I don't understand this need to push eating insects onto people. The "intellectual" point of view makes it even funnier. Food is not just the sum of proteins and carbohydrates. It is wrong on so many levels to suggest that because insects are protein rich then they must be good. I was honestly shocked by Americans not being aware of the quality of their food - it's horrible. Even in Whole Foods, or more expensive supermarkets, most of the food products are just processed crap that comes in a box. Even the quality of vegetables and fruit is questionable, the bacon is by default sweetened with sugar. Every single European or far Easterner that comes to the US will gain 10kg without chaing their dietary habits. The reason is not too much food, or eating fast food, it is because the quality of food in the US is dreadful, all the way from the seed until the plate. So maybe you want to eat insects, but we do not, and there is an absolute consensus about that. Hopefully one day Americans will learn what food is really supposed to be like, and start fixing their country (and health).
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