Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals? • Hacker News Board

Re: Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals?

#51

Post by stdbrouw » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 10:01 PM UTC

dbecker wrote: post #50

stdbrouw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a "natural" steak be intrinsically better than an "unnatural" steak? And what does that have to do with current nutritional thinking?

The most popular author claiming natural foods are better is Michael Pollan (who is admittedly a writer rather than a scientist, but whose views appear to be widely shared in the scientific community). Googling will show as many links as you could possibly want, but you might start with http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....

My point was more basic: current nutritional thinking does not and cannot make any claims about a food type which doesn't yet exist, and food is not good or bad simply because it belongs to a certain category like "natural". (That said, thanks for the link.)

Re: Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals?

#52

Post by dbecker » Mon, Dec 10, 2012, 12:44 AM UTC

stdbrouw wrote: post #51

dbecker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular author claiming natural foods are better is Michael Pollan (who is admittedly a writer rather than a scientist, but whose views appear to be widely shared in the scientific community). Googling will show as many links as you could possibly want, but you might start with http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....

My point was more basic: current nutritional thinking does not and cannot make any claims about a food type which doesn't yet exist, and food is not good or bad simply because it belongs to a certain category like "natural". (That said, thanks for the link.)

The claim is basically that humans are incapable of manufacturing healthy food.

You may disagree with the premise, but the conclusion "food manufactured on a 3d printer will not be healthy" does follow logically from it.

Re: Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals?

#53

Post by exodust » Tue, Dec 11, 2012, 3:51 AM UTC

davidp wrote: post #41

exodust wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing in this article about "not eating meat". The whole point is that meat can be grown in the lab, so you can eat it all you like then. Meat comes from animals who have pretty miserable lives up until death in the modern factory farm. and then the environmental stress from feeding and transporting livestock is huge. And the protein health benefits comes with some warnings not to eat too much meat! Raw mea…

Well, > "... the hackathon’s goal is to come up with technological answer to the problems of meat supply, processing, distribution, health and ultimately consumption. One of big problems the group will tackle is how — simply put — to get people to eat less meat." That said, it's true that meat production (beef at least) is a very inefficient use of arable land, in terms of nutrition per acre. Curse their tasty hides.

Yes you're right, I missed that bit. Quite interesting that "butchers, farmers, and food industry executives" would be tackling the "problem" of getting people to eat less meat! Perhaps they are vegetarian butchers.