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Engineering the $325,000 Burger

nytimes.com

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#121

> Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.” I feel like the lesson of Tesla is that the way to sell new technology is to make it better than the status quo in some way. "It's reasonably good" will sell to a few environmentally-conscious people, but it's better if something is genuinely appealing in some way other than ethics. It's easie…

Read The Innovators Solution (or Dilemma). There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Interesting choice of words given the subject.

In this case I guess you skin the cat by growing cat-meat in a dish, so you don't skin any cats.

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#123

As someone who doesn't eat meat for ethical reasons, I couldn't be more excited by the potential of this.

For ethical reasons? Interesting. Have you considered eating free range chicken? Or perhaps Halal meat?

The problem with free range (at least in Australia) is that it doesn't really mean what customers expect it to.

Often the only difference is that a free range barn will have a small outside area, which the chickens may not access because all the food is inside [1].

I think most vegetarians/vegans would agree that Halal meat is ethically worse than the 'bolt to the brain' alternative. Of course this is a sweeping generalisation.

[1] http://kb.rspca.org.au/What-is-the-difference-between-free-r...

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#124
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who eats meat all the time, I also couldn't be more excited. First this stuff will be an inferior meat substitute. Then it'll be an equivalent meat substitute. Then it'll improve upon nature itself, and we'll be eating things that taste ten times better than bacon, and fifty times better than steak, and it will all be without a twinge of guilt.

Eagerly anticipating the Aspartame of meat. 2 pounds of bacon, 0 calories.

Bacon is so chock full of good-for-you things I'll take it exactly as it is. But I'm definitely OK if Wilbur doesn't have to have an early demise after an inhumane existence to produce it.

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For ethical reasons? Interesting. Have you considered eating free range chicken? Or perhaps Halal meat?

Halal? I'm pretty sure I'd rather a bolt to the brain than having my throat sliced open and being left to bleed out. Free range chickens still die, which is often the ethical reason for vegetarians/vegans.

> I'd rather a bolt to the brain than having my throat sliced open and being left to bleed out.

Agree.

> Free range chickens still die, which is often the ethical reason for vegetarians/vegans.

Disagree. For me at least the death itself is comparatively insignificant. What's far more significant is horrible conditions in which many mass produced meat animals spend their lives, i.e. Factory farming.

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#126
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like there was any evolutionary pressure for animals to optimize for tastiness.

Sure there was, thanks to human domestication and husbandry of animals, we've been selecting for tastiness in some species for thousands of years.

Good point (see, for example, chicken) but that's an evolutionary blink of an eye.

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#128
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the OP means: given the high stakes (environmental, financial, moral, and so on), why aren't governments more involved in this research? (They're already regulating and subsidising farming in pretty much every country of the world.)

"given the high stakes (environmental, financial, moral, and so on), why aren't governments more involved in this research" In the US? The beef industry has a strong enough lobby.

Yes that's my guess too. Note that the lab is in Netherlands.

Re: Engineering the $325,000 Burger

#129
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there was, thanks to human domestication and husbandry of animals, we've been selecting for tastiness in some species for thousands of years.

Good point (see, for example, chicken) but that's an evolutionary blink of an eye.

A few thousands of years turned wolves into teacup poodles. A lot can happen in that timespan with directed evolution.
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