Was that with or without a tip?
Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#22A complete waste for $250,000. Lab meat? Why? Why would any one want to buy artificial, lab processed meat? Why do people insist on complicating food? Our supermarkets all already filled with things that can be barely classified as "food" and now we have this.
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#23It seems like this is all for solving the wrong problem. Why isn't there a shift away from the perceived need for more meat.
Could you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean by perceived need for more meat - to me this seems like a project geared at creating more ethical, future proof meat products.
Humanity has never -- with the exception of extreme cases, historical or modern -- eaten as much meat as the western man does now [1]. The only reason we eat as much meat as we do, I think, is out of marketing. The perceived need for more meat is therefor to saturate the marked.
The problem arising from growing meat consumption include, pollution, maldistribution of food, animal suffering, wasting of land and resources, wasting of water, etc.
[1] I suppose I need a reference for this claim, but think in terms of economy and you'll find that no other culture can afford this much land and resorces to go under meat-farming other than current western cultures
--edit--
I forgot about humans living in extreme environments that live (by necesity) almost exclusively on meat, like the inuits in Greenland, before major western influence. It doesn't change the fact that the majority of all culteres do, and have in the past, eaten but a porportion of the meat that the average westerners eat today.
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#24This guy could pay $330k for a burger for lunch every day and not care.
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#25...And what happens when we no longer need cows? It's not going to be happy fun time for the species, because as soon as there's not a reason to breed them then we'll have a few cows kicking around in zoos and that's it. Good for the environment, possibly, but bad for the species.
I find it highly unlikely that vat meat would totally replace livestock. For starters, a large portion of the world doesn't have refrigeration or reliable transport infrastructure, let alone industrial labs. Even in developed areas, you have to take into account the large existing demand for pasture raised meat.
Vat meat simply has externalities associated with it – civil infrastructure, educational overhead, perception issues, etc – that make it so that it can't compete with traditional livestock models in many areas.
Realistically, vat meat competes with factory farming, and not a whole lot else. Which, don't get me wrong, is fantastic all on it's own.
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
maybe this is not the objective, rather having a more efficient way to produce meat, you're taking out of the equation the farm, meaning less space used, maybe healthier meat (without all the antibiotics and less fat) from one cow you can produce 10 tons of meat without all the space needed not only to raise the cows, but to grow their food, the lab can also be closer to consumers having obvious implications on that.
Well, if efficiency is the endgoal here, than bean cultivation seems way more logical answere to beef alternatives than fake meat. You basically take the the food you would otherwice feed your cows, stew it together with some saffran and beet juice (the same colorants as for the fake meat) and you have your economy-burger. No intermediate step which takes 10 times the space of a traditional meat-farm, no anti-biotics…
> Honestly I cant find a single logical reason why this artificial-meat buisness is a good idea
You can't find a single reason why people would rather eat a replacement that eventually looks and tastes like a burger, rather than cow-food mixed with saffron and beet juice?
If that sounds good to you, more power to you, but to think that people would pay for the mush the same way people currently pay for burgers is ridiculous.
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#27A complete waste for $250,000. Lab meat? Why? Why would any one want to buy artificial, lab processed meat? Why do people insist on complicating food? Our supermarkets all already filled with things that can be barely classified as "food" and now we have this.
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Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#28The timing on this is amusing: Jeff Bezos buys a newspaper for $250,000. Sergey Brin buys a burger for €250,000. Each smart in its own way.
The inaccuracy on this is amusing as well.
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#29The real cool thing is that they are making great advertising to stem cells, by doing something that has a very positive ethical connotation (which is the typical argument against using stem cell in medicine).
Stem cells don´t sell unless they come with hamburgers
Re: Google's Sergey Brin explains why he paid $330,000 for lab burger
#30A complete waste for $250,000. Lab meat? Why? Why would any one want to buy artificial, lab processed meat? Why do people insist on complicating food? Our supermarkets all already filled with things that can be barely classified as "food" and now we have this.
Well, it's a good indication you chose to make a throwaway account for that post, as it suggests that you yourself are aware to some extent how uninformed and ignorant the question is.
But, to answer: These animals are brought up in very inhumane conditions -- in crowded spaces, with no light, no freedom. The whole process is unsustainable, what happens when the world population reaches above 10 billion and demand for meat keeps getting higher? Do we have enough space to keep these animals, enough food to sustainably feed them without having bad environmental implications?
It turns out there are alternative methods, and they may prove to be well worth the cost of investigating them. So here we are, doing science, in the hopes of a brighter future. Experimenting with food, to make it taste better, healthier, cheaper, more environmentally-friendly.