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What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

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Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#251

Post by ArtDev »

rickycook wrote: post #44
np422 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us here on hacker news can afford to buy real food such as grass feed beef/lamb, forage egg/chicken, etc Seems like a more natural evolutionary correct way to get our food rather than some kind of franken-meat grown i lab. Every autumn I buy a lamb from the farmer living next to my father, I kind of like it when I can watch my food being happy before I eat it.

most of us in hacker news aren't most of the world. also, "natural" is a kind of ridiculous term. plenty of food additives are natural, but that doesn't make them good. also plenty that are unnatural aren't all bad. medicines are highly "unnatural", but they save lives. why is food any different? given how quickly we're heading toward a world in which we don't have the land area to be able to feed our population (and…

Open-ocean fish farming will have a dramatic impact on food production, once we get some technical challenges out of the way (storms mostly).

The biggest problem is that its inefficient to feed meat animals grain. Instead we should be farming lots of insects for human and animal food!

Lab grown meat is a nice idea, but I don't see how it can scale.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#252

Post by problems »

enraged_camel wrote: post #249
problems wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just health problems really - it just tastes gross, a much less pleasant texture and consistent flavor. Especially when prepared in a sandwich or in chicken nuggets the white meat is much nicer - chicken nuggets the ooze fat and leave your mouth and hands greasy have horrified me too much.

Fat is what gives meat most of its flavor. We aren't talking about deep frying as in your chicken nuggets example. We're talking about fat that is naturally on the meat.

Not talking deep frying either, I don't deep fry nuggets. Dark meat gives it a bad, inconsistent texture and taste and a generally greasy feeling in your mouth even when eaten on its own. If you like that, you go right ahead, but I'll stick to the white meat - it makes sense that it's priced more to me since it may not be more flavourful, but it's more versatile and more pallatable. No marketing needed - it's just better.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#253

Post by hawkesnest »

ArtDev wrote: post #248
pavlov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. That's the crux of the issue: do chickens' lives and feelings have any value? If so, how should society impose that value system on an enormous industry that optimizes to extract value from chickens' suffering?

After raising my own egg chickens and butchering some of them, my perspective really changed. Chickens are surprisingly smart. After we left our hobby farm I decided to not eat anything smarter than a fish. (I don't eat octopus) I like being Pescatarian. I do try to avoid wild fish for ethical/environmental reasons. Food animals should always come from a farm, obviously.

That's great that you found out chickens can be smart. You may be surprised at how clever fish are as well!

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#254

Post by jordanthoms »

the_gastropod wrote: post #192
Eyas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except as far as I understand it, there seems to be a significant utility to fake meat (and it is more of a distinct possibility than zombies): For many, there are few ways of consuming a balanced diet without meat. Take low-FODMAP diets [1] for example, which are becoming very popular with people with IBS, a condition some ~15% of the U.S. population suffers from [2]. For many, coming up with enough sources of prote…

> For many, coming up with enough sources of protein while satisfying their dietary restrictions is not easy without meat. I'm not sure this is true. I know it's a pretty common argument, but in reality, it's not particularly difficult to hit your protein requirements on a plant-based diet. Even if you take a relatively low protein food, like brown rice, and eat your required daily calories worth of it in a day, you'…

Huh? 2200 calories of Brown rice would give only 50g protein, and 400g carbohydrates. It's not that you it's impossible to get lots of protein on a vegetarian diet - the issue is that it's very difficult to maintain a high ratio of protein to carbs and fat, since even 'high protein' beans and seeds etc have less than a 1:1 ratio.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#255

Post by omginternets »

Baeocystin wrote: post #245
omginternets wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite what we're talking about though. We're talking about synthetic meat, not meat-substitutes, i.e.: lab-grown muscle tissue with (something like) cow-DNA involved.

Expanding animal cells really isn't all that different than expanding anything else. It was expensive because the details needed to be refined, but what cost $250,000 a couple years ago costs ~$8 today. Like I said before, I really don't want to push anyone to try anything they don't want to. But people know how hot dogs are made ( https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pw_CTCSkOZI/WAPJuZWaF5I/AAAAAAAAm... ), and it hasn't stopp…

Yes, and changing fat molecules into trans-fat molecules isn't all that different than any other chemical reaction.

The devil is in the details, and nutrition touches upon highly complex systems. The point being, we've already seen how seemingly simple, innocuous changes to nutritional substances can have nasty consequences. To think this time is different is pure hubris.

I get your point, but you seem to be missing mine.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#256

Post by ArtDev »

algesten wrote: post #80
Swizec wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not want to suffer. Not wanting to die has more to do with avoiding suffering/pain than it does with the dying itself. Ideally I could eat animals that are happy and content then instantly dead without ever knowing what's happening. If we could breed them with little switches in their brain stems that can be turned to Off via a wireless signal ... I'd want that. That would be great. Press button, chicken drop…

> Ultimately the point is that meat is tasty. If it was only about avoiding suffering/pain and not the dying, would you be okay with farming children for eating? They will live happy lives pampered and cared for, running around in the backyard until you press a button and child drops dead. Takes 1 microsecond to die. It's obviously absurd, but you're making that decision with the animals you eat all the time. A chick…

Personally, I draw an arbitrary line between fish and chicken intelligence.

This is true for most people except that pigs are smarter than dogs and many people won't eat dog meat.

Relative intelligence is difficult to measure. Would I eat a person if they were actually dumber than a chicken?

In a survival situation, not having a choice, sure. I would eat the dumb person before the smart dog. That is a strange thing to say though..

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#257

Post by Helmet »

magic_beans wrote: post #208
mywittyname wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't forget the first time I served a perfectly cooked breast to my sister-in-law. Her reply: "it's too juicy."

That is just... sad. Don't know if she's American, but Americans have a HUGE problem with food. The US was never a country with any unified culinary history. The culinary traditions that came with immigrants and slaves largely stayed in those communities and didn't leech out into the culture at large in their original and tasty forms. We've ended up with a culture of bastardized and homogenized factory foods.

This isn't entirely true and it paints too negative of a picture. There are culinary traditions in the US just as there are anywhere else - traditional southern food is excellent:

Shrimp and Grits, biscuits, tasso and country hams, corn breads, fried chicken, country-fried steaks, pimento cheese, collard greens, fried or fresh oysters, pig ears, catfish, pies (some of the best in the world), buckwheat pancakes, etc etc etc.

Not to mention that American BBQ is revered pretty much around the world..oh and almost forgot, the regional cuisine in Louisiana is excellent, steamed shrimp, jambalaya, gumbo...I'll never forget my first bowl of real gumbo with it's strong punch of filé spice.

And that's only traditional southern cuisine that I'm familiar with, I'm sure the rest of the country has it's own traditions as well.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#258

Post by jshevek »

ikurei wrote: post #34
qubyte wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if we're talking about advances in textured vegetable protein. When I read "fake meat" I take it to mean that it's not animal derived. Otherwise it'd just be meat.

Still, we can do something about it right now. We may need meat, but we don't need meat in every meal; if we reduced the consumption of meat, we could conceivably switch to more expensive, less efficient, more humane ways to grow animals. If you can afford it, you can also only buy meat from non-intensive farming. Or stop eating meat all together. I just don't think it's morally right to wait for a solution that may…

"We may need meat, but we don't need meat in every meal"

Is it still a common belief that we 'need meat'? I thought it was well established that humans in normal health do not _need_ meat to thrive - especially with our current technology and industry. We can easily meet all of our nutritional needs without any animal flesh.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#259

Post by ArtDev »

hawkesnest wrote: post #253
ArtDev wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After raising my own egg chickens and butchering some of them, my perspective really changed. Chickens are surprisingly smart. After we left our hobby farm I decided to not eat anything smarter than a fish. (I don't eat octopus) I like being Pescatarian. I do try to avoid wild fish for ethical/environmental reasons. Food animals should always come from a farm, obviously.

That's great that you found out chickens can be smart. You may be surprised at how clever fish are as well!

I used to farm fish too, and they are simple enough that I am okay with eating them.

The level of intelligence I will eat, between chicken and fish, is totally arbitrary.

I think this is true for anyone who is not actually vegetarian.

The next level down is insects and oysters, I suppose.

Re: What is this colored fiber in my chicken?

#260

Post by stagbeetle »

occultist_throw wrote: post #220
stagbeetle wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my viewpoint, the practitioners have all but secluded themselves for the time being, away from all public scrutiny. Very seldom do I hear of them mentioned, and of those very few are intelligent. And I believe this is what could hold you back, atleast in public acceptance (if you're even aiming for this -- and not just discovery among the "initiated"). I'm sorry I can't offer you anymore words, getting a taste o…

> From my viewpoint, the practitioners have all but secluded themselves for the time being, away from all public scrutiny. Very seldom do I hear of them mentioned, and of those very few are intelligent. They still are out there, but most have gone the anti-technology, anti-science.. almost hippie like. To most of them, it's all flowers and happy auras, and vibes. That sort of stuff. In my opinion, they are a dead end…

I've sent you some thoughts.
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