PETA Offers X-Prize for Artificial Meat 1130
Bored MPA writes "The Times reports that PETA is to announce plans on Monday for a $1 million prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012." PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk addressed the controversial decision by saying, "We don't mind taking uncomfortable positions if it means that fewer animals suffer." An unexpected and pragmatic move from an organization that has a strong base of support from pro-organic vegans." The question I always had about this- if they can take one sample from one animal and clone it in a vat and feed this world, will the vegans be ok with that?
Re:Answer to your question (Score:3, Informative)
If it for health reasons
Health reasons? There's plenty of meat that's quite healthy for you. Most fish is low in saturated fat and cholesterol. Chicken is pretty OK. Buffalo tastes very similar to beef, but has lower saturated fat. Vegans are vegans for political reasons. These are people that don't eat gummi bears because it contains ground up bones, and don't wear anything that has leather in it. I've heard of extreme wack-jobs that won't eat honey because we've enslaved the bees. It ain't just about food.
Re:What about human? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cloning Tissue or Whole Animal? (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds nifty and all but really once you go vegan it's not like you've got a jonesing for steak after awhile...you've got so many other interesting things to try.
But hey, sounds like it would make a lot of people happy with no harm done.
My Vegan Girlfriend (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Isnt fake meat called... (Score:4, Informative)
That will be one bland, inedible hunk of meat. Fat is where the flavor and tenderness comes from. Why do you think T-bones, delmnicos and strip steaks taste so good? They have ribbons of fat in them. Same goes for pot roasts. Loads of fat, loads of flavor. This is the same reason most pork nowadays is so bland. We've bred out most of the fat in pigs (except for the bacon portion).
Flavor also comes from the bones. Marrow provides the flavor and is used when making stock.
If we're going to manufacture meat from non-animals, I want my fat and bones. It goes along with my high fat, high sugar, high cholesterol way of eating. I want flavor! If I wanted blandness, I'd eat tofu.
If nothing else, PETA is getting better looking representatives [mainichi.jp] when at events.
Watch out - the posted URL links to "on.nimp.org" (Score:2, Informative)
The Space Merchants (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Isnt fake meat called... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a non-issue anyway, since meals with a couple of vegetables often cover all the essential amino acids anyway (beans on toast is one often-cited example).
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Isnt fake meat called... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:2, Informative)
sure, there are vegan methods that should be able to sustain you but most vegetarians i know are less energetic and full of life than meat-eaters.
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:3, Informative)
The human body can convert ALA to DHA and EPA, how effecient it is at that varies, I've seen numbers ranging from 0.2 to 15.2%. It seems to be better at converting it to EPA because at some place I saw values of 5% mentioned for EPA and 0.5% for DHA.
The human body can also convert between EPA to DHA and DHA to EPA, but the former are much easier to do. Whereby EPA are seen as more important nowadays.
Together that makes me belive that maybe the body just needed those 0.5% of DHA so that may be the reason because only that amount was made/converted.
The amounts of EPA and DHA which are needed are quite low, the numbers I've seen spoke about 650 mg and atleast 200 mg of each. But then it's also suggested to keep the omega6 to omega3 ratio at something like 2-5:1, and most people consume way more omega6 than omega3.
So anyway, what you say about DHA are simply completely wrong. It's true that most vegetarian fats don't contain any DHA or EPA, but since your body can convert ALA to them it's not a huge issue if you consume enough ALA.
Also (some?) microalgea produce both fat acids, and it's that way the fishes themself gets them.
http://www.water4.net/ [water4.net] sells vegan omega3 capsules made from algea, which are also free of the toxins and heavy metals found in fat fish since they don't grow it in the sea and it haven't been concentrated by the food chain.
You can visit http://www.nutritiondata.com/ [nutritiondata.com] and look up the fat acid content among other things in various food types, for instant candula, flax, chlorella and spirulina.
B12-vitamine are the real issue, and are produced by bacteria. It's easily available and cheap so not a big deal.
Also over here in Scandinavia and at similair distance from the equator it may be a good deal to supplement d-vitamine because sunlight of the right wavelengths don't hit us that much during the winters. That's not vegan specific thought and here in Sweden d-vitamine are supplemented by law in milk, butter and margarine AFAIK, all of them contains supplements of it. But since you don't eat those as a vegan you better make sure to supplement that on your own aswell.
Re:Isnt fake meat called... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:4, Informative)
Silly person, picturing that vegans and vegetarians must just eat a lot of greens or whatnot
** It's a big surprise to a lot of people that the most protein-rich foods are vegetarian, as most people associate "protein" with "meat". Look up the protein stats on, for example, tempeh or gluten. I could give you a big long list of a couple dozen common vegan foods that contain more protein per unit mass than the most protein-rich meats.
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:3, Informative)
Answer -- an incredibly insignificant amount compared to that which is produced by factory farming...which is responsible for the environmental damaged cited above.
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:2, Informative)
For those of us that are serious athletes (even as a hobby) the dietary inefficiency and possible consequences of refined plant proteins (the only sort of plant protein that gets close to a protein per pound ratio of meat) is too great.
I personally consume over 600grams of protein per day, mostly from meats. I also consume 6 cups of spinach, 6cups of brocolli, 1 cup of pumpkin seeds, 1 cup of walnuts, 1 cup milled flaxseed. I will mix in kale, mustard greens, collard greens on low-carb days. Pumpkin, sweet potato, apples, or berries on high-carb days.
So, now, tell me how, without resorting to a highly processed food powder, do I get that much protein without going over 70 grams of carbs per day?
You can't do it on a vegetarian diet.
So, if you're carbohydrate intolerant, as northern europeans tend to be, or if you tend toward zinc deficiency (very common in athletes) or EFA deficiency, vegetarian diets can be detrimental to your health. There are non-meat sources of the above nutrients but they tend to be less well absorbed than the animal versions of the same.
Also you may want to note that the more intelligent a primate gets the more efficient it becomes at obtaining animal protein sources, this is shown by homo habilis, homo erectus, and the chimpanzee. Gorilla's our large and folivorous/frugivorous buddies have the benefit of more durable teeth and a longer digestive system with more varied intestinal flora to allow them to meet their caloric needs on a restricted diet.
For the average sedentary individual the vegetarian diet will probably be beneficial in that the increased fiber consumption will increase satiety which in turn will decrease 'empty' calorie consumption. This in turn will lead to a loss or stabilization in bodymass.
When you eat meat, I encourage you to stick to game, and grass-finished meat as much as possible. If you are an athlete, embrace vegetarianism at your own risk.
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:3, Informative)
Why do people confuse these? PETA is an animal rights group. Vegans are non-animal-eating people. Some Vegans are PETA members. Some PETA members are Vegans. Some Vegans are Republicans too.
Re:They are unpleasant already (Score:1, Informative)
In any event, neither your statement, nor mine are valid comparisons for the purposes of determining voracity (dunno if that's really a word). Instead, you should compare actual herbivore teeth with those of humans and you will find that, compared to our own, they tend away from sharpness and toward large, rough, crushing and grinding surfaces. Comparing our teeth with carnivores' teeth, on the other hand, you will find that theirs tend more towards sharpness and have surfaces designed for cutting, piercing and tearing.
Not surprisingly, our teeth tend to have "a little from Column A and a little from Column B", but, since our teeth need to be able to perform both functions we are not as well developed towards either end of the spectrum -- as with most compromises, we don't do either one as well as the critters who've become specialised in such things.
So yes, our sharp teeth CAN cut through lettuce just as you can use a steak-knife to cut-through lettuce, but saying that does nothing to aid our understanding of our ability to make digestive use of said plant-matter.
Cellulose is a tough fibrous material that needs to be thoroughly ground and enzymatically processed in order for nutritional gain to be had from it and we lack the digestive tract to accomplish this feat. (Cellulose is more commonly known as "dietary fibre" in food products and in humans, is passes through the digestive tract essentially unscathed.) In fact, it turns out, when you look at it, that our dietary tract has elements slightly in common with some herbivores, and also with some carnivores, which is perfectly in-tune with what you'd expect from a creature designed to be a little of both.
Did you know that pigs/hogs are considered exemplars for omnivorous characteristics, and that in archeological digs, broken human teeth and broken pig teeth are the ones most often confused with eachother? If we're "naturally" herbivourous why do you suppose that is?
Early humans and proto-humans (and chimpanzees!) evolved to be able to utilise whatever food sources presented themselves. Before we were hunters, and long before we were gatherers (by which I mean agriculturalists), we were opportunists and that made us survivors, and also, Omnivores.
Try adding a little reality to your life, you never know, you might like it.
-AC