Meat the Food of the Future 705
Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC reports that rising food prices, the growing population, and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have food futurologists thinking about what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it. In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets as some in the food industry prognosticate meat prices could double in the next five to seven years, making meat a luxury item. 'In the West many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat,' says Morgaine Gaye. 'Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap.' Insects will become a staple of our diet. They cost less to raise than cattle, consume less water and do not have much of a carbon footprint. Plus, there are an estimated 1,400 species that are edible to man. 'Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers.' But insects will need an image overhaul if they are to become more palatable to the squeamish Europeans and North Americans, says Gaye. 'They will become popular when we get away from the word insects and use something like mini-livestock (PDF).' Another alternative would be lab grown meat as a recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, energy consumption and water use. Prof Mark Post, who led the Dutch team of scientists at Maastricht University that grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, says he wants to make lab meat "indistinguishable" from the real stuff, but it could potentially look very different. Finally algae could provide a solution to some the world's most complex problems, including food shortages as some in the sustainable food industry predict algae farming could become the world's biggest cropping industry. Like insects, algae could be worked into our diet without us really knowing by using seaweed granules to replace salt in bread and processed foods. 'The great thing about seaweed is it grows at a phenomenal rate,' says Dr Craig Rose, executive director of the Seaweed Health Foundation. 'It's the fastest growing plant on earth.'"
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:3, Interesting)
But why? If human kind managed to get most of the way to today without McDonald's 'burgers', could we not go back to fruits and grains and the occasional wooly mammoth of our ancestors?
We know a lot about nutrition - we don't need animal protein to survive. Although, personally, life without an Egg McMuffin may well not be worth it.
If you ask me (Score:4, Interesting)
Our population just topped 7 billion; if you ask me, there is already too much meat.
You already eat bugs; get over it (Score:5, Interesting)
'Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers.'
Um, yeah, you just go on thinking thats a "future tense" activity. Maybe not intentionally, maybe a lower percentage...
Or just dont eat meat (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I am a carnivore and I will not give up my Chicken, red meat and the occasional Pork item(usually bacon or sausage).
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
Land Lobsters.(They're both arthropods) Then you can charge a premium for them.
I think that would complete the circle. Lobsters used to be called the cockroaches of the sea. They were considered just barely good enough to give to your slaves.
I, Caveman (Score:4, Interesting)
So, interestingly enough... I caught an episode of Morgan Spurloch's new docu/experiment.
In the episode I saw 2 people leave, and one essentially go crazy from lack of protein. What happened first was the smallest thinnest woman probed to be the most incapable of dealing with the extreme lack of meat protein and fat. She voluntarily left when the "tribe" failed twice to kill an elk. Strangely enough the supposed semi-pro hunter of the group voluntarily left second. He couldn't deal with the frustration of failing to kill an elk with a spear and atlatl. Morgan kept trying to kill a muskrat, but also couldn't remain patient enough to land a killing blow.
The weirdest thing was how the sanity of the vegetarian played out. She consistently tried to brainwash the other tribe members by constantly complaining about animal meat. IIRC she successfully swayed the tiny girl that left to not eat any of the fish they caught because none of the other tribe members would remove the head... Yes. She refused dire nutrients because it had a face on it and the vegetarian brain-washed here into essentially starving until she volunteered to leave from lack of food and partial dehydration.
The next morning after the semi-pro hunter left, a few of the tribe members (including the woman that got her feet wet and complained about being cold while intentionally avoiding huddling around the campfire) set out early to stalk the elk herd. Back at camp, the vegetarian did literally nothing for the tribe; however she made herself a nice salad of grass and leaves... ROFL. The other members at camp started building a drying rack in the hopes the hunters brought back some meat to preserve.
The first atlatl strike missed the target and almost startled the herd into fleeing, however the second guy landed a beautiful shot to the neck of a large buck. They waited a few moments until it collapsed then went in for the kill. I was proud to see the woman (I think her name was Manu) make the kill shot by puncturing the elk's lung. All 4 members of the hunting party became extremely emotional about killing the large majestic mammal.
They performed a small ritual, thanking the animal for its sacrifice, then proceeded to draw and quarter it. They hauled over 200lbs of fresh elk meat back to camp for all of the tribe to share... except the vegetarian.
The vegetarian immediately began complaining that they had murdered an animal to consume. She began gagging in what I believe was an attempt at spreading a mass hysteric type social reflex (think of a yawn and how it seems to spread). Then came the complaints about how gross it was to butcher it in the field, and she wasn't going to eat any it because it was against her beliefs.
Here is where they pan to the actual scientists running the show. They began to discuss the ramifications of tribe members that refuse to contribute to the tribe, and how in ancient times there were rules to compensate for the lazy and belligerent. Next they began to discuss how if the "experiment" continued how she would rapidly become emaciated and essentially starve to death from lack of edible plant proteins in the wild.
So, the moral is that animals need to die for homo sapien sapiens to survive in our modern bodies as they evolved. Over the last 3 years I have been cutting out plant protein/sugar as my staple and replacing it with animal protein/fat. I feel 100x healthier and happier than I have in over a decade. As long as there are ungulates I will never return to plants as my staple diet. If that means poaching, so be it. Humans require animal protein/fat to be healthy. It's scientifically proven.
Re:Meat gap? (Score:4, Interesting)
Meat is easy.
If you dump animal proteins then you actually have to know what you are doing. Otherwise you can do permanent damage to yourselves. If you're going to be a vegetarian then you need the tribal knowledge to back it up and most Westerners simply don't have that.
Also, if we let all of corn fields go fallow, the cows could live off of that. We can't. That's an important detail that's missed here.
Cattle used to be semi-wild animals that just wandered around and mostly fended for themslves. It's the same for grazing animals in general.
A lot of effort and fossil fuel goes into turning grasslands into something that a human might be able to eat. Even if we repurpose the American midwest to direct human feed crops, a lot of high tech effort has to go into it.
Re:Help me out here, I'm a bit confused (Score:5, Interesting)
It worked for rape seed oil, err, I mean "canola" and for mechanically reclaimed meat in place of "lips, ringpieces and bits of meat blasted off the bones".
It will work for grasshoppers.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
Bio-reactor milk? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always wondered why we use cows to generate milk. Given that most of milk is relatively simple (water, sugars, chalk, oil), why can't we have bioreactor into which we put grass-clippings, and get out something roughly similar to milk?
The need for adding protein, and some kinds of vitamins might be moderately tricky, but I should think that this wouldn't matter for many applications. The only thing that would require the full complexity of real milk would be in making (good quality) cheese. This would also appeal to vegans, some vegetarians, and many people with lactose intolerance.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to http://www.americanbisonsocietyonline.org/AboutUs/Timeline.aspx [americanbi...online.org] there were 25-30 million bison on the Great Plains before we started seriously hunting them to the point of reducing their population.
According to http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx [beefusa.org] there are about 95 million cattle in the US as of 2011. About 33 million were harvested in 2011.
So if we're willing to reduce the beef production by a factor of 3 from where we are now, we can probably avoid human management. Otherwise, chances are human management is needed.
That said, we certainly have enough beef for just the US here; the problems, if any, start when beef exports start competing on price with domestic purchases.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:4, Interesting)
So long as we in the US continue to subsidize corn and raise livestock on it, meat will remain in easy reach of residents of the united states. That's not even considering how an entire huge segment of the population would take the news that they can't do big barbecues anymore. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying this is what I anticipate will happen.
There's already a substantial percentage of people in the US who can't afford to eat. To me anything over zero is substantial given the wealth of the US and here we're talking about 506,000 households or roughly 49 million Americans (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17hunger.html).
Before the idiots on here slam the media, I'll point out that even if you cut this number by a factor of ten you'd still have five million Americans not having enough food. Five million. In the richest country in the world.
I probably don't have to say just how pitiful that is.
Re:You already eat bugs; get over it (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe not intentionally, maybe a lower percentage...
And that makes all the damn difference. I'm not going to intentionally eat bugs, and I certainly wouldn't eat any food if I knew that it often came with insects...
Why not? Ant larva are absolutely delicious with guacamole and crackers. Crickets are nice and crunchy. Snails (arguably not an insect) are absolutely delicious with a twist of garlic. You eat alga whenever you eat maki at a suhi bar.
Haven't your parents taught you to try food before saying you don't like it?
Lobsters: fertilizer, restrictions on eating, ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Land Lobsters.(They're both arthropods) Then you can charge a premium for them.
I think that would complete the circle. Lobsters used to be called the cockroaches of the sea. They were considered just barely good enough to give to your slaves.
IIRC ...
There were actually laws in the Massachusetts Bay colony limiting how often you could feed your servants lobster. Are they still on the books?
Lobsters were heavily harvested but were often used as fertilizer for the fields.
At some point someone applied butter heavily, served it to the queen, she said she liked it and things changed virtually overnight. The trash food of the lowest "class" became gourmet.
This still happens today. My grandfather grew up in Italy poor and hungry. He laughs a little when looking at the menu in Italian restaurants in the U.S. today. Some of the featured and expensive dishes offered are quite literally the meals he was mocked for eating as a child by the kids from wealthier families.
Some vegetarians eat meat when they feel "off" (Score:4, Interesting)
The vegetarian/vegan forums are all full of people who go on a fad vegan diet and end up not feeling well or having other issues because they did not adjust their diet properly
I have a vegetarian friend who goes that path for health reasons, not religion, politics nor philosophy. Once every month or two he "surprises" us (coworkers) by eating meat at lunch. He explained that when he feels his body is a little off he understands that there may be a nutritional imbalance. He understands that a meat free lifestyle is not natural for our species, its not the environment we evolved in. So he does the practical and natural thing. On extremely rare occasions he may try a meat dish out of curiosity. For example when working in the US Gulf Coast region he tried alligator with the rest of us.
Another friend is purely vegetarian. However he comes from a society that has a long history of vegetarianism and as another poster mentioned, such "tribal wisdom" is of great benefit when planning/implementing a vegetarian diet. This friend is strong and healthy, healthy as in he is a marathon runner.
Careful and well informed planning seems to be absolutely necessary for a purely vegetarian lifestyle.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is garbage and the latest in a long line of "we're all going to die" crap.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Interesting)
Only USA Today would quote a floral designer on the history of crustaceans.
Re:Utter nonsense (Score:3, Interesting)
If the food supply comes down to eating bugs...well, I'm glad I won't be around for it when it comes down to that. I don't foresee this happening in my lifetime.
I LOVE to cook, and love to be creative in the kitchen, and explore foods...but I draw the line at fucking BUGS.
I don't worry about meat prices going up....I've been cutting down on animal proteins lately....if I want a steak, I'll wait and have GOOD steak...something prime, and dry aged for about 20 something days. Sure it is $22-$24/lb. But I don't eat it every day. When good cuts of meat are on sale, I'll buy and grind my own...and have a great burger. I don't do fast food...
But really, it would NOT hurt the US, at least...to change the diet back to more of a plant based diet. We'll need to stop all the subsidies and over farming of useless corn that humans can't directly eat without being run through tons of processing.
Many point out, this move in our food supply is likely a large part of the obesity problem in the US anyway.
Will I go vegetarian or vegan? NO.
But I am moving to make most of my plate plant based....and use meats and dairy as a treat and flavoring rather than the part that covers 90% of my plate. Seeing that show, Forks over Knives....was a bit of an eye opener...and the more I research...the more truth that appears to be there.
And at the very least...I've noticed my food bill has decreased a good bit. Shopping around the edges of the grocery store (fresh produce, etc) and cooking your foods yourselves, is not only healthier, but much more economical. Just scan the food ads for the various stores in your area, and plan your weekly menus from there....get up early one morning to beat the crowds...buy, and cook and eat leftovers for lunches. Poor people can eat much better than they do with the crap food at fast food places. It just takes a little time and effort.
I basically do all my grocery shopping for the week on early Sat. mornings, or even Sunday mornings. I usually cook most of the afternoon on Sundays...preparing 3 or so main dishes and about the same sides...or even just grill a bunch of stuff, that can easily be made into other meals during the week. I don't start running out of foods till about Friday or so....
Better to cook and eat home 99% of the time...and money saved is what I use to go out and dine somewhere where I'll get good service, excellent food and a good bottle of wine.
However,...nowhere in that scenario, do I see bugs being a food source.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
"Gamey" to me means it has a metallic, "liver-ish" aftertaste. But I happen to like that. Most Americans won't touch organ meat, but you get a hint of that flavor in game muscle tissue.
I once had a huge wild duck pig-out with a hunter friend of mine. The drumsticks, which wild ducks hardly use, were indistinguishable from domestic duck. If anything they were sweeter. The breast (which the animal uses to fly) was a much more powerful muscle, and it was distinctly gamey. I actually enjoyed the gamey breast better, because domestic duck I can have any day of the week. It also helped that the duck was cooked to perfection -- there isn't a lot of margin for error in cooking game if you don't want it to end up like shoe leather. This was at a Chinese restaurant that was willing to cook its customers game -- how cool is that?
I've had rattlesnake, which wasn't exactly chicken-like, but it did have a remote resemblance. I think the "tastes like chicken" thing means "leaner than marbled beef". When I was young, pork tasted quite different than it does now. Hog farmers, conscious of the negative public attitude toward fat, are producing lean pork that is very close to chicken in flavor. Recently I had some wild boar, and it was a revelation. The flavor was so intense I wasn't sure at first that I liked it. Imagine the taste difference between a pork chop and a chicken breast, then multiply that by 100x.
The plant equivalent of chicken, by the way, is "asparagus". For some reason many wild plants seem to remind people of asparagus.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, the best beef for you is not from a cow being fed corn from giant trough which is also sludged up with manure, dead cow parts, and days-old standing water. How about a cow eating grass, seeing as they happen to be ruminants?
So yes, GOOD meat would be less expensive if the government stopped subsidizing the corn industries. In fact, the whole idea of massive farms growing nothing but corn is the stupidest waste of land possible. Corn has very low benefit for both humans and cows, but it just happens to be easy to ship long-distance. Ask yourself "Why do they need subsidies to survive?" It's just like the "too big to fail" banking system that must be subsidized at the cost of huge segments of our economy. Politics and power never seem to collude in our benefit.
The whole concept of the monoculture industrial farming system has ruined generations of farmland. The age-old concept of rotational grazing [jclandtrust.org] as well as other sustainable methods [polyfacefarms.com] has actually been shown to produce much more return for square acre than typical large-scale industrial farming, but our whole government and food-regulation system makes it very hard for these kinds of farms to compete. Check out Joel Salatin's book "Everything I Want to do is Illegal".
Re:More efficient to grow but less efficient as fu (Score:2, Interesting)
Evolution is a process of changing. Our diets can change too.
Evolution is the process of adaptation to the environment, so you can have more children.
I am amused by the vehemence with which people insist that vegetarian diets are insufficient, or require so much planning as to be impractical. This just is not true. That doesn't make vegetarianism obligatory or anything. Jeez.
I get annoyed because many vegans/vegetarians are almost evangelical in their fervor, and have to tell everyone that they are vegetarians, and how everyone in the universe should also be. If you don't want to eat meat, fine, I don't care. If you keep telling me not to, then I'll get a bit pissy at you. Also, the fact that many of the veggies in this discussion are idiots, and don't know much about human history ("we never ate meat!"), or saying that a diet with meat in it is somehow detrimental.
I am amused by the vehemence with which people insist that vegetarian diets are insufficient, or require so much planning as to be impractical. This just is not true. That doesn't make vegetarianism obligatory or anything. Jeez.
I'm sure they are perfectly sufficient (I went to school with several vegetarians and pescetarians who were fine), and they do require a fair bit of planning... But it is possible. Sadly in the west it is not a diet for poor people, though. It is doable other places, but here it isn't. Or at least it isn't enough variety to keep it nice. I had a girlfriend who quit a 10 year vegitarian binge because she moved down in income a bit and got sick of the monotony (and being forced to order pilaf at restaurants). She also got sick of me eating better looking food with meat in it. She did wind up at the hospital after trying meat though, since he system stopped being able to break it down as well as an omnivore like me.
Some vegetarians (not the majority, but the loud idiotic ones, who really think anyone should give two shits about what they like eating) do think it should be obligatory. Or think that dietary choices somehow make them superior.. I think its probably just cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head again.. You made a major life-style choice, and sacrificed a lot of dietary variety, so obviously it must be the best possible choice, and everyone else who chose different is inferior.
Again, some, not all. A smart omnivorous diet is just as healthy as a smart vegetarian diet. A stupid one is just as bad, no matter what dietary road you want to take.
Re:Utter nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
TFA is yet more crazed futurism predicting global disaster. Like all the past predictions of the future it will be wrong.
The reason prices are rising is not overpopulation or environmental damage. prices are rising because we have too many quasi-socialist, socialist, communist and dictatorship regimes and not enough freedom and capitalism in the world. the more government and the pointy-heads try to intervene and control the economies of the world, the more expensive things become. thus, more people drop into poverty and the poor suffer more.
You want abundant cheap food? Limit governments to their proper 'referee' role in the economy and watch food production take off. Obesity will be the new 'epidemic' the world over as we launch our well-fed butts into space on private industry rockets that take us to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
Or we can keep diddling around here with command economy failure as the world slowly starves to death while corrupt giant governments pay farmers to leave land fallow and use farmland as military dumps then start wars over a dwindling food and fuel supply as humanity fades into oblivion.
Personally, I prefer the privatized vision of the future. Seems much nicer to me.