A Fresh Take On Fake Meat 317
JMarshall writes: Impossible Foods, a Silicon Valley food start-up started by a Stanford professor who quit his job, just raised $108 million to pursue a plant-based burger that truly tastes like meat. This ACS article explains how Impossible Foods and other startups and researchers are tackling the tricky chemical and engineering challenge of making fake meat that tastes real. "Meat flavors and aromas come from thousands of volatile small molecules released by muscle and fat cell destruction. Flavor precursors start with an animal’s diet, which influences the molecular composition of its cells. After slaughter, enzymes in an animal’s muscle cells begin breaking down biomolecules into simpler amino acids, sugars, and fatty acids. This means some flavor molecules develop even as the meat ages during its trip to the store. Other flavor and aroma components emerge from reactions between sugars, amino acids, or fatty acids as the meat is cooked."
I found another unicorn! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I found another unicorn! (Score:5, Interesting)
Are people who are concerned about what they eat going to embrace a chemical s**t storm just because it's meatless?
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It's for people who want the THIS IS HEALTHY label on the box, who aren't going to check the ingredient list to verify that its healthy, and think what they're eating is healthy. IAfter all, the label can't be wrong.
Re:I found another unicorn! (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, Almond 'Milk' drinkers.
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Re:I found another unicorn! (Score:4, Informative)
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I only like cow's milk when it's steamed in my capuccinos. Weird, huh? I don't drink milk otherwise. My favorite ersatz milk was Oat Dreams, which I can't get anymore in Montreal.
Hey Mutant, most adult humans can't digest milk. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I called you a mutant. I'm one also, from the Northern/Western European version of the mutations that let adult humans digest lactose. (There are other groups of humans that also have that - the Masai in Kenya, for instance - and most of them evolved independently about 5000 years ago.) Most normal humans are lactose-intolerant as adults, so they get indigestion if they drink raw cow milk, though most of them can handle cheeses and some other sufficiently fermented milk products.
Theoretically I can drink milk; in practice I almost never do, unless it's got coffee or cocoa in it, or it's on cereal or something.
Re: Hey Mutant, most adult humans can't digest mil (Score:5, Funny)
Hello my Lactose Master Race brothers! Is this where the meeting is at?
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Meeting's down at the ice cream place.
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Think of it this way -- the more almond milk he buys, the more real milk for you.
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Re:I found another unicorn! (Score:5, Insightful)
But it doesn't have to taste like meat. That part is pointless I feel. If they don't want to eat meat than that's fine. Veggie burgers are good too (not the tofu junk) and even meat eaters like them. It's just that the need to make faux meat seems strange to me. It's not like they're coming off of a lifetime of heroin and need something like methodone to keep themselves clean.
I know when I visit the veggie line for lunch the worst things they have are the meat substitutes, like seitan or tempeh.
Re:I found another unicorn! (Score:5, Interesting)
They will if they are the sort who abstain from meat due to ethical considerations (the "fish are friends, not food" crowd). Your chemic shitstorm isn't alive so there's no ethical debate about eating them.
Also normal people who don't give two shits will eat it. I eat normal meat but if this tasted like real meat, and wasn't substantially less healthy or more costly, I'd eat it for sure.
If it comes even close in price I can see restaurants choosing it because then they don't have to have separate vegetarian and vegan menu options.
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The problem is it will turn out to be bad for you. Factory produced problems.
Me, I'll stick with pasture raised, naturally grown meats. They are a nicely integrated part of our vegetable and fruit farming too. It's a system that works. Permaculture.
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They will if they are the sort who abstain from meat due to ethical considerations (the "fish are friends, not food" crowd). Your chemic shitstorm isn't alive so there's no ethical debate about eating them.
The probelm is that the "fish are friends" crowd are also the "chemicals are bad m'kay" crowd. They eat organic, fair trade, ethically cultivated, save the whales vegan because everything else is factory farmed, chemical laden, horse meat infected rubbish that give them the cancers and the autisms. They also like to ignore the fact their organic cucumber is just a normal cucumber that has had the price jacked up on it.
Put simply, they have an irrational fear of non-descript chemicals (not anything specif
Re:I found another unicorn! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're being unfair and unnecessarily polarizing. Just because you've met people who have both beliefs doesn't mean they always go together. People aren't always either right about everything or wrong about everything.
I'm not convinced there's any correlation at all, though there could be. As anecdotal evidence, at the time of writing there are four responses to my post. Two of them are explicitly meat eaters who are making the "chemicals are bad" argument and both precluding any possibility they are wrong. Clearly none of them are vegans.
I've also met lots of vegetarians and vegans, and literally none of them have irrational fears of chemicals in foods (they have rational fears of things that actually cause food poisoning and such). The only time I've seen those two beliefs together are in stereotypes.
In fact, the person I know who is most irrational about food is almost a complete carnivore. He's all-in on his keto diet. He lost like 150 lbs when he switched to basically only ever eating sausages, and from that he's drawn the conclusion that a co-worker of ours could cure her Multiple Sclerosis by cutting the grains and veggies out of her diet. Second place goes to a vegetarian who was pretty convinced that ancient humans never hunted for meat.
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Lots of people do it for Religious reasons, for instance, Adventists.
I once dated an Adventist girl who lived in Loma Linda, CA, which has a very high population of Adventists. I was amazed when I first walked into her local grocery store - there was aisle after aisle after aisle of stuff pretending to be meat.
It was bizarre.
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I'm sorry to have to be the one to break it to you, but everything you eat -- and drink -- is a chemical shitstorm.
"Foods. Chemistry." That's like saying "Oceans. Water." No, wait. It's actually like saying "Oceans. Chemistry." :)
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No shit, sherlock.
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So, what exactly in my post are you objecting to, or denigrating?
Just curious.
I wasn't the one who described one food as a "chemical shitstorm" with the implication that other foods aren't also "chemical shitstorms." That was tachdab1
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They *obviously* meant "artificial", or "processed", of which some people have illogical paranoia.
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There are some people that are vegan but also conflate that with non-GMO, or chakras, or some other fucked up shit. I'm vegan, so my only concern is "is this made from animals?"
If not, it goes in my belly.
The answer to your next question is "because I like burgers, but meat is made from factory-farmed tortured animals. The standards for slaughterhouses and human consumption are so low that you're actually eating literal shit, and probably pus from a cow's tumour. Yes, really. Plus, factory farming is th
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Since when does a tofu burger "taste real"?
Cows are fake (Score:2)
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Cows are fractal: http://mndl.hu/2008-02-01-frac... [mndl.hu]
Why not eat meat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Our bodies evolved over millions of years to eat meat. The fact that your senses crave the smells, taste, and texture of meat means... your body wants meat. Now, we all know that you should eat it in moderation because of the problems of overeating. But meat in reasonable portions is naturally good for you.
All of this biochemical engineering to come up with a meat substitute is reminiscent of all the chemical companies trying to come up with artificial sweeteners. The end result is probably as bad for you or worse than the original.
Eat your meat. That way you can have your pudding.
Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on the professor I guess... Could be just to cash in on the vegetarian / vegan / health market like everybody else seems to be doing. Could also be a 'think of the future' thing. Meat produced from grazing animals (e.g.: beef) is pretty inefficient to raise for our tables. As the worlds population grows we might need to start thinking about alternatives to satiate our bellies. In the future you have an alternative to that beef flavored partially refined locust protein burger everybody has been talking about if the professor is successful :)
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Why would you take something as glorious as meat and turn it into something lesser like a vegetable?
Do you hate bacon or something evil like that?
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Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:5, Informative)
I eat (and enjoy) meat myself, but if there's a way to get that texture and flavor (texture is the most important part, I think) in a healthier and more sustainable way - I'd love to see it happen so long as the final result is actually more efficient to produce and healthier to eat. As you say, many artificial foods have ended up being worse than what they were meant to replace.
How about a counter opinion? Or you know "Facts". (Score:2)
HINT: Bring back the cows to desert areas.
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Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:4, Insightful)
I subscribe to an evolutionary theory of nutrition, which says that we do best if we eat what our ancestors ate for tens of thousands of years. We were designed to eat meat, but because we didn't have refrigeration, we didn't eat meat very often. Gorging on red meat a couple times a month should be fine; eating it for every meal, not so much.
Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Our bodies evolved over millions of years to crave the smell, taste, and texture of COOKED meat?
Not millions, but easily tens of thousands. Which is enough to to develop an aversion or affinity to a certain kind of smell.
Try this test. Take a chunk of raw beef, slice it in half and cook one of them on an open fire (in an appetizing way so that you'd wanna eat it... don't burn it). Leave the other half raw. Present both halves to a dog and see which one it goes for first. Now repeat this test on a tiger or some other non-domesticated carnivore.
I'll bet you the dog goes for the cooked meat and the tiger
Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:5, Funny)
The dog will go for whichever one is closer and then try to eat the second one, at least judging by all the dogs I've known. Dogs are not as particular as you imply.
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I like to thing one of my dogs is fairly average intelligence but she absolutely loves food. She would eat the parsley, both steaks, the plates and anything else that smelled like the meat. She will lick every inch of her dish three or four times after eating something like real meat just to make sure she got every ounce of scent out. She also eats so fast that I'm surprised she hasn't choked to death already.
Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:5, Funny)
Try this test. Take a chunk of raw beef, slice it in half and cook one of them on an open fire (in an appetizing way so that you'd wanna eat it... don't burn it). Leave the other half raw. Present both halves to a dog and see which one it goes for first. Now repeat this test on a tiger or some other non-domesticated carnivore.
Ok, I tried this experiment. I ate the dog, and then I ate the tiger.
What do I do now . . . ?
Please advise.
Re: Why not eat meat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Speak for yourself please. My body doesn't crave meat and i don't particularly like the taste of many meats, especially beef. I would take good cheese or nice rye bread or vegetables over meat any day. But meat is often cheaper, otherwise i'd probably eat meat once a week or so.
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I'm sure some people can condition themselves to suppress their cravings. And if you want to live that way, go right ahead. But eating meat is an instinct inherited through evolution.
Statistically, as a tendency, yes. Categorically, for everyone, no. I know people who never liked meat. They just don't crave meat.
People are generally common, but they're not just all the same.
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Humans, like our primate relatives, do eat non-vegetable matter. Moreover, there is a case to be made that it is through our discovery of FIRE that our success as a species really started to take off, because while other animals consume their nutrition raw, the act of cooking one's food to break down plant and animal matter enabled the human digestive system to be simpler and less energy-consuming. We essentially offloaded a good part of the function of digestion into cooking, and this is what allowed us
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Because (Score:2)
Oh, I agree. However, I also recognize that eating meat is a little hard on the animal that supplied it, at least the way we're doing it now, which is to say, we're killing them.
While I would welcome a veggie burger that actually tasted like meat, I'm feeling dubious that it actually does. Until it does, I put my charitable donations towards development of tech that may be able to (eventually) provide meat raised without a host animal. The tech is n
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The roughly one billion people on the planet who intentionally don't eat meat because of cultural/religious reasons seem not to know that their body craves for it.
Why not writing a book about the 'craving for meat' and sell it to them, lets say for $10 per volume? You should be a multi millionaire even a billionaire in no time!
Re:Why not eat meat? (Score:4, Insightful)
medical literature shows significantly lower incidence of diseases such as cancer and ischemic heart disease in populations eating a vegetarian diet
Correlation is not causation. Those populations either have much poorer healthcare and die of other things, go undiagnosed, or they're young health nuts who don't have many unhealthy symptoms like smoking, lack of exercise, and overweight.
Is this really important? (Score:3)
I've been eating fake meat in various forms since the late seventies. It's mostly a matter of convenience, so I can partake in events like barbecues as a vegetarian. Fake meat patties and cutlets and so forth have various flavors and textures, none of which taste like real meat. (at least, as far as I can remember) But is it necessarily bad that they have their own taste? If the taste and texture are pleasing, (some are, and some are not) does it really matter if it tastes nutty or tofu-y and not meaty? I guess what I'm asking is, what problem are we trying to solve here?
I have a friend who is a vegetarian chef, and she says if you're trying to be vegetarian but only eat products that ape the food you don't eat anymore, what's the point?
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Some vegetarians don't eat meat because they don't like it but for many that isn't the reason. They like the way meat tastes but they refuse to eat it for a variety of other reasons. It might be moral (they don't like animals being slaughtered for food), due to health concerns (meat is often said to be bad for you, although this is generally not true if you eat it in moderation), or because meat production is horrendously inefficient (usually out of some concern for the those starving in poor countries, eve
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The only non-pretentious dietary vegan (she still buys and wears leather, etc) I know switched in an effort for her and her husband to get off cholesterol meds. It has worked for them, but yeah, they eat a lot of "replacement meat-like products". As was said upthread, why bother if you are just going to eat stuff that (poorly) imitates what you no longer eat by choice?
One other NPV (who is no longer vegan, or even vegetarian - back to omnivore-hood!) I know did it to become more conscious of the world aro
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he said that if he hit a deer with his car he'd happily take it home and eat it - he had already interacted with it
Please post a link to the tube of "him" . . . "interacting" with a deer.
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He didn't... But I was querying him about his choice for vegan-ism.
Beer? Yah, yeast don't count.
What about your leather jacket, etc? It was before this "experience" and the effect of him purchasing it had already rippled out, no longer a concern.
"Well, what if you hit a deer on your way home from work?"
"If it were dead or totally disabled I'd cut its throat, bleed it out, and grill it up - no use in wasting. It isn't *my* choice to hit the deer - rather, it is the deer's choice to jump the road in front o
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The point is that I'm not trying to be vegetarian, yet some vegetarians and most climate change activists are screaming that raising livestock for meat is a horrendous generator of methane and CO2, a tremendously poor use of land and water resources, and ethically suspect.
Despite all this, ham and beef are very tasty.
So forgive those who bel
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For those who like meatish things there is always Arby's.
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Well as an omnivore, if I buy a vegie burger to cook on a barbecue I'm expecting it to taste of caramelized chickpeas and exotic herbs and spices of the Levant.
It would be a disappointment, personally, if it tasted of beef.
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Well as an omnivore, if I buy a vegie burger to cook on a barbecue I'm expecting it to taste of caramelized chickpeas and exotic herbs and spices of the Levant.
It would be a disappointment, personally, if it tasted of beef.
Yes, exactly my point. Even speaking as a vegetarian, I figure if you want to taste beef, eat beef.
I still miss bacon, though.
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I guess what I'm asking is, what problem are we trying to solve here?
We've got a lot of people out there who really like to eat meat, and aren't likely to give it up anytime soon. To meet their demand, we've got a meat industry that is inefficient, unhygienic, environmentally harmful, and cruel to animals.
If (and it's a big if) someone can come up with a meat substitute that is sufficiently similar to the real thing, and cheaper to produce and to buy, then the problematic meat industry will likely shrink down into a much-less-problematic niche/specialty market for foodies.
Alternate plan (Score:4, Interesting)
Who says I want the taste of real meat? (Score:3)
I don't want to have the taste of meat. Nor do I want the slightly cardboardy taste of current "veg meat" foods (though it is improving).
Instead, I want something which combines the best aspects of the flavours of both real meat and fake meat.
Only fake meat can even attempt to reach that solution, or at least can offer a far bigger variety of flavours than real meat could hope to offer.
Is it the taste that matters? (Score:2)
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My issues aren't moral
But does it have truly complete protein? (Score:3)
I just don't get the point of mimicing meat (Score:4, Insightful)
Why even try to mimic meat? It struck me the first time I walked into a grocery in an Adventist community - there were multiple aisles of highly processed vegetable/fungus/grain matter trying to resemble meat.
I mean, especially if you're living a totally meatless lifestyle, why even kowtow to the omnivore food culture?
For example, look at Middle Eastern cuisine. Sure, they have kabobs, etc, but things like Falafel, Faul, Hummus, Baba Ghanouj, Tabouleh and Dolmas are all fantastic, and none of them are trying to mimic a hunk of beef or chicken.
Same with Asian food. There are fantastic meatless dishes that don't try to resemble an animal part.
Why do we do it in the West? Marketing?
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Simple.
A lot of us like the taste of meat, but wouldn't mind a friendly substitute, especially if it were cheaper.
Re:dont want it to taste like meat (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheaper is about the only justification I could see for it. As the FDA has been getting more and more of a clue lately, it's basically been found that red meat isn't actually bad for you after all. The original belief in that (as well as the belief that meat causes high cholesterol) originated from some poorly done studies in the early 60's and late 70's.
Re:dont want it to taste like meat (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also "I don't want to kill animals for the sake of my dinner". Meat in moderation isn't bad for you, but there are plenty of other reasons why a lot of us don't eat it.
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Then don't kill animals for you dinner.
Do what billions of people do.
Pay someone ELSE to kill animals for your dinner.
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It seems like those people are just impossible to please. Yes, your dinner doesn't taste like meat. That's what you signed on for there, buddy!
Of course, the point of the article is that several companies are well on their way to making it possible to please those people. Science!
Re:dont want it to taste like meat (Score:5, Interesting)
The original belief in that (as well as the belief that meat causes high cholesterol) originated from some poorly done studies in the early 60's and late 70's.
FWIW, there are many contradictory studies made in this area that correlate read-meat consumption with higher mortality. Earlier studies that blamed cholesterol and fat in meat were poor studies, but there are more modern studies that illustrate correlation. Some studies blame gut bacteria that converts Carnitine into TMAO. Some blame the nitrates in processed meat. Some studies show an increased link with certain cancers. Some studies blame poor dental hygiene causing a general inflammation response leading to heart disease.
We may not know the truth yet in this matter, except there is some correlation (but if there is actually causation is a bit of a mystery still).
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Re:dont want it to taste like meat (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's a veggie burger, not a veggie patty. They are expressly trying to simulate meat, because there are also people like me who quite like meat and quite dislike vegetables. I might move to a veggie burger but sure as hell am not going to move to a vegemite patty, a bean patty, or 90% of whatever ground-vegetable-matter-in-puck-form you're after.
Don't complain that a thing called a "burger" is trying to simulate a "real burger." Complain that they aren't making something some other thing that tastes way too much like a vegetable.
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Potassium chloride.
Calcium chloride.
Magnesium chloride.
Several of my friends from high school, and the first amendment, and a government where religion does not have monopoly rights to defining a purely legal arrangement (says this atheist).
Sod off you relic.
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So, all you have is semantics? Figures...
Ah, yes, sure. Pure legalese, this:
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Only a true moron has the gall to claim that something is a "self-contradictory, meaningless term" and then complain that the argument against them is "semantics."
se-man-tics
noun
the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning
They eat vegetables in Hamburg (Score:2)
My experience as a vegetarian wandering around the Germanies on vacation is that if you leave out the beef and pork, and convince them you don't eat fish or chicken either, the cuisine is, if not light-weight exactly, at least light enough to lose weight while still not being hungry all the time. Sometimes you have to resort to beer being the protein course of your meal, but that's ok.
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You're just not using enough garlic. They should taste like garlic chicken.
Vegetarians taste like cows, not chicken (Score:2)
(ObMOOOO.) Cows are usually vegetarian (not vegan, of course, but it's not exploitative for calves to drink cow's milk.)
Chickens aren't - their natural diet includes insects, but if your corpse were lying around and had time to rot a bit, they'd totally eat you too. Pigs and goats would probably wait until you're dead, but not much longer. Almost all fish eat other fish; it's only the really bottom end of their food chain that eat plants. Sheep don't have the same reputation that goats do about eating
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Why are you eating a veggie "burger" if you don't care for anything that resembles meat? Just slap some tofu on a bun or jam some spinach in there or something.
Do you actually have a craving for vegetarian matter processed and formed into a hamburger shape?
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They usually do that if the meat is prepared like crap. I personally think a good marble steak gets ruined by condiments.
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I wonder how much "fake" meat they can come up with for $108 million. Because $108 million sure buys a lot of cattle and the land to keep them on. And a herd large enough to maintain its numbers and pay its own expenses. I know a lot of farmers who have started with far less...
If you come up with a killer meat substitute you can sell to large parts of the population, you can sell for way more than 34 cent per American. It's a bit like asking how many drivers could you hire for the money Google has spent on a driverless car. Probably a lot, but if you can make it happen you'll still make killer profit. On the other hand if it's another substitute only vegetarians and masochists would eat, not so much.
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Aye (Score:2)
Example: I went to purchase a Dog Treat the other day from Costco, "Healthy Choice" something Milk Bones, ingredients: 1| Chicken, 2| Sugar...
What the fuck is sugar being added to dog treats for. And that is pretty much your choice for any packaged Human food too, if it doesn't have HFCS or the branded newly branded "Corn Sugar" (w
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What the fuck is sugar being added to dog treats for.
Roll up your shirt sleeve, and take a bite out of your arm. It will taste rather salty. Now, put some ketchup, which is mostly sugar, on your arm, and take another bite. It will taste better.
That is why sugar is added to doggie treats . . . it's their ketchup.
What Foods are Toxic to Dogs? (Score:2)
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Oh FFS. No, it's not people. (Score:3)
True spoiler alert: it's algae. The whole "people" thing? Just Hollywood screwing up a good SF story. As usual. No more than that.
Harry Harrison: Make Room, Make Room
Read it. I guarantee it will be a better experience than that ridiculous movie ever was.
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In soviet russia, cow posts you, kid.
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If it's honestly exactly the same taste, texture and nutrition, then why not? Meat is expensive, and kinda sucks for the environment. I don't have moral objections to eating meat in terms of the fact that an animal bred for the purpose is getting butchered, as long as it's done humanely, but I certainly have objections to it on environmental grounds, there just aren't any good alternatives. If there were, though... why not?
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Maybe not suddenly, but if it tastes good enough, there are nutritional reasons (lower fats, for example) and most importantly the price is right, then I could easily see artificial meat sitting in the grocery store and being offered on menus.
There will always be a huge market for real meat, of course, but if alternatives are available then alternatives will always be taken by somebody.
=Smidge=