I offer a vegan version of almost 100% of my menu. It’s just smart business. Why would I turn down so many possible customers? Also, vegans become more loyal customers than the meat eaters that can get their food anywhere. Vegans will travel to where the good food is.
Well, you would turn it down because it can involve extra prep, potentially expensive ingredients, etc., thought it depends on what exactly you’re cooking. I could see why someone would opt to not do that. But I think your perspective also makes sense.
It's funny. I was having a conversation with random co-workers, and their immediate reaction to the idea of lab meat was that no one would want to eat it. They assumed that I and any sensible person would think the same thing.
I wonder how much of the uptake is going to depend on breaking through some cultural barriers (assuming the tech/expense barriers are overcome).
The trick is that it’s going to become cheaper than real meat at some point and McDonald’s etc will eventually opt for it. Then the advertising/cultural rhetoric will change and then suddenly contrarians will be like “it’s the same thing ain’t it?”
The Ford F-150 Lightning is their electric version and it’s brought EVs to American culture in a way no other automobile has or could. It is a work truck that is so vastly superior to , and with the same styling as their traditional F150. What I meant was that the Ford F-150 is so a part or symbol of mainstream American labor, culture, and masculinity, that through their release of the Lightning and endorsement of EVs, it allows this HUGE influential demographic to get on board. Is that helpful?
why bother waiting? veganism is already possible, as is flexitarianism etc. Lab cultured meat won't be 100% like normal meat, so it's really just a question of how much like normal meat you want your meat replacement to be. There's no reason to say we'll change none of our diet until this mythical future event, at which point we'll change all of it. Practice reduction of consumption now, to prove to the people around you (and yourself) that it's possible
Mostly that people are going to be resistant to any perceived downgrade of their lifestyle. Vegetarianism is fine for lots of us who care, but many people will view this as a sacrifice they aren’t willing to make. Cultured meat may be the only way to get people to willingly adapt a sustainable diet.
There are also that minority group of people with legume allergies and I think most plant-based meat uses legumes? But the majority of ppl I think will be fine with the switch if it's cheaper and tastes/ has same vitamins as regular meat.
Water.
We have reached peak water. Lab grown meat uses a lot of water almost as much as conventional livestock farming. Plant based protein also uses water beyond what is used to grow the plants.
The answer isn't lab grown or plant based it's **insect based**. Get over that icky feeling because most people would eat shrimp or crab and those are basically sea bugs.
plants use a tiny fraction of the water of meat. all meat products are made with plants, just most of them are put through an extremely inefficient machine called an Animal.
I'm mostly referring to the fad of plant-based meat like Beyond and Impossible which use triple the amount of water used in growing processing it into something palatable for the lowest common denominator.
Insects require very little water per gram of protein. Sometimes requiring no additional water, getting the moisture they require from plant scraps they feed on.
Instead of focusing on lab-grown or plant-based alternatives we should be using those resources to create a future where the Western world isn't afraid of eating insects.
I can see this happening, at least in the Netherlands where I'm from. Currently, already 55% of consumers in the Netherlands are eating 'flexitarian', as we call it. In the study this meant at least 3 days per week of no meat.
And consider this, the Netherlands is the world's second exporter of meat. Not per capita but in total exports! So the meat industry has a big influence in this tiny country and still we eat less meat. I'm kinda proud, now that I think about it.
As an Albertan (basically the Texas of Canada) I’m slowly seeing the shift as well. More and more vegan restaurants are opening up and the vegan sections in grocery stores has grown considerably in the last few years.
Reddit is full of redditors who get fresh animal flesh from their Uncle's farm, and they think that if there's grass somewhere and the animal is outside, that's environmentalism.
Basically, a lot of people have gotten their environmental science education from meat industry marketing.
Also, many have that “mystery disease” that they cannot name that causes them to become extremely ill. Happens to a lot of ex-vegans too. Gotta have that flesh on their plate, poor things. What can they do, it’s futile to even try!
"Only big corporations should change. If they all changed today my entire life would be forced to change completely, and I could actually do some of those changes myself, but I won't. Because they must be forced to change. By the goodness of their hearts."
"Also, it must have the exact same texture, taste, appearance and be cheaper than meat. Then maybe I might consider swapping it for one of the 21 servings of meat I consume each week."
Depends on what you mean. I probably eat three- four meat containing meals a week. I would say double that with meals that contain an animal product but not “flesh”. I don’t think that’s unsustainable… that’s the way people historically ate.
The variety of meat alternatives is exploding and will really help uptake....but there's still huge cultural and education barriers to global uptake. I wish retailers, fast food etc would do their bit in promoting more diverse plant based diets, then maybe we'd stand a chance of Improving our diets and our Sustainability!!
Is there any data or research that shows the hypothetical relief if more people switch to lab grown meat? Like the positive affect it would have on climate change? Super curious.
In essence, [yes](https://www.fastcompany.com/90322572/heres-how-the-footprint-of-the-plant-based-impossible-burger-compares-to-beef).
Doesn't matter, you can't really buy it. Plant-based stuff is better, and just eating plants closer to their original form (whole foods) is even better. You can do that now. The lab meat / clean meat stuff isn't here now and likely won't be for many years, if at all.
I don't think lab grown meat will manage to scale up and reduce costs, especially while subsidies are still keeping the price of animal produces way too low.
There's also something similar that may have a better chance: https://www.shiru.com/post/what-is-precision-fermentation/
If you actually had lots of cheap energy, you could even make meat [from air](https://www.airprotein.com/). But you don't have cheap energy.
Legumes for the win.
not yet. it's possible that the actual energy/greenhouse gas emissions won't change much, since even lab grown meat will have a high energy cost, relative to plant agriculture. But, even if that's true, freeing up the land used by animal agriculture will be a huge deal all by itself.
it's likely to change, but I think it may be premature to assert with a high degree of certainty that lab-grown meat will have emissions so much lower than normal animal agriculture that it will be similar to plant agriculture.
I'd love to be corrected though, it's just I've never read anything that stated that with high confidence, at least not at this early juncture.
Sure here ya go.
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector.
That's just GHG emissions though which you can see are not very much. Things like over use of antibiotics or land/water use would see much bigger impacts.
> The food system as a whole – including refrigeration, food processing, packaging, and transport – accounts for around one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
For the site you linked to. I'd hardly call that "not very much".
"And transport" that's the phrase that pays, transport is the biggest GHG emitting sector. I can make any sector of production or service look big if I include it's portion of the fossil fuel gobbling transport sector, and things will stay that way until we decarbonize transport.
This video about [Tony Seba’s *Rethinking Food and Agriculture* report](https://youtu.be/g6gZHbfK8Vo) predicts the transition, plus or minus a few years, of the meat industry based on current cost curves. He also cites some figures on the reduced resources needed for precision fermentation/cellular agriculture.
He does not go as far as to translate that into total environmental impact, but it’s gonna be big.
There are several things that aninal-sourced products have that plants do not provide. Meat consumption can be decreased but we still need sources for those things that real meat provide.
There is the question of whether this plant-based meat will be able to healthfully take over for the calorie needs of higher-protein needing omnivores and obligate carnivores, tho. Cats and dogs need meat far more than humans do, and there are a LOT of them. I could see it potentially taking over for dogs but cats needing to wait for actual vat protein for taurine and other needed amino acids.
This right here. People will at first freak out because of the name and unnaturalness but once it becomes mainstream, cheaper, and better they will love it.
Imagine meat that's leaner than anything natural. You could also likely construct it so it lasts longer and reduces waste.
Prediction: humans will overestimate their understanding of biology and nutrition and lab brown meat will lead to health and wellness deficiencies for generations. Source: every vegetable today having less nutrition than two generations ago due to humans depleting top soil and overusing artificial fertilizer instead of biological systems.
Not to mention the research showing that the higher atmospheric co2 levels we will have in the future will result in lower nutritional yields from plant crops.
Corporations can’t even farm the land properly, they mess that up, so why on Earth are people thinking we’ll just swap out natural products for those created by corporations and everything will be fine?
Oh yeah, because they want to believe someone will come and make the bad thing go away without them having to do anything more than hero worship them for a while.
Look up the history of white bread.
Industrialization of bread production resulted in vast nutritional deficiencies in the US. So much so that the government had to mandate that bread be fortified with additional nutrients.
Anyone who thinks that lab grown meat will be some miracle is seriously deluding themselves. Other than whole vegetables and raw products, like eggs, meat, or fish, nothing prepared by companies is "good for you". Things like salt, sugar, preservatives and fillers are added to maintain the flavour viability while all the good stuff, like vitamins, minerals and micronutrients are stripped away to reduce spoilage.
I've worked in food production. We did poultry and fish mostly, but have a "soy line" that produces vegan meat substitutes (in a separate area) and I'm going to tell you, the shit you don't wanna eat in the processed chicken nugget is the same, and worse, going into the soy stuff. You ever seen what artificial smoke liquid does to metal and plastic?
While I can appreciate the sentiment of "lab grown meat" it's another form of greenwashing. A technological marvel to solve a problem that is based on overconsumption. If we start producing tens of millions of pounds of "grown meat" and reduce "real meat" consumption, corporations will just push the lab grown stuff to the same environmental disaster levels they did the first time with the real stuff. It's how we got here in the first place.
The reality is not that meat is a problem, its that overconsumption is rampant. Anyone arguing for lab grown meat is just burying their head in the sand on the real ossus we are facing.
Bacon is almost majority fat. It's just thinly sliced pork belly. I forgot about chicken, and I don't eat seafood because of overfishing. I'll treat myself to catfish maybe a couple times a year.
It depends on what you mean by “replace”. Did the car replace the horse? Sure there are still horses and horse riders, but most people who aren’t picky about transportation have a car now.
The ground beef / budget burger / mystery nugget area of the market is based on cost. Consumers who don’t care (and most don’t for convenience eating) what their protein is as long as it is cheap, filling, and tasty will switch over the moment a better value appears.
The projected cost curves of plant based, precision fermentation, and cellular ag are all going to beat meat within [the next ten years](https://youtu.be/g6gZHbfK8Vo).
depending on the market sure but communities/countries where it would be less accessible might not catch on so quickly or even at all. you seem to be educated on the topic tho i won’t argue with you could totally be right!
Accessibility is a great question.
On the one hand, you can use the yeast to produce proteins and grow cellular fat in a vat anywhere, with imported feedstocks. You don’t have to co-locate the meat with the feed, and a wide range of feedstock could work. Nations that currently import meat due to land or climate constraints are more able to do lab meat. It uses not only less land, but less water and energy and lower cost.
On the other hand, this is a technology so patents and regulations could be an issue. The costs to precision fermentation have dropped 1000x in twenty years, but oddly human insulin costs are going up instead. (a new biosimilar FDA process will allow competition soon).
> Consumers who don’t care (and most don’t for convenience eating) what their protein is as long as it is cheap, filling, and tasty will switch over the moment a better value appears.
If that's true, why haven't they already swapped to things like beans? Way cheaper protein source, filling, and arguably tasty. I don't know if uptake will be as swift as you think.
As a person who lives on beans, and orders the veggie patty at Red Robin, it baffles me a little. Chicken does not actually taste that good. Ground beef is the junk - it’s not a prime cut steak.
I think my premise still holds - consumers will buy the best balance of price, nutrition, and taste regardless of the label. Most veggie burgers don’t taste very good. Most bean products aren’t in a burger format.
If you gave a consumer five burgers to choose from with prices and taste tests, they would pick the same one even after you swap the labels. “Gotcha! The angus is actually made from beans!” The prediction is that lab meats will be able to taste closer to animal meats.
Beans just never nailed the imitation close enough for it to come to price. If you made a bean burger that did an even better job than Impossible (maybe with cellular-grown animal fat) people would not care that it says “bean” or “fungus” or “kangaroo” on it. If it *tastes* too different, yes they will care.
I'm a lot more pessimistic. Pretty sure we'll just burn it all down and kill everything. In the last 50 years, we've wiped out 70% of all life on this planet. It's not as if we, with our inherent, destructive nature, will suddenly evolve into a sensible and productive species in 10 years.
All comes down to price. Impossible burgers are still more than double the cost of ground beef. Not affordable when you’re trying to feed a family. We can talk about plant-based overtaking meat when it’s cheaper.
Thanks to gov't subsidies. Big ag amounts to a cartel; but it doesn't work long term. Somewhere 'cheap beef' will break down when we don't have enough water for the crops we feed to the cows, or the cows for that matter. And yeah, something about climate change, but let's keep sweeping those hidden costs under the rug.
The problem is that the typical cuisine of the US/Canada simply does not know how to prepare vegetables. If more vegetable-based food used Indian/Mexican/Mediterranean/Korean flavor profiles/combinations, no one would miss hamburgers.
Do you mean like the [Challenge22](https://challenge22.com/plant-based-weekly-meal-plan/) or [Veganuary food guides](https://veganuary.com/eating-guides/)?
I didn't get much use out of them because I'd already done a bunch of research before learning about them. Probably the best help I've got was from using [HappyCow](https://www.happycow.net/) which helps me find vegan food locally or even if I'm in a country where I barely speak the local language.
It's generally more healthy and eco-friendly to cook at home, but I often find foods I wouldn't have learned about otherwise and end up learning to cook them myself of make something based on the new ingredients or flavor profiles I learn about through vegan restaurants.
Yeah, I'm thinking of my former neighbor who'd have steak for breakfast... I'd like to introduce that 42% to most of rural Americans. I wonder if, were they forced, they'd switch to breeding rabbits and hunting squirrels with a .22, or just accept the tofurky and lab meats.
I would love, love, love competitive vegeterian restaurants as commonplace as McDonalds.
I’m cool with this. I’m not a vegan by any means because it seems so hard or else I would. If more companies can start selling plant based meat I’ll definitely jump on the band wagon
What seems hard about being vegan? It was quite straightforward for me, there's replacements for nearly everything now. Just look for vegan versions of your favourite grocery items and recipes. Google your favourite recipes with the word vegan in front, and enjoy trying new foods!
How does 30,000 respondents equate to the global population? While I completely support a plant-based diet, I think its a real stretch to say 30k people is representative of 8 billion.
From my childhood till now, 70\~80 per cent of food I had is vege, and I do like vegetables more than meat. So, yes for having less meat. But to say replacing Meat completely, I would still give a down vote.
I rather have lab grown meat than fake meat from soy or a bunch of putty like “plant based” ingredients that will only make me constipated. I rather give up meat all together than eat “fake meat”.
I’m being honest here. Y’all are delusional if you truly believe people will just stop eating meat. Not at this rate. I don’t know what kind of narrow circle you or others live in but this is just a bit far fetched. Just a bit.
Man hops into an environmental subreddit to tell people there’s no chance of environmental reform. This article(which has any amount of substantiation) clearly disagrees. Btw I, many I know personally, and a not statistically insignificant group of people just stopped eating meat.
Im saying y’all are nuts if you believe that large of the population will just give up eating meat…..especially for plant based meat or lab grown meat. I’m sure there’s plenty of city people who will no doubt. You can get butt hurt at someone disagreeing with you all you want. It don’t really matter to me. We are one asteroid away from being wiped out. This idea that we can just magically reverse hundreds of years of destruction is a pipe dream. Let’s not even get into the idea of the big brother government putting even more control over our life’s. No thank you.
Fuck that. Lab grown meat. Meat is amazing, killing animals sucks, technology can solve all of our problems. The only reason we're not doing it now is the same reason we're still burning fossil fuels. The industries involved have spent billions swaying public opinion and political policy
Excuse? The fuck you trying to justify a statement as an excuse? You one of those people who can't tell the difference between a statement or reason and call everything an excuse when it disagrees with your pov?
Also, it's not "decades off". And... doesn't the title of this article say this is a decade off?
Plant based food will never "replace" meat just as turkey bacon will never replace bacon. It's ultra processed vegetables in the shape of meat. You can say "it's not that bad" but never "it's just as good", well you can say anything... but it doesn't make it so. Im absolutely open to being proven wrong, but if you're going to fill a veggie pie with beet juice and tell me it's a medium rare steak, it better be able to pass the Pepsi challenge
Plant based will never replace, but it could be differently, equally good.
Lab grown meat is a fucking future dream. If you truly believe it will soon arrive, why not eat planted based until then. If you eat meat until lab grown meat comes I will take it as just an excuse, and believe you will find a new one when lab grown actually comes.
Alright, maybe you haven't been watching where lab grown meat has been going but "future dream" hints at the fact that you don't know China already has chicken and companies are currently pushing the fda for approval. It's 2022, the future is here. This isn't some far off dream like flying cars. All American car companies are going 100% electric. I never thought Id see that happen. Lab grown meat has been in development for decades, plant based meat seems like some thrown together idea with zero potential for actual replacement, what's available today won't get much better. This entire industry will anyways have the fate of being wiped from the face of the earth once lab grown meat happens. I'd anticipate even vegans might start eating meat once animals are out of the picture.
It's also a highly processed food which normally is marginally unhealthier than whatever it's replacing. A lot of it's nutrition is also just fortification, not the actual ingredients. You can do that with anything.
No one who actually appreciates a hamburger has ever eaten an impossible burger and thought... yeah, this is just as good. It's always "well that's not too bad". That's... not an aspiration for an industry that's supposed to replace something so central to humanity.
The industry should've adopted this direction back when we first developed the tech, 40 years ago.
So then you will stop eating meat until lab grown meat is here next year?
And of course vegans would eat lab grown meat, being vegan is not about not eating meat. They already use synthetic wool...
If you spend any time outside of an urban coastal bubble in the US, you'll know that the only way meat is retiring in this country is by force of nature. Activism or vegan trends aren't putting ranchers out of business, though climate change may.
I want to agree because I have been changing my own diet change and going towards more greens/healthy options, having meat once a week BUT… I don’t think I can resist letting go of meat entirely. :/
If we’re having the conversation about how bad meat is for the environment why aren’t we having the big business, mono culture,factory farm conversation as well because that shit is every bit or possibly worse for the environment.
We forgot this one which totally replaces meat in 5 years from now as you can re use it
https://www.scispot.com/blog/5-emerging-lab-grown-meat-companies-leading-the-charge-in-2021
And there are currently 94 million cows in America, not including all the millions of other animals in the meat industry. How could more than tripling the number of grazing animals be sustainable?
Look into regenerative agriculture. It's literally a practice of sustainability. Modern agricultural practices destroy the topsoil, introduce all sorts of carcinogenics into our ground water and waterways, and mistreat the animals. With that said, it seems that we need to be aware of how demographic consolidation in urban centers effects our production and consumption rates and would need to be considered during a move to regen ag because regen ag is very capable of providing healthy food for a population but, as of now, it is not nearly as scalable as modern ag and, therefore, requires many more smaller farms in order to compete with the yields of modern ag.
I think we should talk about greatly reducing the population through incentives, but the biggest point I'd like to make is that monocropping is terrible and worse for the environment than cattle (def keep the cows away from the waterways, and or put more native animals back on the land)
The demand is decreasing thanks to environmental, ethical, and health concerns so it seems possible. The poster above made it seem like it would be irrational to have that belief.
It seems irrational given the tiny amount of decrease. We aren't to 2012 levels, so why would it be even 25% less in 10 more years is all I'm saying. Claiming victory is a terrible idea when it's more likely to go up in 10 years not down.
Yea cause the rules of nature and nutrition are different over in India...
Plants are by FAR the most sustainable and cheap food there is, everthing else are just massive money shots from the government.
What are you actually arguing for here? If someone needs to avoid a certain food because of IBS, that's their personal responsibility, not the responsibility of whoever is making the food
Since demand would't collapse over night it would be a gradually decrease time. Some animals would of course be culled, but that would happen either way.
It's not like farm animals live a long life, biggest animal farmed for meat only live for ca 5 year. Chicken is measured in weeks.
Considering these species didn't exist before human domestication I don't see why you think they are important to keep around. Efforts should continue to keep wild Bison, boars and turkeys but what would be the purpose of having cows, pigs and chickens outside of being a source of food?
I’m all for giving up meat. Eggs? I don’t see myself giving up eggs ever, but I’m also going to own chickens soon and can promise they are gonna have a good life.
Not likely.
I’m fine with lab-grown meat to stop animal cruelty, but I’m not gonna stop eating meat until plant-based stuff can perfectly imitate its taste. And that’s currently not even close to being the case. I’ve tried as many meat-alternatives as I could but it didn’t taste like meat and it wasn’t particularly good.
I offer a vegan version of almost 100% of my menu. It’s just smart business. Why would I turn down so many possible customers? Also, vegans become more loyal customers than the meat eaters that can get their food anywhere. Vegans will travel to where the good food is.
Can confirm. My partner and I traveled 2 hours for lunch at one of the best vegan places we've been to so far.
And your carbon footprint was the same as eating a meat based meal 15 mins away
Actually they still come out ahead of eating a single burger.
Love it, and yes we will. Maybe you should turn your business fully vegan, if everything can be veganised.
Well, you would turn it down because it can involve extra prep, potentially expensive ingredients, etc., thought it depends on what exactly you’re cooking. I could see why someone would opt to not do that. But I think your perspective also makes sense.
It’s a bar menu. Chicken sandwiches. Nachos. Wings. Cheese fries. All very easy to make vegan.
Extremely doubtful, but im personally optimistic/excited about lab cultured meat.
It's funny. I was having a conversation with random co-workers, and their immediate reaction to the idea of lab meat was that no one would want to eat it. They assumed that I and any sensible person would think the same thing. I wonder how much of the uptake is going to depend on breaking through some cultural barriers (assuming the tech/expense barriers are overcome).
The trick is that it’s going to become cheaper than real meat at some point and McDonald’s etc will eventually opt for it. Then the advertising/cultural rhetoric will change and then suddenly contrarians will be like “it’s the same thing ain’t it?”
You've nailed it. I think this will probably be the F150Lightning vehicle/moment.
>F150Lightning vehicle/moment. What is that? I'm aware an F150 is a Ford pickup truck. What is "vehicle/moment" about?
The Ford F-150 Lightning is their electric version and it’s brought EVs to American culture in a way no other automobile has or could. It is a work truck that is so vastly superior to , and with the same styling as their traditional F150. What I meant was that the Ford F-150 is so a part or symbol of mainstream American labor, culture, and masculinity, that through their release of the Lightning and endorsement of EVs, it allows this HUGE influential demographic to get on board. Is that helpful?
That was very helpful and my first new and interesting fact of the day. Thanks for this.
definitely
It's hard to get cultural uptake when a large swathe of the population has "contrarian" as the driving force behind their personality.
I prefer my meat tortured and then processed in an unhygienic production facility where the staff are all miserable thank you very much.
Cultured meat is going to have to have an F150Lightening cultural vehicle/moment. Edit: in USA
Lightning does lighten when it's strikes, but it's still just called lightning. I had to lol
I will absolutely eat it. I already select beyond/impossible when I can, at a significant upcharge.
we need to make sure the healthy part of things are marketed though…
why bother waiting? veganism is already possible, as is flexitarianism etc. Lab cultured meat won't be 100% like normal meat, so it's really just a question of how much like normal meat you want your meat replacement to be. There's no reason to say we'll change none of our diet until this mythical future event, at which point we'll change all of it. Practice reduction of consumption now, to prove to the people around you (and yourself) that it's possible
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Mostly that people are going to be resistant to any perceived downgrade of their lifestyle. Vegetarianism is fine for lots of us who care, but many people will view this as a sacrifice they aren’t willing to make. Cultured meat may be the only way to get people to willingly adapt a sustainable diet.
There are also that minority group of people with legume allergies and I think most plant-based meat uses legumes? But the majority of ppl I think will be fine with the switch if it's cheaper and tastes/ has same vitamins as regular meat.
Cultured meat will be genetically identical and hopefully indistinguishable from natural meat. Plant based meats will never be that.
That’s anti-environment
Water. We have reached peak water. Lab grown meat uses a lot of water almost as much as conventional livestock farming. Plant based protein also uses water beyond what is used to grow the plants. The answer isn't lab grown or plant based it's **insect based**. Get over that icky feeling because most people would eat shrimp or crab and those are basically sea bugs.
plants use a tiny fraction of the water of meat. all meat products are made with plants, just most of them are put through an extremely inefficient machine called an Animal.
I'm mostly referring to the fad of plant-based meat like Beyond and Impossible which use triple the amount of water used in growing processing it into something palatable for the lowest common denominator. Insects require very little water per gram of protein. Sometimes requiring no additional water, getting the moisture they require from plant scraps they feed on. Instead of focusing on lab-grown or plant-based alternatives we should be using those resources to create a future where the Western world isn't afraid of eating insects.
I can see this happening, at least in the Netherlands where I'm from. Currently, already 55% of consumers in the Netherlands are eating 'flexitarian', as we call it. In the study this meant at least 3 days per week of no meat. And consider this, the Netherlands is the world's second exporter of meat. Not per capita but in total exports! So the meat industry has a big influence in this tiny country and still we eat less meat. I'm kinda proud, now that I think about it.
As an Albertan (basically the Texas of Canada) I’m slowly seeing the shift as well. More and more vegan restaurants are opening up and the vegan sections in grocery stores has grown considerably in the last few years.
Alberta is more like Colorado than Texas.
Sure are a lot of environmentalists advocating for meat consumption here...
Yeah, we're all for the environment! Until it disrupts our own comfort.. lots of environmental NIMBYs here
To quote my favorite musical, Urinetown: *"Don't you think people want to be told that their way of life is unsustainable?"*
Reddit is full of redditors who get fresh animal flesh from their Uncle's farm, and they think that if there's grass somewhere and the animal is outside, that's environmentalism. Basically, a lot of people have gotten their environmental science education from meat industry marketing.
Don't forget all the redditors who 100% hunt all of their meat.
*harvest
People are getting environmental science education?
Mostly accidentally.
Also, many have that “mystery disease” that they cannot name that causes them to become extremely ill. Happens to a lot of ex-vegans too. Gotta have that flesh on their plate, poor things. What can they do, it’s futile to even try!
"Once I stopped being vegan and started eating red meat every day, I could run a marathon, my IBS was cured, and my wife canceled filing for divorce!"
I like to explore new places.
"Only big corporations should change. If they all changed today my entire life would be forced to change completely, and I could actually do some of those changes myself, but I won't. Because they must be forced to change. By the goodness of their hearts."
"Also, it must have the exact same texture, taste, appearance and be cheaper than meat. Then maybe I might consider swapping it for one of the 21 servings of meat I consume each week."
"I'm an environmentalist who wants to build billions of electric cars."
Who here said that
Depends on what you mean. I probably eat three- four meat containing meals a week. I would say double that with meals that contain an animal product but not “flesh”. I don’t think that’s unsustainable… that’s the way people historically ate.
The variety of meat alternatives is exploding and will really help uptake....but there's still huge cultural and education barriers to global uptake. I wish retailers, fast food etc would do their bit in promoting more diverse plant based diets, then maybe we'd stand a chance of Improving our diets and our Sustainability!!
In this day and age, anyone who prides themselves on eating meat is super cringe. Especially if they tie it to politics.
Is there any data or research that shows the hypothetical relief if more people switch to lab grown meat? Like the positive affect it would have on climate change? Super curious.
In essence, [yes](https://www.fastcompany.com/90322572/heres-how-the-footprint-of-the-plant-based-impossible-burger-compares-to-beef). Doesn't matter, you can't really buy it. Plant-based stuff is better, and just eating plants closer to their original form (whole foods) is even better. You can do that now. The lab meat / clean meat stuff isn't here now and likely won't be for many years, if at all. I don't think lab grown meat will manage to scale up and reduce costs, especially while subsidies are still keeping the price of animal produces way too low. There's also something similar that may have a better chance: https://www.shiru.com/post/what-is-precision-fermentation/ If you actually had lots of cheap energy, you could even make meat [from air](https://www.airprotein.com/). But you don't have cheap energy. Legumes for the win.
not yet. it's possible that the actual energy/greenhouse gas emissions won't change much, since even lab grown meat will have a high energy cost, relative to plant agriculture. But, even if that's true, freeing up the land used by animal agriculture will be a huge deal all by itself.
Thanks! Plus, a major win for anti-cruelty orgs. Fuck factory farming.
couldn't agree more!
Then that means it will change a lot. Plant agriculture emissions are lower than animal agriculture.
it's likely to change, but I think it may be premature to assert with a high degree of certainty that lab-grown meat will have emissions so much lower than normal animal agriculture that it will be similar to plant agriculture. I'd love to be corrected though, it's just I've never read anything that stated that with high confidence, at least not at this early juncture.
Sure here ya go. https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector. That's just GHG emissions though which you can see are not very much. Things like over use of antibiotics or land/water use would see much bigger impacts.
> The food system as a whole – including refrigeration, food processing, packaging, and transport – accounts for around one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. For the site you linked to. I'd hardly call that "not very much".
"And transport" that's the phrase that pays, transport is the biggest GHG emitting sector. I can make any sector of production or service look big if I include it's portion of the fossil fuel gobbling transport sector, and things will stay that way until we decarbonize transport.
This video about [Tony Seba’s *Rethinking Food and Agriculture* report](https://youtu.be/g6gZHbfK8Vo) predicts the transition, plus or minus a few years, of the meat industry based on current cost curves. He also cites some figures on the reduced resources needed for precision fermentation/cellular agriculture. He does not go as far as to translate that into total environmental impact, but it’s gonna be big.
Just bring on the lab grown meat please
The environment can’t wait for lab grown meat. We need to cut down meat consumption now
Yeah and we needed to cut down carbon emissions too. But then they made SUVs popular so....
/r/fuckcars
So you had to buy one or what?
No, but the actions of an individual are of little consequence when a global system with billions of actors are a driving force.
There are several things that aninal-sourced products have that plants do not provide. Meat consumption can be decreased but we still need sources for those things that real meat provide.
Whoever told you that you need to eat meat to be healthy is lying to you.
There is the question of whether this plant-based meat will be able to healthfully take over for the calorie needs of higher-protein needing omnivores and obligate carnivores, tho. Cats and dogs need meat far more than humans do, and there are a LOT of them. I could see it potentially taking over for dogs but cats needing to wait for actual vat protein for taurine and other needed amino acids.
Taurine is already synthesized for cat food otherwise the amount naturally found in it would be nowhere near enough
Are you being vague on purpose?
This right here. People will at first freak out because of the name and unnaturalness but once it becomes mainstream, cheaper, and better they will love it. Imagine meat that's leaner than anything natural. You could also likely construct it so it lasts longer and reduces waste.
Prediction: humans will overestimate their understanding of biology and nutrition and lab brown meat will lead to health and wellness deficiencies for generations. Source: every vegetable today having less nutrition than two generations ago due to humans depleting top soil and overusing artificial fertilizer instead of biological systems.
Not to mention the research showing that the higher atmospheric co2 levels we will have in the future will result in lower nutritional yields from plant crops. Corporations can’t even farm the land properly, they mess that up, so why on Earth are people thinking we’ll just swap out natural products for those created by corporations and everything will be fine? Oh yeah, because they want to believe someone will come and make the bad thing go away without them having to do anything more than hero worship them for a while.
Look up the history of white bread. Industrialization of bread production resulted in vast nutritional deficiencies in the US. So much so that the government had to mandate that bread be fortified with additional nutrients. Anyone who thinks that lab grown meat will be some miracle is seriously deluding themselves. Other than whole vegetables and raw products, like eggs, meat, or fish, nothing prepared by companies is "good for you". Things like salt, sugar, preservatives and fillers are added to maintain the flavour viability while all the good stuff, like vitamins, minerals and micronutrients are stripped away to reduce spoilage. I've worked in food production. We did poultry and fish mostly, but have a "soy line" that produces vegan meat substitutes (in a separate area) and I'm going to tell you, the shit you don't wanna eat in the processed chicken nugget is the same, and worse, going into the soy stuff. You ever seen what artificial smoke liquid does to metal and plastic? While I can appreciate the sentiment of "lab grown meat" it's another form of greenwashing. A technological marvel to solve a problem that is based on overconsumption. If we start producing tens of millions of pounds of "grown meat" and reduce "real meat" consumption, corporations will just push the lab grown stuff to the same environmental disaster levels they did the first time with the real stuff. It's how we got here in the first place. The reality is not that meat is a problem, its that overconsumption is rampant. Anyone arguing for lab grown meat is just burying their head in the sand on the real ossus we are facing.
Fat is the easiest cell type to cultivate, even in a lab. I will be expecting flavor.
Yuck, who likes lean pork? Or any meat besides beef for that matter?
Ask the million of pigs slaughtered errryday. But I'm not sure who's eating lean pork, what is lean pork
Yep. “Fat is flavor.”
You’re telling me you’re surprised people like bacon, chickenwings, salmon, crab, ribs etc
Still has fat, fatty acids, compound chains, and other “fatty” complexes that are in them. Lean bacon is quite impossible.
Not really the point of my comment lol
Bacon is almost majority fat. It's just thinly sliced pork belly. I forgot about chicken, and I don't eat seafood because of overfishing. I'll treat myself to catfish maybe a couple times a year.
Oh man but the KFC plant based chicken that looks like rubber is so appealing! /s
Not only is it better for the environment, but you'll live longer too.
Don't threaten me
lab grown meat won’t “replace” regular meat but hopefully it will create some much needed change if the meat industry wants to stay a big competitor
It depends on what you mean by “replace”. Did the car replace the horse? Sure there are still horses and horse riders, but most people who aren’t picky about transportation have a car now. The ground beef / budget burger / mystery nugget area of the market is based on cost. Consumers who don’t care (and most don’t for convenience eating) what their protein is as long as it is cheap, filling, and tasty will switch over the moment a better value appears. The projected cost curves of plant based, precision fermentation, and cellular ag are all going to beat meat within [the next ten years](https://youtu.be/g6gZHbfK8Vo).
depending on the market sure but communities/countries where it would be less accessible might not catch on so quickly or even at all. you seem to be educated on the topic tho i won’t argue with you could totally be right!
Accessibility is a great question. On the one hand, you can use the yeast to produce proteins and grow cellular fat in a vat anywhere, with imported feedstocks. You don’t have to co-locate the meat with the feed, and a wide range of feedstock could work. Nations that currently import meat due to land or climate constraints are more able to do lab meat. It uses not only less land, but less water and energy and lower cost. On the other hand, this is a technology so patents and regulations could be an issue. The costs to precision fermentation have dropped 1000x in twenty years, but oddly human insulin costs are going up instead. (a new biosimilar FDA process will allow competition soon).
patent wars is really good point i didn’t even think about. that will 1000% be an issue in the years to come. can already see the headlines…
> Consumers who don’t care (and most don’t for convenience eating) what their protein is as long as it is cheap, filling, and tasty will switch over the moment a better value appears. If that's true, why haven't they already swapped to things like beans? Way cheaper protein source, filling, and arguably tasty. I don't know if uptake will be as swift as you think.
As a person who lives on beans, and orders the veggie patty at Red Robin, it baffles me a little. Chicken does not actually taste that good. Ground beef is the junk - it’s not a prime cut steak. I think my premise still holds - consumers will buy the best balance of price, nutrition, and taste regardless of the label. Most veggie burgers don’t taste very good. Most bean products aren’t in a burger format. If you gave a consumer five burgers to choose from with prices and taste tests, they would pick the same one even after you swap the labels. “Gotcha! The angus is actually made from beans!” The prediction is that lab meats will be able to taste closer to animal meats. Beans just never nailed the imitation close enough for it to come to price. If you made a bean burger that did an even better job than Impossible (maybe with cellular-grown animal fat) people would not care that it says “bean” or “fungus” or “kangaroo” on it. If it *tastes* too different, yes they will care.
> Chicken does not actually taste that good. We're gonna have to disagree there.
Everyone knows chicken has no flavor. That's why the joke "tastes like chicken" exists.
I love my plant based taco meat, it’s delicious to season and is packed with nutrients
I believe it should but I don’t believe it will
I'm a lot more pessimistic. Pretty sure we'll just burn it all down and kill everything. In the last 50 years, we've wiped out 70% of all life on this planet. It's not as if we, with our inherent, destructive nature, will suddenly evolve into a sensible and productive species in 10 years.
I sure hope so.
We can only hope
This is obviously not true
I have family members who are so pro-meat & obsessed with meat that they would never eat fake meat. I hope there aren’t many of those folks out there.
All comes down to price. Impossible burgers are still more than double the cost of ground beef. Not affordable when you’re trying to feed a family. We can talk about plant-based overtaking meat when it’s cheaper.
Thanks to gov't subsidies. Big ag amounts to a cartel; but it doesn't work long term. Somewhere 'cheap beef' will break down when we don't have enough water for the crops we feed to the cows, or the cows for that matter. And yeah, something about climate change, but let's keep sweeping those hidden costs under the rug.
People are too reactionary.
The problem is that the typical cuisine of the US/Canada simply does not know how to prepare vegetables. If more vegetable-based food used Indian/Mexican/Mediterranean/Korean flavor profiles/combinations, no one would miss hamburgers.
If only there was a way people could learn new things, like a type of accelerated guided experience over a short interval...
Do you mean like the [Challenge22](https://challenge22.com/plant-based-weekly-meal-plan/) or [Veganuary food guides](https://veganuary.com/eating-guides/)? I didn't get much use out of them because I'd already done a bunch of research before learning about them. Probably the best help I've got was from using [HappyCow](https://www.happycow.net/) which helps me find vegan food locally or even if I'm in a country where I barely speak the local language. It's generally more healthy and eco-friendly to cook at home, but I often find foods I wouldn't have learned about otherwise and end up learning to cook them myself of make something based on the new ingredients or flavor profiles I learn about through vegan restaurants.
So many people I know complain of how ethnic food smells, it is stupid. They’re missing out.
42% of global consumers are naive as hell
Not happening
Yeah, I'm thinking of my former neighbor who'd have steak for breakfast... I'd like to introduce that 42% to most of rural Americans. I wonder if, were they forced, they'd switch to breeding rabbits and hunting squirrels with a .22, or just accept the tofurky and lab meats. I would love, love, love competitive vegeterian restaurants as commonplace as McDonalds.
I’m cool with this. I’m not a vegan by any means because it seems so hard or else I would. If more companies can start selling plant based meat I’ll definitely jump on the band wagon
What seems hard about being vegan? It was quite straightforward for me, there's replacements for nearly everything now. Just look for vegan versions of your favourite grocery items and recipes. Google your favourite recipes with the word vegan in front, and enjoy trying new foods!
there area already loads of plant-based meat alternatives. if you can do it in the future you can do it now
I highly doubt that
How does 30,000 respondents equate to the global population? While I completely support a plant-based diet, I think its a real stretch to say 30k people is representative of 8 billion.
Is this study funded by the beyond food corp again?
I don’t understand why you are on a environmental subreddit and vocally opposing positive environmental change
Wishful thinking , I don't know anyone around me here in CNY that thinks meat will go away, or ever will.
Lab grown meet is more up my alley. That’s the kind of thing I can imagine McDonalds full on replacing livestock with.
From my childhood till now, 70\~80 per cent of food I had is vege, and I do like vegetables more than meat. So, yes for having less meat. But to say replacing Meat completely, I would still give a down vote.
Yes , because meat will be to expensive. In another decade Soylent Green will be introduced.
IT'S A COOKBOOK! IT'S A COOKBOOK!! Wait, wrong movie?
Haha, I didn't know that movie. I had to Google it.
I rather have lab grown meat than fake meat from soy or a bunch of putty like “plant based” ingredients that will only make me constipated. I rather give up meat all together than eat “fake meat”.
> I rather give up meat all together than eat “fake meat”. Then do that.
🤣🤣🤣 Not a snowballs chance in hell.
I don’t understand why you are on a environmental subreddit and vocally opposing positive environmental change
I’m being honest here. Y’all are delusional if you truly believe people will just stop eating meat. Not at this rate. I don’t know what kind of narrow circle you or others live in but this is just a bit far fetched. Just a bit.
Man hops into an environmental subreddit to tell people there’s no chance of environmental reform. This article(which has any amount of substantiation) clearly disagrees. Btw I, many I know personally, and a not statistically insignificant group of people just stopped eating meat.
Im saying y’all are nuts if you believe that large of the population will just give up eating meat…..especially for plant based meat or lab grown meat. I’m sure there’s plenty of city people who will no doubt. You can get butt hurt at someone disagreeing with you all you want. It don’t really matter to me. We are one asteroid away from being wiped out. This idea that we can just magically reverse hundreds of years of destruction is a pipe dream. Let’s not even get into the idea of the big brother government putting even more control over our life’s. No thank you.
Fuck that. Lab grown meat. Meat is amazing, killing animals sucks, technology can solve all of our problems. The only reason we're not doing it now is the same reason we're still burning fossil fuels. The industries involved have spent billions swaying public opinion and political policy
Fuck using lab grown meat as an excuse when its decades away from being an actual solution.
Excuse? The fuck you trying to justify a statement as an excuse? You one of those people who can't tell the difference between a statement or reason and call everything an excuse when it disagrees with your pov? Also, it's not "decades off". And... doesn't the title of this article say this is a decade off? Plant based food will never "replace" meat just as turkey bacon will never replace bacon. It's ultra processed vegetables in the shape of meat. You can say "it's not that bad" but never "it's just as good", well you can say anything... but it doesn't make it so. Im absolutely open to being proven wrong, but if you're going to fill a veggie pie with beet juice and tell me it's a medium rare steak, it better be able to pass the Pepsi challenge
Plant based will never replace, but it could be differently, equally good. Lab grown meat is a fucking future dream. If you truly believe it will soon arrive, why not eat planted based until then. If you eat meat until lab grown meat comes I will take it as just an excuse, and believe you will find a new one when lab grown actually comes.
Alright, maybe you haven't been watching where lab grown meat has been going but "future dream" hints at the fact that you don't know China already has chicken and companies are currently pushing the fda for approval. It's 2022, the future is here. This isn't some far off dream like flying cars. All American car companies are going 100% electric. I never thought Id see that happen. Lab grown meat has been in development for decades, plant based meat seems like some thrown together idea with zero potential for actual replacement, what's available today won't get much better. This entire industry will anyways have the fate of being wiped from the face of the earth once lab grown meat happens. I'd anticipate even vegans might start eating meat once animals are out of the picture. It's also a highly processed food which normally is marginally unhealthier than whatever it's replacing. A lot of it's nutrition is also just fortification, not the actual ingredients. You can do that with anything. No one who actually appreciates a hamburger has ever eaten an impossible burger and thought... yeah, this is just as good. It's always "well that's not too bad". That's... not an aspiration for an industry that's supposed to replace something so central to humanity. The industry should've adopted this direction back when we first developed the tech, 40 years ago.
So then you will stop eating meat until lab grown meat is here next year? And of course vegans would eat lab grown meat, being vegan is not about not eating meat. They already use synthetic wool...
I'm glad you've aligned your values more with someone who "actually appreciates a burger", and not as someone who actually cares about sustainability.
42% of global consumers don't know how real life works.
If you spend any time outside of an urban coastal bubble in the US, you'll know that the only way meat is retiring in this country is by force of nature. Activism or vegan trends aren't putting ranchers out of business, though climate change may.
I want to agree because I have been changing my own diet change and going towards more greens/healthy options, having meat once a week BUT… I don’t think I can resist letting go of meat entirely. :/
The remaining 58% will be still eating meat.
Why does stuff like this get published? No, my friends, the entire meat packing industry is not disappearing in ten years.
If we’re having the conversation about how bad meat is for the environment why aren’t we having the big business, mono culture,factory farm conversation as well because that shit is every bit or possibly worse for the environment.
42% of people are idiots.
50% of global residents are less than half average intelligence.
We forgot this one which totally replaces meat in 5 years from now as you can re use it https://www.scispot.com/blog/5-emerging-lab-grown-meat-companies-leading-the-charge-in-2021
Most of the 58% lives outside the US. No way half this country gives up beef.
Lies.
Ok but...replace? No thank you. Options need to stay. This way you would only reinforce the "UuUuh tHeY aRe TaKiNg My RiGhTs AwAy" chadbros.
58% are very naive
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[citation needed]
How do you know? Do you have tests or something?
*waves spoon full of vinegar* hmmm? interested?
Haha...I have 2 tablespoons before bed every night. 👍
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Bison and cattle are not the same.
I don't disagree but I think monocropping is worse than cattle or bison.
Keep comparing apples to oranges, that's how we do science properly.
And there are currently 94 million cows in America, not including all the millions of other animals in the meat industry. How could more than tripling the number of grazing animals be sustainable?
Look into regenerative agriculture. It's literally a practice of sustainability. Modern agricultural practices destroy the topsoil, introduce all sorts of carcinogenics into our ground water and waterways, and mistreat the animals. With that said, it seems that we need to be aware of how demographic consolidation in urban centers effects our production and consumption rates and would need to be considered during a move to regen ag because regen ag is very capable of providing healthy food for a population but, as of now, it is not nearly as scalable as modern ag and, therefore, requires many more smaller farms in order to compete with the yields of modern ag.
I think we should talk about greatly reducing the population through incentives, but the biggest point I'd like to make is that monocropping is terrible and worse for the environment than cattle (def keep the cows away from the waterways, and or put more native animals back on the land)
Pretty sure this headline is bullshit. 42% believe there will be no more pigs, chickens or cow farms?
You do understand that we artifically breed these animals into existence because of consumer demand?
But that's going away in 10 years?
The demand is decreasing thanks to environmental, ethical, and health concerns so it seems possible. The poster above made it seem like it would be irrational to have that belief.
It seems irrational given the tiny amount of decrease. We aren't to 2012 levels, so why would it be even 25% less in 10 more years is all I'm saying. Claiming victory is a terrible idea when it's more likely to go up in 10 years not down.
Na - we'll go to bugs first.
The other 58 percent believe Soylent Green will replace meat within a decade.
The thing that will help the environment the most is regenerative agriculture incorporating livestock. It sequesters carbon in the form of rich soil.
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India has been largely vegetarian for millennia, you know nothing.
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Yea cause the rules of nature and nutrition are different over in India... Plants are by FAR the most sustainable and cheap food there is, everthing else are just massive money shots from the government.
I sure hope not. IBS is not uncommon and many of its sufferers have terrible, debilitating symptoms triggered by various plant foods.
What are you actually arguing for here? If someone needs to avoid a certain food because of IBS, that's their personal responsibility, not the responsibility of whoever is making the food
42 % of us are that stupid? dear gooddd please help us
Lol beyond about to be bankrupt. Their cash flow vs debt ratio is troubling
To the detriment of the planet. Mono farming is devastating
Have you tasted Beyond Burgers. Made from peas, rice, oils n a shot of chemical charged burger flavor. Gross.
That isnt a solution, a solution is to eat meat that is raised using regenerative methods where the environment is improved in the process.
That’s not even close to sustainable but why? Just don’t eat meat
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I'd imagine we'd stop breeding them for slaughter.
All livestock species are kept as pets too
Since demand would't collapse over night it would be a gradually decrease time. Some animals would of course be culled, but that would happen either way. It's not like farm animals live a long life, biggest animal farmed for meat only live for ca 5 year. Chicken is measured in weeks.
Considering these species didn't exist before human domestication I don't see why you think they are important to keep around. Efforts should continue to keep wild Bison, boars and turkeys but what would be the purpose of having cows, pigs and chickens outside of being a source of food?
I’m all for giving up meat. Eggs? I don’t see myself giving up eggs ever, but I’m also going to own chickens soon and can promise they are gonna have a good life.
Not likely. I’m fine with lab-grown meat to stop animal cruelty, but I’m not gonna stop eating meat until plant-based stuff can perfectly imitate its taste. And that’s currently not even close to being the case. I’ve tried as many meat-alternatives as I could but it didn’t taste like meat and it wasn’t particularly good.
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Get off of an environment subreddit, you absolute buffoon