Would you eat a lab-grown steak? Esquire Magazine interviewed Dr. Morris Benjaminson who created lab-grown fish for NASA about the ways that "test tube meat" could rescue the planet and the human race - from helping the environment to curing disease and preventing hunger.
ESQ: There won't be methane emissions without a digestive tract. Could this technology stop global warming?
MB: Reports have definitively shown that animal husbandry produces massive pollution, and a large percentage of our problems are caused by raising large numbers of animals for slaughter. Look at the way chickens are raised. Fish raised in captivity produce enormous quantities of waste, and there's no good way to dispose of it. The environment is not being affected favorably; from the standpoint of preserving the environment, lab-grown meat technology certainly deserves support. And beyond climate change, this could stop famines in places like Ethiopia and Darfur, where people starve to death because they don't have enough protein in their diet.
Link - Thanks Marty!
If the steak doesn't cost $45,000 a pound, would you eat lab-grown meat?
I don't think lab-grown meat would (or could) replace farmed meat entirely -- the differences in fat content and texture of the various parts of livestock would be difficult to replicate. However, for applications that aren't generally picky about these things (ground beef, or processed deli meats, for example) lab-grown meat would be a perfect fit.
Let me suggest 'The Space Merchants' by Pohl&Kornbluth.
And who can forget Bill Cosby's bit about 'The Chicken Heart that Ate Chicago'? What do you suppose all that heart was supposed to be for?
Anyways I would eat lab grown beef but I doubt it would taste the same since it is lab grown and would not have the features it would have if it was farmed.
They think it should be chewy, like real meat, which is unrealistic. You have to work out the muscle in order to get that sort of texture.
Instead of thinking of it as NEEDING to have a chewy steaky texture, try to be open to the idea of it being a protein brick, like Tofu.
I bet it would be great in a casing like sausage.
Well, if lab meat taste is to industrial meat what industrial meat is to good meat or wild meat, then I'm not buying it, at any rate.
Speaking out of almost total ignorance (obviously, this is the Internet); I can't see that working a muscle in order to somewhat replicate the chewiness of normally farmed meat would be too difficult. Some sort of electrical pulse as it grows should work, right?
Also, my GF would surely rapidly run out of excuses to not eat meat; which would mean I would only have to cook one meal at a time. And that would kick ass.
Just wish somebody had posted a clip from it on YouTube!
Forget making it taste 'normal'; it's a new product. Don't introduce it as a substitute unless you want it to have a bad image. With that said, I bet it tastes like what it's made from -- meat. I couldn't have more reasons to look forward to this development.