Would You Eat Lab-Grown Meat?

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?

Absolutely, I would.

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.
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This has been a staple item in mildly-futuristic science fiction ever since the 1950's.
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?
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I laugh that they had to throw global warming in there. Come on people it is a myth that humans are the cause of global warming.

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.
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The problem is that people have an incorrect mindframe.
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.
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Snarlz is right, mouth-feel is a limiting factor. For an example, try eating a tomato sandwich after the tomato has made the bread a soggy mess. Not the same, is it?
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Are they going to also make foie gras ?
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.
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I would definitely eat it. In fact, I'd volunteer to test it. Cheaper, cleaner, healthier meat must be a good thing. And, if it can help to ameliorate a potential world food crisis, then so much the better.

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.
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The show "Better Off Ted" had a hilarious episode about a "meat blob" Veridian Dynamics was developing.
Just wish somebody had posted a clip from it on YouTube!
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I'm amazed none of these articles make any real effort to extrapolate the ethics of the bioreactor. The great majority of us would rather NOT have to kill for meat.

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.
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