It seems that everyone I know in person thinks that the concept of vat grown meat is disgusting. I find it hard to believe that killing a living animal is less disgusting than not doing so.
So, here’s a poll. If the technology was available, would you eat vat grown meat?
Whadda ya mean “if”?
Yes, if it was as good as the natural version. Or meat grown on some genetically engineered “meat plant” for that matter. I like the taste of meat, and eating it makes me feel better; but I don’t really like killing animals to get it, and it’s ecologically expensive. I’d really prefer some more efficient method of getting it.
I used to work in a hot-dog making plant. I’ve *seen *vats full of meat. I don’t care where it comes from, you get a load of a giant cauldron of pink goo that used to be meat, and you’ll never eat another hot-dog.
Yep. What’s the downside?
Well, I consider that a pretty normal thing about food. Think too much about where it comes from, and you’ll lose your appetite ( at least in a society as fastidious as ours ). Plants in the field with bugs and dirt and manure and pesticides isn’t very appealing either to think about.
So this is coming along but it certainly isn’t right around the corner.
I’ve been a vegetarian for a while. I wouldn’t eat this stuff because I don’t have the desire to eat meat. I do think this sounds gross, but from a veggie ethics standpoint this would be a good idea.
Yes
IF
taste, texture, nutrition content etc didn’t give me a reason not to.
For some reason this thread makes me think of [post=7288287]this post[/post].
I’d probably eat vat-grown meat, if it seems appetizing enough, but probably not vat-grown human meat.
The majority of veggies I know refuse to eat regular yogurt because of the rennet that’s used to make the culture thrive. Yet (to my understanding) that rennet may have originally come from a cow’s stomach many years ago and just been cultured. So for those people, I’m sure this would be a no-no.
I thought you were going to link to a Sentient Meat post.
Are these people vegetarians or vegans? I’ve never known a vegetarian who wouldn’t eat yogurt, but I expect vegans avoid it.
I don’t know, how would it taste?
If it tasted like meat, I would eat it.
But I wish they would find a better way to describe it. Every time I hear about meat in vats, I have this mental image of scientists growing tumors in a lab somewhere, and you know, yuck.
Assuming it can be produced economically in large quantities, it will be one of the ten greatest technological advances in history. Hope it tastes good, though.
Vegetarians.
However, on review it seems that I misremembered and meant cheese not yogurt. The objection to yogurt is that it sometimes contains gelatin.
So substitute “cheese” for “yogurt” in my post above and it will make sense - and the point stands. Vegetarians who won’t eat rennet-made cheese would almost certainly not eat vat-grown meat.
(Would the meat have to be stimulated to bolster the muscle fiber, I wonder. Maybe by putting an electrical charge across it. Can you imagine it throbbing…)
Couldn’t say yes or no - too many variables as has been pointed out above. Vat-grown animal protein slurry doesn’t sound too good but as a rather tasteless base for balogna or sausage who could tell? A sliced chunk presented as a “roast” would probably be pretty awful, although not too much worse than some of the watery insipid factory-farmed meat you can currently buy at your grocers.
So assuming there was no nutrtional reason to avoid it (excessive salt, preservatives, sugars), sure I’d eat it within limits.
Could this stuff be made remotely healthy at all? Today, processed meats have so much salt and chemicals in them you’d probably be better off as a vegetarian than eating that stuff all the time. So vat-grown sausage might be more ethical, but it doesn’t sound very good for you.
I voted “yes” since:
– Either it will really taste like something we call “meat,” in which case who care? And possibly who know?!
– Or it won’t, in which case the question of eating vat grown meat would be moot… And I’d either eat whatever it was they grew in those vats if it tasted good (even if it isn’t meat) or, if it didn’t. I wouldn’t.
I voted yes. I don’t think I would seek it out, or be one of the first people to try it in its experimental phase, and I might not eagerly dive into a huge slab of vat loaf, but if it had been on the market a while and someone offered me a vat-meat hors d’ouevres, I might have a nibble.
Mmmm. Meat. Vat grown, industrially farmed, free range, shot, trapped, hit by a car, if it’s not spoiled it’s still meat. Gimme.