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[AzyWng]

Personally?

Now that I think about it, I'm just gonna make sure not to screw up any "killing-derived" meat I cook from now on.

Don't know how frequent the vat-cultured meat will become, but I'm interested in trying some once it becomes available.

[itisnotlogical]

I wouldn't mind vat meat, but then I'm not especially picky about my food anyway as far as source/quality goes. I probably wouldn't even notice it happening.

I feel like there will be a moral stink over vat meat though, because we can't have anything nice without decades of struggle. The only thing stronger than capitalism in America is a temporary moral panic.

[Biowraith]

Apparently now confirmed that Chris Cornell's death was a suicide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39960066

Soundgarden was a big part of my teenage musical listening; Badmotorfinger was either the 3rd or 4th album I ever bought.  I am sad.

[Sirus]

I'm pretty damn certain that lab grown meat is much more tasteless, something about lack of fat or something? Read it somewhere in a reputable source (aka, not the internet)

From what I understand, the problem comes from the meat never getting, well, used while it's growing. It doesn't get exercised or put to work in any way and so it's just sort of this bland, untextured blob.

[Avis-Mergulus]

I'm pretty damn certain that lab grown meat is much more tasteless, something about lack of fat or something? Read it somewhere in a reputable source (aka, not the internet)

From what I understand, the problem comes from the meat never getting, well, used while it's growing. It doesn't get exercised or put to work in any way and so it's just sort of this bland, untextured blob.

I'm pretty sure that with enough funding, these problems are ultimately solvable. One could make artificial muscle strips expand and contract using electrodes while they are being grown... I think, at least, my biotech experience is nonexistent.
My general idea is that once some tech becomes widespread, it accumulates improvements pretty fast. The main challenge is making it more cost-effective than already existing tech, like animal husbandry, in this case.

[SalmonGod]

Apparently now confirmed that Chris Cornell's death was a suicide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39960066

Soundgarden was a big part of my teenage musical listening; Badmotorfinger was either the 3rd or 4th album I ever bought.  I am sad.

Down on the Upside was one of my most listened to albums through my teen years.  Probably only superceded by Pink Floyd DSotM and The Wall.  I consider the first Audioslave album to be one of the most inspired I've ever heard.

I saw him live once, and he blew me away.  Fun and engaging with the crowd.  He was disappointed when a bunch of the front rows started leaving early at his show to beat traffic, so he basically told everyone on the lawn to storm through security to the front, and put on an incredible encore performance.  And I'll never forget one part of the show, where I'm pretty sure his mic cut out.  Suddenly his voice disappeared.  A second later, I heard it again... but it wasn't coming through the speakers.  He just upped his projection so goddamn powerfully that I could hear him from the middle of the lawn, over the heads of the entire concert crowd and instruments, almost as clearly as if it were still through the speakers.  He sang like this through a whole verse before his mic kicked back in.  Fucking amazing.  In terms of raw vocal bravado, I can't think of anyone who compares.

I can only think of 3 musicians whose deaths will likely effect me as much (Roger Waters, Floor Jansen, Trent Reznor).  I'll be paying my own tributes to the man all weekend.

[Yoink]

I am not intending to be rude, but humans are anatomically omnivorous. We have meat teeth and veggie teeth for a reason. Why do you choose to be a vegetarian, Yoink? Again, not being rude, it's a curiosity to me.

That's not actually the case, we are descended from herbivorous creatures and eating meat is actually not ideal for the human body. We've just become so used to gaining vital nutrients from meat over the centuries that it seems extremely difficult to get enough of them, otherwise. That's not really amongst the reasons I refuse to eat meat, though, mostly I just find the idea of farming (especially factory farming) abhorrent. Basically humankind has several species that are kept in captivity, grown, raised and (almost always) mistreated just for food.
Before someone says, "but otherwise these creatures would be extinct, there's no room left on the Earth for wild populations of farm animals" in all honesty extinction would likely be a kinder fate than an entire species being kept alive purely for its meat, skin and the products of its horribly-overworked mammary glands.

Also... Eggs are chicken embryos. So what is the difference there?

As was said before, chicken periods.
And I don't know what it's like in the States, but here most people choose to buy 'free range' eggs, which is supposed to be far less cruel than caged egg farming. Many so-called 'free range' egg farms actually don't fit the requirements for actual, ethical free range, but with a bit of digging online one can discover which are to be trusted, which is what I did.
I would rather not be eating eggs at all (I have mostly cut dairy from my diet at this point in the hopes of going vegan, probably by next month sometime), but I am trying to put on weight and my usual sources of nutrition (beans, spinach, broccoli, nuts, that kind of thing) are rather more expensive, and I am currently very poor for the next couple of days due to moving house and related expenses. I don't disagree with the idea of eating eggs in general like some people, though. It's not like dairy farming. *shudder* As long as the eggs are unfertilized, sourced without cruelty (i.e they don't come from a farm that also kills their birds for meat) I don't see a problem with it. Keeping your own chickens, for example.

Buuuut I'll never qualify for the full 'vegan' label until I cut the eggs, so... they'll probably be the last thing to go once I've cut dairy completely.    


Also, goddamn, this is a lot of discussion to wake up to and try to take in and respond to at once.
On the topic of synth meat, I'm not convinced it will be actual, lab-grown (and incredibly expensive) meat that eventually replaces the real thing. There are already amazing things being done with soy, tofu, seitan and various other plant products. I haven't been vegetarian so long that I've forgotten the taste and texture of meat, and lately I've been finding more and more imitation meat products that are shockingly realistic. Sometimes they are so like the real thing that it worries me, I hesitate after a bit thinking that I've just unintentionally broken veg, and I look into the source of this food with a great deal of trepidation-- only to find that it was, in fact, entirely meat-free.

Well, I'm pretty sure I responded to most everything that's been said in here. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to drink some more coffee (my first for the day!) and get back to focusing on videogames.

[wierd]

I am quite sure vat-meat will become a thing, for a very important reason:

It has synergy with bioregenerative technologies for use on humans.

Take for instance, the "Spray skin" technology that uses cultured human stem cells that produce epidermal tissue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spray-on_skin

and the "Hey, let's use spinach leaves as a scaffolding for making cultured tissue grafts for heart muscle!" research.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/human-heart-spinach-leaf-medicine-science/

The major issue with vat grown "meat" will be the lack of vascular networks, which will preclude good diversification of the tissue into fatty regions, contractive regions, etc-- resulting in inferior texture and flavor. Using a vegetable precursor (like the research with spinach leaves) that supplies a vascular network would enable high quality meats, much like high quality tissue grafts can be cultured using the method. There is significant overlap in the two technologies, and both working together would greatly bring down costs of the technology.

Plant tissue is easier to convince to form vascular networks than mammalian tissue, so using the plant structure as a scaffold is an inexpensive way out of a difficult problem.

[Yoink]

Oh, yeah, fair point. Of course it will become "a thing," I just doubt it will be affordable enough to be suitable as a large-scale replacement for meat.
I could easily be wrong though, that article you linked seems rather interesting!

[redwallzyl]

I am not intending to be rude, but humans are anatomically omnivorous. We have meat teeth and veggie teeth for a reason. Why do you choose to be a vegetarian, Yoink? Again, not being rude, it's a curiosity to me.

That's not actually the case, we are descended from herbivorous creatures and eating meat is actually not ideal for the human body. We've just become so used to gaining vital nutrients from meat over the centuries that it seems extremely difficult to get enough of them, otherwise. That's not really amongst the reasons I refuse to eat meat, though, mostly I just find the idea of farming (especially factory farming) abhorrent. Basically humankind has several species that are kept in captivity, grown, raised and (almost always) mistreated just for food.
Before someone says, "but otherwise these creatures would be extinct, there's no room left on the Earth for wild populations of farm animals" in all honesty extinction would likely be a kinder fate than an entire species being kept alive purely for its meat, skin and the products of its horribly-overworked mammary glands.

Your wrong. Humans and human ancestors have eaten meat for millions of years. we are adapted to it. Im going to take the word of my professor with a doctorate in this stuff over you.

[Lord Shonus]

I am not intending to be rude, but humans are anatomically omnivorous. We have meat teeth and veggie teeth for a reason. Why do you choose to be a vegetarian, Yoink? Again, not being rude, it's a curiosity to me.

That's not actually the case, we are descended from herbivorous creatures and eating meat is actually not ideal for the human body. We've just become so used to gaining vital nutrients from meat over the centuries that it seems extremely difficult to get enough of them, otherwise. That's not really amongst the reasons I refuse to eat meat, though, mostly I just find the idea of farming (especially factory farming) abhorrent. Basically humankind has several species that are kept in captivity, grown, raised and (almost always) mistreated just for food.
Before someone says, "but otherwise these creatures would be extinct, there's no room left on the Earth for wild populations of farm animals" in all honesty extinction would likely be a kinder fate than an entire species being kept alive purely for its meat, skin and the products of its horribly-overworked mammary glands.

Your wrong. Humans and human ancestors have eaten meat for millions of years. we are adapted to it. Im going to take the word of my professor with a doctorate in this stuff over you.

Besides the mountains of anatomical evidence (the human digestive system is not particularly well adapted to breaking down vegetable matter, our entire sensory system is constructed in a way that is only beneficial for a predator species, human teeth don't have a thick enough layer of enamel needed to handle most vegetables that haven't been washed thoroughly first, etc), the fact that most of the environments humans have lived in were not capable of supporting vegetarian human life (unlike most herbivores, humans lack the ability to synthesize several vital amino acids, and the relatively small number of plants that can supply those acids were quite geographically limited before modern agriculture) until a fairly modern era is particularly damning to the "meat eating humans are unnatural" crowd. The evidence is overwhelming that Homo Sapiens has been an omnivorous species for a very long time, as were several of our predecessor species.

[Yoink]

You're (I'm assuming this is what you were trying to say?) wrong. Humans and human ancestors have eaten meat for millions of years. we are adapted to it. Im going to take the word of my professor with a doctorate in this stuff over you.

Even if that is true (spoiler alert: it isn't), it still doesn't make for an argument in favour of eating meat now, when it is no longer necessary for survival.

[Rolan7]

Free range eggs are almost twice as expensive, here...  But that's still $3-4 for a dozen, and I don't eat many eggs.  So I usually spring for organic in that case.  (Organic beans, on the other hand, I usually pass up since I eat more).

I'm not qualified to weigh in, really, but I think we're somewhat adapted to eat meat.  We're also very capable of surviving on plants, and I'm not sure which is "better".  I treat meat as a treat and keep my consumption low, because I know raising meat is vastly less efficient than a vegetarian diet.

By mostly consuming beans+rice and other vegetarian protein-combos, and resisting the thermostat, I'm making my drop in the bucket of human impact just a tiny bit smaller.  And many tiny efforts, on large scale, help a lot.  I'm happy to be part of that.

I still go out and eat burgers (or usually fried chicken) as reward food.  I still have a sizeable imprint.  It's just not as big as it could be.

[redwallzyl]

Biological anthropologist > Random internet person

Rumages around for a few minutes:

Zooarchaeology is the study of animal-body and trace fossils found in association with hominin body or trace fossils. Zooarchaeology in the nineteenth century served to assign antiquity to stone artifacts associated with extinct animals and to evaluate the paleoenvironmental setting of archaeological occurrences (Daniels, 1975). The current role of zooarchaeology has expanded to include evaluations of the physical and biotic processes responsible for the formation of paleoanthropological assemblages, including most centrally the suite of hominin behaviors and ecological interactions recorded by the animal remains. For the dietary ecology of Quaternary hominins, zooarchaeology is the principle source of evidence for documenting the origin and evolution of larger-mammal carnivory. Larger-mammal carnivory signals a major niche expansion within the hominin lineage. The likely frugivorous ancestral diet (e.g., Andrews and Martin, 1991) that probably included small animals ( < 5 kg body weight) was supplemented by foods from animals of similar and far greater body size than hominins. The novel stonetool slicing technology of the Oldowan Industry enabled this niche shift (e.g., Isaac, 1983). It involved often distant transport of stone materials to carcass-processing locales. Carcass foods were also likely transported at times from acquisition sites to places affording safer processing and consumption (Isaac, 1983; Peters and Blumenschine, 1995, 1996). Stone-tool-assisted butchery of larger mammals is highly distinctive from the small-animal faunivory of nonhuman primates, limiting the usefulness of predation by chimpanzees and baboons for modeling its ecology and evolutionary consequences (cf. Stanford, 1996). Oldowan hominins were apparently the first primate to enter the larger-carnivore guild, composed most prominently of a diverse series of felids, hyaenids, and canids (Turner, 1990; Werdelin and Lewis, 2005), as well as crocodiles and vultures.Oldowan hominins likely remained prey for most guild members, but they were now also potential food competitors for some. This ecological transformation can be linked to the evolution of the hominin brain and social systems (cf. Washburn and Lancaster, 1968; Isaac, 1978; Foley and Lee, 1991; Aiello and Wheeler, 1995; Foley, 2001). The zooarchaeological record makes three unique contributions to early hominin dietary reconstruction. First, butchery marks on bone allow the realized carnivorous niche of hominins to be itemized. These dietary trace fossils record the edible tissues hominins extracted from animals of specifiable size and sometimes species. Such specificity about paleodiet composition cannot be ascertained currently through the morphology or chemistry of hominin body fossils. Second, co-occurring butchery-marked and tooth-marked bone is informative about modes of carcass acquisition and the carnivore species with which hominins interacted over food directly or indirectly. Temporal changes in these ecological traits define the evolving role of hominins in the larger carnivore guild. Third, the relative commonness of fossils bearing feeding traces of the carnivore guild allows hominin dietary ecology to be examined in paleolandscape context (Blumenschine and Peters, 1998). The suite of carnivores associated with landscapes supporting patchy tree cover theoretically afforded hominins varying degrees of predator encounter risk and competition for carcass foods. These ecostructural factors, which have been modeled for the Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai lake basin (Peters and Blumenschine 1995, 1996), likely affected the amounts, sources, and processing of carcass foods by hominins in different landscape settings (Blumenschine and Peters, 1998). The zooarchaeological record in paleolandscape context can be used to test these theoretical constraints on early hominin carnivory (Blumenschine et al . , 2006.).

Ungar, Peter S., ed. Human Evolution Series : Evolution of the Human Diet : The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. Cary, US: Oxford University Press, 2006. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 May 2017.
Copyright © 2006. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

[Yoink]

Try looking at the number of fucking health issues caused by consuming meat sometime, might inspire you to pull your head out of your arse.   
Although it probably won't... if you need medical reasons to convince you that consuming meat is a bad thing to begin with, it's probably wedged pretty firmly up there.