I’m in San Francisco, at an Italian joint just south of Golden Gate Park, enjoying meatballs and bacon not made of meat in the traditional sense but of plants mixed with “cultivated” pork fat. Dawn, you see, donated a small sample of fat, which a company called Mission Barns got to proliferate in devices called bioreactors by providing nutrients like carbohydrates, amino acids, and vitamins—essentially replicating the conditions in her body. Because so much of the flavor of pork and other meats comes from the animal’s fat, Mission Barns can create products like sausages and salami with plants but make them taste darn near like sausages and salami.
I’ve been struggling to describe the experience, because cultivated meat short-circuits my brain—my mouth thinks I’m eating a real pork meatball, but my brain knows that it’s fundamentally different and that Dawn (pictured above) didn’t have to die for it. This is the best I’ve come up with: It’s Diet Meat. Just as Diet Coke is an approximation of the real thing, so too are cultivated meatballs. They simply taste a bit less meaty, at least to my tongue. Which is understandable, as the only animal product in this food is the bioreactor-grown fat.
This is the best I’ve come up with: It’s Diet Meat. Just as Diet Coke is an approximation of the real thing, so too are cultivated meatballs.
I hope that wasn’t meant to be a pitch for it. Diet Coke tastes like ass.
They simply taste a bit less meaty
See that’s the disconnect - diet Coke doesn’t taste like Coke that’s less Coke-y, it tastes like Coke that had the sugar replaced with a scoop of Grandpa’s ashes and a dash of betadine.
If we’ve made the meat equivalent to diet Coke, the best course of action is to just skip that nastiness and cook up some tofu or paneer or something.
If we’ve made the meat that’s just a little less meaty, okay cool, I’ll give it a shot.
…but those two are NOT the same thing.
If you can make ethical bacon, you can also make ethical long bacon
I would definitely donate some of my fat to taste myself
I’ve been waiting for this for years. I can’t wait to eat the first celebrity that donates some cells for a tie-in promo with Taco Bell. That shit is going to be so mid and our nightmare cyberpunk future is incomplete without it. XD
Jeffrey Dahmer is interested
Simpsons did it
But for real, I am super interested in the concept of cultivated meat. I’m no vegan, but if less animals need to be mistreated and murdered for my steak, I’m not going to complain.
I mean I think in this case Norse mythology beat the Simpsons to this at least a few centuries before with Heidrun
If the animal has been given the best possible life it could have right to the moment of death would you still have misgivings about meat?
Most animals behave pretty clearly as if they don’t want to die, and humans have been really bad, historically, at deciding correctly who is person enough to mind being enslaved/genocided/colonialized.
Warfare would look quite different if the winner had to eat the loser.
Bosmer lore in a nutshell.
I barely have misgivings about meat as it is. But yes, an animal that is raised on quality feed, and given space to grow before being harvested is always going to be preferable to the industrial levels of farming that capitalism requires to meet demands.
Makes sense I enjoy meat as well but I try to stay away from factory farmed meats and mostly get meat from family farms or hunting but that’s not a luxury that everyone’s able to do.
It blows me away that some towns or cities only have a walmart for their grocery store.
Yes, it is still murder and their life was not full. I don’t care how pampered the animal was its life was still cut short and its purpose was solely as a commodity for human consumption.
Sure it’s murder but meat is delicious and I care for my animals before I slaughter them and use everything I can.
Or we could you know, leave the fucking animals alone.
Did Dawn explicitly say “I would like to donate my fat”? No? Then it wasn’t a fucking donation. Pretty gross to characterize the story in this way.
That’s ridiculous. You know that’s ridiculous right?
People gonna eat meat. They can eat dead animals or they can eat this stuff. You choose which you prefer
What’s ridiculous is humans unconsensually raping and pillaging living beings for all they are worth just because you think your taste buds and minutes of pleasure outweigh a living breathing being with the capacity to experience. Sorry that my moral compass is more attuned than yours.
You forget the third option, leave animals the fuck alone and eat plants ffs.
I can’t tell from the article or Mission Barn’s page whether they need a new sample for every batch, or just needed one sample to seed their bioreactors. I’m not sure (as someone who avoids meat for ethical and environmental reasons) if there’s a big difference.
I’m actually happy with Beyond burgers/sausages when I do want meat taste, but nice to have more options. (Mozzarella and Parmesan are what I’d look for next, though Rebel Cheese is doing a good job with some more cheese-platter varieties.)
It may not be an every batch thing but you would need more samples at least eventually. Cells have division limits. While these are somewhat bypassed in these types of setups you do run into issues for longer term.
I’m just gonna stick to beans
One day they’ll breed an animal that makes it clear it wants to be eaten.
the Cow was the Dish of the Day at Milliways, which arrived when Zaphod Beeblebrox (accompanied by Arthur, Ford, and Trillian) requested to ‘meet the meat’. It was described as a large dairy animal, a “large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type.” It was said to have large watery eyes, as well as small horns and what might have been an ingratiating smile on its lips. The creature seems peaceful and at ease, and at one point is described to have “mooed.”
The creature offers Zaphod and his party his shoulder, braised in a white wine sauce, then goes on to offer other parts of its body, having worked hard to fatten itself up through force-feeding itself for months. Eventually, after Arthur and Trillian have expressed their shock and Ford has expressed his disinterest, Zaphod requests four rare steaks and the Dish of the Day goes off to shoot himself, telling Arthur not to worry, as he says “I’ll be very humane.”[1]
Indeed what I was referencing.
Okja kind of has similar themes about a fictional animal bred for food.
Beyond Lies the Wub
Excellent, more ultra processed material that our bodies have never encountered before and don’t know what to do with, what could go wrong with eating it in with other things that we aren’t supposed to be eating?
I do think there’s reason to scrutinize a new food manufacturing process. From morphine to microplastics to sugar, we’ve got plenty of prior art thinking we were on top of the health implications.
But, if we are trading some human health risk for known environmental catastrophe & animal lives, I think shifting responsibility into our court is a good step.
It’s exactly the same material.
Anything the body doesn’t know what to do with, it excretes.
Not a commentary on this particular product, but I don’t believe it’s quite so simple
Or, if someone doesn’t have the enzymes to digest it, it sits in their stomach and rots, which is fun.
It’s even more fun if you’re actually allergic to the proteins in meat, but I digress.
What you’re describing is called gastroparesis, and it’s a serious medical condition, not something that generally happens to people as a response to certain food.
Trust me; my body has encountered pig fat and knows just what to do with it.
