…and this is a 
Who needs a vat when you've got a chicken?
Category: Science
Posted on: April 16, 2008 12:20 PM, by PZ Myers
Revere is thinking about how to grow meat without the animal. It's a cool idea that's been floating around in science fiction for a while now, but, well, of course it has problems, and Revere notes a couple.
The two biggest, as far as I can see from a quick perusal of the burgeoning literature, are finding a suitable nutrient to grow the cells in; and then growing tissue that has the proper texture for being a meat substitute. Animal meat is not just muscle cells but a complicated structure also containing connective tissue, blood and blood vessels, nerves and fat. Just growing up masses of identical cells isn't sufficient. You have to reproduce an architecture.
I see those two problems as aspects of one much bigger problem. Muscle doesn't grow in isolation: it's always in a solid environmental context. It's made up of cells that respond to activity in a way that enhances performance for the organism, and incidentally promotes flavor and texture and bulk for the delectation of the carnivore. So what do you need to make edible muscle mass, beyond a sheet of myocytes in a culture dish (which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime and would not sell well in test markets)?
An architecture is right. You need connective tissue to form a framework and you need a rigid but motile structure to do work and exercise the growing muscle. Then, because you want a piece of muscle larger than a drop, you need a delivery system for nutrients: a circulatory system, with a pump. This muscle in a vat is going to need a skeleton and a heart.
When I teach physiology, one of the organs I emphasize is the liver. It's amazing how important a liver is to just about everything: growth, digestion, physical performance, reproduction, the whole shebang. Our cultured muscle will need a liver equivalent to support it. Even if we get rid of the digestive system entirely and feed this muscle mass on delivered supplies of pure glucose, amino acids, and various cofactors and enzymes, the liver is a primary regulatory agent for those substances.
Then we need an immune system. A huge lump of cells growing in a bath of sugar and amino acids is bacterial heaven — it's going to need major antibacterial/antiviral support.
The more I think about it, the more I think people are going at it backwards. We shouldn't be thinking about building muscle from the cells up, to create a purified system to produce meat for the market, we should be going the other way, starting with self-sustaining meat producers and genetically paring away the less commercially viable bits, like the brain. Instead of test-tube meat, we should be working on more efficient organisms that generate muscle tissue with the properties we want.
Guess what? Farmers have already been doing this! Look at the domestic cow and chicken and turkey: they're far more brainless than their wild relatives, and have been reduced to as much stupidity and helplessness as possible, without compromising their ability to survive semi-autonomously and harvest nutrients from naturally occurring food sources. I don't see all that much difference in the consequences between building up a functional meat producer from cells in a dish, and stripping down a functional meat producer from a line of domesticated animals. Both starting points are aiming at the same final result; I suspect that the top down procedure is more likely to achieve success in my lifetime.
Comments
With all the speed technology allows,
From agar plates, we work our way to cows.
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | April 16, 2008 12:26 PM
Excellent post.
Of course, if you really want to maximize the muscle mass to parts-I'm-not-interested-in-eating ratio, you're wasting your time with endotherms anyway--takes too much guts to maintain those high thermoregulatory metabolic rates. Best to start with something like a fish. Or a shrimp.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | April 16, 2008 12:28 PM
You may be a little behind on this actually, I was reading about this a few days ago. The texture is still a problem, but pretty much everything else has been worked out--as soon as they can get the cost down it's ready to go for certain processed foods where the texture doesn't matter. Chicken nuggets were mentioned specifically. They were estimating it'll be available in five or six years.
Posted by: Grand Fromage | April 16, 2008 12:28 PM
I remember when the original McChicken Sandwich came out. It was perfectly round and the exact size of a Petri dish. It occurred to me that perhaps they cloned some cells, grew them in a dish, popped it out, breaded it, froze it and shipped it to your local McD's. Creepy, eh?
Posted by: Cappy | April 16, 2008 12:29 PM
Most animals including modern hens and swine retain the ability to go feral, breed and live successfully in the wild. They are calmer, but when measured in ecologically sensible ways, generally not stupider.
Posted by: emily | April 16, 2008 12:38 PM
it's kind of scary actually. Eventually we'll be eating food that was synthetically grown. Our great grandchildren will ask "What is cow? Chicken?"
Posted by: Geral | April 16, 2008 12:38 PM
They're made out of meat!
Posted by: boomer | April 16, 2008 12:39 PM
Instead why not work on building structure and the essential nutrients into plant tissues? That technology is even older - in fact >1000s of years old - soy and lentil based mock meats. It is clean and civilised and no one gets killed.
Posted by: rimpal | April 16, 2008 12:40 PM
Heck, they're better off genetically modifying plant material to have the taste and consistency of meat.
That's what they really want anyway... not meat in a vat that takes a ton of factory support to grow.
Posted by: Siamang | April 16, 2008 12:40 PM
I could see the practical application of "vat grown" meat for something like long-term space travel, where a food store may not be sufficient. Of course, the process would have to be fairly compact, wouldn't it? And from what PZ is describing, it all sounds fairly complex.
Maybe we should be investigating the applicability of zero-g bovines.
--Raynfala
"Pigs..... in..... spaaaaaace....."
Posted by: Raynfala | April 16, 2008 12:41 PM
So what's the structural complexity of a goose liver look like? Could we grow humane fois gras in a petri dish?
Posted by: TomS | April 16, 2008 12:44 PM
Give up meat. Save the world. Easy peasy.
Posted by: Jit | April 16, 2008 12:45 PM
If we stopped eating meat, we'd stop growing farm animals, so they'd never get to live in the first place. I'm all for eating meat as long as the animal didn't suffer in life or death. Of course, if humans are going to continue to reproduce at the rate we are, we're probably going to have to eat less meat anyway. It's just an inefficient way of getting our nutrients.
Posted by: Jackal | April 16, 2008 12:49 PM
Forget the Vat-Veal, we already have a limitless supply of tasty, nutritious Soylent!
Posted by: Longtime Lurker | April 16, 2008 12:49 PM
So what do you need to make edible muscle mass, beyond a sheet of myocytes in a culture dish (which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime and would not sell well in test markets)?
You should remember that the primary consumer of this lab-grown "meat" in the future would be those who willingly consume tofu and the like today. Taste and texture obviously mean nothing to them.
[/snark]
Posted by: Ryan Jensen | April 16, 2008 12:52 PM
I'm with Jit-- you're attacking a non-problem. There's no reason for humans (especially those in developed countries!) to eat meat except "it tastes good".
This is one area where most of you champions of rational thinking really let me down.
Posted by: DaveX | April 16, 2008 12:52 PM
I think we're going completely in the wrong direction. We should have to hunt for our meat. And it should be dangerous. And the animals we hunt should be strong and wily and be trying very hard to not die.
(Don't ask me how serious I am about this because I don't really know. I just know I won't eat veal--way too creepy. And I eat buffalo meat when it's reasonably priced.)
Posted by: RamblinDude | April 16, 2008 12:56 PM
boomer - The video version. Made of meat, indeed.
Posted by: Carlie | April 16, 2008 12:59 PM
According to the guy I was drinking with the other night, KFC already does this. That's why they had to legally change their name to KFC, since they couldn't call it "chicken" anymore.
(Snopes link for anyone that hasn't heard this one before)
Posted by: Fatboy | April 16, 2008 1:03 PM
which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime
You mean, like egg whites?
I think an undifferentiated cow cell omelet would be pretty tasty.
Posted by: HP | April 16, 2008 1:05 PM
Reminds me of an off-hand reference in Sterling's Schismatrix to floating, headless chickens as "free-fall protein machines." And then of course (same book) there's Kitsume, whose body is essentially acres of vat-grown human flesh carpeting the interior of an orbital habitat.
Posted by: CJO | April 16, 2008 1:06 PM
I loved the story "They're made out of meat".
It does seem that vat grown meat is going in the wrong direction just in the end too complicated that I doubt it could be made profitable or grown cheaper than using some kind of animal instead. If you are willing to process the primary source of the animal protein then you would have the entire animal kingdom to chose from, add selective breeding and genetic engineering you could get "hamburger patties" from beef flavored worms with all the "flavor, fat and texture" of beef grown on organic waste and water.
Vat grown food like meat seems so "Victorian" so removed from the body like putting "skirts" on furniture to hide the naked legs.
Posted by: unclee frogy | April 16, 2008 1:08 PM
@#21
Wow. I was beginning to think I was the only person who ever read Schismatrix.
Posted by: Ranson | April 16, 2008 1:13 PM
Re: zero-g bovines @#10
"Assume a spherical cow...."
Posted by: parkrrrr | April 16, 2008 1:14 PM
AMEN.
I get in these arguments with fellow physicists all the time. They talk about how one day we will make small self replicating 'robots' that we can instruct to build things. And perhaps they can be powered by chemistry or even sunlight. So let's get started, building these form the ground up. That's clearly the most efficient way to go about it since nothing like this exists already.
Posted by: kyle | April 16, 2008 1:14 PM
You all are missing the point. Obviously the best thing about cultured meat is the ability to grow it from your own biopsy. I'm sure I'm delicious.
Of course, I'd settle for a better soybean or whatever. Like one engineered with a more ideal/meat-like amino acid profile and a higher protein/carb ratio.
Some kind of engineered plant product you could leave in a barrel for a while to make vegetarian fish sauce would be awesome too.
Posted by: jack lecou | April 16, 2008 1:15 PM
"13, "If we stopped eating meat, we'd stop growing farm animals, so they'd never get to live in the first place."
I'm not sure I understand what benefit is to be derived from getting to "live in the first place" if you're destined to be slaughtered at 2 years of age or younger and eaten.
Posted by: karen | April 16, 2008 1:18 PM
As a serious question, how much of the animal is used strictly for food, and how much is used for other applications (glue, leather, etc.)? Do we even need the animals for those other applications, or is it that we're raising so many for meat, that the leftovers would simply be waste, otherwise, so they're currently cheaper than synthetic versions.
I recall hearing on NPR this morning, that if Americans (U.S. Americans, that is, sorry to all you other residents of the New World) reduced their meat consumption by 20%, it would have the equivalent reduction in greenhouse gases of everybody switching to driving Toyota Priuses.
Posted by: Fatboy | April 16, 2008 1:20 PM
Posted by: alex | April 16, 2008 1:26 PM
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | April 16, 2008 1:27 PM
Gah! Where'd I put that closing blockquote tag??
Serves me right for not previewing. The bit from "Not just eaten" is mine.
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | April 16, 2008 1:28 PM
Ha! You mentioned that the domesticated cow, chicken and turkey are far more brainless than their wild relatives. Of course, because they have absorbed the humans freaking religion that soaked into the grain and grasses and then ossified into their brains and bones. Man, that stuff is pernicious!
Posted by: Holbach | April 16, 2008 1:29 PM
While there are certainly good arguments for both approaches, the last I read about vat-grown muscle tissue suggested that they could already get something about the consistancy of hot-dogs. I don't know that this was a particularly large step; sausages still seem to be a long ways away.
I also suspect that there would be a greater negative reaction from various animal rights organizations if the approach was to deliberatly create 'mutated' livestock with missing parts, non-essential for meat production, like eyes or ears.
Practically, both paths should be pursued because both approaches will yield information which should help the other succeed.
Of course, while meat may be a sexy thing to try to grow in vats, I would rather see them work on vat growing plywood. It should be simplier than meat, and it should result in stronger plywood.
Posted by: Flex | April 16, 2008 1:29 PM
The website linked by revere claims that they've been making 2 cm long muscles that contract when subjected to electrical current. If they can do that already, it doesn't seem like a huge leap to make muscles 10 bigger, which would be good for eating (supposing that they are thick enough).
Posted by: Flaky | April 16, 2008 1:29 PM
If we stopped eating meat, we'd stop growing farm animals, so they'd never get to live in the first place. I'm all for eating meat as long as the animal didn't suffer in life or death. Of course, if humans are going to continue to reproduce at the rate we are, we're probably going to have to eat less meat anyway. It's just an inefficient way of getting our nutrients.
This describes an ideal that seems to still be a long way from becoming realized. The life form, humans included, has not been born yet in our ancient history that suffered none in life nor death. I agree that we should do our best to minimize inhumane or unnecessary suffering, but to cut meat out of the human diet would drastically change the biosphere we live in, and as is the same with any drastic change to a system, most of these changes will be both unforeseen and in some way damaging to our established manner of living. And if the human population continues to grow, the the capitalist leaning of the world will more than likely take the route of reasoning that more produce and livestock will be necessary, and will push their efforts in research and development towards THAT area, instead of deciding that the population has made their form of commerce obsolete.
As for the claim that ingesting meat from animals is an inefficient way of getting our nutrients, I have serious doubts in mind that prohibit me from accepting that claim at face value. Discounting the fact that many of the alternatives to actual meat still cause a majority of people to have digestive complications, the fact remains that a great many of the alternatives to meat - and more specifically the proteins within - simply do not measure up the the efficacy of actual meat's absorption into the system. I'm not trying top say that these alternatives do not belong on the table at all, but they do need more testing and development before they should be considered viable alternatives to the kind of sustenance our race has lived on for the entirety of its existence.
Posted by: brokenSoldier | April 16, 2008 1:30 PM
Armchair Dissident-- Ah, you give Karen the same argument meat-eaters usually resort to: "mmm, it tastes good". But if a creobot was in here giving an equally vapid response to a valid question, folks would be livid.
As for Fatboy's remark about 20% = Priuses... well, why not drop meat-eating by 100%? It's not difficult in the slightest. Hell, it's actually more difficult to stop driving, given the spread-out nature of most modern communities!
Posted by: DaveX | April 16, 2008 1:32 PM
What is all this talk about the future soon. Have to live in the moment. You think somehow all the imperfections will be fixed? I remember when I was 13...
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/The%20Future%20Soon
Posted by: rickflick | April 16, 2008 1:33 PM
I already eat flavored soy patties, and now you tell me I might be able to get vat meat? When do I get my chrome bustier, clownish eye makeup, and big, big hair? Oh, dystopian SF future, how I've longed for you! *wipes away a tear*
Posted by: Kadath | April 16, 2008 1:34 PM
So I'm thinking it's the Matrix all over again - except with cows. Yeah cows in those pods! Imagine the energy that could be derived! Plus, as a benefit, the methane they produce could be sequestered and used as fuel which would help save our planet from global warming!
I wonder what the cow Matrix would look like inside. Lots of fields probably.
Anyway, meat is so 19th century. We really need to grow up about it. The way it's consumed here in the west is not healthy for us or our planet.
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 1:41 PM
Anyway, meat is so 19th century. We really need to grow up about it. The way it's consumed here in the west is not healthy for us or our planet.
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 1:41 PM
Cows are a great way to turn grass into human-edible calories. But when cows are fed something that's already a human-edible, like, say, corn, it becomes bogglingly wasteful.
Guess which way we do it?
Posted by: Kadath | April 16, 2008 1:49 PM
I don't want to eat mean from chickens raised in the conditions they are raised in. I doubt that chicken farming can go back to something more humane. I like chicken. What to do?
Posted by: Jacob | April 16, 2008 1:49 PM
Once we get the technology to do so we should be creating PLANTS that can produce muscle simulcra without all the saturated fats, parasites and bacteria traditionally found in meat critters.
Yes its playing Frankenstein but if can get cheap easy to grow plants that can dump out protein rich pseudo-meat I'd become a vegetarian over night. This might prove impossible or unfeasible just seems to be the most direct route from sun to stomach.
Posted by: Seth | April 16, 2008 1:54 PM
That was my thought. We need something like "steak plants". Or chicken mimics that grow out of the ground. Or shrimp trees.
All are perennial staples of SF.
Posted by: raven | April 16, 2008 1:54 PM
#40
There are far easier, more efficient, and more productive ways to produce human-edible calories than using lumbering beasts as production facilities.
http://groups.google.com/group/ottawavegchat/browse_thread/thread/3ad0017de9772f32
Besides, calories from red meat are not the healthiest for humans and are easily replaced by better sources.
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 1:58 PM
It wasn't an argument; but yes, meat tastes fantastic. On the converse side, my fiancée is a vegetarian. She's not a vegetarian because of any moral objections to meat, but because she simply doesn't like it. She has the same reaction to meat that I have to tofu. She doesn't like meat, I don't like tofu (or that revolting Quorn stuff, and most of her vegetarian recipies for that matter).
Huh?
I don't care whether you find eating meat immoral, I don't. I have absolutely no objection to the raising of animals, or their humane slaughter or eating them. Just as I don't find animal testing or leather shoes immoral. I don't care whether you do or don't. If you find eating animals distasteful (pardon me), then don't eat animals. These are both entirely subjective views.
Whether or not eating meat is an efficient way to get nutrients may or may not be objectively demonstrable, but it is also is beside the point because - whether or not it's factual - it's *irrelevant* to me; I don't have a moral objection to eating meat in the first place.
Creationists, are making demonstrably false statements about objective reality. I'm not. I fail utterly to see where the valid comparison is.
I wouldn't know. I don't drive.
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | April 16, 2008 2:03 PM
Besides, calories from red meat are not the healthiest for humans and are easily replaced by better sources.
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 1:58 PM
There's some evidence that those stats only hold for corn-fed beef, not grass-fed. (Pollan cites some in The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I don't have a copy to hand.)
Anyway, you're preaching to the wrong person; I'm a vegetarian.
Posted by: Kadath | April 16, 2008 2:04 PM
jack lecou,
I remember a SF short story that involved a new food product that became so popular that congressional hearings were held. All foods at that point were vat-grown. The manufacturer testified, and had to point-out that many of the foods people were eating were actually analogues of materials originally from natural sources, and that some were classified as "meat," which he then had to define, much to the alarm and disgust of the congressmen. Then he defined "pork," "chicken," etc. He pointed-out that this new "meat" had the perfect balance of nutrients, and had never, even in pre-vat days, been available to anyone but the most privileged. The story ended with the words "Now let me define the word 'cannibal.'"
Posted by: OrchidGrowinMan | April 16, 2008 2:05 PM
I can't believe none of you have mention The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe yet.
They'd solved the problem by breeding an animal that not only wanted to be eaten, but was capable of saying so.
Posted by: Hans | April 16, 2008 2:06 PM
I concur. I'm a big advocate of this direction in "humane" meat, and I don't see how the tissue approach has much promise compared to simply engineering animals without any higher brain function. Even growing tissues in plants seems more promising than basically growing trying to grow muscle grafts en masse on a plastic framework.
"If we stopped eating meat, we'd stop growing farm animals, so they'd never get to live in the first place."
Apply the same logic to having too many children, and you can see how easily it breaks down. What we want is for lives lived to be good lives. The number is not what's morally important, because a life never lived in the first place is nothing lost or suffered. It's the quality of what there is, not how much of it we can produce.
Posted by: Bad | April 16, 2008 2:07 PM
I became convinced from watching turkeys on my grandfathers farm that the FDA should re-classify them as vegetables anyway.
Posted by: NoAstronomer | April 16, 2008 2:09 PM
awesome. im a vegetarian for ethical reasons so i would have no problem eating this unless there are as now unforeseen environmental side effects.
Posted by: Mark P. | April 16, 2008 2:12 PM
As a former chef and somewhat of a food nerd, I can see many things that would suck about this.
Modern beef and pork and chicken coming from mass producing farms already is lagging way behind heritage breeds of the same animals in flavor, texture and fat content (which adds to both flavor and texture and mouthfeel).
The only way I see this going is further homogenizing the animals to the point of having exactly zero variance in any of the above characteristics. There are some many variables that go into how an animal tastes (feed, location, breeding, etc..) that this appears to only be headed towards the dry bland stale pork we see in mass supermarkets we have now. Instead of the marvelous cuts one can get from something like a Berkshire hog.
And please there are some of us that still think the nasty bits (yes phrase stolen directly from Bourdain) are worth having.
/rant on theoretical issue off
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbCHimp | April 16, 2008 2:12 PM
It would be no fun to hunt down and kill a vat of "meat"(TM)
Posted by: Greg Laden | April 16, 2008 2:12 PM
This thread is making me SOOO hungry...
raven - Shrimp trees... That'd be enough to make me want to learn how to garden. We could call them Popplers.
OT kinda, PZ maybe you can answer this. If we can make food for cats and dogs that give them all of their nutrition in a single food product why can't we do that for humans? A single product that would provide all of a human's dietary needs, proteins, carbs, vitamins, minerals, etc. A product that if a person ate nothing else they would still have a healthy diet. Perhaps in the form of a kibble that you would just put some water on and microwave and it would make it's own gravy? You could sell it in bulk with different flavor packets. Call it, Bachelor Chow.
Actually, I am serious. This would be a huge time saver.
Posted by: Bill | April 16, 2008 2:14 PM
Of course what we really need is meat that *wants* to be eaten and is capable of saying so quite clearly and distinctly.
Posted by: NoAstronomer | April 16, 2008 2:15 PM
I know (or at least I think I do) that that was somewhat tongue in cheek.... but
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.
Food should be enjoyed as well as provide sustenance. It's been a primary focus for social interaction through history. I can't imagine asking the boys over to watch bland standaed sports event© to suck back brand standard brewed adult beverage© and have a bowl of bland standard gray colored gruel© with all new flavor packets©.
Posted by: Rev. BigDummbCHimp | April 16, 2008 2:20 PM
#6 "Our great grandchildren will ask "What is cow? Chicken?""
Perhaps our great-grandchildren will ask "What is eating?"
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 2:24 PM
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | April 16, 2008 2:33 PM
Bah.
*shakes fist at Sven
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 16, 2008 2:44 PM
*grins back at BigDumbChimp while enjoying Eyes of the World from Roosevelt Stadium, 8/1/73
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | April 16, 2008 2:48 PM
Armchair--
I certainly didn't bring up "morality," so I don't know why you're arguing that. I said that you haven't given me any rational argument for eating meat, and instead have stuck with an "it tastes good" answer instead. Mentioning your veggie girlfriend is like when a racist mentions their one black friend-- it's not much of a defense!
Posted by: DaveX | April 16, 2008 2:48 PM
Instead of generic kibble, how about a trans-dermal meal patch for when you're just too busy to stop for a bite?
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 2:49 PM
Perhaps our great-grandchildren will ask "What is eating?"
I can only hope. As a minor foodophobe (I'm not picky; I just don't like eating. In fact I'll eat nearly anything so I don't have to be hungry and can go back to doing whatever it is that I was doing), I look forward to the day when I can toss down a meal in a cup with all the protein, minerals, vitamins and fibre I need three times a day, and save the real food for special occasions.
Better yet, when are you scientist-types gonna be able to make us photosynthesise? Hell, if we were really effficient at it, we could subsist on a pint of Guinness and an hour's tanning per week in the summertime.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | April 16, 2008 2:50 PM
I don't know, that sounds exactly like any average Carl's Jr or Burger King commercial.
Speaking of science fiction "Vat Meat", Samuel R. Delany's "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand" had interplanetary cultures with all kinds of cloned meat, including human. One of the characters is eating a meal on a more 'primitive' planet and is shocked to find a piece of bone in his food: "This meat had once been walking around with a skeleton inside!"
Posted by: horrobin | April 16, 2008 2:51 PM
Rev. BigDumbChimp,
One fascinating attribute of innovation is that it starts by trying to simulate an established product in the market. Initially it is of inferior quality, but if it becomes successful, it supersedes some facet of the original product in some fashion. The chicken farms produce chickens of little flavor, but they are cheap, so they are successful among those people for whom cheapness is a desirable aspect. Over time, other aspects may be improved, including flavor and texture.
So, eventually the vat-raised meat may have varieties which does have the texture and flavor of Kobi beef. At an additional cost of course.
But there is another facet with regard to innovations. Eventually the innovation is accepted as commonplace and they potentialities inherent in the innovation are exploited. Do you want vat-raised Green Eggs and Ham? Currently pigs and eggs don't produce emerald colored flesh (at least not when it's fresh). But vat-grown meat could (potentially) be made in any color, shape, or texture you want!
The mind boggles with possibilities.
A square roast with ham on one side and chicken on the other... perfect for your catering needs.
A marinade which marbleizes the meat when applied... let it soak overnight for Canadian bacon.
A technicolor roast where the all the colors of the rainbow are used to indicate the temperature it reached when cooked... "Waiter, I ordered this steak pink, and it arrived purple!!"
Even flavor compounds that change as the cooking tempature changes.... The green parts are minty and express themselves when cooked at 130C, while the yellow is flavored with horseradish, and becomes dominant at 150C.
Ah, well, I should get back to studying for my exam tonight. Real work just isn't going to happen today. Wild-ass (and mouth watering) speculation is much more enjoyable.
Posted by: Flex | April 16, 2008 2:54 PM
Nice. You dirty hippie. Now I'll have to pull that one out of the collection.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 16, 2008 2:54 PM
Posted by: Bill | April 16, 2008 2:14 PM
"Perhaps in the form of a kibble that you would just put some water on and microwave and it would make it's own gravy? You could sell it in bulk with different flavor packets. Call it, Bachelor Chow.
Actually, I am serious. This would be a huge time saver."
I should think that if he intended for the post to be a parody, he should not have inserted the line at the end of the quotation below - so I'll answer as if it were sincere.
Bill, I don't know if you have ever been remotely close to the military and the way they do things, but the old, brown packaged MRE's had certain entrees and desserts that were synthetic, and all you had to do was add water. (A La the "peach square - a semi-cookie of chopped peaches that you had to place in a small bowl of water. To equate it to something we all know and - do not, i hope - pine for, imagine a bowl of "peach-flavored" Cheerios after you have finished all but ten or fifteen of them, and then imagine those semi-soggy things floating in water instead of milk.) I do not care how much technology has advanced since then. What I do care about is the fact that however you packaged freeze dried or other types of water-reactive food, they still taste like watered down synthetics of the food they are intended to imitate. If you don't agree, ask a few astronauts about their cravings upon returning to Earth after a long stay in outer space. I'd be willing to bet that their food choices are never freeze-dried, hyper-nutritional alternative foods.
And as for time-savers, since when has saving time been in anyone's best safety or health interests? Sure, TV dinners are quick and easy, but how many nutritionists would suggest that you live off a diet of Hungry Man meals?
Posted by: brokenSoldier | April 16, 2008 2:55 PM
Yeah, yeah, Bachelor Chow. I can get behind that. As for social interaction, that's what copious amounts of liquor are for.
I've never had a meal with someone I wouldn't rather be doing something else with.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | April 16, 2008 2:56 PM
"So what do you need to make edible muscle mass, beyond a sheet of myocytes in a culture dish (which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime and would not sell well in test markets)?"
I think that's pretty much what they said about tofu. Some still do. Humans are adaptable. I might live long enough to see a tube of "Meet" or "Jerky Slurry" on the shelf right next to the aerosol cheez, the gelatinous "yogurt", and the guar gum ice "cream".
Posted by: breakerslion | April 16, 2008 2:56 PM
The 'it tastes good' argument is PARAMOUNT. People don't eat just for survival; they eat for comfort and for pleasure. Rational thinking doesn't mean giving up all worldly pleasures.
Evangelical vegetarians really remind me of no-fun christians; one tells us not to fuck, the other not to eat.
Posted by: Marc | April 16, 2008 2:57 PM
For some of the same reasons, I've often thought that the frequently related dream of nanobots in our bloodstreams, etc., might never come true.
I think it will turn out that everything we might want to do on the microscale can be done easier by tailored micro-organisms. Unlike nanobots, they'd be self-repairing, self-replicating, cheap, and carry their own power sources. Having been in development and field-testing for the past couple of billion years, working models already exist -- we just have to figure out how to break them down and reassemble them in desirable new ways.
Posted by: Hank Fox | April 16, 2008 2:59 PM
raven said:
That was my thought. We need something like "steak plants". Or chicken mimics that grow out of the ground. Or shrimp trees.
Maybe a transgenic basidiomycete would do the trick?
Posted by: Dark Matter | April 16, 2008 3:00 PM
"13, "If we stopped eating meat, we'd stop growing farm animals, so they'd never get to live in the first place."
There has better be something wrong with this argument. Is the couple who decides not to have children, when they could have had, say, eight, as morally reprehensible as the person who kills eight people? In fact, continuing your line of reasoning, the couple`s behavior would be slightly worse, since the murder victims at least got to live SOME time before getting killed.
I`m not sure I can point out exactly where it goes wrong (possibly with the action of killing being objectionable in itself). It may have be something about deprieving someone of something being worse than not giving it in the first place, but really, I think, the solution seems to be tied to whatever undermines the old 'why should I worry about being dead? I don`t worry about the long time of emptiness before I was born, so why should I worry about the emptiness at the other side?'
Personally I eat meat because I don`t care, mostly.
Posted by: G.D. | April 16, 2008 3:02 PM
I agree that its possible Flex, but the mass produced meat right now continues to head in the other direction, namly in the direction of bland rubbery stale overly lean meat. Of course you could argue that the recent upswing in smaller farms producing better quality animals and more variety of breeds of said animals are in response to the meat industry's continual "dumbing down" (yeah not sure if that works there but what the hell) of the products you find at the Piggy Wiggly, Harris Teeter and ALbertsons. And you'd probably be right. But the cost of and limited availability of those higher quality products isn't making a huge impact on how the big boys continue to operate. An impact yes, but not a overly significant one.
Maybe that will change? Maybe it would work that way with the proposed techniques above. I'd hate to give up on the "natural" (yes that word sucks too but I'm drawing a blank) products to find out.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 16, 2008 3:02 PM
They already do. It is called ramen.
Posted by: raven | April 16, 2008 3:02 PM
I've started buying most of my animal protein from local farmers; the critters are not factory farmed.
Posted by: khan | April 16, 2008 3:03 PM
You haven't given a rational reason that "it tastes good" is *not* a good reason to eat meat! I'm like meat because it's tasty. I have no moral objection to eating meat. Ergo I eat meat because it's tasty. Could you please point out the logical flaw in that argument without resorting to questioning the morality of killing animals?
What?! First, she's not my girlfriend, she's my fiancée. I used to get stick from my work colleagues when I kept making that mistake, so you will get it too. And later this year she will be my wife. I hope you're not in the habit of calling people's wives "your girlfriend".
However. Are you seriously suggesting that because I don't have a moral objection to eating meat, that I will therefore ensure that vegetarians can't hold political office, or work? Are you *really* going to go down the "meat-eater == racist" route?
Seriously?
Posted by: Armchair Dissident | April 16, 2008 3:04 PM
I respect people who don't eat meat because they don't like the taste and I also respect people who refuse to eat certain meats because of how horribly the animals have been treated their whole lives.
However, I will not respect people who refuse to eat meat because it's "immoral under all circumstances" and also people who go posting videos of the cruelties done to battery chickens or other animals and then continue to eat all the chicken they want regardless, have some balls.
And your cows get fed corn? As far as I know most if not all of the cows in New Zealand are grass fed, my uncle and aunty's farm has something like 1000+ cows all fed really nice grass and then get milked twice daily (they actually to be milked on their own accord usually, they like being milked) and go about doing their cow-like things all day. It's not a bad life really. :P
I don't know what meat is like in the states however, is it good?
And yes, it probably would be beneficial to the human race under some terms if we just dropped meat altogether, I could never do it though, meat is just so freaking delicious.
Maybe if you brought up a whole group of people who had never tried meat you might be able to do it?
Posted by: Slyer | April 16, 2008 3:05 PM
Yeah I don't eat at those places either.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | April 16, 2008 3:05 PM
From what I've heard and read brokenSoldier, you're right about the MREs and astronaut meals, but the trick is not to try to make them taste like something else. Imagine a gruel that didn't taste like some watered down version of oatmeal, but had its own specific flavour.
After all, we don't try to make chicken taste like broccoli or garlic taste like raspberries. Given a world in which people eat casu marzu, I'll bet if you flavoured an MRE with skunk glands they'd be considered a delicacy in some circles.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | April 16, 2008 3:05 PM
Evangelical vegetarians really remind me of no-fun christians; one tells us not to fuck, the other not to eat.
Posted by: Marc | April 16, 2008 2:57 PM
I'm not particularly evangelical (except about soy burgers, mmm), but for many vegetarians "it tastes good!" sounds like the "I feel safer!" argument for driving SUVs--okay, great, but you are doing harm, which outweighs your enjoyment.
Posted by: Kadath | April 16, 2008 3:06 PM
You are thinking of the product, Vitameatavegamin™ See this product advertisement from 1952. See also The Jetsons.
Posted by: Laura Queue | April 16, 2008 3:06 PM
DaveX, You bring up an interesting topic.
A long time ago, I tried vegetarianism. Food combining, cheese, nuts, protein powders, the whole works. After several months I turned pale. As an experiment, I ate a big steak 3 nights in a row. I will never forget the moment, when on the third day, I was standing in a doorway and my strength returned. I suddenly felt energized and flexed all my muscles like a weight lifter. I didn't even realize I had lost that feeling! Never again.
That doesn't mean I eat only meat, or even meat at every meal--or even every day. (I like tofu, too! Soy sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, dill weed, mustard and mayonnaise, yummy!) Health is important to me, and whole grains and dark green leafy vegetables comprise much of my diet--but I do eat meat. I'm also concerned about the quality of it. Is it really all, in the end, just protein?
I also agree with grass fed beef. It makes more sense, in many ways, than feeding them corn.