What will it be for you today? Do you want a pound of our fleshly grown man-made meat or do you prefer the six oz bagged crunchy maple syrup crystallized pecan encrusted grasshoppers?
Gazing first at engineered beef, Renovating Your Mind sees it growing in a lab, cell by cell. Currently, this product is too expensive for the consumer at $321,000 per burger or found as small pieces of meat skewered on a stick.
Research has been able to gather together cow muscle stem cells. Scientific techniques enable them to multiple and grow very slowly. They do this by stimulating the cells with electricity. The same thing happens to make beef in the real world of an industrial farm. This involves time, grass and Mother Nature’s help give us beef.
So in a lab, they are now creating artificial meat. The amounts produced are so small that thousands of pieces are needed to make one artiburger (artificial) patty. It’s so expensive because of the long periods of time to generate such a small piece of product.
The taste is not quite like eating a hamburger but is quite bland. The color of the meat is white because of the absence of red blood.
“Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” — Winston Churchill in 1936
From an environmental point of view there will be a lowering of carbon dioxide emissions with the elimination of animal production. This gas comes from their feces, flatulence and their lungs. Also, animal cruelty will be eliminated. It has been said that water and feed will be drastically lowered verses a cattle ranch. That hasn’t been proven because large term production of lab meat does not exist yet. Vegetarians may consume lab meat because it was never part of a living animal.
“Loved Flatulence! It’s The Chicken?”
Consumers may actually be able to eventually generate their own production of meat at home. In a kitchen meat incubator, you will be able to dial-up the size, shape and texture of the meat product you desire for the meal. They may actual produce meat printers that would print out a burger, steak, chicken strip. The question is would you miss the bone and the taste it gives to the meat? No problem, that will be dealt with by adding flavoring, spices and smoked particles to divert your taste buds. Science can always find a way to trick your “reality.”
This would allow consumers to start producing protein for other families. So the consumer would change to a prosumer to generate enough product to maintain a living from this consumable entity. Now we are giving back as a producer rather than just as a consumer. Another example of this is energy privately obtained by solar or wind collection and selling any excess to the utility company.
Seeing another distant blurry view in the crystal ball of insects giving us the protein calories we need without sacrificing as much in environmental energy costs. The buggers are incredibly high in protein. The top five insects currently consumed around the world are ants, caterpillars, grasshoppers, silk worms and water bugs. They are already starting in the U.S. to feed farmed fish some of these bugs.
“My Meat Don’t Taste Like Chicken! Eat Cricket Instead!”
The United States is one of the countries that is really turned off with consuming insects. Other places like Africa, China, Mexico, Middle East, Japan and Thailand have no problem filling up with buggy grub.
During test tastes in the U.S., consumers preferred what they thought was “meat” over real meat products. What they presumed was “meat” were insects that were made to taste like meatloaf, meatballs and in chilli.
Renovating Your Mind thinks that if it’s introduced slowly through fine restaurants, it may progress to mainstream America in the next 3-5 years. I would give it a try if they could make it look appetizing and keep it healthy. Would about you? Would you feature those multi-legged creatures on your menu? Just once?
Photo credit: hpebley3 / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
Photo credit: panduh / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
Photo credit: cstm-mstc / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Photo credit: Drriss / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
Categories: Food, Health, Nutrition, Science-Technology
Renovating Your Mind 
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