What meat costs is heavily subsidized currently. Although most of the subsidies aren’t explicit, if the meat industry had to pay for the environmental effects of their waste runoff and deforestation, the climate effects of the methane released, and the cost of water/food shortages caused by cattle consumption, then meat (which I love btw) would cost 10-fold what it does.
If the meat industry didn’t get to externalize all of those costs, then many of the substitutes would be cheaper. (very much the same way that fossil fuel companies remain competitve through governments allowing them a free pass on their environmental costs)
It’s from Spain and it’s not Nazis! Hoping the print process is less disturbing than having a porcine factory farm nearby! Mince again and again but less and less…
Given that this appears to be completely automated, it could scale to a factory line. Shouldn’t be any more expensive than making keychains and sunglasses. Even a ham sandwich requires more labor.
As I’ve said repeatedly, I’ll be first in line to eat this stuff when it becomes available. Beyond/Impossible burgers / sausage are a good carryover till then, but as soon as I can buy engineered steaks and chops, I’m in!
Unfortunately, while seeing this process is awesome, it’s still clearly very very far away from being a viable product.
I got the fore mentioned burgers for the hibachi, it was grand slam. They were super cheap at the discount grocery store, or I’d have went conventional meat. Paired nicely with tater tots and a fine Jim Beam on the rocks. They do grill similar to meat meat, and with cheese I doubt anyone could tell the difference, especially after 3 whiskeys.
I just asked them (there’s a “send us a message” thingy at the bottom of their home page):
"Do you think we’ll get to a machine that can be located at the restaurant, fast enough to fabricate a steak “to order”.
Restaurant machine would need to fab in <15 minutes, maybe 1/2 hour for a very fancy place; this gets the cooked steak to the table in 45 mins.
Restaurant would need to keep a supply of feedstock. Maybe the real business is in supplying the feedstock? Like Coca Cola makes money on the syrup?"
Barring serious negative problems, I’m pro-fab-meat. But I do agree with the meat industry in that this stuff should NOT be call “meat”. I propose: “schmeat”.
A very fast way is to spend the little extra money and time researching in buying animals and animal products you eat. If you are going to continue eating beef, pork and poultry and drinking milk and eating cheese then the beat way is spend more money in the ethical sector… but I guess it’s easier to grab a hamburger
Keep in mind all those stories about pink slime that went around were basically false. There’s honestly nothing particularly gross about fast food chicken (aside from how the birds are treated of course). The iconic image that went viral, in particular, is nonsense, but that’s all anyone remembers about the topic.
Sounds Jewish to me: “Meat, Schmeat™ - what do you expect for a dollar?” My wife would love the riff and it might just be a product name and ad campaign I should copyright.
Individuals of means can certainly do that, and my family does do our best to eat meat from reasonably humane sources despite the extra cost, but there’s simply no way that it’s possible to fill the world’s current demand for meat at affordable prices without resorting to methods that result in unacceptable living conditions for the animals. It would be awesome for the animals and the planet if we could convince the majority of the human population to significantly cut back on their meat consumption, but unfortunately it’s probably more realistic to satisfy the demand with new technologies such as this.
The best vegetarian food is “ethnic”. Ones coming from long traditions of avoiding meat for one reason or another. With real flavors and spices. Not pretending to be something else.
I am partial to “semi vegetarian”. Where meat is used as a flavoring component than the main part of the dish.
