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Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too. Peopl

Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too. People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even be willing to try alternatives. Impossible meat has a great start and I think their market share will continue to increase. But, there's an immense amount of variety in the meat market and the alternative meat industry still has a huge amount of work to do to address it.

6nf 7y ago
Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains who knows what. The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.
- rhlsthrm 7y ago
  But what if it's not "highly processed" due to advancements in tech? Personally I would always choose the fake (lab grown or plant based) over the real meat. Real meat and three industrial farming process just has too many ways that the product is prone to contamination, not even to mention the cruelty/ethics. I say this as an avid meat eater as well. I love the taste of meat but I'd switch in a heartbeat once there's an alternative that compares.
  - pascalxus 7y ago
    This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but: Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1 carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to the World health organization.
    - TheCycoONE 7y ago
      That statement is factually correct but worded in a way that suggests a misunderstanding of the WHO classification system. "The lists describe the level of evidence that something can cause cancer, not how likely it is that something will cause cancer in any person (or how much it might raise your risk)."
    - mitchty 7y ago
      > This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but: Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1 carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to the World health organization. I downvoted you not because of what you wrote, but because what you wrote is directly refuted by your (unlisted no less which I find intellectually lazy) source. Processed meat being a class 1 carcinogen doesn't mean that plutonium = read meat! It simply means there is a likely link between it and cancer. Not that they are equivalent. This statement is scaremongering at best, unsupported by the classification. Also "cancer" is vague, the WHO organization, IARC, listed colorectal cancer as the specific cancer. Ref: https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ And for red meat being a class 2 carcinogen, they listed as probably not that its known. From their FAQ: This recommendation was based on epidemiological studies suggesting that small increases in the risk of several cancers may be associated with high consumption of red meat or processed meat. Although these risks are small, they could be important for public health because many people worldwide eat meat and meat consumption is increasing in low- and middle-income countries. Although some health agencies already recommend limiting intake of meat, these recommendations are aimed mostly at reducing the risk of other diseases. With this in mind, it was important for IARC to provide authoritative scientific evidence on the cancer risks associated with eating red meat and processed meat. Note that phrase: "Although these risks are small" If you want to paint red meat with a broad "bad for humans and whatnot" brush. At least get your facts straight. I can't look at the paper cause its behind the elsevier paywall but it should be here for anyone that can get it. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(15)00444-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2... I bet the 18% more chance of colorectal cancer listed in the study amounts to for 500 people instead of 4 getting cancer, maybe 5 do now. One of my biggest pet peeves with all of this is the focus on whatever number is higher without contextualizing it.
- gordaco 7y ago
  You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you don't have to lean left to be vegan, but the vast majority of vegan people, or people seriously trying to reduce their meat consumption, do lean left (continuing with the car analogy: remember the rolling coal fad). Dietary choices go way beyond their nutritional value. People feel attached to what they eat, and they will resist change. So, yes, a strong economic incentive is needed, and even worse, it might not be enough.
  - SllX 7y ago
    As someone who isn’t considering giving up my ways, red blooded meat eating American that I am, I actually appreciate vegans to some degree. As long as there are an appreciable number of them, I will enjoy a greater variety of dishes and ingredients available to me, and oftentimes fresher ingredients too. Insofar as they are making choices that benefit them, they also make choices that benefit me. Where they lose me, and this isn’t all vegans, but the ones that lose me are the ones that try to convince me that I am a bad person for the dietary choices I make. Maybe I am, but I don’t think so. The ones that make me want to go out and eat two steaks just to stick it to them are the ones that want to take away my choices or introduce sin taxes onto meat. I’m cool with carbon/GHG taxes that make no exceptions, if the cost of my choices goes up because of a tax that applies to all levels of society in fair measure, I can live with that. I would argue such a fair tax is entirely theoretical, but in theory, it could work out. The ones that want to punish me specifically are the ones I can’t abide. When someone introduces me to an entirely vegetarian dish or vegan dish that I like, I’ll probably add it to my menu and start making it myself, and I usually don’t modify it to add any additional protein. Good food is good food and I actually like tofu and some of those veggie patties on the market. I like them for that they are, not for what they pretend to be. It come down to making a different choice as to what to eat for dinner, rather than making a compromise. Today, January 1st 2020, I’m not even thinking about lab grown meat. Maybe I’ll prefer it on January 1st, 2030, or maybe I’ll be paying a premium for my steak, or maybe the price of my premium cut steak will actually fall after checking against inflation and I’ll be eating even more steak. Maybe I’ll even lose my taste for meat, I mean I lost my taste for shrimp once upon a time, and I gained a taste for eggs in my early twenties. Vegans that practice veganism for dogmatic, ideological and religious reasons certainly aren’t going to win me over in ten or a hundred years by preaching to me though. I make choices. Vegans make choices. Everyone makes choices. I think that’s a pretty good state of affairs.
- jka 7y ago
  Even within a much smaller price margin, there'd still be plenty of reasons to make kill-free meat the default preference. Abattoir and meat-processing facilities might not be able to achieve the same quality bar for hygiene as lab-developed meat cultures. That should ultimately translate into better food safety for consumers. There are also strong ethical and environmental arguments for choosing kill-free meat as opposed to high-methane[0] animal-based meat products. It's not the entire solution to environmental problems by any means, but it's a large opportunity. A good chunk of meal decision-making comes down to the way that food is marketed and the way that we talk about and discuss our food options. As determined and evidence-led entrepreneurs and technologists, all of us in the HN community can do a lot to advocate for and influence public opinion and behavior in whatever direction we choose. [0] - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
  - 6nf 7y ago
    Hey if they can develop lab-meat cultures with the same(ish) makeup of real meat then yes I'd love that stuff. If I can get the same product but without suffering of animals then I'm 100% on board. What I don't like is this current crop of fake meat. I don't know what it's made of and I don't want to eat something with a list of ingredients as long as my arm pretending to be something else.
    - skosch 7y ago
      Consider that "subjects raw plant matter to complicated chemical processes to produce something meat-tasting" is equally true for fake meat factories as it is for cows. Just because the recipe for real meat has come about via evolutionary (and not laboratory) trial-and-error, doesn't necessarily make it healthier.
      - 6nf 7y ago
        We've been eating meat for thousands of years.
    - prawn 7y ago
- jfoster 7y ago
  I think you're right, but there might be another way. What if there were a Tesla-like company? Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well. I imagine that meat will eventually be replaced by lab-grown meat that had been engineered to be as delicious (or moreso!) as the highest grade beef, but perhaps more healthy & cheaper. The fact that it would be better for the environment and animal rights needs to be listed as a benefit, but not the focus.
  - kmlx 7y ago
    > Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well. as a former tesla owner, i dispute both of these assumptions. > ... lab-grown meat ... tesla builds cars. cars are a recent human invention. cattle on the other hand is a product of millions of years of evolution. i think it will take a bit more time to get lab meat that is as good as the real thing.
    - vnorilo 7y ago
      On the other hand, those million years of evolution did not select specifically for ”delicious and nutritious”.
      - dzhiurgis 7y ago
        It did plus it's healthy (to an extent) It didn't select to be environmentally friendly. Humans scaled up animal growth fairly recently too, so we hadn't had enough time to figure out pathogen issue and ethics.
      - blaser-waffle 7y ago
        I disagree. Evolution has created signals -- "tasty" -- for things that are good for us. Fats, salts, and sugars are comparatively rare in a wild environment, and thus they taste good.
        7y ago
- mlinsey 7y ago
  I think this is inevitable if #1 is true. It may seem politically infeasible now, but if governments get really serious about climate change, then the price of many meats but especially beef will increase significantly, and that alone will give the fake beef a cost edge.
- redisman 7y ago
  I guess there's no reason veggie meat wouldn't become much cheaper than real meat. It takes a lot less resources to grow a bushel of soy or wheat or GMO super-grain than a quarter pound of a cow.
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    It takes basically no resources to graze cattle on grasslands. Plus, as a bonus it sequesters carbon and creates topsoil.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Most of the meat we eat doesn’t come from cattle on grasslands.
    - nl 7y ago
      Grass fed cattle produces more methane than grain fed thoug (and methane is a much worse greenhouse gas). But it does (possibly) help sequesters carbon. The truth is that it's hard to tell which is better, but neither is great environmentally. it’s hard to say whether grass-fed or grain-fed beef is better for the Earth – in part because they’re both pretty bad. “No matter how you slice it,” he wrote, “eating beef will never be the greenest thing you do in a day.” He cites an estimate by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan that producing 2.2 pounds of beef emits more greenhouse gases than driving 155 miles. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s study of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with consumption in Oregon found red meat and dairy products have the highest carbon footprint of all the foods Oregonians eat.[1] (Needless to say the Cattlemen’s Association dispute these, and claim it only (?) produces 2.8% of greenhouse gases in the US). [1] https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/which-is-greener-grass-fed-or-grain-fed-beef/ https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/which-is-greener-gras...
      - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
        Methane is short lived in the atmosphere. Also, North America historically had about 300 million ruminants, before human intervention: bison. The other issue is we’re basically running out of topsoil. Modern agriculture is an extractive process, and the result is we have maybe 60 years left until the topsoil is gone and we can’t grow any more crops.
- biolurker1 7y ago
  Time to Google "lab grown meat"
- collyw 7y ago
  > Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. How can you say that with certainty? There isn't any fake beef that tastes similar that I am aware of.
  - 6nf 7y ago
    People tend to choose what they are familiar with over the new/unknown.
- loco5niner 7y ago
  > If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef Ironic choice to use McDonalds "beef" as the example of real meat.
  - 6nf 7y ago
    Australian McDonalds beef patties contain exactly three ingredients: Beef, salt, pepper. That's it.
    - loco5niner 7y ago
      Interesting. Did a little reading. It does seem that in the last few years, McDonalds has cleaned up it's food a bit.
__d 7y ago
If an effective carbon tax is introduced (see #1) then the price of meat will rise astronomically, which will make reduced consumption inevitable. In many places, climate change will make existing agriculture unsustainable, so there'll be massive upheaval in the industry at the same time. If that's combined with a cultural movement similar to flugskam, I think drastically reduced meat consumption is possible. Of course, there'll be counter forces -- likely primarily cultural. "Only libtards don't eat meat" etc. So it goes.
- pharke 7y ago
  There would likely be unintended consequences to raising the price of meat through a carbon tax. It creates a market for cheaper meat that there will be no shortage of producers or consumers for. How that meat is made cheaper is an open question. It could be through carbon offsets but it could just as well be through worse conditions for the animals or importing the meat from countries where production is cheaper.
  - KozmoNau7 7y ago
    The same argument is made against raising the taxes on tobacco products, that "people will smuggle in cigarettes from countries without the tax", but it never seems to actually happen to any significant degree. People are lazy, and if the only source of cheap meat is the black market of illegally-imported products, only a very small segment of people will bother.
    - pharke 7y ago
      I live somewhere with high taxes on tobacco products and illegal cigarettes are a big problem. It's not a small segment of the smoking population either but it is disproportionately those who are more economically disadvantaged. People are lazy but they are also motivated by economic pressures. It's easy for something like that to become an 'invisible' problem to people who aren't in those economic or social groups while still having severe negative effects on a large number of people.
- torstenvl 7y ago
jka 7y ago
As someone from the UK who has tended to eat meat a lot in the past - I do agree with your reading of culture in the UK historically. But I also think it's remarkable how quickly public opinion in the UK has been shifting with regard to environmental concerns. Traveling by train as opposed to air travel, reduction of single-use plastics and plastic packaging, and reduced-meat diets all feel like much more common discussion topics and lifestyle choices than they were even five years ago. Shops and restaurants have also shifted to meet changing demands. There have been mistakes (incentives around long-life plastic shopping bags haven't worked out exactly as planned) but overall it feels like a wave of change.
- larnmar 7y ago
  Perhaps, but fashions change fast. I remember the first environmentalism craze of the 90s, it didn’t last.
- kmlx 7y ago
  1. trends come and go. 2. we all live in our bubbles. both meat consumption and air travel have increased YoY over the past 25 years in the UK. and sticking with the UK, current estimates point to an almost 100% increase in air passenger numbers in the 2030s, and Heahtrow still being in the top ten busiest airports in the world. anecdotally, my flights have increased 2x every year for the past 5 years. this year it's been 50 flights, 40 of which intercontinental (no train availability).
  - jka 7y ago
    Good food for thought, thanks. From a little more digging to try to break out of my bubble, here are some reading references: Of beef, pork, lamb, poultry, and fish -- only poultry has seen any broad increase in expenditure by UK households over the past few years (and slim, at 2%); all others have decreased or remained the same[0]. I'm not claiming that's related to environmental concerns directly but it shows some changes in behaviour. Air travel passenger numbers are certainly on the rise[1], although interestingly the number of flights ('air travel movements') appears to be somewhat more muted. Even so, greenhouse gas emissions from aviation have certainly increased a lot since the 1990s. Brexit and the prospect of a high-spending majority UK government could both have impacts on these over the next decade, no doubt - but in what direction I'm not sure. [0] - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-statistics-pocketbook/food-statistics-in-your-pocket-prices-and-expenditure https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-statistics-p... [1] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/855288/tsgb-2019.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Mikeb85 7y ago
It's also funny he compares it to caviar which today is almost all farmed and is as cheap as it's ever been in living memory.
chirau 7y ago
Yeah I don't see our species evolving into pure herbivores anytime soon. I'm from Africa and the only vegans I know there are either allergic to meat or just can't afford it yet. Eating meat is actually something we work towards aggressively. Meat is also a status symbol, as a result. We will be eating meat for a very very long time.
cable2600 7y ago
Tyson changed from a meat company to a protein company. Can make veggies taste like chicken or beef. I didn't have an Impossible Whopper yet but it costs a lot of money. For $12.99 with a coupon I can gt a family meal of three Whoppers, three cheeseburgers, and 3 fries. I hear the Vegans are mad that the Impossible Whopper is grilled on the same grill as the regular Whooper. I suppose the reason to turn away from meat eating is to save the environment? Animals exhale CO2 but not as much as factories with smoke stacks burning coal or oil.
- mbil 7y ago
  Animals also output methane, and there are land-use issues with meat production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production#Greenhouse_gas_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  Only a very small segment of loud'n'proud vegans on social media complain about the cooking method of the impossible whopper. And you can have it microwave cooked if you want it to not touch the grill.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tluyben2 7y ago
> People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even be willing to try alternatives. That's the problem; they will say it's not the same even if it is 100% the same. I bake a lot of pizzas for friends and I tend to do real sausage and Beyond sausage and have people taste. I tell them upfront that some are real and some are fake meat but not which are which. Yesterday I did almost 50 pizzas on a hangover party (it's a hobby...) and the most 'angry' meat eaters taste fake when it's real, real when it's fake, but once they think that they have the fake one (even though it was the real one), they simply leave it. And that I really don't understand. Little disclaimer about tasting: I don't load my pizza's up with that 'meatlover' amount of (fake or real) meat. I like subtle tastes, so there won't be a lot of sausage on a pizza.

6nf 7y ago

Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains who knows what. The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.

rhlsthrm 7y ago
But what if it's not "highly processed" due to advancements in tech? Personally I would always choose the fake (lab grown or plant based) over the real meat. Real meat and three industrial farming process just has too many ways that the product is prone to contamination, not even to mention the cruelty/ethics. I say this as an avid meat eater as well. I love the taste of meat but I'd switch in a heartbeat once there's an alternative that compares.
- pascalxus 7y ago
  This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but: Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1 carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to the World health organization.
  - TheCycoONE 7y ago
    That statement is factually correct but worded in a way that suggests a misunderstanding of the WHO classification system. "The lists describe the level of evidence that something can cause cancer, not how likely it is that something will cause cancer in any person (or how much it might raise your risk)."
  - mitchty 7y ago
    > This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but: Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1 carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to the World health organization. I downvoted you not because of what you wrote, but because what you wrote is directly refuted by your (unlisted no less which I find intellectually lazy) source. Processed meat being a class 1 carcinogen doesn't mean that plutonium = read meat! It simply means there is a likely link between it and cancer. Not that they are equivalent. This statement is scaremongering at best, unsupported by the classification. Also "cancer" is vague, the WHO organization, IARC, listed colorectal cancer as the specific cancer. Ref: https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ And for red meat being a class 2 carcinogen, they listed as probably not that its known. From their FAQ: This recommendation was based on epidemiological studies suggesting that small increases in the risk of several cancers may be associated with high consumption of red meat or processed meat. Although these risks are small, they could be important for public health because many people worldwide eat meat and meat consumption is increasing in low- and middle-income countries. Although some health agencies already recommend limiting intake of meat, these recommendations are aimed mostly at reducing the risk of other diseases. With this in mind, it was important for IARC to provide authoritative scientific evidence on the cancer risks associated with eating red meat and processed meat. Note that phrase: "Although these risks are small" If you want to paint red meat with a broad "bad for humans and whatnot" brush. At least get your facts straight. I can't look at the paper cause its behind the elsevier paywall but it should be here for anyone that can get it. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(15)00444-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2... I bet the 18% more chance of colorectal cancer listed in the study amounts to for 500 people instead of 4 getting cancer, maybe 5 do now. One of my biggest pet peeves with all of this is the focus on whatever number is higher without contextualizing it.
gordaco 7y ago
You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you don't have to lean left to be vegan, but the vast majority of vegan people, or people seriously trying to reduce their meat consumption, do lean left (continuing with the car analogy: remember the rolling coal fad). Dietary choices go way beyond their nutritional value. People feel attached to what they eat, and they will resist change. So, yes, a strong economic incentive is needed, and even worse, it might not be enough.
- SllX 7y ago
  As someone who isn’t considering giving up my ways, red blooded meat eating American that I am, I actually appreciate vegans to some degree. As long as there are an appreciable number of them, I will enjoy a greater variety of dishes and ingredients available to me, and oftentimes fresher ingredients too. Insofar as they are making choices that benefit them, they also make choices that benefit me. Where they lose me, and this isn’t all vegans, but the ones that lose me are the ones that try to convince me that I am a bad person for the dietary choices I make. Maybe I am, but I don’t think so. The ones that make me want to go out and eat two steaks just to stick it to them are the ones that want to take away my choices or introduce sin taxes onto meat. I’m cool with carbon/GHG taxes that make no exceptions, if the cost of my choices goes up because of a tax that applies to all levels of society in fair measure, I can live with that. I would argue such a fair tax is entirely theoretical, but in theory, it could work out. The ones that want to punish me specifically are the ones I can’t abide. When someone introduces me to an entirely vegetarian dish or vegan dish that I like, I’ll probably add it to my menu and start making it myself, and I usually don’t modify it to add any additional protein. Good food is good food and I actually like tofu and some of those veggie patties on the market. I like them for that they are, not for what they pretend to be. It come down to making a different choice as to what to eat for dinner, rather than making a compromise. Today, January 1st 2020, I’m not even thinking about lab grown meat. Maybe I’ll prefer it on January 1st, 2030, or maybe I’ll be paying a premium for my steak, or maybe the price of my premium cut steak will actually fall after checking against inflation and I’ll be eating even more steak. Maybe I’ll even lose my taste for meat, I mean I lost my taste for shrimp once upon a time, and I gained a taste for eggs in my early twenties. Vegans that practice veganism for dogmatic, ideological and religious reasons certainly aren’t going to win me over in ten or a hundred years by preaching to me though. I make choices. Vegans make choices. Everyone makes choices. I think that’s a pretty good state of affairs.
jka 7y ago
Even within a much smaller price margin, there'd still be plenty of reasons to make kill-free meat the default preference. Abattoir and meat-processing facilities might not be able to achieve the same quality bar for hygiene as lab-developed meat cultures. That should ultimately translate into better food safety for consumers. There are also strong ethical and environmental arguments for choosing kill-free meat as opposed to high-methane[0] animal-based meat products. It's not the entire solution to environmental problems by any means, but it's a large opportunity. A good chunk of meal decision-making comes down to the way that food is marketed and the way that we talk about and discuss our food options. As determined and evidence-led entrepreneurs and technologists, all of us in the HN community can do a lot to advocate for and influence public opinion and behavior in whatever direction we choose. [0] - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- 6nf 7y ago
  Hey if they can develop lab-meat cultures with the same(ish) makeup of real meat then yes I'd love that stuff. If I can get the same product but without suffering of animals then I'm 100% on board. What I don't like is this current crop of fake meat. I don't know what it's made of and I don't want to eat something with a list of ingredients as long as my arm pretending to be something else.
  - skosch 7y ago
    Consider that "subjects raw plant matter to complicated chemical processes to produce something meat-tasting" is equally true for fake meat factories as it is for cows. Just because the recipe for real meat has come about via evolutionary (and not laboratory) trial-and-error, doesn't necessarily make it healthier.
    - 6nf 7y ago
      We've been eating meat for thousands of years.
  - prawn 7y ago
jfoster 7y ago
I think you're right, but there might be another way. What if there were a Tesla-like company? Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well. I imagine that meat will eventually be replaced by lab-grown meat that had been engineered to be as delicious (or moreso!) as the highest grade beef, but perhaps more healthy & cheaper. The fact that it would be better for the environment and animal rights needs to be listed as a benefit, but not the focus.
- kmlx 7y ago
  > Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well. as a former tesla owner, i dispute both of these assumptions. > ... lab-grown meat ... tesla builds cars. cars are a recent human invention. cattle on the other hand is a product of millions of years of evolution. i think it will take a bit more time to get lab meat that is as good as the real thing.
  - vnorilo 7y ago
    On the other hand, those million years of evolution did not select specifically for ”delicious and nutritious”.
    - dzhiurgis 7y ago
      It did plus it's healthy (to an extent) It didn't select to be environmentally friendly. Humans scaled up animal growth fairly recently too, so we hadn't had enough time to figure out pathogen issue and ethics.
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      I disagree. Evolution has created signals -- "tasty" -- for things that are good for us. Fats, salts, and sugars are comparatively rare in a wild environment, and thus they taste good.
      - 7y ago
mlinsey 7y ago
I think this is inevitable if #1 is true. It may seem politically infeasible now, but if governments get really serious about climate change, then the price of many meats but especially beef will increase significantly, and that alone will give the fake beef a cost edge.
redisman 7y ago
I guess there's no reason veggie meat wouldn't become much cheaper than real meat. It takes a lot less resources to grow a bushel of soy or wheat or GMO super-grain than a quarter pound of a cow.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  It takes basically no resources to graze cattle on grasslands. Plus, as a bonus it sequesters carbon and creates topsoil.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Most of the meat we eat doesn’t come from cattle on grasslands.
  - nl 7y ago
    Grass fed cattle produces more methane than grain fed thoug (and methane is a much worse greenhouse gas). But it does (possibly) help sequesters carbon. The truth is that it's hard to tell which is better, but neither is great environmentally. it’s hard to say whether grass-fed or grain-fed beef is better for the Earth – in part because they’re both pretty bad. “No matter how you slice it,” he wrote, “eating beef will never be the greenest thing you do in a day.” He cites an estimate by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan that producing 2.2 pounds of beef emits more greenhouse gases than driving 155 miles. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s study of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with consumption in Oregon found red meat and dairy products have the highest carbon footprint of all the foods Oregonians eat.[1] (Needless to say the Cattlemen’s Association dispute these, and claim it only (?) produces 2.8% of greenhouse gases in the US). [1] https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/which-is-greener-grass-fed-or-grain-fed-beef/ https://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/which-is-greener-gras...
    - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
      Methane is short lived in the atmosphere. Also, North America historically had about 300 million ruminants, before human intervention: bison. The other issue is we’re basically running out of topsoil. Modern agriculture is an extractive process, and the result is we have maybe 60 years left until the topsoil is gone and we can’t grow any more crops.
biolurker1 7y ago
Time to Google "lab grown meat"
collyw 7y ago
> Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. How can you say that with certainty? There isn't any fake beef that tastes similar that I am aware of.
- 6nf 7y ago
  People tend to choose what they are familiar with over the new/unknown.
loco5niner 7y ago
> If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef Ironic choice to use McDonalds "beef" as the example of real meat.
- 6nf 7y ago
  Australian McDonalds beef patties contain exactly three ingredients: Beef, salt, pepper. That's it.
  - loco5niner 7y ago
    Interesting. Did a little reading. It does seem that in the last few years, McDonalds has cleaned up it's food a bit.

__d 7y ago

If an effective carbon tax is introduced (see #1) then the price of meat will rise astronomically, which will make reduced consumption inevitable. In many places, climate change will make existing agriculture unsustainable, so there'll be massive upheaval in the industry at the same time. If that's combined with a cultural movement similar to flugskam, I think drastically reduced meat consumption is possible. Of course, there'll be counter forces -- likely primarily cultural. "Only libtards don't eat meat" etc. So it goes.

pharke 7y ago
There would likely be unintended consequences to raising the price of meat through a carbon tax. It creates a market for cheaper meat that there will be no shortage of producers or consumers for. How that meat is made cheaper is an open question. It could be through carbon offsets but it could just as well be through worse conditions for the animals or importing the meat from countries where production is cheaper.
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  The same argument is made against raising the taxes on tobacco products, that "people will smuggle in cigarettes from countries without the tax", but it never seems to actually happen to any significant degree. People are lazy, and if the only source of cheap meat is the black market of illegally-imported products, only a very small segment of people will bother.
  - pharke 7y ago
    I live somewhere with high taxes on tobacco products and illegal cigarettes are a big problem. It's not a small segment of the smoking population either but it is disproportionately those who are more economically disadvantaged. People are lazy but they are also motivated by economic pressures. It's easy for something like that to become an 'invisible' problem to people who aren't in those economic or social groups while still having severe negative effects on a large number of people.
torstenvl 7y ago

jka 7y ago

As someone from the UK who has tended to eat meat a lot in the past - I do agree with your reading of culture in the UK historically. But I also think it's remarkable how quickly public opinion in the UK has been shifting with regard to environmental concerns. Traveling by train as opposed to air travel, reduction of single-use plastics and plastic packaging, and reduced-meat diets all feel like much more common discussion topics and lifestyle choices than they were even five years ago. Shops and restaurants have also shifted to meet changing demands. There have been mistakes (incentives around long-life plastic shopping bags haven't worked out exactly as planned) but overall it feels like a wave of change.

larnmar 7y ago
Perhaps, but fashions change fast. I remember the first environmentalism craze of the 90s, it didn’t last.
kmlx 7y ago
1. trends come and go. 2. we all live in our bubbles. both meat consumption and air travel have increased YoY over the past 25 years in the UK. and sticking with the UK, current estimates point to an almost 100% increase in air passenger numbers in the 2030s, and Heahtrow still being in the top ten busiest airports in the world. anecdotally, my flights have increased 2x every year for the past 5 years. this year it's been 50 flights, 40 of which intercontinental (no train availability).
- jka 7y ago
  Good food for thought, thanks. From a little more digging to try to break out of my bubble, here are some reading references: Of beef, pork, lamb, poultry, and fish -- only poultry has seen any broad increase in expenditure by UK households over the past few years (and slim, at 2%); all others have decreased or remained the same[0]. I'm not claiming that's related to environmental concerns directly but it shows some changes in behaviour. Air travel passenger numbers are certainly on the rise[1], although interestingly the number of flights ('air travel movements') appears to be somewhat more muted. Even so, greenhouse gas emissions from aviation have certainly increased a lot since the 1990s. Brexit and the prospect of a high-spending majority UK government could both have impacts on these over the next decade, no doubt - but in what direction I'm not sure. [0] - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-statistics-pocketbook/food-statistics-in-your-pocket-prices-and-expenditure https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-statistics-p... [1] - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/855288/tsgb-2019.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Mikeb85 7y ago

It's also funny he compares it to caviar which today is almost all farmed and is as cheap as it's ever been in living memory.

chirau 7y ago

Yeah I don't see our species evolving into pure herbivores anytime soon. I'm from Africa and the only vegans I know there are either allergic to meat or just can't afford it yet. Eating meat is actually something we work towards aggressively. Meat is also a status symbol, as a result. We will be eating meat for a very very long time.

cable2600 7y ago

Tyson changed from a meat company to a protein company. Can make veggies taste like chicken or beef. I didn't have an Impossible Whopper yet but it costs a lot of money. For $12.99 with a coupon I can gt a family meal of three Whoppers, three cheeseburgers, and 3 fries. I hear the Vegans are mad that the Impossible Whopper is grilled on the same grill as the regular Whooper. I suppose the reason to turn away from meat eating is to save the environment? Animals exhale CO2 but not as much as factories with smoke stacks burning coal or oil.

mbil 7y ago
Animals also output methane, and there are land-use issues with meat production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production#Greenhouse_gas_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
KozmoNau7 7y ago
Only a very small segment of loud'n'proud vegans on social media complain about the cooking method of the impossible whopper. And you can have it microwave cooked if you want it to not touch the grill.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tluyben2 7y ago

> People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even be willing to try alternatives. That's the problem; they will say it's not the same even if it is 100% the same. I bake a lot of pizzas for friends and I tend to do real sausage and Beyond sausage and have people taste. I tell them upfront that some are real and some are fake meat but not which are which. Yesterday I did almost 50 pizzas on a hangover party (it's a hobby...) and the most 'angry' meat eaters taste fake when it's real, real when it's fake, but once they think that they have the fake one (even though it was the real one), they simply leave it. And that I really don't understand. Little disclaimer about tasting: I don't load my pizza's up with that 'meatlover' amount of (fake or real) meat. I like subtle tastes, so there won't be a lot of sausage on a pizza.