The main reasons I’ve seen from vegans for not eating meat seem to be all about the morality of eating a sentient animal, the practices of the modern meat industry, and the environmental impact of it. And don’t have anything to do with the taste of meat.
Since lab-grown meat doesn’t cause animal suffering, and assuming mass production is environmentally friendly, would you consider going back to eating meat if it were the lab-grown kind?
You must log in or register to comment.
I don’t think that lab-grown meat will ever replace animal agriculture on a large scale, at least in my lifetime. That being the case, I’d rather leave any ethically produced meat for people who would’ve been eating unethically produced meat instead.
If the situation is basically full on Star Trek replicator, then I wouldn’t have ethical qualms but I might still find it gross and it might not digest well since I’m not used to it. Either way, it’s very distant from the actual situation we’re in now.
i’m not a vegan or vegetarian, but from my experience with various plant-based proteins i honestly just do not see the point
we already have perfectly affordable vegan proteins that, while not identical to meat or even necessarily that close, are absolutely as satisfying to chew on and very tasty.
Really, all you need is a chunk of mostly pure protein of any kind and it’s doubtful people are going to much notice the difference if it’s part of a dish and they aren’t given a chance to study the protein in detail.
The only thing you’d really need lab-grown meat for is steaks, which are overrated anyways and like… god eating steak is such a violently bougie thing! The shelves with ground meat here are hilarious because the cheaper ground pork is constantly completely sold out while the ground beef is barely even touched, so i doubt people would even notice the disappearance of the steak that costs 6 times as much…Very relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR8M4zARBXY
I grew up vegetarian and I’m used to regarding body parts as belonging to a living thing and to be used in service of it, not as food.
If others cannot stop eating meat from animals then I would find it less morally wrong to eat lab-grown. Still disgusting though. And unlikely to be very resource efficient. Or safe. That’s my two pennies!
I would not mind eating lab grown and I think it is great if people would eat that instead but ive been vegan for so long that i have no interest in meat. I hardly eat mock meats, its only in social situations to not stand out to much.
Meat is delicious, you should try it if theres no reason not to
Ah, so witty! Here is more.
Wasn’t trying to be witty.
I eat meat, but I’ve gone months at a time on a vegetarian diet, and the smell of cooking meat could be nauseating at times. I don’t think as many people would eat meat if it wasn’t so ingrained in our society
Meat traditionally was the only food option for most people. Meat, eggs and grain are staple foods across the world no matter where you look.
Seconded. When I was vegan I’d already been vegetarian for years. Meat, including fake meat, held no appeal.
Fake meat has more of an appeal to me than lab grown meat, or it used to. It was kinda interesting when they were unique flavours marketed as alternatives rather than accurate immitations.
Honestly the food science is one of my favourite things about being vegan, I can cook way more interesting meals than I could as a carnist because I’d just use meat as the main flavour which works but it’s kinda lazy. Let me make something with a little miso and shitake broth and you’ll be in love
You got me drooling - any recipe suggestions? I’ve both ingredients in my fridge!
I don’t have any written recipes I’m afraid, I’ve been making them up as I go.
I usually use that combination for a ramen base. I used dried shitake and soak them in a ton of water overnight in the fridge. The dried shitake are honestly kinda inedible even after being rehydrated so I don’t always use them afterwards. I should also soak Kombu but I keep forgetting to buy it.
If you mix that broth with the right amount of miso paste then you’ll get the amazing combination of msg and nucleotides that gives you some amazing flavours. Soy sauce helps too, some garlic, ginger and sesame oil make it perfect.
Good luck working out ratios because I just guess everytime based on the size of my bowls 😅
Thanks so much for sharing! I’ll have to experiment for dinner tomorrow (I’m blessed to have a local eco store that sells everything you mentioned).
Hell yeah!
Good luck and have fun!
Same. I stopped eating meat in the mid 90s, was pescatarian until 2019, and have been vegan since. I don’t miss meat at all. I’ll eat an impossible or a beyond burger occasionally because it’s sometimes my only option, but I could just as easily skip them.
I wouldn’t judge anyone else for eating lab meat, though. I don’t have any moral issue with it, it just isn’t something I’m personally interested in.
it’s* only in
Ill let it slide, because you seam to have made it youre hole identity, butt ill note its knot relevant to this discussion
No, I dont like the taste or texture
Where are you getting lab grown meats?
From… A guy. Don’t ask questions.
I assume they meant meat in general. Supposed lab-grown meat aims to be a similar experience, the given answer is self-explanatory.
Btw, you can get lab-grown meat in a reastaurant in Singapore iirc.
Yes you are correct. I was talking about meat in general.
So, you’ve already tasted lab-grown meat?
I think they mean they don’t like the taste/texture of meat already so why would they go over to lab grown.
Given that the point of lab grown meat is to stand in for butchered meat, I think it’s fair to assume they’ll target the same taste/texture. Honestly, what’s even the point of the discussion without that premise baked in?
For sure
Nah, the stuff I am cooking without meat tastes better anyways.
Seems like a bold assertion, saying your food tastes better than something that doesn’t exist yet, and so cannot be compared.
I mean, you are probably right, but you can’t know how dinosaur meat or whatever genetically engineered nonexistent animal meat tastes like.
The point of lab meat is to taste like dead animals. I know what dead animals taste like, I ate them for 28 years.
I get that, what I mean is that current attempts fail to even taste like animal meat, so it’s hard to tell what that could actually taste like in the future. Now they pursue the taste of animal meat, but I imagine if they succeed they will go in other directions. Ultimately it’s a tech to grow arbitrary cell structures from arbitrary cells, so nobody says it has to replicate any animal tissue. That’s just unfortunately what people are familiar with.
I’m a vegetarian, and the answer is no. I find the idea of vat-grown meat disgusting, like something out of a bio-mechanical nightmare.
how is it different to hydroponic gardens?
I would not trust anyone who tells me it’s lab grown. I’ve had so many restaurants and people lie to me that someone ws vegan, out of malice and out of incompetence, that I just would not believe that a burger was “lab grown” instead of made with cheap meat leftovers.
If somehow I I could assure that it was made without animals being hurt, maybe. Meat is unhealthy so I would still mostly avoid it.
How is free range grown-up meat bad for health?
Everything within limits and maybe not the cheapest drug filled meat?The human body is an amagin versatile machine. But the best diet for health seems to be plant based whole foods. Meat should be a very small part of your diet. It has been linked to all main causes of death like heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimers…
Vegetarian here. It’s not something I’d personally buy or use in meals, as I don’t really have the desire to eat meat. That said, if it happened to be in a dish I really want to try at a restaurant, sure I’d eat it.
For me the main benefit of it would be the ability to try local/cultural dishes while travelling, if lab grown meat was an option.
I don’t eat meat because it causes suffering in another. Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings. So to me, the question becomes if the lab grown meat was ever attached to a brain that could feel suffering.
Now as far i understand it, lab grown meat isn’t nessecarily grown in isolation from a cow. But in a solution primarily compromised of blood extracted from living cows. That’s without question better than killing a creature, buuuuuuut we all know that when profits are involved the health of a animal is not prioritized.
So it really depends, while I don’t miss meat, once lab grown becomes widely available I’ll make my choice depending on the exact process of how it reached the grocery store.
Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings.
Ehhh, questionable.
No. It’s really not. I know the study you are going to link with the clickbait title that “plants feel pain”, but it’s unscientific garbage.
When you cut a plant, it only reacts with a secretion. That’s not sentience, it has no concept of pain because it literally does not have the required parts to feel it. Pain requires a nerve ending to feel the sensation, a brain to process that sensation in to an threat and a system to connect those two organs. Plants have none of this.
Yes plants release a pheromone when they are cut, but to extrapolate that to pain is a wild leap. If I cut an animal, they bleed, they yell, and they either run away or attack me, they generally do the same for their children. Exactly like humans react when cut. It’s impossible to disprove if plants have some other totally radically different type of intelligence we just don’t understand yet, but there is no evidence to suggest that is the case. I am making my choices based off evidence, not “idk, what if it was true”. It’s the same reason I know the earth is round and not flat, evidence not vibes.
It is intellectually dishonest to say that a potato and a pig perceive the world in the same way.
Consciousness is an open question. A potato does not perceive the same way as a pig, but a pig does not perceive the same way as a human. Plants communicate and make rudimentary decisions. Once you start getting into questions of degree, you subjectively decide where to draw the line. If you can argue that the line is between animals and plants, then someone else can argue the line is between animals and humans.
It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend our understanding of sentience and sapience is simple and unambiguous.
If you can argue that the line is between animals and plants, then someone else can argue the line is between animals and humans.
See, this is where you are just throwing your hands up and giving up on an sort of ethics. Because it’s theoretically possible for plants to feel pain then there is no reason to act moral when it comes to animals who we KNOW feel pain.
It’s like saying “porn with adults is harmful, but so is porn with children, who is to say where the line is? It’s an open question that is all perspective, so consume whatever you like”. When we know for a fact that sexual abuse of children causes suffering as opposed to what consenting adults do for a job.
Saying plants feel pain is motivated reasoning to call vegans hypocrites, not to actually produce a better world. I did not message you with my beliefs, you messaged me with whataboutism. 99% of the food humans eat is living in some sense (aside from minerals like salt), yeast in my bread is alive in some sense, but comparing that life to an animal as a reason it may not be matter? That it’s all perspective? Well then why not draw the line around cannibalism of anyone under a certain IQ. If consciousness is such an open question, then who is to say anyone is real except for myself? If I hurt another human, who is to say that they feel at all? It could all be simulation from a certain perspective so who cares?
This sort of “what if” and “it depends” whataboutism doesn’t actually help anyone. I didn’t bring veganism to you, you brought this to me. This is just naval gazing because calling vegan hypocrites makes you more secure in your own choices. You’re not saying anything of value,
Uh, you do know it’s possible to focus on fruits, which are freely given, right? You volunteered your perspective in the first place, and you’re the one throwing your hands up instead of finding an ethical diet. You’re the one trying to justify your choices based on subjective distinction. You’re the one calling yourself a hypocrite. All I said was that your absolute claim was questionable.
I eat, primarily, botanical fruits (which includes cucumbers, squash, and a surprising quantity of other vegetables freely given by plants for our consumption) as well as meat which would otherwise be thrown away. Once the animal is dead, it is far more respectful to consume it than let it be wasted. I typically buy meat on clearance, at the end of the night, on the expiration date.
I have no desire to “gotcha” people who sincerely want to make a better world, but hypocrites who call out others while justifying their own ethical blind spots are typically more interested in self-righteousness than actually improving the world.
🙄🤦
hypocrites who call out others while justifying their own ethical blind spots are typically more interested in self-righteousness than actually improving the world.
Exactly. I agree completely, but scroll up and remember I didn’t call ANYONE out in my original comment. I came to this thread because my perspective was asked for in the title. You came to me with a “but plants” trying to call MY beliefs out. So think whatever you want, but frankly, leave me the hell alone. This isn’t a discussion I asked for, it’s not on topic and you’re not saying anything interesting.
Once again, I said none of that. Scroll up to verify I didn’t call you out at any point.
This is a public forum, when you make a statement people are free to comment. You made a statement I disagreed with, and all I said was that the statement was questionable. All the rest of this “calling beliefs out” happened purely in your head. Feel how you wish about your choices, but don’t implicate me in your projection.
Yeeeah, it’s not going to be environmentally friendly, probably the opposite. In the lab grown meat discussions people seem to forget how incredibly efficient cows are at converting biomass to muscle.
For lab grown meat you’d need a circulation system that can reach all parts of the meat and provide it with enough nutrients, proteins, supplements and all that while also removing by-products such as ammonia that result from chemical processes in the cells.
So you’ll end up needing a circulation system, immune system, bones for the meat to not get crushed by it’s own weight ideally, recycling system like the liver and logistical system to back everything up, and that’s assuming the whole process will be energy efficient.
Adding a brain to it makes essentially gives you all parts of a cow except the cow can largely produce the meat without any oversight and will do all the nutrient differential equations automatically.
We’re still decades away from being able to scale this up while being within the same order of magnitude in cost. It’s far easier to do a decade of chemistry and biology on textured soy meat to perfectly replicate the flavor, texture and nutrient profile of cow meat. This shouldn’t come as a shock since plants are more efficient than animals in creating protein.
I’m personally hoping for genetically modified soy beans that have good amount of the amino acid leucine which is lacking in most plant protein.
Sidenote: We are close to fixing the methane emissions of cows by feeding them a supplement mixed with the feed.
You didn’t want answer the hypothetical though?
That’s true, I shouldn’t since I’m not vegan.
I’ve been vegan for four years, and I would personally not be interested in lab-grown meat because I have no desire to consume meat anymore, after a while it became quite gross to me to think about, just kinda icky.
I don’t know much about lab grown meat, but if there are no animals harmed in the manufacture and it’s at least somewhat more sustainable than animal products, then I wouldn’t have any ethical objections to it.
I’d be much more interested in ethically produced dairy than meat, personally.
I saw lab grown milk at the grocery store the other day! It’s still pretty pricey and there’s only whole milk but I’m excited that accessible lab grown milk is on the horizon
Did you try it? I’ve tried a number of milkless milk substitutes and none of them hit the spot for me.
I did actually! I wouldn’t call it a milk replacement. It’s definitely got a really peculiar taste that I can only describe as lactose free milk if it tasted like it had aspartame in it. I don’t really drink much milk to begin with, so the only thing I was doing with it was just sipping straight but I feel like it would taste nice in coffee or tea. Wouldn’t put it in cereal or cook with it tbh.
really peculiar taste that I can only describe as lactose free milk if it tasted like it had aspartame
Okay yeah, that sounds similar to some of the stuff I’ve tried. It’s a beverage, possibly even a good one, but it’s not milk. I’m still waiting for when we can accurately and cheaply reproduce the sugars, proteins, and fats in cow milk, but without growing the rest of the cow.
I dated a vegetarian, and I love to cook. It was wild how little it took to break through the “meatless” thing. We didn’t last but I kept the skillset, and eat vegetarian at least a few nights of the week.
I love being able to taste things at every stage without worry about food safety. Like if I don’t think a sauce is quite right, I can always try a bit. Once you kind of break through, meat freaks you out a bit… and I still eat meat!
Edit: I’ll also add: giving up cheese and eggs would be hard as hell though… I get where that would be more exciting than meat.
I would eat it, but I would do so on rare occasions in the same way I might have a drink with friends once a month. I became vegetarian for health reasons in addition to the reasons listed by OP and I have grown to really enjoy meat-free eating, so I don’t really miss it but would view it as a treat best enjoyed sparingly.
If it’s not wasteful/polluting to produce it, I don’t see why not
Still need to investigate the sustainability of it before I would try, but presently there’s no produce on sale here. But I’m pretty used to dishes without meat by now, so there’s no direct need. I suppose it would be more targeted towards current meateaters, hopefully they stop destroying life on the planet at some point.
I, a meat eater, and you, presumably not, will both continue to destroy life on this planet for as long as we exist.
Causing no damage isn’t really an option for one who exists.
I hope, you only grow your own food then.
