{"id":61474,"date":"2009-12-03T12:09:53","date_gmt":"2009-12-03T17:09:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marksdailyapple.com\/?p=9426"},"modified":"2009-12-03T12:09:53","modified_gmt":"2009-12-03T17:09:53","slug":"in-vitro-meat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/61474","title":{"rendered":"In Vitro Meat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"testtubemeatWhen Winston Churchill, in the 1932 essay \u201cFifty Years Hence,\u201d mused that \u201cwe 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,\u201d he may have been more prescient than credited. Alexis Carrel had already been keeping a cultured chunk of chicken heart \u201calive\u201d in a Pyrex flask for the past twenty years by feeding it nutrients (though Carrel was only interested in whether cell death was inevitable, not whether meat could be grown in a lab for human consumption). Sci-fi author Frederik Pohl was one man who took the idea of in vitro meat seriously enough to write about it \u2013 in the novel The Space Merchants<\/em>, where cultured meat is the primary source of protein. That was science fiction, sure, but most good sci-fi is borne of the author\u2019s honest opinion of what the future might hold and it\u2019s usually inspired by the scientific advancements of the day. And sometimes, science fiction comes true. Like this time.<\/p>\n

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Dutch scientists were able to grow pork in a lab test tube<\/a>.<\/strong> They extracted myoblast cells from the muscle of a living pig, incubated them in a piglet fetus-blood-nutrient solution, and got \u201ca soggy form of pork.\u201d No one\u2019s tried the \u201cpork\u201d due to lab rules, but it\u2019s derived from the same myoblast cells that generate muscle in response to tissue damage in an actual animal \u2013 ideally, this would taste exactly like pork muscle meat. They\u2019ve even got plans to \u201cexercise\u201d the tissue, which could conceivably do away with the sogginess and provide a meatier chewing experience.<\/p>\n

The Dutch scientists weren\u2019t the first; four years ago, a research paper detailed plans to engineer in vitro meat on a massive, industrial scale<\/a>, and others have been trying in vain for years to produce a decent lab-grown steak. The soggy pork is perhaps the closest they\u2019ve gotten. Every researcher runs into a couple basic issues. First, there are generally two accepted methods for growing in vitro meat: the generation of either loose muscle cells or structured, \u201creal\u201d muscle. The latter is the ideal path, because it might make cohesive cuts of meat possible, but it\u2019s also the most challenging. Real muscle growth depends on perfusion, or the delivery of arterial blood bearing nutrients to biological tissue, and a similar system might be required for \u201creal\u201d lab grown muscle. Until then, only thin sheets of muscle meat have been grown. These can be compressed into meat sheets or ground up, but a three-dimensional, juicy rare steak is still far off. The easy way out is to grow loose muscle cells, but unless you\u2019re prepared for a future of unrecognizable meat products, you might want to wait for that soggy pork to firm up.<\/p>\n

Where do I stand on the idea of in vitro meat? Well, I\u2019m more than a little skeptical as you might imagine.<\/strong> Natural animal reproduction already does a pretty good job at growing meat, and major deviations from the natural order<\/a> have a spotty track record. Big Pharma, for example, represents one big attempt after another to replace the natural order<\/a>. It gets things right from time to time \u2013 I won\u2019t argue against that \u2013 but it also creates unnecessary products that purport to protect patients from conditions that could otherwise be handled through lifestyle modifications. Both Big Pharma and the in vitro meat researchers are trying to understand incredibly complicated physiological processes that took millions of years to develop naturally. The vast interplay between hormones, nutrients, and environmental factors (including exercise, diet, and drugs) in the human body is difficult \u2013 if not impossible \u2013 to parse, but that\u2019s exactly what medicine tries to do. When you take a drug, you\u2019ve got to hope pharmacists took every possible factor into account. They can make educated guesses, and they\u2019re often right, but not always. Statins, as prescribed, do a helluva job at lowering cholesterol (a pretty pointless gesture, but they do what they say they\u2019ll do \u2013 note that they don\u2019t promise reductions in actual heart disease), but they do so by interrupting the same passages used by other important bodily players \u2013 like CoQ10. It\u2019s a complex thing, the human body.<\/p>\n

Animal bodies are no different, and a steak isn\u2019t just a matrix of muscle cells. It\u2019s got fat (several kinds!), blood vessels, collagen, and different textures (which depend on the activity level of the animal; the lab meat cubes better have access to treadmills). Nutrients have to be shuttled in and waste out (grass-fed in vitro meat?). If you want a real steak with a bloody center, how is that achieved in the lab? Blood pockets? What\u2019s the blood made of? What if I want a cowboy ribeye, bone-in \u2013 are they trying to grow bone, too? And I worry about the saturated fat content. One scientist mentioned replacing the Omega 6s with Omega 3s, which sounds promising, but I can only think the next step is to replace the saturated fats with even more Omega 3s (or, shudder, canola oil). Will it even taste the same?<\/p>\n

At the same time, I remain open-minded.<\/strong> If they\u2019re able to grow meat with perfect Omega 3\/Omega 6 ratios, no hormones, no antibiotics, on a \u201cdiet\u201d that recreates real grassy pasture, that tastes like meat, has the same texture as meat, the same saturated fat content as meat \u2013 I might be convinced to give it a shot. And if it\u2019s cheaper than grass-fed meat, easier on the environment than industrial farming, and easy to produce on a mass scale without sacrificing quality, why wouldn\u2019t I support it? Remember: I don\u2019t glorify the ancestral, natural ways because they are ancestral and natural. It\u2019s just that paying attention to evolution and being wary of modern \u201cimprovements\u201d has paid off. The Primal Blueprint<\/a> works. If in vitro meat works (and it\u2019s proven beyond a doubt that it\u2019s identical to real meat \u2013 a tall order, I grant you), why shouldn\u2019t we give it a shot?<\/p>\n

Still, I can\u2019t help but doubt it. It\u2019s not so much that I\u2019m wary of processed food, because perfect in vitro meat that recreates actual meat is theoretically different than HFCS, boxed goods, and industrial vegetable oils, and it has the potential to revolutionize food (you mean I get to eat a black panther steak? Sign me up!); it\u2019s that following the natural order has been so good to me. I eat according to human evolution, I exercise in accordance with my body\u2019s design, and things have generally worked out well. Eating real steak raised the way it was intended to live has also worked out okay. I\u2019ll keep my real meat for now and watch warily from the sidelines, curious and always skeptical.<\/p>\n

Both Pohl and Churchill were undoubtedly inspired by Carrel\u2019s experiment, but the prevailing public opinion was that the decades-old chicken heart was an abomination. It still lived when Carrel died, 28 years later, but the experiment was soon halted. If it weren\u2019t for the negative public reaction, that chicken heart might still be pumping today. I suspect the initial public reaction to in vitro meat would be pretty similar, but what do you think?<\/p>\n

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.<\/p>\n

If no, what would it take to convince you? Anything? Is there any possible scenario in which in vitro meat is a good thing for this world? Share your thoughts in the comment section!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Get Free Health Tips, Recipes and Workouts<\/a> Delivered to Your Inbox<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/h4>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

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  2. Raw Meat<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Did Grok Really Eat That Much Meat?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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