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RE: Steemit vegetarians, "deathless meat" is almost here...what do you think?
I'll definitely be staying far, far away from lab-grown meat, just like I do animal-grown meat, and lab-grown fruits & veggies.
Mother Earth provides more fruits & vegetables than most of us will ever even hear of, no reason to start creating strange, unnatural, potentially dangerous substances to eat.
I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. "Mother nature" doesn't provide anything. We humans artificially selected a plethora of foodstuffs, and now grow them and cultivate them and reap them. There's nothing "strange" or "unnatural" about lab-grown meat.
I agree with you, @tychoxi. People have been tinkering with genes since the dawn of farming. Our cows, corn, etc. are nothing like their ancestors. My dog is great, but thank goodness, she's nothing like her wolf ancestors. Through mate selection, we're also probably quite different than our "wild" ancestors.
Tinkering with nature is what we do. In that way, it's also entirely natural. Even Neil D. Tyson changed his stance on GMOs. It's like any other tool - it's what we do with it -- but there's nothing inherently bad about it. In fact, we have always needed to do it.
If this lab grow meat is safe and helps curb some current abuses that hurt both animals and people, why not? And yes, I made some pretty good "faux" meat patties yesterday with sweet potatoes and flax seeds yesterday. But that's me.
True, but there is a HUGE difference between helping select which (of the same species) get to breed, and the current model of extracting genes from one species to put into another.
All the more reason not to trust them. NDT is a bought & paid for mouthpiece for the corporate structure. That exact video is the one that first proved to millions of us that he is absolutely not to be trusted, thanks for including it :-)
Exactly, if. Personally, I'm not going to be one of the ones who pays for the right to be a guinea pig to see if it's safe. (as "safe" as meat that is, which is not very safe, unless only consumed in very small amounts)
Mother nature does provide fruit & vegetables. You can go into a forest and pick berries and all other types of fruits and nuts. Humans didn't wake up one day and create vegetables, we found them in nature then learned to cultivate them. Meat grown in a lab just sounds wrong, why don't we just make our meat healthy. We can having such large farms where the animals are stuffed with hormones and forced to live in their filth.
We do it because people want cheap meat. If they didn't do those awful things, meat would cost more. Of course, that would help curb consumption, so it would be more like the old days when meat was more of a luxury and people ate more vegetarian sources of protein. My father said they'd often eat lentil soup when he was a child (so often, he got sick of it), but he grew up fine.
You are right about, "the old days when..." in those days the poor people that rarely could afford to eat animal products had better health and the wealthy often were unhealthy and died younger than their servants. BTW going vegan saves me an easy 50.00$ or more on my grocery bill.
Mother Nature provides all the food we need to stay well nourished and healthy. There wasn't always GMO's, pesticides, food cloning, etc etc. People were living off of Mother Nature's fruits, veggies, seeds, grains, nuts, herbs, etc. before all of these killer foods, poisonous water and drinks, preservatives, additives, steroids, artificial this and that were added. Those are the things that are killing us. Oh yes, lets not forget about synthetic drugs that are killing everyone also....which they didn't need way back then either because they used Mother Nature's natural healing foods. Mother Nature is where the "real" cures for diseases are. Don't let the gov't and Big Pharma fool ya. They are the ones controlling the population and they do it by putting poison in our foods and water. Why do you think doctors who have found cures using Mother Nature products mysteriously die? It's been going on for years. They don't want us to know the truth because it will take money out of their pockets and they'd rather have us walking around like zombies.
Water... air... mycelium, sunlight, worms, et al. All of the things needed for even human cultivation of plants comes right from our environment. Plus you can live on wild plants even if you aren't cultivating anything yourself.
Re-read that sentence
Well, looks like you want to argue about semantics. I re-read my reply and I think the point's clear: whether you want to say that nature "provides" our foodstuffs or not, it's irrelevant, I can accept that yes nature is "providing" that which we take from the environment. But lab-grown meat is no more "unnatural" than the tomato I grow in my pot or the high-fructose syrup, assembly line-made, preservatives-filled "cereal" bar I buy. Some are healthier than others, yes, but their "healthiness" is not reliant on them being "provided" by nature or the lab. Nature can "provide" contaminated water and soil the plant you eat absorbed to the rim, while the lab can provide the perfect, safest, healthiest foodstuff to ever have been consumed by a human.
I wasn't trying to argue semantics, I was asking you to re-read the sentence where you said that "there is nothing strange or unnatural about lab-grown meat" which is clearly a false statement.
Natural, from Oxford:
Strange, from Oxford:
Moving on...
By any definition of natural, both the cereal bar, and the lab-grown meat are far more unnatural than the tomato is. In one case you are simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways; in the other you are creating something that does not (and cannot) exist in nature.
Theoretically, yes. But as we've seen with that high-fructose corn syrup, the GMOs, the "artificial sweeteners", and all of the other food-stuffs coming out of laboratories, that is not the case. In a world without corporations, corrupt governments, and where people are actually responsible for their actions (like poisoning millions), laboratory-made "food" wouldn't necessarily be a problem. However, we currently don't live in that world.
There is nothing strange or unnatural about growing humans in a lab, feeding them their liquefied dead, and then raising them in pods hooked up to a virtual reality simulator to extract their life force to power an autonomous robotic army.
I thought your problem was with "strange" and "unnatural" foodstuffs. Now you say the problem is greedy corporations.
Artificial meat, if a replica of the animal tissue, does indeed already exist in nature, you would just be "simply facilitating nature in doing what it would do anyways," ie. grow muscle tissue. But now the semantic discussion of what is "natural" and "unnatural" is irrelevant as you admit that theoretically there's no reason to think that "natural" foodstuffs are better or worse. Your problem is with corporations and governments.
You make it seem as though it's impossible to have a problem with both... even though the one is created exclusively by the other...
Except that nature only works in systems, and would never be creating muscle tissue outside of an organism that requires it to function.
That's not what I said at all. You said that labs can produce healthy, safe food. I said that theoretically they can, though we have never seen it. Even if it had been what I said, that wouldn't make the argument of natural vs synthetic a non-issue.
Again, that is one problem. And since these laboratory-made food-replacements are only created by governments & corporations...
We also wouldn't have any need to look for ridiculous solutions like this if it wasn't for those corporations (governments are simply corporations with guns) creating the illusion that there isn't enough food readily available for everyone and forcing children to go to indoctrination camps that conveniently train them to think food must be "bought"
I still disagree with you but are right haha, I generalized what you said too much, sorry about that!
It's all good :-)
Every time I get into a heated discussion like this on Steemit, it reminds me how much better this platform is than the other social media options.
No name calling, nobody just walked away because someone disagreed, and we were able to refine our points back and forth to at least come to a better understanding of each others' points, if not agreement.
I agree. Lab-grown meat involves genetic engineering of the cells and there aren't any studies on our how it might impact our health. The idea itself is interesting but I'll pass for now. Besides, growing food is fun :)
Lab-grown meat does not necessarily involve genetic engineering. As far as I could find, lab-grown meat produced so far has been free from genetic engineering.
Should've rephrased. You're right, the labs aren't using genetic engineering now but they may in the future.
( ＾ω＾)
I was Vegetarian for a couple years, then i became a selectarian after having nothing but steak to eat one night on a tree planting mission to replant the animal corridor in West Australia.
After that blood craving i realized how much my O blood type required some form of meat every now and then.
So now i selectively eat meats again but ONLY from my Organic Butcher with humane practices.
lol... I'm happy you found your balance.
Me too, probably won't venture into eating something Nature hasn't worked out over time.
Your lifestyle is only possible thanks to modern agricultural technology and the high energy density and amount of cheap vegetarian food availabe. If you don't have that you need meat or you harm yourself and die.
@doodlebear Spoken like someone who has truly never grown their own food.
lol nice one.. but dead wrong: I grew up surrounded by farms;-)
and I grew up surrounded by tech factories... doesn't mean I know how to manufacture a microchip
Actually, "urban farms" are a growing trend. More and more people are giving up on the animal products and/or buying as much locally sourced organic or "grown with organic methods" as possible. Smart people are giving up their 2nd day job to grow food. Modern agriculture is really more of a problem than a solution but I do agree that to feed our large populations we need to keep the best of the modern technology and apply as much of it as you can to organic and more natural practices.
Not exactly true. There were plenty of cultures pre-modern-agriculture who lived on little to no animal products whatsoever. There are even still places where you can do that, in the wild, right now.
There is a WIDE variety of "modern agricultural technology" like greenhouses, aquaponics, hugleculture, etc. that is perfectly harmless, but those don't involve messing with DNA itself. Working in tandem with the plants & environment is a whole different story from trying to play god.
Maybe in tropical places where you can harvest 3 times a year. But I remember even Bantus living in the deepest jungle eat plenty of meat.
Here is a documentary about a couple that lives in the jungle of New Zealand. She used to be a vegetarian, but had to give it up to get enough proteins etc:
But yes, sure, with modern technology pretty much everything is possible. Also tasty deathless meat. (actually, I can't wait to try it^^)
Lost any credibility there, as protein deficiency is almost impossible unless you aren't getting enough calories to survive anyway.
I did add etc - or is that not a thing in English? (not my mother language..)
You did, and that is the proper term. My point though, is that any time someone references "not enough protein", it's clear there is some level of misunderstanding nutrition and nurtritional sources. (not necessarily you, as I assume you're giving an example of something they said in the documentary)
My English is mainly patched together from school+Netflix&HBO.. I only used proteins because it sounded right;-)
But you're right, I am more or less out of my depth from that point on. What I do know from watching and doing is how much of a difference it makes in agriculture to have good soil versus bad soil and also fertilizer and none. For example, in regions with bad soil and no fertilizer (I'm thinking about Central Asia/Afghanistan), people usually have goats roaming around, because they collect the thinly spread plant nutrient much more efficiently than it is possible to do with cultivating the land by hand. The detour over goat milk and meat becomes a necessary trick for survival and my point is that you can only avoid this by living in the right place or having enough technology/processing knowledge.
Well your english is quite good :-) "not enough protein" is one of the most common, though factually incorrect, arguments against veganism.
Absolutely, the soil (and microbiology in it) is just about the most important thing for the survival of humans, and every other living thing on the planet.
I would argue your last point a bit, it is quite easy (not simple, but with the knowledge, easy) to revitalize the soil.
Even in pure desert, we can create lush food forests:
Why would strange and unnatural be a problem? And if it were dangerous, it wouldnt be aproved.
Either way, i hope you make sure to get enough lab created vitamin B12 (i think its still created by the same bacteria which usualy create it, just not inside an animal, i might be wrong and i dont care either way). I dont want to hear more stories about crazy people besmirching vegetarian or vegan diets due to their esoteric nonsense.
That's just hilarious. The FDA has approved literally hundreds of things that prove to be quite toxic, and doesn't even bother to pull most of them off the market.
Our bodies create b12, probiotic foods (kraut, pickles, kombucha, etc) contain b12, and eating produce from soil that hasn't been Monsanto'd to death gives b12 as well. The only way to not get enough B12 is to eat only dead food and not keep healthy gut flora.
I've been vegan for over 4 years now, and have never taken any supplements that were not 100% raw and totally plant-sourced (like Garden of Life)