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RE: Steemit vegetarians, "deathless meat" is almost here...what do you think?

in #news7 years ago

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.

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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.

People have been tinkering with genes since the dawn of farming

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.

Neil D. Tyson changed his stance on GMOs

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 :-)

If this lab grow meat is safe

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.

"Mother nature" doesn't provide anything.

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.

There's nothing "strange" or "unnatural" about lab-grown meat.

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:

Existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.

Strange, from Oxford:

1. Unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain.
2. Not previously visited, seen, or encountered; unfamiliar or alien.


Moving on...

But lab-grown meat is no more "unnatural" than the tomato I grow in my pot or the high-fructose syrup, assembly line-made, conservatives-filled "cereal" bar I buy.

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.

while the lab can provide the perfect, safest, healthiest foodstuff to ever have been consumed by a human.

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.

in the other you are creating something that does not (and cannot) exist in nature.

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.

I thought your problem was with "strange" and "unnatural" foodstuffs. Now you say the problem is greedy corporations.

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...

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.

Except that nature only works in systems, and would never be creating muscle tissue outside of an organism that requires it to function.

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.

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.

Your problem is with corporations and governments.

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.