Artificial food coming soon.

I'm not a vegeterian, and I don't consider eating non-sophonts ethically questionable, but I would try this if it's a faithful reproduction in terms of nutritional value while being more sustainable than mass livestock farming ecologically.
 
I'm fascinated by this whole idea of "artificial food" I mean really, we don't go out and milk/kill our own cows, grow our own vegetables, grind our own wheat and sugar do we?

Food grown in test tubes - I'm all for it. So long as it tastes good and is nutritious.
 
Just another step in our societal evolution that will most likely get extreme opposition from the jobless and stuipd and my neighbor dan..
 
Just another step in our societal evolution that will most likely get extreme opposition from the jobless and stuipd and my neighbor dan..

and people calling it "frankenfood" as if it was going to suddenly come alive and attack you.
 
I actually dislike such food. It is currently betraying the customer, because nobody would buy it if they would write that this cheese is not made of milk, but of taste-free proteins with artificial aromas. Instead, they sell it for the same price and under the same label as real cheese, but just write the truth into the fine print.

I also dislike the "overoptimization". Making one kg of meat costs x liters of water. Yes. That is what a living being drinks and eats before it is old enough to be butchered. But what it makes of the water can be returned into drinking water by simple processes and little effort. Contrary, a single solar cell or a single electric car battery consumes way more liters of water for the processes, pollutes some water more, and is then sold as "ecologic". And that water is nearly impossible to be cleaned completely, a lot of the resulting pollution ends in toxic waste dumps.

So why should I care about such talking? A single cow is likely three times more effective than any artificial solution.

Also, there is the "dignity of life" thing for me. you can sure complain about industrial meat production having no dignity at all. It is the wrong thing created by organized crime. But then, that does not apply to all butchers. If you pay for your meat, you can expect it to be good and have a name. What dignity has a vat of proteins have? would you feel relaxed when walking along a artificial meat factory? Or would you feel better when going past cows?

I don't believe in human solutions being always better than nature. Nature had way longer to optimize and way harder standards of quality. Who could prove that artificial meat proteins won't cause CJD or similar diseases? Or cancer? Natural meat does aid in cancer, but is still way more healthy than for example breathing the air in Los Angeles for a day.
 
Nature had way longer to optimize and way harder standards of quality.

This is what a banana "from nature" looks like (not domesticated by humans):
638px-Inside_a_wild-type_banana.jpg
 
So why should I care about such talking? A single cow is likely three times more effective than any artificial solution.

I think the whole point is trying to come up with an artificial solution that is more efficient than a cow.

What dignity has a vat of proteins have? would you feel relaxed when walking along a artificial meat factory? Or would you feel better when going past cows?

As far as I'm concerned, "ethics" and "dignity" only applies to stuff with nervous systems complex enough to be considered brains. Are you also concerned about the dignity of factory-farmed potatoes?

I don't believe in human solutions being always better than nature. Nature had way longer to optimize and way harder standards of quality. Who could prove that artificial meat proteins won't cause CJD or similar diseases? Or cancer? Natural meat does aid in cancer, but is still way more healthy than for example breathing the air in Los Angeles for a day.

It would obviously have to be rigorously tested. But the nature-fetishism has to stop. There's nothing special about nature, and we can do a lot better. Which is not to say that we are, but we, without a doubt, can.

Also, nature's standards of quality tend not to overlap with ours. Sorry for invoking the evolution-fairy.
 
It would obviously have to be rigorously tested. But the nature-fetishism has to stop. There's nothing special about nature, and we can do a lot better. Which is not to say that we are, but we, without a doubt, can.

Prove it!

---------- Post added at 07:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:32 PM ----------

This is what a banana "from nature" looks like (not domesticated by humans):

Yes, I know. you sure also know what wheat was like before it was domesticated or what a pig was like 2000 years ago.

The key difference to artificial food is: humans just pushed nature a little in the right direction, and still followed the rules of nature, since the rules had not been negotiable. The meat of a pig still had to be natural enough to keep the pig alive. That does not apply to clumps of cells in a vat. Such stuff can be just long enough alive to be sold.
 
The key difference to artificial food is: humans just pushed nature a little in the right direction, and still followed the rules of nature, since the rules had not been negotiable. The meat of a pig still had to be natural enough to keep the pig alive. That does not apply to clumps of cells in a vat. Such stuff can be just long enough alive to be sold.

The artificial meat follows the same "rules of nature" as a wild boar. There's nothing about the way the universe works that prevents a chunk of vat-grown meat from having the exact same nutritional properties as a wild animal. Our ability to create it may not be there yet, but that doesn't make it "against the law of nature", unless manned flight was also against the laws of nature until the first balloon. Which, come to think of it, many people claimed to be the case.
 
The artificial meat follows the same "rules of nature" as a wild boar. There's nothing about the way the universe works that prevents a chunk of vat-grown meat from having the exact same nutritional properties as a wild animal. Our ability to create it may not be there yet, but that doesn't make it "against the law of nature", unless manned flight was also against the laws of nature until the first balloon. Which, come to think of it, many people claimed to be the case.

There is also nothing that prevents it from being different. What now? And if it is cheaper to sell meat that will kill the customers after they did consume the meat for some years, is that an economic problem? Sure not.
 
I really can't see the problem. If the meat looks like Beef, tastes like Beef, feels like Beef, and is chemically indistinguishable from Beef, why should it matter how said Beef came into existence?
 
I really can't see the problem. If the meat looks like Beef, tastes like Beef, feels like Beef, and is chemically indistinguishable from Beef, why should it matter how said Beef came into existence?

The problem is: Can you produce something like that beef better than by the natural way.

(sorry, the fallacy does not apply there. In this case, nature is not used in a vague form, but specifically as growing the meat on the animal)
 
(sorry, the fallacy does not apply there. In this case, nature is not used in a vague form, but specifically as growing the meat on the animal)

Is domesticating cows natural? How about pumping them full of entirely unnatural feedstock and carefully orchestrating every moment of their lives for optimal meat output?

The only difference between this and (properly done) vat meat is the efficiency and the lack of a brain and other non-edible parts.
 
Wait, since when is a brain not edible?

Missed a comma there, didn't mean to imply the brain was non-edible. But not growing one seems like an obvious way to placate the people who refrain from eating meat out of purely ethical, animal welfare-related reasons.
 
Most of the cows here in East Tennessee (well, around Cleveland anyway) eat grass. Most are for dairy, Mayfield dairy farm is pretty well known along the southeast.

About 2 miles from me is another large farm with "eating" cows. They primarily eat grass also. Although I have heard and read about other farms around the nation (and world) that pump their cows full of strange chemicals, to stereotype my southern self... "We don't cotton to that kind of stuff 'round here".
 
The problem is: Can you produce something like that beef better than by the natural way.
Can you produce a living environment on a space station better or as good as our natural one down here?

It's a question of state of art instead of impossibility, no?

Just like with artificial environment, we'll hit one lack of something, then another, then an excess of something else, and finally settle on something that seems edible in the short term.
Generations later we'll root out all the lacks and excesses that causes long-term harm.
And off it goes.
 
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