Unless you’re a cannibal you’re probably not going to like this next idea. For it may one day be possible to eat meat created at home from our very own cells.
Dezeen explains:
“Ouroboros Steak could be grown by the diner at home using their own cells, which are harvested from the inside of their cheek and fed serum derived from expired, donated blood.
The resulting bite-sized pieces of meat, currently on display as prototypes at the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition, are created entirely without causing harm to animals. The creators argued this cannot be said about the growing selection of cultured meat made from animal cells.
Despite the lab-grown meat industry claiming to offer a more sustainable, cruelty-free alternative to factory farming, the process still relies on fetal bovine serum (FBS) as a protein-rich growth supplement for animal cell cultures.
FBS, which costs around £300 to £700 per litre, is derived from the blood of calf fetuses after their pregnant mothers are slaughtered by the meat or dairy industry. So lab-grown meat remains a byproduct of polluting agricultural practices, much like regular meat.”
But meat from human cells isn’t the only new way of creating food that could soon be on the menu. It may also be possible to create meat from fungus as well. Wired sums it up best:
“Meat is murder of Earth’s climate, at least. More than a quarter of the planet’s ice-free land is inefficiently used for grazing, a third of all farmland grows food for animals, and livestock are prodigious belchers of greenhouse gases. Global demand for meat is spiking at exactly the moment it’d be really good for all of us to eat less of it.
Alas, meat is also freakin’ delicious. High-tech plant-based replacements aspire to replicate its proteinaceous umami yumminess and texture, but pea-based Beyond and soy-based Impossible face technical challenges. So maybe it’s time to look to a whole other kingdom of life for meaty not-meats: fungus.
Fast-growing meshworks of mycelial filaments can replicate meat’s texture, and it’ll eat pretty much any carbon source, including waste from various industrial processes. Decades ago, British-based Quorn was the beginning of this idea, but this year the number of startups planning to put fungus-based alternative proteins in stores and on plates is mushrooming.”
So, what do you think? Would you be willing to eat meat made from human cells or fungus?! Or is the real thing just too good to pass up?
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