An Israeli company has produced the first 3-D printed ribeye steak, and the Washington Post thinks there's an audience for it:
A survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults, conducted by MRS research company for agriculture company Proagrica, showed that 39 percent of American consumers have considered going vegetarian or vegan since the pandemic began. Health concerns, climate change and animal welfare are drivers.
Hmmm. A poll from Proagrica. Got anything better? Here is Plant Based News:
More than half (60 percent) of Americans have started eating a more plant-based diet since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to a new poll. The survey, which polled 2,000 adults, was conducted by market research firm OnePoll and by Eat Just, Inc – a food tech company best known for its plant-based JUST Egg product made from mung beans – ahead of Better Breakfast Month (September).
This is from Eat Just Inc., which makes mung-bean egg products. And that's all I could find after an exhausting two minutes of googling.
I officially declare this a worthless factoid. About 6% of Americans are vegetarians, and I imagine that there's always some huge share of meat eaters who are considering switching. Just like there are tons of Americans who are considering losing weight, or looking for a new job, or finally getting their act together and fixing that squeaky doorknob. In other words, none to speak of.
I usually share your cynicism on such things, but I don’t know about this one. I am not vegetarian but during COVID the rest of my meat-eating immediate family became vegetarian, and my vegetarian child is now vegan. Which means I’ve essentially become vegetarian myself. And on my weekly extended family zoom call I just learned that similar things have been happening in my brothers’ families. Now we’re all lefties and certainly not representative of the whole of America, but being vegetarian (or even vegan) is just so much EASIER now. Especially since I can use Impossible/Beyond ground beef for my shepherd’s pie or beef burritos and frankly it doesn’t taste a whit different. If you add steak to that, then I’m done with cows completely. It’s gotten such that I wonder if we’ll see a new retronym soon, “animal meat” perhaps?
Have you tested your sense of smell? I find it difficult to believe that Impossible/Beyond tastes like beef when taste is strongly based on smell and Impossible/Beyond smells pretty bad when cooking.
I think this is it, for me- I am an avowed carnivore, but I absolutely pick the impossible/beyond option when it's actually available.
So far there isn't actually an alternative- just similar products that try to claim that they are an alternative. But lab meat changes that by creating actual hamburger without growing a cow, which I think is a game changer. Saying that there are boca burgers available in the freezer isn't really the same as having a hamburger alternative except in the sense that e.g. ground chicken is an alternative to hamburger. Ground chicken is fine for a lot of stuff, but it's also clearly not ground hamburger.
When there is a printed steak in the butcher counter next to the other ribeyes at comparable or better cost (which should happen sooner than you think), I guarantee you that a ton of consumers are going to pick it.
An "avowed carnivore"? Really? You eat only meat? No bun for that burger? No fruits? No vegs? No condiments, even?
I believe that what you mean is that you're an omnivore, and that's just fine (by me, at least). We omnivores might very well want to reduce our meat consumption, for a variety of reasons (health, the environment, cost, whatever), and it's not necessary to become a "vegan" to do so -- much less declare yourself to be a backlash "carnivore" when you're clearly not.
I apologize for my rudeness. I've become irrationally insensitive to "Vegan Superiority" ...
I doubt most know what beef smells like, then. Most burgers are manufactured product anyhow.
This seems like something that would be relatively easy to prove or disprove using sales figures for beef, pork, and chicken.
I'm flailing on the connection between a 3d printed rib eye steak and being a vegetarian. Shirley, they aren't suggesting that 3d printing with broccoli in the shape of a steak is a rib eye steak?
A vegetarian is one who doesn't eat products that involve killing animals. Many vegetarian foods contain milk products, bacterial fermentation, nutritional years; and some vegetarians even eat eggs, fish, or bugs.
A cell culture isn't an animal to be killed. It would be no different than eating pickles or bread.
KD_
"I officially declare this a worthless factoid. About 6% of Americans are vegetarians, and I imagine that there's always some huge share of meat eaters who are considering switching. Just like there are tons of Americans who are considering losing weight, or looking for a new job, or finally getting their act together and fixing that squeaky doorknob. In other words, none to speak of."
Whoa now Kev I hope you rethink this
THAT 6% is twice as dangerous as the 3%ers - that far right anti-government extremist group
"Eat your broccoli or I light the wick on this Molotov Cocktail....."
I tried one of those Burger King impossible burgers. I thought it sucked. It sort of tasted liked beef, but the texture was completely off. The patty was too thin, Burger King tries to mask that by loading up the burger with lots of shredded lettuce.
I just ate an Impossible Whopper today for lunch. Burger King is already low on my list for fast casual -- save for the discontinued Triple Whopper -- but the IW was good.
Yeah, they often undercook it, which will make it mushy.
Just discovered that white sugar is only white because bone char is added to it.
Take that, vegans.
Vegans don't generally eat refined sugar.
Sort of large sized sugar cane grinders?
Sugar is white because in liquid form it is filtered through dirt and bone char. The gooped up bone char has the goop burned off in a kiln and is reused. The seperated brown stuff is sprayed back on to make brown sugar.
Forget about 3d printed meats. The only alt-flesh product I need is that burger made from.human feces that the Japanese invented.
So are we eating PLA or ABS?
I am not in the 6% of Americans who are vegetarian.
But most of my meals do not contain farmed meat. I eat red meat less than once a week, meat replacements are much more common.
It's a lower carbon footprint. And cheaper, in many ways.
What happened to artificially-grown animal-based protein?
Sugar is white because in liquid form it is filtered through dirt and bone char. The gooped up bone char has the goop burned off in a kiln and is reused. The seperated brown stuff is sprayed back on to make brown sugar.
Hot Brown Sandwich > Brown Sugar
I just tried Jusr Eats egg substitute using mung bean protein the other day. It was good, cooked like eggs, made a tasty omelette... If they can do as good a job with ribeye I'll be sold.