The main reasons I’ve seen from vegans for not eating meat seem to be all about the morality of eating a sentient animal, the practices of the modern meat industry, and the environmental impact of it. And don’t have anything to do with the taste of meat.
Since lab-grown meat doesn’t cause animal suffering, and assuming mass production is environmentally friendly, would you consider going back to eating meat if it were the lab-grown kind?
I would eat it, but I would do so on rare occasions in the same way I might have a drink with friends once a month. I became vegetarian for health reasons in addition to the reasons listed by OP and I have grown to really enjoy meat-free eating, so I don’t really miss it but would view it as a treat best enjoyed sparingly.
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I saw lab grown milk at the grocery store the other day! It’s still pretty pricey and there’s only whole milk but I’m excited that accessible lab grown milk is on the horizon
Did you try it? I’ve tried a number of milkless milk substitutes and none of them hit the spot for me.
I did actually! I wouldn’t call it a milk replacement. It’s definitely got a really peculiar taste that I can only describe as lactose free milk if it tasted like it had aspartame in it. I don’t really drink much milk to begin with, so the only thing I was doing with it was just sipping straight but I feel like it would taste nice in coffee or tea. Wouldn’t put it in cereal or cook with it tbh.
really peculiar taste that I can only describe as lactose free milk if it tasted like it had aspartame
Okay yeah, that sounds similar to some of the stuff I’ve tried. It’s a beverage, possibly even a good one, but it’s not milk. I’m still waiting for when we can accurately and cheaply reproduce the sugars, proteins, and fats in cow milk, but without growing the rest of the cow.
I dated a vegetarian, and I love to cook. It was wild how little it took to break through the “meatless” thing. We didn’t last but I kept the skillset, and eat vegetarian at least a few nights of the week.
I love being able to taste things at every stage without worry about food safety. Like if I don’t think a sauce is quite right, I can always try a bit. Once you kind of break through, meat freaks you out a bit… and I still eat meat!
Edit: I’ll also add: giving up cheese and eggs would be hard as hell though… I get where that would be more exciting than meat.
I’ve been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for ~4 years or so, and I would definitely eat lab grown meat (assuming the conditions you stated).
I almost certainly wouldn’t eat it often but there is sooo many cultural dishes I haven’t ever tried due to them containing meat, which I would love to try sometime.
Admittedly I expect that most things I would not end up liking, but the ability to try would be really nice.
Admittedly I expect that most things I would not end up liking, but the ability to try would be really nice.
Man, what a great attitude. I wish everyone was this open about food.
I don’t think so, it doesn’t sound very appealing. I’m very used to going without meat, and tofu satisfies me quite well, or seitan. Being vegan to me is getting away from the idea that you need a lump of something fleshy on your plate to be satisfied.
Only for fish/eggs/dairy. I’ve never really liked pork or beef.
Chicken, turkey, rabbit?
It would depend how this lab grown meat affects the environment or who produces it, how, what price it is… I’m not opposed to it, just need to see the details.
And whether screams in inarticulate horror at being conscious without senses other than pressure and pain.
But hopefully that’s not how it goes
Lab-grown meat might not have nerve-endings or nerve-endings that connect to nowhere. You will need a brain or spine for the nerves to connect back to for the nervous signals to get recognized and processed before the screaming and “conscious” state of the brain can potentially exist.
So in essense, the lab-grown meat will just be like tissue cultures kept artificially alive but not a living organism.
Perhaps then it screams at the horror of having no nervous system to organize its consciousness into a time-bound shape.
Maybe the more a creature’s consciousness morphs into the shape you and I inhabit, the more protected its consciousness is from the unshaped horror of formlessness.
Maybe the only reason we have anything other than pure yelp as our existence is because evolution built these structures to give us some relief from a background agony.
Perhaps when we try to engineer flesh that doesn’t suffer, we instead make flesh that lacks the dopaminergic insulation from suffering that higher-order structure enables.
Probably not though
pure hell not pure yelp lol
No, I dont like the taste or texture
Where are you getting lab grown meats?
I assume they meant meat in general. Supposed lab-grown meat aims to be a similar experience, the given answer is self-explanatory.
Btw, you can get lab-grown meat in a reastaurant in Singapore iirc.
Yes you are correct. I was talking about meat in general.
So, you’ve already tasted lab-grown meat?
I think they mean they don’t like the taste/texture of meat already so why would they go over to lab grown.
Given that the point of lab grown meat is to stand in for butchered meat, I think it’s fair to assume they’ll target the same taste/texture. Honestly, what’s even the point of the discussion without that premise baked in?
If it’s vegan (is fetal bovine serum still an input?) then yes.
Any vegan who says no is saying so for some other reason besides veganism (ick factor, no desire, environmental considerations).
If your knee-jerk reaction to this is to downvote because “what kind of vegan eats meat?” - consider why you went vegan. Was it for the animals? Well, if lab meat allows us to produce meat without animal suffering then it’s vegan…
For me the main benefit of it would be the ability to try local/cultural dishes while travelling, if lab grown meat was an option.
I’d definitely eat it, especially over ecosystem-destroying meats and dirty meats. Especially if they can work on the price. I’d like to see more farmlands and public lands reforested and taken back to nature.
I don’t think that lab-grown meat will ever replace animal agriculture on a large scale, at least in my lifetime. That being the case, I’d rather leave any ethically produced meat for people who would’ve been eating unethically produced meat instead.
If the situation is basically full on Star Trek replicator, then I wouldn’t have ethical qualms but I might still find it gross and it might not digest well since I’m not used to it. Either way, it’s very distant from the actual situation we’re in now.
Seems like a bold assertion, saying your food tastes better than something that doesn’t exist yet, and so cannot be compared.
I mean, you are probably right, but you can’t know how dinosaur meat or whatever genetically engineered nonexistent animal meat tastes like.
I get that, what I mean is that current attempts fail to even taste like animal meat, so it’s hard to tell what that could actually taste like in the future. Now they pursue the taste of animal meat, but I imagine if they succeed they will go in other directions. Ultimately it’s a tech to grow arbitrary cell structures from arbitrary cells, so nobody says it has to replicate any animal tissue. That’s just unfortunately what people are familiar with.
For sure
As a vegan, I would not eat lab grown meat.
It’s mainly a texture/concept thing, my food needs to be safe from disembodied muscle, fat, skin, cartilage, bone, minced meat containing the combined flesh of thousands of raped and tortured carcasses, the faecal matter and bacterial colonies all meat is covered with, and the horrifying possibility of meat containing hidden cysts full of pus, bits of hair, teeth, genitals, eyeballs, parasites, tumours, zoonotic diseases, prions, etc.
Lab grown flesh would hopefully be exponentially cleaner, and far less problematic than the current rape torture factories and abattoir system, but I will never be able to thematically seperate labgrown meat from what meat currently is, not enough to be able to put it in my mouth and chew it anyway.
Also, all sentient life (as we know it) is made of flesh. Lab growing billions of disembodied chunks from a handful of sentient animals? There is still deep horror to this. Granted it’s on a completely different scale to the current system of livestock atrocities, but it’s still horrifying none the less.
Oh, better to eat only broccoli. In the third world, with poop of human cow pig. With a lot of antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals.
Did I really trigger you so badly that your feeble hormone addled carivore brain tried to get you to think about eating broccoli?
Wow. New vegan power unlocked.
Every time I see someone shitting on vegans and saying they’re all assholes I always stick up for them and say I see way more aggressively assholish people arguing for eating meat and in fact I haven’t seen any asshole vegans.
Thanks for breaking my streak and making it so I can’t say that anymore without it being a lie…
What makes me an asshole here?
Just fyi, when I’m trying to stem the flow of vegan hate I see online, I find way, way, way more success in not being an obnoxious asshole. It’s a stupid trend, bashing and shitting all over vegans and vegetarians saying the habit is a good thing. Don’t make it harder for everyone else to get on board with this kind of shit.
Did you mean to reply to me?
…yes. Did you read what I said? Because it should be clear I mean you.
So you think vegans should passively put up with bullshit from trolls and never poke fun back? Why?
Are you-
Um. I don’t know what’s even happening here. How do you not get what I’m saying.
Just fyi, when I’m trying to stem the flow of vegan hate I see online, I find way, way, way more success in not being an obnoxious asshole.
Or put another way: “it’s best when trying to make sure not everyone hates a good cause, to not be a total dick.” (Read: you’re being a total dick and not helping your cause.)
It’s a stupid trend, bashing and shitting all over vegans and vegetarians saying the habit is a good thing.
“I understand it’s a stupid trend that people on the internet hate vegans and anyone speaking positively about veganism/vegetarianism.”
Don’t make it harder for everyone else to get on board with this kind of shit.
“You’re making sticking up for veganism/vegans much harder by, as mentioned before, being a dick.”
Get it now?
I would not mind eating lab grown and I think it is great if people would eat that instead but ive been vegan for so long that i have no interest in meat. I hardly eat mock meats, its only in social situations to not stand out to much.
Same. I stopped eating meat in the mid 90s, was pescatarian until 2019, and have been vegan since. I don’t miss meat at all. I’ll eat an impossible or a beyond burger occasionally because it’s sometimes my only option, but I could just as easily skip them.
I wouldn’t judge anyone else for eating lab meat, though. I don’t have any moral issue with it, it just isn’t something I’m personally interested in.
Meat is delicious, you should try it if theres no reason not to
Meat traditionally was the only food option for most people. Meat, eggs and grain are staple foods across the world no matter where you look.
Ah, so witty! Here is more.
Wasn’t trying to be witty.
Fake meat has more of an appeal to me than lab grown meat, or it used to. It was kinda interesting when they were unique flavours marketed as alternatives rather than accurate immitations.
Honestly the food science is one of my favourite things about being vegan, I can cook way more interesting meals than I could as a carnist because I’d just use meat as the main flavour which works but it’s kinda lazy. Let me make something with a little miso and shitake broth and you’ll be in love
You got me drooling - any recipe suggestions? I’ve both ingredients in my fridge!
I don’t have any written recipes I’m afraid, I’ve been making them up as I go.
I usually use that combination for a ramen base. I used dried shitake and soak them in a ton of water overnight in the fridge. The dried shitake are honestly kinda inedible even after being rehydrated so I don’t always use them afterwards. I should also soak Kombu but I keep forgetting to buy it.
If you mix that broth with the right amount of miso paste then you’ll get the amazing combination of msg and nucleotides that gives you some amazing flavours. Soy sauce helps too, some garlic, ginger and sesame oil make it perfect.
Good luck working out ratios because I just guess everytime based on the size of my bowls 😅
Thanks so much for sharing! I’ll have to experiment for dinner tomorrow (I’m blessed to have a local eco store that sells everything you mentioned).
Hell yeah!
Good luck and have fun!
it’s* only in
Ill let it slide, because you seam to have made it youre hole identity, butt ill note its knot relevant to this discussion
