Are Meat Alternatives in Your Future?

While meat consumption worldwide continues to increase, there are many Americans who have reduced their consumption of meat and those who have eliminated meat from their diet.  With this, there is a push to meat alternatives -

1. Plant based - those derived from plant based products including "Beyond Burger (made of pea protein, canola oil and coconut fat, colored with beets) and the Impossible Burger (soy protein, coconut oil and its central meat-like ingredient soy leghemoglobin, or “heme,” produced with a genetically modified yeast). The other variety is cultured meats, derived from extracted animal cells and cultivated into products that manufacturers claim are virtually identical to meat from slaughtered animals."
2. Animal cultured meats - derived from extracted animal cells and cultivated into products that manufacturers claim are virtually identical to meat from slaughtered animals. Animal cell culture "refers to the process by which cells are grown in a controlled artificial environment.  Cells can be maintained in vitro outside of their original body by this process which is quite simple compared to organ and tissue culture."

While plant based meats are already being sold, animal cell culture has number of hurdles before it will be available.  First is the regulatory hurdle - FDA and USDA must determine the potential hazards, oversight considerations, and labeling of cell cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry tissue.  Then there is the cost associated with commercialization.   If you have done cell culture work you know that it is not easy.....it is not like growing bacteria or yeasts.  Conditions must be more exact and controlled (proper nutrients, gases, etc.  Contamination is a huge issue.)  Scaling up these processes will take a lot of investment, but it seems that there are a lot of people lining up to invest.

What do you think?  Are you willing to eat meat where growth started on a plate. For me, between the two, I have to go with the plant based items.  Heck, just throw a good marinara sauce on soy meatball filled with onion and garlic rather than some petri-animal tissue thing.

Bloomsberg Businessweek
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-25/we-ll-always-eat-meat-why-more-of-it-won-t-be-meat-quicktake
We’ll Always Eat Meat. But More of It Will Be ‘Meat’
By
Deena Shanker  and  Lydia Mulvany
‎January‎ ‎25‎, ‎2019‎ ‎12‎:‎00‎ ‎AM