Introduction of a New Ingredient

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Since the news has been raving about veganism, it's saying now that meat is very unsustainable, fine. I find this a bit of a sudden conclusion compared to over the years, they never really talked about this, at least in the UK.

I've noticed alongside this news of unsustainability, they keep mentioning the introduction of this new labgrown meat.

I believe they are setting us up for this labgrown meat, by giving us the appearance of a food crisis, so that this new "meat" enters our processed food, so people won't be challenging this new frankenfood and will welcome it due to the "environment". Plus the fact that the information they allow scientists to release is obviously going to be biased.

Discuss.

Note I am vegan myself.

There is also a meat substitute, processed entirely from vegetable products, and containing a substance called "heme" or "phytoheme" also derived from plants. I'm told that when cooked, this vegetable-based stuff looks, smells, and tastes just like real meat -- so much so that vegans and vegetarians feel nauseated, especially after eating it.

Possible - yet the outlook of meat without cruelty to animals is ethically tempting, and the environmental impact of meat production has never been a secret.
The specific effect on the climate has come to the forefront in recent years, because climate change is beginning to make headlines.
If it had no effect on the climate, the effects on the groundwater would be more prominent.
But there has been no point in my memory when I didn't know that meat production was the primary driver of rain forest deforestation to expand production of livestock feed.
So... yeah. maybe frankenfood propaganda. let's assume it's somehow even more unhealthy to eat than red meat- it still fulfills the ecological and ethical promises...

Frankly, I thought we'd see we'd see insect-farming brought up as a more sustainable alternative before they bandied out the mildly creepy lab-grown stuff. Possibly as a health-fad or something.

Roasted crickets, anyone?

I had never heard of that before, it sounds interesting and quite clever really. The fact that it isn't real food though puts me off. Do you know why the vegans and vegetarians feel nauseated? Are they like that with all meat or just the "kind" you described?

I guess they would use whatever was cheaper, I can well imagine insects to be cheaper. But they like using lab stuff in our food anyway, like chemicals for flavourings etc. I think over time the synthetic meat would become cheaper to manufacture, and the fact that it is like meat rather than insects, I think that would make it a better candidate. Still, I'm unsure why Fnord's one isn't more popular and known about.

I dunno, I just felt like the news here was driving home the facts about the environmental impacts of meat, much more than it usually did, and it kept mentioning that labgrown meat alongside it almost as if it was an offshoot, but beside it nonetheless. It seems to have settled down for now, but I will keep my eyes open.

There seems to be different food fads that become so popular in the mainstream news, the current one being coconut oil. I swear it can't be good for you. The oil just makes me feel sick and it absolutely stinks, like it's used for industrial purposes or something.

I remember when soy was made out to be excellent for health before, and now they say it isn't. I think they are doing the same thing by heavily promoting coconut oil.

There is indeed an agenda to kill off agriculture in the west. This is so that big businesses (which dictate government policy) can buy off the land at reduced prices.

oh, yeah, there's always the superfood thing going on, trying to promote a new (or not so new) product.... that's different from the environmental thing, though - that's purely marketing. Coconut oil is strongly advised against by the cardiologists of the WHO.
But the environmental impact of meat is going with the flow of climate change related news, right now. And lab grown meat isn't promoted as healthy, either, but as an ethical, environmentally friendly meat for 7.something billion people.
It's much more a specific solution to an urgent, specific problem, where cocnut oil is not a solution to anything specific.

the plant-based meat thing is made from soy roots but still needs animal serum, if I remember correctly, and is promoted as a guilt-free-ish meat substitute for people who enjoy meat, but want to reduce their carbon footprint.

whether this is an agenda to kill off agriculture... I donT think so, because agriculture actually is big business for the seed and pesticide producers. Monsanto/Bayer definitely is against killing of agriculture, except organic and small scale farming.
But getting rid of mass production of animals for food would open up the areas for production for human food, first, so I don't actually think that's a totally valid argument...

What would they use the land for if not agriculture? I'm not doubting you, I'm genuinely curious.

Land is a commodity in its own right, as well as being useful for housing, industry and the like.

It's funny how nobody points out the "unsustainability" of covering treasured countryside in concrete; apparently unsustainability is only a negative thing when billionaires can't make money out of it.

I found this BBC documentary to be pretty interesting:

What IS a grasshopper, but a shrimp scampi that lives on land?

What's a lobster, but an oversized bug that lives in the sea?

Besides having only sex legs instead of ten, insects are pretty much the same thing as crustaceans.

Exactly. That's actually so true that if you're allergic to shellfish you should avoid eating insects. But one's a delicacy and the other is kind of gross because reasons.

Furthermore, bugs are extremely high in protein and essential amino acids, low in fat and, as a bonus, have few or no (can't recall) transferable pathogens.

If we stop eating meat there’s going nana massive genocide of animals. People don’t seem to realize that. Do they expect the ranchers and farmers to go into debt feeding the millions of animals ? No they won’t they’ll sell to China or just kill them all. Doubt peta is wants mass killing. It’ll also lead to more poaching as some will never accept no meat.
So it’ll drive the animal population into extinction. Yay