[HN Gopher] Wildtype: Sushi-grade salmon grown from Pacific Salm...
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Wildtype: Sushi-grade salmon grown from Pacific Salmon cells
Author : zuhayeer
Score : 234 points
Date : 2021-04-22 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wildtypefoods.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wildtypefoods.com)
| raldi wrote:
| What I'm looking forward to is lab-grown meat that _improves_
| upon nature. Imagine pigs didn 't exist but someone figured out
| how to make bacon in the lab. What do we not have on this Earth
| that makes bacon seem like chicken breast? What might we invent
| that's three levels past otoro?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I agree in looking forward to it, but it is also possible that
| human taste and desire has evolved in conjunction with what
| food sources are available(either genetically or socially), so
| it really might be that bacon(or whatever) is actually the most
| delicious thing in the universe for humans.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Personally I'm more interested in meat from species which don't
| reproduce in captivity, like some (all?) octopuses.
| astrange wrote:
| The problem with eating octopuses is they're smart enough to
| get revenge. As soon as they figure out how to not die of old
| age in a year, anyway.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for: people are programmed to like a
| fat and salt. Fatter salter meats probably aren't as good for
| you as nice lean salmon...
|
| That's without the industrial side of this: meats with built in
| preservatives and colouring that are actually no good for you
| but look good and supermarkets will prioritise.
|
| I think both GM and lab grown meat suffer from this issue:
| smart doesn't mean good for you, it means good for the sales
| person sadly.
| Symmetry wrote:
| If the increased tastiness means we eat more of it then it'll
| be good that the meat is fattier. In terms of macronutrients
| your body needs a certain amount of fat and a certain amount
| of protein but not necessarily any carbohydrates. But too
| much protein can lead to medical problems like gout so
| ancient hunters who lived off large animal kills tended to
| prefer the fattier cuts of their kills which were both
| tastier to them but also healthier given the rest of their
| diet.
|
| As to salt you do have a point.
| astrange wrote:
| The evidence that salt is bad for you is actually quite
| weak and many people probably don't get enough.
|
| What is lean about salmon though...? If it was lean it
| would taste like tilapia.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Give it a decade and we'll be taking this to a level of
| customization where we'll be able to select our own level of
| marbling, connective tissue and water content.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Do they also grow it with shrimp cells so it turns pink or just
| use food coloring like they do with farmed salmon? [0]
|
| [0]https://wildalaskancompany.com/blog/heres-why-salmon-are-
| pin...
| astrange wrote:
| It's not accurate to call astaxanthin just food coloring. It's
| the actual source of pink color in
| flamingos/algae/shrimp/lobsters and it's certainly not
| unhealthy.
|
| https://examine.com/supplements/astaxanthin/
| hutzlibu wrote:
| From the landing page, there is this great claim: "the chance to
| eat the foods we love without sacrificing our food ideals"
|
| But not information on how it is produced. So I won't know,
| whether it really matches my food ideals.
|
| I mean, how _does_ it get produced? From real fish stem cells?
|
| So still, there needs be dead fish in the process at some point?
| So how many fish do you need to kill, to produce one portion of
| sushi? Or can you grow forever, with one batch of stem cells?
| (probably not I guess)
|
| Without knowing this and about what else is involved in the
| production chain, I really cannot believe such statements.
| cheese_please wrote:
| I don't know about WildType specifically, but it's not
| necessarily true that a salmon would need to die at any point
| in the process. Cells from a simple muscle biopsy could be
| cultured for this purpose, and a single biopsy may have the
| potential to produce a great deal of cells depending on the
| culture conditions. Or they may have developed an immortalized
| salmon cell line from an initial biopsy that they can
| proliferate indefinitely (though this leads to questions about
| genetic drift after a certain number of population doublings;
| I'm sure they would have a bunch of frozen vials to restart
| from early passage numbers every few batches though).
| UglyToad wrote:
| Plus as a lapsed-vegetarian I'm excited for lab grown meats
| even if there's an animal killed at some point in the
| process. It's impossible to choose a food without at least
| some harm. How many fish are killed by fertilizer runoff or
| damming for irrigation or whatever else is needed for all
| forms of agriculture?
|
| I'm going to assume a non-zero amount. So my view is the aim
| with all ethics-based dietary choices with the motivation of
| avoiding harm to animals is basically to optimize for least
| animals killed per calorie per 'sentience' unit or whatever.
|
| All food choices are inherently non-zero in animal suffering
| and I don't think it's reasonable to hold lab grown meat to
| any higher standard.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Great, now do Chutoro !
| dang wrote:
| > _Join our waitlist_
|
| How real is this?
| akeck wrote:
| According to Google, their site doesn't mention "FDA" or "USDA-
| FSIS", both of which regulate parts of the lab grown meat process
| as of 2019. I assume they'll need some sort of approval to
| actually sell the stuff in the US.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Welcome to the future.
| roadnottaken wrote:
| Bullshit
| posterboy wrote:
| "sushi-grade" sounds like "fantastic" or any other not
| leverageable marketing promise.
|
| The cells I suppose must be stem cells, induced with some
| solution to grow into a homogenous mass of soft tissue. I'm very
| confused about this.
|
| Why just gimme the nutrient solution.
| foxyv wrote:
| It typically depends on the fish. Usually sashimi/sushi grade
| fish consists of deep muscle tissue that is unlikely to contain
| parasites. EG: Fish that is suitable for eating raw. In the US
| all fish intended for raw consumption is frozen below -32F to
| kill any parasites. However this is just a guideline and health
| codes are enforced on a per-state basis. Sashimi/sushi grade is
| usually just a marketing term beyond that. You could slap a
| sticker saying as much on any fish you like.
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/05/how-to-prepare-raw-fish-...
| posterboy wrote:
| That's a bit different than "fantastic", in that it is a much
| worse type of misleading, unless you concern was their lab is
| prone to parasites?
| foxyv wrote:
| Yeah, sushi grade doesn't mean it's good. I doubt they have
| problems with parasites either. I would bet their sushi has
| to be completely sterile coming out of the lab or the
| culture will die pretty quick. In fact I wouldn't be
| surprised it it's swimming in antibiotics to prevent
| bacterial contamination.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07757-w#:~:text=
| S....
| lacker wrote:
| At least here in California, when someone selling fish says
| that it is "sushi-grade" they just mean it's okay to eat raw.
| Usually I think that means it was flash-frozen to kill
| parasites, maybe with this sort of fish production mechanism it
| just doesn't have any parasites in the first place.
| vangelis wrote:
| Sushi-grade isn't a thing! It's marketing. I also doubt this
| follows the FDA rules for flash freezing that sushi grade
| implies given the lack of risk for parasites.
| jfengel wrote:
| It would seem to be a reasonable term for "safe to eat raw".
| If the term is regulated, the term would have to be changed,
| but it does convey the right thing to the consumer.
| elhudy wrote:
| Sushi-grade IS a thing with real fish. It means the meat has
| been inspected for parasites or frozen to kill them.
| rileytg wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no enforcement of that. People often
| consider "sushi grade" what you've described but there
| isn't any official rating like there is for wines or beef.
|
| Source: ex-commercial fishmonger
| elhudy wrote:
| FDA guidelines dictate that fish sold for raw consumption
| must be frozen under one of the following conditions to
| kill parasites: -4degF (-20degC) or
| below for 7 days (total time) -31degF (-35degC)
| or below until solid, and storing at -31degF (-35degC) or
| below for 15 hours -31degF (-35degC) or below
| until solid and storing at -4degF (-20degC) or below for
| 24 hours
|
| Whether or not this is enforced is another thing, but the
| absurdly low rates of sickness from sushi in the US are
| testament to the fact that companies are probably trying
| to protect consumers from the hazards of eating their raw
| fish.
|
| With ground beef recalls left and right, we fortunately
| live in an age of avoiding large-scale liability.
| vangelis wrote:
| It's a marketing term. The FDA doesn't label things sushi
| grade. It does have rules for fish that are going to be
| eaten raw. Your fish was either frozen to spec to not.
| *Sorry, it's just one of those things I'm nitpicky about.
| elhudy wrote:
| I am not following. If it is labeled as "sushi-grade"
| then it is being sold to be eaten raw, and the rules
| apply, yeah?
| vangelis wrote:
| Assuming a reputable fish monger!
| Isamu wrote:
| Why would lab grown tissue have parasites?
| dnautics wrote:
| That's the point.
| woeirua wrote:
| This is a great business model. If they can culture a reasonable
| enough imitation of salmon then they can certainly do so for
| other fish that are even more expensive to farm and grow. They
| only have to come in just under the price of farm grown fish for
| this to take off like wildfire (which should be easy). This
| company could be immensely profitable very quickly.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| What are their methods? Does this make $100/lb salmon?
| jvalencia wrote:
| "The sample of salmon cells served up in Portland cost $200 per
| sushi roll (six pieces)."
| https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-faux-fish-coming-...
| monocasa wrote:
| That's pretty damn good for an 0.1 release with no economies
| of scale.
| FredPret wrote:
| We're having Salmon v0.1 for lunch. Welcome to the future!
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| For reference, fresh, wild, King Salmon, which is only
| available at certain times of the the year (depends on your
| state/country), can be $30 a pound or more. At $100 or $200 a
| pound, they don't have that far to go to be in the ballpark.
| hinkley wrote:
| I could see people paying that sort of money for 4 ounces of
| nigiri in some endangered species.
|
| Cruelty free blue fin tuna, anyone?
| miketery wrote:
| Very cool. Any estimate on current or target costs?
|
| If this is possible efficiently would help reduce destructive
| commercial fishing practices (just watched seaspiracy...).
| f430 wrote:
| looks like another Beyond Meat style pump & dump
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Wait, Beyond meat is one of the main meat substitutes making
| the rounds alongside Impossible burgers, right? If I'm not
| mixing up my names, what makes it a pump and dump?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| There is debate about whether their technology is truly novel
| or whether it is just hype as soy protein based food
| manufacturing is not exactly new. Their most important
| technological achievement appears to be the artificial heme
| that they were able to source from a plant origin.
| danhak wrote:
| There's debate about whether Apple's technologies are truly
| novel, that doesn't mean they aren't a good business.
| genericone wrote:
| If someone thinks X won't amount to anything, and is bound to
| fail, then it would not be a fore-gone conclusion to believe
| that the whole X endeavor is a pump-and-dump scheme to take
| money from people who don't "know" that its bound to fail.
| It's more of an indication of someone's opinion on a subject.
| I for one am rooting for Beyond and Impossible. The more food
| choices are available the better.
| danhak wrote:
| It seems like the discourse has shifted to describe even
| legitimate businesses that are overvalued in the opinion of
| an author as "pump and dump" or "ponzi scheme"
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It's maybe not entirely accurate, but it seems at least in
| the ballpark of a reasonable description for a public
| company that's never made money and has no legible path to
| making money.
|
| That said, it looks Beyond Meat made money in two quarters
| last year. So not a good fit on those criteria.
| [deleted]
| ska wrote:
| > another Beyond Meat style pump & dump
|
| Whatever Beyond Meat is, "pump & dump" is off base. They may
| fail in their ambition but the attempt is real.
| [deleted]
| jvalencia wrote:
| Yes, but how does it taste?
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| It's easier to overlook taste than price.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Depends who your target audience is. I imagine the audience
| for extremely expensive and hard to obtain artifically grown
| sushi with decent taste is probably bigger than the market
| for, say, extremely expensive and hard to obtain artificially
| grown hotdog meat with decent taste.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Is it worse to kill something for food, or deny it from ever
| living? I think personally I think I would prefer to have lived
| and be killed than not lived at all. I also kind of believe that
| things have an essence, a soul of sorts. So eating any part of an
| animal is still repulsive on some level.
| lee wrote:
| What is "it" from ever living. An stack of lumber does not make
| a table. The table doesn't exist until the wood is configured
| as such.
|
| If this salmon meat is grown by replicating cells, then there
| was no "life" that was denied. Your statement would imply that
| it "existed" somehow before it came into some physical form.
| tsherr wrote:
| Why don't plants fall into your "things that have an essence"
| category? They are alive. They communicate and work together.
| jtolmar wrote:
| Widespread adoption of this technology would likely lead to
| more total salmon lives, as wild populations recover.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Is wildcaught salmon popular and available? I literally
| cannot find any - anywhere. Then again I'm in Denver, which
| is not well known for its seafood.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| This seems non-obvious. How many salmon are farmed vs wild
| right now? Salmon is already protected and very expensive, so
| what's the potential for increase in wild population? 2x?
| 10x? And there would still be demand for "the real thing".
| Daishiman wrote:
| Farmed salmon incurs a heavy cost to the environment that
| surrounds said farms.
|
| Demand for real salmon will still be around but it will be
| a rare delicacy, which is totally OK.
| asdff wrote:
| Wild populations might not budge much as long as their
| historic spawning grounds up estuaries remain scarred by
| human development.
| roym6 wrote:
| You would not be aware of your lack of life in the latter
| scenario.
| foxyv wrote:
| Typically these cultures come from biopsies of living animals.
| They aren't grown from fetal stem cells or eggs.
| atourgates wrote:
| But you're setting up a false choice.
|
| Our option here isn't "salmon exist and we kill them to eat
| them" or "no salmon exist."
|
| Our option is "salmon exist and we kill them to eat them" or
| "salmon exist and live their lives in the wild unmolested, and
| we also get to eat salmon."
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I have no problem with killing wild animals for food. The
| problem is that it doesn't scale well for 7B humans. And who am
| I to tell the next human that they don't deserve a spot in the
| living world? To me, lab grown meat is a relatively attractive
| compromise.
|
| Also, it's unclear what their process is, but it's possible
| that these are cells cultured from a handful of fish, not lab
| growth from new zygotes. I'm fine with it either way, though.
| LetThereBeLight wrote:
| This is a cool company that started out of QB3. One of the co-
| founders was a postdoc at UCSF working in regenerative medicine
| before starting wildtype. I think these wetlab incubator spaces
| near universities is really key to getting more biotech startups.
| bogomipz wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that there is no such thing as "sushi-
| grade" fish in the US. The fish used in commercial sushi is
| always flash-frozen on the ship. Neither the USDA or FDA have
| designations for fish similar to the grades they have for say
| beef. There is a regulation around freezing temperatures in order
| for it be sold for raw consumption but this has nothing to do
| with the quality of the fish. The regulation is used to guarantee
| parasite destruction. I can highly recommend the book "The Sushi
| Economy" by Sasha Issenberg for a very interesting look at how
| the sushi trade works.
| viraptor wrote:
| The description makes sense though - since you have a
| controlled growth environment, you don't get parasites in this
| meat. Which is the goal of "sushi-grade".
| aaaaaadsfscxva wrote:
| Incredible!
| aaaaaadsfscxva wrote:
| indeed
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| There's a number of pictures of the final sushi product.. but I
| couldn't find pictures of the actual salmon that was created in
| the laboratory or pictures/explanations of the lab process.
| vessenes wrote:
| Boy I really wish I knew more about the science here.
|
| I can't tell if it's yucky, so they don't discuss it, or if it's
| vapor, so they don't discuss it.
|
| That said, their photo looks like something I would at least
| taste! Matrix-grown meat seems to me like something that will
| have its place in the world, especially if the net environmental
| impact is favorable.
|
| So, Wild Type: more details, yo.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The photo on their website looks amazing, with perfect fatty
| stripes. Photos from one of their early tastings in 2019 didn't
| look so good. Mostly chopped up, and larger pieces didn't seem
| to have the fatty layers.
|
| https://i0.wp.com/thespoon.tech/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/w...
|
| It makes me question if the salmon in the photos on their
| website is really lab grown. If so, it is quite an achievement.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. It's really unclear if the
| photos are their own product or just supposed to represent
| good salmon in general.
| saxonww wrote:
| I had a different reaction on seeing it.
|
| Yes, it has the striped pattern, but the texture looks
| completely wrong. Compare their image now with e.g.
| https://i.redd.it/12cdw2wb55p01.jpg. It's superficially
| similar; the 'early tasting' picture you link to looks
| _better_ from a texture perspective, to me.
|
| That doesn't mean it's not tasty, but I would not choose this
| over the real thing (traditional preparation? idk).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Compare crab stick to the real thing. People still eat poor
| imitations if it tastes good.
| remexre wrote:
| Heck, I _prefer_ surimi to crab!
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| It's a year old, and probably not exactly what you're asking
| for, but a NYT article on the product: https://archive.is/2vdTu
|
| They seem to be heavily implying stem cells:
|
| _"The cells know what to do," Mr. Elfenbein said. "They become
| muscle fibers. They become fat tissue. They create the
| connective tissue that we know as meat."_
| indigochill wrote:
| > ...especially if the net environmental impact is favorable.
|
| Probably a stupid question, but is it possible for artificially
| grown meat to have a net positive environment impact? This
| seems like it parallels the "vertical farming" idea, which has
| its own pitfalls relative to traditional farming, like being
| powered by polluting power sources or the concentration of
| contaminated water.
| jtolmar wrote:
| Wonderful! I hope they publish the yucky details, it could be
| really interesting.
|
| Also, I know this will be an industrial process for a long time,
| but I'm having fun imagining a day where a hobbyist can grow meat
| cultures at home. Like an advanced version of maintaining a
| sourdough starter.
| cheese_please wrote:
| I've got good news for you! The Shojinmeat Project's
| (https://shojinmeat.com/wordpress/en/) mission is the
| "democratization of cellular agriculture." They develop methods
| for DIY cultured meat (recently someone posted about developing
| a cell culture medium out of Red Bull). They do have a slack
| channel, but it's not super active recently. They're pretty
| active on Twitter though, and their website is a great
| resource. I would highly encourage you to also check out some
| of Yuki Hanyu's (founder) talks on YouTube; he's great.
| californical wrote:
| The possibilities with this are so exciting, as someone who eats
| a vegetarian diet due to environmental and moral concerns with
| the meat industry.
|
| It appears on their website that this is real & ready to sell. I
| thought large-scale lab-grown meat was still 10-20 years in the
| future... Does anyone know the pricing? I didn't see anything on
| their website, but I feel like it must be expensive.
|
| Also, did they pick salmon because it's easier than other meat
| types for some reason?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This falls into a class of bio-tech that I'm extremely excited
| about.
|
| Sure, we can have rockets to Mars, but can we engineer fungii
| to create soil there? Can we grow food from cultures?
|
| Will we care more about a lunar lander or the long-term results
| of mRNA vaccines? Can we cure Ebola, HIV, HPV, HSV and other
| social viruses? Not to mention the next pandemic, Malaria, etc?
|
| I'm an aerospace engineer by day, but biotech (med/food/agri)
| is where the real social impact will come from over the next
| 100 years.
| ganafagol wrote:
| Have you found any information on how it's actually produced?
| tymekpavel wrote:
| See the comments below -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26905472
|
| ~$200 for a 6-piece sushi roll.
| marricks wrote:
| Ok, well that's way less than thousands of dollars so it's a
| start!
|
| Not to mention, they probably haven't realized the economies
| of scale yet at all.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Exactly. Also if you decided to go on a boat and catch one
| yourself that easily could end up in thousands...
| robotpony wrote:
| That's less bad than I thought the early pricing would be
| (and isn't far from the highest end sushi I've seen around
| the west coast here).
| ac29 wrote:
| Its an order of magnitude higher than traditional salmon
| nigiri would cost though ($2-3/piece in a restaurant).
| jimbokun wrote:
| Is there hope for some kind of law for the price steadily
| decreasing over time as efficiencies improve, like Moore's
| law for computer chips or the exponential increase of solar
| efficiency?
| Plough_Jogger wrote:
| Yes, see Wright's Law: https://ark-invest.com/wrights-law/
| digikata wrote:
| I've seen that in the scope of the technology life-cycle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_life_cycle
|
| Once it's taken off sometimes there is reference to the the
| manufacturing s-curve. That would be on the Wikipedia
| chart, going from when the R&D has traction to where
| increasing scaling increases volume and reduces costs of
| the product.
| Symmetry wrote:
| The industry term for how prices drop as you make more of
| something is the "learning curve".
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| I'd go with "economy of scale".
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| They're different things. I could build my own processor
| fab for probably around EUR100 000, and those things used
| to cost millions - but I'm not exploiting economies of
| scale. Rather, I can look up how to best do it instead of
| having to work it out myself, plus I have better other
| technology available (e.g. a laser cutter can be modified
| to make parts of it).
|
| I'd still have the problem of sourcing materials and
| disposing of all that toxic waste, though, which probably
| isn't a problem with the salmon.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| If you can build your own processor fab today for EUR100
| 000, you are definitely exploiting economies of scale. It
| is possible because of the massive existing industry
| that's created the market for, and driven down the price
| of parts and tools and supplies that you need to put it
| together and run it. E.g., that inexpensive off the shelf
| laser cutter you need to buy.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Sure, like with anything that goes into mass production.
|
| But before that happens, the process needs to be understood
| and not rely on rare ingredients, for which production also
| needs to scale up. Are there big suppliers of salmon
| stemcells?
| cheese_please wrote:
| I'm not an expert on WildType's specific process, but I've read
| that while mammalian cells need to be grown at ~37 C 5% CO2,
| fish cells can be grown at lower temps due to differences in
| biology. I just read a paper where salmon cells were incubated
| at 13 C and 3% CO2. Could be that they're expecting energy cost
| savings with no need to pre-warm media, heat bioreactor, etc.,
| but it's also possible that cooling will be necessary
| (depending on the location of the plant) or that mammalian
| metabolism will produce enough heat that bioreactor heating may
| not be an issue. I think the jury is still out on that. So
| maybe they just looked at where they could find their niche in
| a market with lots of pork, beef, and poultry companies
| already? Or maybe the founders really cared about marine
| ecosystems?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| My girlfriend and I have both spent years working in Sushi
| restaurants, and judging by those pictures alone, this "salmon"
| falls short of our fat requirement. I.e., it's kind of lean
| looking. We'd try it even at the high price point, but only if
| they come up with a fatty "salmon belly" edition.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| I would have expected that lack of colouring as well for lab-
| grown salmon meat.
|
| Wild salmon meat gets its pink shade from eating krill/shrimp
| according to https://qz.com/358811/heres-why-your-farmed-
| salmon-has-color...
|
| Farmed salmon doesn't get enough krill/shrimp so the farmers
| have to add colouring to the farmed-salmon diet to get
| something close to the colour of wild salmon. see previous
| qz.com link.
|
| At least you won't have to worry about microplastics in the
| lab-grown salmon meat. see https://www.ecowatch.com/are-
| microplastics-in-your-salmon-fi...
| hinkley wrote:
| How is it that anyone thinks you're going to grow nutritious
| tissue without an immune system and expect anything but bad long-
| term outcomes?
| toddh wrote:
| No mention of the nutritional value. Which is my concern with
| Beyond Meat as well. It's great that it's not meat from factory
| farming POV, but it's not nutritious food either.
| tptacek wrote:
| What's your concern about the nutritional content of Beyond
| Meat? Its macros are comparable to that of the product it
| replaces.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Isn't it high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and sugar?
| tptacek wrote:
| It's not high in sugar. The macros are comparable to those
| of meat.
| lm28469 wrote:
| They're still highly processed products.
|
| We got used to vegetarian = healthy because for a while it
| meant grain, veggies and fruits. But today half of the
| vegetarian/vegan processed food is as bad as regular
| processed food.
|
| I'll take an halloumi/spinach patty burger over a beyond meat
| burger every day
| danhak wrote:
| Why are processed foods automatically bad so long as the
| macronutrient / sodium profile is otherwise in line?
| avereveard wrote:
| Because absorption and bioavailability are complex thing
| and even few missing micro can alter the nutritional
| value whole; processed and synthetic for trend to miss
| out on that fairly often
| lm28469 wrote:
| Not automatically, but macros aren't everything, a lot of
| additives they add to make up for nature's magic tricks
| are concerning (I don't know about beyond meat
| specifically, but for most processed food it is the case)
|
| If all that mattered in nutrition were prots, fats, carbs
| and sodium it would be muuuuuuch easier but sadly it's
| infinitely more complex than that.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| To replicate the mouthfeel of beef, you have to replicate all
| the negative qualities of the meat too. They are full of
| saturated fat.
| [deleted]
| yboris wrote:
| It avoids the mercury ;)
| atourgates wrote:
| I mean, it depends on your definition of nutritious, and what
| you're expecting from a burger.
|
| Should you eat one for every meal? Probably not. I don't think
| "a burger for every meal" has ever been on anyone's nutrition
| plan.
|
| Is it reasonably nutritious compared to a meat burger? Yeah.
|
| Compared to ground beef, a Beyond Burger is pretty equivalent
| in terms of fat and calories. The Beyond has a few more carbs
| (but far fewer than most veggie meat alternatives), but also a
| few grams of fiber.
|
| The Beyond burger has quite a bit of sodium, but probably most
| ground beef would by the time you got it ready to cook.
| asdff wrote:
| I think the beyond et al ranks worse after you cook it. When
| I cook with this stuff it has no fat inside to render out, so
| it soaks up cooking oil like a sponge to reach equilibrium.
| It's osmosis. I put in some olive oil in my pan to get some
| browning, and it's been soaked up dry in 30 seconds and I
| have to add more before the patty fuses to my pan. I can't
| help but think I'm eating a lot more grease. Not to mention
| you still need to use your salt and pepper and other
| seasonings, because it is quite bland. Probably intentionally
| to be widely palatable.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| My doctor recommended BeyondMeat as an alternative to my soy-
| heavy diet because it's based on pea protein. What exactly
| makes BeyondMeat something that's not nutritious?
| robcohen wrote:
| I mean, just because one thing is preferable to another
| doesn't mean that both are good. Hitting yourself in the head
| with a smaller rock is preferably to hitting yourself with a
| larger rock.
|
| I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist, but it appears that
| processed food has a host of negative effects according to
| recent studies (for example https://www.nih.gov/news-
| events/news-releases/nih-study-find...). Now you can pick
| apart these studies, but ultimately we "know" very little
| about nutrition for certain, which is why there are so many
| conflicting studies.
|
| What concerns me about fake meat products and why I won't
| consume them is that they are heavily processed. In my
| limited experience, eating whole foods from fresh, organic
| suppliers is the way to go. I'll let someone else be the
| guinea pig for processed foods.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| We don't need to pick apart the study, but let's skim it so
| we know if it applies.
|
| _This system considers foods "ultra-processed" if they
| have ingredients predominantly found in industrial food
| manufacturing, such as hydrogenated oils, high-fructose
| corn syrup, flavoring agents, and emulsifiers._
|
| I believe the study, even though small, reasonably shows
| that ingredients like hydrogenated oils or high-fructose
| corn syrup are bad for you.
|
| That doesn't mean food that has gone through a process is
| bad, it means industrial scale food production often uses
| foul ingredients to reduce costs.
|
| Processing != bad, But, mass market, massive scale,
| processed food production correlates with the use of bad
| ingredients. So just read the ingredient list on Beyond
| Meat or whatever processed food you want to try and see if
| there is stuff in it you don't want in you.
| liuliu wrote:
| Maybe sodium? It tastes unusually salty.
| asdff wrote:
| Careful how much oil you use to cook it, I find it soaks it
| up like a sponge and I tend to use a lot more than for
| cooking, say, ground chuck or other meat.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Beyond meat isn't lab grown animal cells, right? This is actual
| salmon.
| lprubin wrote:
| Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat are imitation meat made with
| plants, aka "Meat Substitutes". This company is what's known
| as "Lab Grown Meat" where the end result is basically meat at
| the molecular level.
|
| So theoretically this will have a very similar nutritional
| profile to farmed or caught salmon. At least thats one of the
| goals of the lab grown meat sector.
|
| It fact, it might even have a better nutritional profile
| because it won't be exposed to ocean contaminants like
| mercury and plastic.
| DeepYogurt wrote:
| Which is fine as far as I'm concerned. We live in a world of
| nutrition surplus not deficit
| jfengel wrote:
| We have a calorie surplus, certainly. The nutrition content
| is more complex.
|
| It's true that for most people, the main malnutrition is a
| surplus of calories. If they're deficient in something, it's
| likely to be dietary fiber, and perhaps vitamin D. Salmon has
| none of the former, but it would be interesting to know how
| this stacks up in the latter.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Why would it have less nutritional value than a slab of muscle
| cells grown inside of a fish vs cells from that fish induced to
| grown in a tank?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I imagine wild grown flesh is going to have tons of micro
| nutrients available (although also pollutants). That type of
| nutrition is hard to emulate in a lab setting.
| shuntress wrote:
| >That type of nutrition is hard to emulate in a lab setting
|
| I would assume it is easier to control that type of
| nutrition in a lab setting.
|
| Unless you are implying that full grown salmon (and other
| meats) contain some nutrients which are crucial to human
| survival, not inherent in the salmons biology, and
| currently undiscovered.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| The nutrients would be typically provided through diet.
| Indeed a lab could just amend the meat like they feed
| cows particular B vitamins. But those inputs have costs.
|
| This is all just theoretical. Once a nutrient profile is
| published we can talk more seriously.
| philote wrote:
| I would guess nutritional value depends on what nutrients are
| fed to the fish (or the cells). The big benefit IMO is it
| shouldn't contain any mercury or other heavy metals that are
| present in some fish.
| knodi wrote:
| Impossible burger has better nutritional profile than real meat
| burger.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Define better. Define real meat.
|
| I would imagine the imitation meat patties are worse in some
| ways than a turkey patty.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I heard the same about vegetable oil and margarine replacing
| butter 15 years ago. That didn't bode very well...
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| I wonder if this scales up to having a larger piece of meat, to
| make steaks and such. Or is it only good when its "raw" and
| sliced up real thin.
| avereveard wrote:
| And the other question is what will the nutrition value be
| after it gets industrialised for mass production
| kleton wrote:
| Why wouldn't you do tuna in a vat instead? Higher value fish, and
| the culture requirements would be nearly identical.
| iamwil wrote:
| As a curiosity and side note, Salmon wasn't always eaten by the
| Japanese as sushi. It was considered a garbage fish that you'd
| grill due to its likelihood of being infected by parasites. It
| was the Norwegians that had a surplus, and was looking for a new
| market to open up that salmon sushi became a thing.
|
| https://medium.com/torodex/salmon-sushi-is-not-a-japanese-in...
|
| The Norwegians probably won't pay attention to this initially,
| but will probably come out against it, given that Salmon is at
| least a chunk of chain for their industries.
| ddlatham wrote:
| As with many interesting topics, there's a great Planet Money
| episode about this too:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/16/440951873/epis...
| weaksauce wrote:
| Andong did a deep dive on it and the norway genesis isn't the
| full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4
| nerdkid93 wrote:
| I found that video fascinating as an example of how
| pernicious myths can be. Makes me wonder how many myths I've
| propagated to others without verifying them myself.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Succinctly: When people defend meat eating as part of their
| cultural heritage, they're defending a marketing campaign from
| the last 80 years.
| wwarner wrote:
| Source? I've been reading the opposite.
| [deleted]
| kakkun wrote:
| I don't think it's accurate to call salmon a "garbage fish"
| (though I've known salmon sushi all my life). It's been the
| classic protein of choice for traditional Japanese breakfasts
| (akin to having eggs for breakfast in the West) and a very
| common rice ball filling.
| chrismaeda wrote:
| Yes, I was thinking to myself that 'sushi-grade salmon' was an
| oxymoron.
| viraptor wrote:
| The way I understand it, it's not the meat that's sushi-
| grade. It's the way it's preserved / delivered. Basically if
| you can eat it raw and not let the parasites from salmon
| grow, then it's sushi-grade. Most commonly that means storing
| salmon in a freezer which kills the parasites. (think -50C)
|
| Here's a decent article
| https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/05/how-to-prepare-raw-
| fish-...
| beaner wrote:
| Only in japan
| the_af wrote:
| Even if salmon wasn't traditionally consumed in sushi by the
| Japanese, wouldn't the later reversal indicate that, even in
| Japan, there is such a thing as sushi-grade salmon?
| pedalpete wrote:
| I'm not sure who to trust here. This video says that the
| Norwegian sushi story is a bit of a myth, or over stated due to
| poor journalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4
|
| But he definitely has evidence of salmon sushi being eaten
| before the Norwegians claim to have invented it.
| asaph wrote:
| Other companies working on cell-cultured fish:
|
| Finless Foods: https://www.finlessfoods.com/
|
| BlueNalu: https://www.bluenalu.com/
| cheese_please wrote:
| Just wanted to add a few more:
|
| _avant_ : https://www.avantmeats.com/
|
| ShiokMeats: https://shiokmeats.com/
|
| _Umami_ : https://www.umamimeats.com/
|
| Bluu Biosciences: https://www.bluu.bio/
|
| _Cell Ag Tech_ : https://cellagtech.com/
|
| Clean Research: https://cleanresearch.org/ (they do a lot of
| stuff, but cultured fish is one of the things listed)
|
| Cultured Decadence: https://www.cultureddecadence.com/
|
| Please note a few of the companies (italicized) are very young,
| so their websites don't have much info.
|
| I recommend this site for keeping up with which companies are
| active in the alternative proteins space:
| https://newprotein.org/. For cultured meat, click "Alternative
| Protein V 3.0" and it's in the top left (or just head to page 2
| for a more zoomed in view).
| andrewla wrote:
| This movement towards synthetic meat seems very antithetical to
| the natural foods heuristic. Isn't what we've learned over the
| last half-century or so that processing food in an attempt to
| make it more nutritious/uniform/etc. generally involves a
| reductive analysis of the value of the food and in doing so
| destroys most of the actual nutrient value?
|
| The "shopping at the edges of the market" thing is a tolerably
| good heuristic for avoid foods that have been modified based on
| outdated or incorrect theories of human nutrition. The push for
| heavily processed synthetic meats seems like a _huge_ step
| backwards.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Isn 't what we've learned over the last half-century or so
| that processing food in an attempt to make it more
| nutritious/uniform/etc. generally involves a reductive analysis
| of the value of the food and in doing so destroys most of the
| actual nutrient value?_
|
| Pretty much.
|
| I had a boss who was very sanctimonious about her lunches. She
| would hover over other people and say, "I never eat processed
| foods."
|
| Then she'd put a fake chicken patty in the microwave and
| slather it with vegan mayonnaise.
|
| I've found that the louder someone is about their eating
| habits, the less likely it is that they use logic to choose
| their food.
| trav4225 wrote:
| I've found that the louder someone is in general, the less
| likely it is that they use logic in general. :-)
| msla wrote:
| > This movement towards synthetic meat seems very antithetical
| to the natural foods heuristic.
|
| I can't take that heuristic seriously while eating any kind of
| fruit or vegetable, given how selective breeding has turned
| them all into utterly unnatural creations, even the so-called
| non-GMO varieties. At that point, "natural" just means "not
| using any technology developed after an arbitrary cutoff date"
| and it's meaningless.
| andrewla wrote:
| For what it's worth, most modern food animals and plants are
| still capable of producing natural offspring and sustaining
| life on their own. GMO presents some interesting challenges,
| but the main thing is that modern offshoots of wild organisms
| are bred to produce these outcomes, but they are bred, which
| means that they are within the range of variability of the
| population in question, even if they're out in the bell curve
| a bit.
|
| I think there's a significant qualitative difference between
| cheese, for example, of any variety, and "processed cheese"
| which is designed to mimic cheese properties but make it
| uniform over time and region by substituting simple chemicals
| (i.e., reductive by definition) for ingredients which came
| about by co-evolution in our ecosystems.
| ianai wrote:
| It's at least more efficient and doesn't result in killing
| animals. This is probably way more sparing of water use, for
| instance. Whether someone wants more nutritious food or not is
| a secondary concern from decoupling meat consumption from
| current (horrible) practices.
| jraph wrote:
| Exactly. I see the benefit of this kind of food even if it is
| somewhat weak nutritionally if used occasionally in an
| otherwise well balanced diet. Sure, don't do this for every
| meal, but maybe don't it with regular sushi neither anyway.
| Enjoy your occasional sushi without the ethical /
| environmental drawbacks of eating actual salmon, and remain
| healthy by diversifying food.
|
| I'd be glad too, actually.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| What i see and taking in account the higher comments about
| economics of scale is that at some point synthetic meats
| will become cheaper that natural so food manufacturers will
| start replacing it with a tiny disclaimer "may contain
| synthetic meat" and that if the FDA forces them to.
| jraph wrote:
| I hope the disclaimer will say "is synthetic meat" if it
| is actually entirely synthetic. Uncertainty would ruin
| it!
| cheese_please wrote:
| While I definitely understand your concern, I also think we can
| see this as a fascinating opportunity to improve the
| nutritional value of meat. These muscle cells in culture will
| generally speaking continue to produce the proteins, ECM
| components, etc. that they normally do, but we can also take
| advantage of genetic manipulation, metabolic engineering, and
| nutrition engineering to make them achieve more. A paper came
| out last year (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pi
| i/S109671762...) in which mammalian cells (bovine primary and
| immortalized murine muscle cells) were modified to produce
| plant proteins without loss of phenotype. From the abstract:
|
| "... to endogenously produce the antioxidant carotenoids
| phytoene, lycopene and b-carotene. These phytonutrients offer
| general nutritive value and protective effects against diseases
| associated with red and processed meat consumption, and so
| offer a promising proof-of-concept for nutritional engineering
| in cultured meat."
|
| It may also be worth mentioning that cultured meat offers other
| potential gains in the arena of human health -- no need for
| antibiotics in a sterile manufacturing setting (so not
| contributing to antibiotic resistance), vanishingly low risk of
| foodborne illnesses and novel viruses like covid-19, etc..
| andrewla wrote:
| All due respect, I do not feel like you understand my
| concern.
|
| "Improving the nutritional value" is exactly what I am
| railing against. The idea that we understand human nutrition
| in any quantitative way is not realistic. It involves
| attempting to reduce complex systems to a small set of things
| that we can understand (making the system more "legible") is
| dangerous and represents a huge failure of what James C.
| Scott calls "high modernism".
|
| By the time that we figure out that one of the nutrients
| presented is harmful unless it is accompanied by mediators
| naturally present in real foods it will be too late to fix
| these processes.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Wait till you find out how unnatural most meat is. Its totally
| full or hormones and ammonia...And just to get ahead of the
| inevitable response, no, the vast majority of consumers do not
| buy grass fed / free range / whatever. Its a dodge and
| impossible to scale to current consumption levels based on land
| availability.
| andrewla wrote:
| I mean, the animals that the meat is made from are living
| creatures, capable of reproduction and all the usual
| functions of those animals. We have not been able to shortcut
| biology in this regard; we are just working on the fringes of
| natural variability.
|
| In other words, the fact that we have biological systems that
| are achievable by breeding natural stock is a backstop
| against producing "food" that did not co-evolve with us. No
| guarantees, of course, which is why it's a heuristic and not
| a hard-and-fast rule, but I'd much rather have meat from
| living animals that have to survive than lab-produced meat
| that we have reductively arrived at by trying to mimic the
| observable properties of meat from biological organisms.
|
| GMO presents significant challenges to this, as does clonal
| propagation of mutant varieties of fruit trees, both of which
| result in things that, while not necessarily bad, have
| developed outside the range of what natural variability could
| produce as viable systems.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > The push for heavily processed synthetic meats seems like a
| huge step backwards
|
| Regardless of how accurate that is, "ultra processed foods" is
| a recent, poll-optimized anti marketing campaign keyword from
| the American meat industry.
| Daishiman wrote:
| It isn't really "heavily processed" any more than
| artificicially selecting seeds for edible plants and growing
| them through aquaponics or other "unnatural" settings.
|
| Lab-grown meat implies that most of the basic cell chemistry of
| these cells is going to occur as usual. To me that kills many
| of the stronger arguments against processed food.
| andrewla wrote:
| "Basic cell chemistry" is a term that is very reductive.
| Long-held wisdom is that we don't eat animals that have died
| of natural causes. But a dead animal's cell chemistry is
| largely functional for days to months after its death.
|
| So yes, I would argue significantly more heavily processed;
| edible plants need to be biologically viable in order to be
| useful for food production. That is not a guarantee that it
| will be safe or good, but as a heuristic I think it's a solid
| one, since the changes are within the bounds of the
| variability that is achievable through natural reproduction.
| dublin wrote:
| If this doesn't qualify as Frankenfood, I don't know what does.
| (This is nearly as scary as unproven, untested "vaccines"
| intended to provoke a life-long autoimmune response...)
|
| Just what the heck is wrong with an actual _fish_ , people??? If
| sales of this is allowed at all, it should be VERY conspicuously
| marked and labelled ALL the way to the table, _especially_ in
| restaurants. The older I get, the more Bill Joy is proven wisely
| prescient...
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