[HN Gopher] Insiders reveal problems at Upside Foods
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Insiders reveal problems at Upside Foods
Author : dtagames
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-09-16 23:58 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| [deleted]
| radar1310 wrote:
| Another scam, imagine that.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I only skimmed it, but nothing in the article said scam? More
| just that they are facing enormous problems scaling production.
| Both at producing macroscopic quantities of chicken (vs thin
| chicken sheets) and how to productionize the process so it
| could produce the mega tons required to be a commercial
| product.
| Animats wrote:
| > I only skimmed it, but nothing in the article said scam?
|
| Employee: "the startup could be the next Theranos".
| ethanbond wrote:
| Employee in-jokes are not at all proof of misbehavior.
|
| Lots of teams poke fun at their shortcomings.
|
| They obviously don't look great, but you're excerpting that
| as if it's employee testimony. It wasn't.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > Another former employee confirmed that staffers at the company
| would make jokes comparing Upside to Theranos.
|
| that's taking it a little far... their goal is providing an
| ethical food source, not revolutionizing human diagnoses
|
| can't wait for meat-less meat tech to get through its paces and
| take the time to mature. humans took hundreds of years to figure
| out how to herd cattle; what's another few years to make it in a
| lab?
| flangola7 wrote:
| It's a time sensitive issue unfortunately
| crooked-v wrote:
| Also, there's a significant difference between "the process
| works on a small scale, and would work at a large scale if we
| can solve the reliability/consistency issues" versus Theranos'
| "the process literally isn't physically possible at any scale
| and we've been outright lying about it the whole time".
| civilitty wrote:
| I think lab grown meat is closer to a Theranos type scam than
| most people realize. The problem with Theranos wasn't that
| their tech didn't work at any scale; it's that blood drawn
| from finger capillaries is useless for most diagnostic tests
| that they claimed to do. It's a very subtle problem that only
| investors with proper scientific advisors with diagnostic
| experience caught onto (aka all the biotech VCs, who stayed
| far away). "If only" Theranos took regular blood samples from
| the arm instead of a few droplets from a finger prick, it
| could have worked but then it'd be just another unsexy
| competitor in onsite diagnostics.
|
| Lab grown meat is full of those kinds of caveats and while no
| company has committed as egregious a fraud as Theranos,
| they're all going to eventually find themselves in the
| position where they either have to lie to keep getting
| investments or admit that it's not feasible and fold.
|
| Personally, my bet is that without advanced bioengineering
| that can design entire artificial immune systems that protect
| the growing tissue, bioreactors will just be too expensive to
| scale up and compete with animals. IMO the only way it'll
| work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt
| evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into
| protein and fat, with an engineered biome that responds to
| contamination like an immune system. And that's probably
| decades if not centuries ahead of us.
| catgary wrote:
| Honestly, the roller bottle approach seems pretty reasonable
| when they're making sure that the process is making good
| chicken. They've at least reduced the problem to making giant
| sheets of chicken-paper.
| smegsicle wrote:
| i suppose "we're getting the cell growing procedure worked out
| so that we're ready for when we can make our own stem cells" is
| a bit more believable than "we're getting the blood pinprick
| transport device worked out for when we have the sensor
| technology to do anything with it"
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Yeah, I agree.
|
| Honestly, as long as the product isn't contaminated, the
| consumer doesn't care if it made in roller bottles or
| futuristic machines. At worse they are misleading investors,
| but are not endangering the health of consumers.
|
| Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors
| but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not
| actually work.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > At worse they are misleading investors, but are not
| endangering the health of consumers.
|
| > Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just
| investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests
| that did not actually work.
|
| Elizabeth Holmes was _acquitted_ of defrauding patients; her
| convictions were only for defrauding investors.
|
| This looks a lot like Theranos.
| Animats wrote:
| The real success in this area is the Impossible burger. It's made
| mostly from peas and soy, with heme added to produce the bloody
| meat texture. The heme is made in a fermentation process not much
| more complex than brewing. Impossible has no problems with volume
| production - they sell through Burger King and WalMart. Growth
| rate about 85%/year.
| sokoloff wrote:
| As a long-time meat eater, I find Impossible to be a passable
| substitute for ground beef in a lot of dishes.
|
| If they can get the end user price under control, they could
| displace a whole lot of beef consumption. At the current price
| point, it's not nearly worth it on a taste or economic value
| comparison with 80% ground beef.
| jahnu wrote:
| If only we subsidised this as much as we subside meat
| production. Or perhaps subsidise nothing. Either way it's not
| yet a level playing field.
| jononomo wrote:
| Why do you think we subsidize meat production? Isn't it
| sugar and soybeans that we subsidize?
| paulcole wrote:
| 70% of soybeans grown in the US go to feed livestock.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Blame your restaurants. Burger king has figured out how to
| sell you two impossible kings for $7. The only reason why
| people still ask for another $4 to swap out the sysco patty
| on your $12 brewpub burger is because they can and you are
| used to it.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Their sausage has already done this. It's almost a dollar
| cheaper than Jimmy Dean at my local, and the Impossible stuff
| is indistinguishable from pork sausage.
| Animats wrote:
| It seems more like they price it high because they can. The
| process isn't expensive. A 68,000 square foot plant makes a
| million pounds a month, says the company. It's not like lab-
| grown meat, which is a slow, expensive process.
|
| Amusingly, Impossible's ground beef like product was getting
| rave reviews from prominent foodies at first. It first
| appeared only at expensive restaurants. Then they got Burger
| King to sell it. Only then was there criticism.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| You know how the working conditions in so many meatpacking
| plants are abysmal, like how Tyson Foods is always making
| headlines for some heinous shit? I wonder if conditions in
| Impossible plants are better by default. Fewer occupational
| hazards or whatever.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| A single Beyond Meat plant last year was found to have
| mold, listeria, and rodents. I wouldn't be so sure that
| working conditions are much better.
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-21/beyond-
| mea...
| katbyte wrote:
| It is likely far more automated requiring fewer people
| then butchering
| datavirtue wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but I find myself having zero patience for
| introductions that set me up with a story. I just glanced over
| the first two paragraphs, rolled my eyes, and started reading at
| the third.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| On September 34th, Johnny decided to get up from his chair,
| head outside for some fresh air after sitting in his pajamas at
| home "working" all day, and do some Satvic Yoga.
|
| That's when a key line of code triggered on an errant latest-
| generation DJI Mavic Pro. This drone, manufactured by a
| "private" Chinese company, then descended 90 feet in only 4.2
| seconds, and subsequently crashed. Directly into Johnny's ass.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| When I read a Wired article on Ars Technica, I can tell
| (without looking at the byline) that it's a Wired article
| simply because of this.
| sshine wrote:
| Why not just grow mushrooms? Their cells are meaty, super high in
| protein, and they already exist / the "tech" has already been
| developed! There is an extremely large selection, some with
| additional health benefits.
| rcme wrote:
| And heme iron?
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| Not mushrooms but Quorn has been making meat substitute
| products (some quite tasty) out of vat-grown mycelium since
| '85: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Quorn has for the most part been making meat substitutes out
| of vat-grown mycelium _and eggs_
|
| I love mushrooms, and am mostly vegan, but the skeptic in me
| suspects it's not as economically viable (with their current
| processes) to make meat-like products out of _just_ their
| "mycoprotein" or they'd be doing more of it.
|
| I realize they _have_ released a few vegan products, but I
| 've never seen them in stores and can't see why they wouldn't
| be as widely available as their other products if there
| weren't some texture/flavor issues without the eggs.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Mostly vegan?
|
| So you're not vegan.
| sshine wrote:
| Mostly plant-based, move along.
|
| Vegan is the church.
|
| My local animal rights group changed their marketing 15
| years ago from mainly using the term "vegan" to "plant-
| based" which is free from the cult-like elements of
| veganism, such as disapproval of anything but "100%". The
| term "vegan" is back now that it has become more
| mainstream.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Hence, "mostly vegan". I was vegan for 6-7 years, now I'm
| begrudgingly consuming oysters and clams. Both have fewer
| neurons than a mosquito and no brain or central nervous
| system. I'm not certain they can't feel pain, but I was
| having a hard time sustaining my health within my budget
| on a fully plant-based diet, so until I can get back to a
| place where I feel like I'm getting complete nutrition on
| plant-based foods and supplements, I've been forcing
| myself to choke down some bivalves on occasion.
| camtarn wrote:
| The fully vegan products are actually pretty common here in
| the UK. They taste fine to me. I wonder if it's something
| to do with certain products needing a particular texture
| which is hard to get without eggs.
| malfist wrote:
| 2-3 percent of the population has a mushroom allergy, myself
| included
| smegsicle wrote:
| that's too bad, they taste great with beef
|
| maybe better than worcestershire
| kaycebasques wrote:
| I think I looked into the protein amounts back in my vegan days
| and was disappointed to discover that the amounts are fairly
| low. Maybe it depends on the type. Lots of other reasons for us
| to cultivate more mushrooms though. _Mycelium Running_ outlines
| a lot of cool ideas.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Livestock eats food that tastes good: grains, grasses, corn,
| protein-rich insects. You can discern a well-nourished animal
| by the way its meat tastes.
|
| What do you feed to mushrooms?
| housemusicfan wrote:
| Because mushrooms are NOT "super high in protein".
|
| A comparable serving of beef has about 12x the amount of
| protein as mushrooms.
| sshine wrote:
| When you compare mushroom dry weight, it is more like 10-25%
| protein. This is without any industrial processing.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Is that relevant? You don't eat dried mushrooms, even if
| you start with them you have to hidrate them _a lot_ before
| they are any good.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| This. Beans, lentils and friends if you're after vegetable
| protein.
| xnx wrote:
| 12x? Isn't beef approximately 2/3 protein and mushrooms 1/2
| protein?
| pjscott wrote:
| Mushrooms are about 90% water, but the non-water part is
| indeed roughly half protein.
| gffrd wrote:
| Say you were going to eat 8oz of beef.
|
| How many oz of mushrooms would one have to eat to get the
| same amount of protein?
| mattnewton wrote:
| >56oz according to google which lists beef at 7g/ounce
| and mushrooms at 0.9/ounce
|
| Edit: legumes are more practical, green peas give you
| 2g/oz and peanuts can be 7g/oz shelled according to
| google, (though they are different proteins than the
| beef). Mushrooms are good for texture and some like
| shitaki can give the umami taste, but they aren't a
| nutritional meat substitute on their own.
| dmoy wrote:
| Like 1-3kg of non-dried mushrooms?
| Loughla wrote:
| Meat tastes good. Mushrooms taste good, but in a different way.
|
| You can want a perfect world, but it will never exist.
|
| Like it or don't, solving meat consumption and its effects on
| the planet is something we'll have to do. That probably
| involves a meaty substitute for meat.
| ETH_start wrote:
| The only reasons to find ways to end consumption of natural
| meat are 1. to increase efficiency and 2. ethical concerns
| relating raising animals in confinement to slaughter and eat
| them.
|
| The effects on the planet can be completely eliminated with
| massive expansion of nuclear and/or space-based electricity
| generation to power vertical farms that a) don't displace
| natural habitats and b) capture and recycle livestock's
| methane emissions along with other waste products.
| pjot wrote:
| Does meat actually taste good though? When has anyone ordered
| unseasoned chicken?
|
| Salt and spices taste good.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Indians have figured out how to make vegetables taste very
| good (It helps India is perfect for growing spices)
|
| But Indians still eat meat, the majority in fact.
| manmal wrote:
| The secret is just loads and loads of onions that add
| umami, no? Spices/herbs are added to meats too.
| jononomo wrote:
| India has one of the lowest life expectancies in the
| world and and exploding rate of diabetes.
| Loughla wrote:
| You haven't really understood what I said.
|
| You can want one thing, but you have to live with the real
| thing.
|
| Some people think meat tastes good, regardless of
| seasoning. Drawing attention to seasoning is just a red
| herring.
|
| We need to figure out low-co2 meat. And seasonings.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I really think the "you don't _actually_ like meat "
| strategy is counterproductive to the cause of getting
| people comfortable with alternatives.
| ddingus wrote:
| It totally is.
|
| I like meat. In fact, I really like it.
|
| No shame in that.
|
| The answer is in the fact that I (we) like a lot of other
| stuff!
|
| Maximize that and meat consumption will be reduced.
| timeon wrote:
| Maybe not good _strategy_ but still really interesting
| question.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's a really silly question. People love the aroma of
| meat, obviously. Steak is often served with just a bit of
| extra salt, which has no aroma of its own. The smell of
| meet on a fire is already delicious, even without salt.
|
| Of course, there are also people who don't like the taste
| of meat at all. But to claim people who like meat
| actually like the spices is patently ridiculous, not
| interesting.
| ddingus wrote:
| It does taste good!
|
| When cooked, most meats have the necessary fats needed to
| bring out great flavor. Anyone who has done primitive
| camping can tell you just how good meat cooked in various
| ways is!
| dlkf wrote:
| The fallacy here is pretty transparent. On the one hand,
| you're saying meat "doesn't taste good" because it is
| usually not served in isolation. But on the other hand, you
| claim that seasoning tastes good, despite the fact that it
| is _never_ served in isolation.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| Where is fallacy ? Sugar is sweet I've never ordered a
| cup of sugar in a cafe or seen it on the menu
| [deleted]
| dlkf wrote:
| Parent claims that because we don't eat meat plain, this
| shows that it isn't the meat that "tastes good", its the
| seasoning. The fallacy is that we could have applied the
| exact same logic to the seasoning: we don't eat steak
| seasoning plain, therefore it isn't the seasoning that
| tastes good, its the meat. By parent's logic, meat both
| does and does not taste good.
|
| The resolution, which has always been obvious to everyone
| (except hackernews, apparently) is that flavour is the
| result of the _combination_ of ingredients. That you
| typically eat X and Y together doesn't mean X is
| tasteless and Y is tasty (or the reverse). It just means
| X and Y combine to make a good dish.
| Loughla wrote:
| This is the same site where I read a post about making
| puree vegetables and freezing them as meal planning,
| because flavor was secondary to efficiency. So. . .
| dpig_ wrote:
| Red meats taste good sans spices.
| parthdesai wrote:
| eh, you still need salt + pepper.
| ddingus wrote:
| No, you don't. Well, maybe you do, but it can be prepared
| well and require none of those things.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Salt helps a lot, but pepper is not necessary. And even
| an unsalted steak is still good.
| [deleted]
| parthdesai wrote:
| Just for fun and games, let's apply your logic but inverse
| the argument.
|
| Do salt and spices actually taste good though? When has
| anyone ordered only salt and spices?
|
| Need both (or salt, spices and vegetables/lentils/beans
| etc), and a skilled cook for delicious meal.
| xwdv wrote:
| We _do_ eat meat plain. Not poultry typically, but give me
| a Dutch oven and with little more than some oil and water I
| can easily prepare a delicious 3 hour braise of chuck roast
| that can gently shred apart with a fork. The fat is
| delicious, it melts out to a liquidy goodness that bathes
| the meat. Get a nice charred sear on both sides before
| adding the braising liquid, you'll have flavorful goodness.
|
| Adding more ingredients only enhances the flavor, but it's
| not necessary if your taste buds aren't hyperstimulated.
| Meat tastes good.
| howlin wrote:
| Fungi make up one of three primary kingdoms of multicellular
| life. Mushrooms and other fungus have a variety of flavors
| already, and some of them are quite meat-like. Given fungus
| cells are more similar to animal than they are plant, it is
| possible that they can be selectively bred or engineered to
| taste more meat-like.
|
| I wouldn't be too dismissive of the potential here.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm not being dismissive, but was instead responding to a
| completely useless argument based on the ideal. Ideally,
| people will choose to eat mushroom instead of meat.
|
| An ideal situation only exists in a textbook, and dealing
| with reality is what we should do, was sort of my point.
| beefpies wrote:
| > I'm not being dismissive, but was instead responding to
| a completely useless argument....
|
| Listen to yourself.
| asah wrote:
| there's a startup for that:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/hedgehog-2
| xnx wrote:
| There are startups doing this: https://www.naturesfynd.com/fy-
| protein
| workfromspace wrote:
| https://archive.ph/UEn8h
| raylad wrote:
| I'm not sure about chicken cells but my experience with growing
| human cells (WI-38 fibroblasts)[1] is that they want to grow in a
| monolayer.
|
| The way we grew them normally was in those roller bottles [2]:
| you have some tissue culture medium in the bottle (containing
| fetal calf serum, which is still required to grow mammalian cells
| AFAIK, another reason most of these companies can't do what they
| say) and other components. Then the bottles are put on their
| sides on a roller mechanism, in an incubator with a controlled
| CO2 concentration.
|
| The cells want to grow in a one-cell-thick monolayer all over the
| inside of the bottle. What they won't do is to grow a double
| layer. This is because they have "contact inhibition" which is a
| major mechanism for preventing tumor-like growth: when cells are
| touching each other, they stop dividing.
|
| So these guys are trying to grow tissue and what they seem to be
| doing instead is growing monolayers just like this on the inside
| of roller bottles, scraping them off, then putting them together
| again.
|
| One thing that disturbed me was that they need to coat the
| bottles with porcine gelatin. In that case, a lot of those
| "chicken" cutlets are actually pork!
|
| [1] WI-38 cells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WI-38
|
| [2] Tissue culture in roller bottles (yes, the medium is red at
| least for mammalian cells):
| https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-hgsfepq18i/images/stencil/12...
| nicoburns wrote:
| > The cells want to grow in a one-cell-thick monolayer all over
| the inside of the bottle. What they won't do is to grow a
| double layer. This is because they have "contact inhibition"
| which is a major mechanism for preventing tumor-like growth:
| when cells are touching each other, they stop dividing.
|
| How does that work inside the human body, where presumably they
| do form 3D structures?
| papertigerau wrote:
| Your experience matches with what I've seen.
|
| If you give the cells something spherical [1] to adhere to then
| you can achieve a higher yield, but still only a monolayer.
|
| [1] https://smartmcs.com.au/what-is-microcarrier/
| [deleted]
| zvmaz wrote:
| I really wish them to succeed. Imagine centuries from now, a
| future civilisation where human-inflicted cruelty towards
| billions and billions of sentient beings is ended...
| avalys wrote:
| Do you think animals in the wild are being cruel to each other
| when they eat them?
| dkarl wrote:
| Not to mention the benefits for us: all the space dedicated to
| pasture could be dedicated to wildlife or outdoor recreation,
| and all the high-density facilities fouling air and waterways
| could be closed. If it works for fish, we could stop scouring
| the ocean like an Old Testament-style god angry with our
| creation.
|
| Even the food snobs would be happy, since responsible wildlife
| management practices would yield a certain amount of expensive,
| hard-to-get wild meat that they could build a culinary mystique
| around.
| jononomo wrote:
| Space that is currently dedicated to pasture is already
| currently dedicated to wildlife. In fact, grazing cattle on
| land serves to rejuvenate the land, since the cattle's
| hoove's serve as little plows, and the cows walk around and
| poop and pee, which fertilizes the land and allows for
| insects and bugs to thrive, which helps the bird population,
| and the little rodents.
| harvey9 wrote:
| In some cases that land was recently deforested. It was
| previously dedicated to wildlife but now it's dedicated to
| agriculture which happens to benefit some different
| wildlife.
| ggm wrote:
| Some kind of partial surface rotation inside a horizontal or near
| horizontal drum Reactor? Combine the best bits of a single
| surface grow and a large production run with a helical feed
| surface emitting sheets of the stuff?
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