What's the FLAP about?

[salvius]

Are you going to prevent the frog from eating the fly, the snake from eating the frog, the lion from eating the gazelle? The intestine of man is a medium length by body size and man has only one stomach... signs that man was made to eat meat. If a slab of beef could be replicated or grown in a lab with out creating a cow brain I would be all for it but for now I think we have to accept our place in the food chain and be thankful for the cow and respectful of the cow that feeds us.

My stupid friend Lisa has never heard about the food chain

It's now fairly well accepted that my 'kind' lives longer, and that a vegetarian diet is an amazing tool for managing various long-term diseases (such as diabetes), so I'll take that as an endorsement to stick with it over what we are 'meant' to eat.

Maybe if we were still respectful of the nature around us and didn't have the sick and disgusting meat industry for which the words animal cruelty do not do any justice, I could kind of, maybe, see your point.

 

[Bogtrotter]

I've never bought into vegetarianism being a healthier lifestyle choice. Primates eat meat, including humans, it's normal and healthy. However I do agree that farm animals can be processed more humanely and if they come up with a viable alternative to farmed meat I would be willingto give it a try.

 

[salvius]

I've never bought into vegetarianism being a healthier lifestyle choice.

Study after study shows it is so, even among generally non-partisan organisations (the diabetes diet was a Mayo/American Dietetic Association study and the latter has also done longevity studies). I'm not quite sure what is there to buy into, it's pretty well accepted. The only bane of the vegetarian diet is the dreaded B12, but otherwise vegetarians tend to have more balanced diets with greater variety. I certainly know the variety skyrocketed in my case, after turning vegetarian.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/06/71201

"Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place ... at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner. Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years. Currently involved in identifying the type of stem cells that will multiply the most to create larger quantities of meat within a bioreactor, the team hopes to have concrete results by 2009..."

Curious: how many of you would eat this, and how many wouldn't? Maybe a worthy poll subject...

truly amazing! imagine the implications...

-reduction of global warming because now we can convert most grazing lands to forests & reduction of methane - those cow farts add up.

-reduction of pathogens in the food supply. less sickness.

-less farm runoff into our water supply.

-it's humane & the meat would have a nice soft texture. soft meat is really expensive and sometimes cruel.

- cutting the lawn would probably be more inhumane that eating such a product.

-etc..


p.s, i'll only support it if they use embryonic stem cells. only the best for my dinner plate. part of this complete pluripotent breakfast!

 

[EnviroTO]

Curious: how many of you would eat this, and how many wouldn't? Maybe a worthy poll subject...

I would eat it. They would have to give it electrical impulses for it to properly develop into muscle tissue I would think. What I find most interesting about a factory for meat is that the meat could be perfected with tweaking the nourishment and electrical stimuli regimen used. It seems that someday the factory will replace the farmer with slow moving conveyors with shelves of growing plants and meats... maybe the CO2 coming off the meat could be pumped into the plant environment thus speeding up the growth of the plants.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

I would eat it. They would have to give it electrical impulses for it to properly develop into muscle tissue I would think. What I find most interesting about a factory for meat is that the meat could be perfected with tweaking the nourishment and electrical stimuli regimen used. It seems that someday the factory will replace the farmer with slow moving conveyors with shelves of growing plants and meats... maybe the CO2 coming off the meat could be pumped into the plant environment thus speeding up the growth of the plants.

look at that! a closed loop system.

 

[Mongo]

look at that! a closed loop system.

Well, the Earth itself is a closed loop system, other than for energy (input = Sun, sink = space).

The more I think about this, the more beneficial I think it would be, in terms of vastly reduced environmental stress (especially reduced greenhouse gas emissions), greater quality control, and of course it's far more humane. I've been in a slaughterhouse (helping out a buddy who was there to do some repairs), and what the animals are subjected to is appalling. Hogs, for example, are merely stunned enough by an electrical shock to render them unable to move, but they are still quite conscious when they are hung onto the overhead conveyer and sliced in half by saws. Tank-grown meat, of course, does not have this ethical problem.

Bill

 

[adma]

 

[Bogtrotter]

The only bane of the vegetarian diet is the dreaded B12, but otherwise vegetarians tend to have more balanced diets with greater variety.

I think in general they probably are against the general population, I wouldn't dispute that considering that the non-vegetaran poulation (the vast majority of the population of NA) doesn't eat very well at all. Large consumptions of red meat are bad for you for a lot of reasons- primarily it's fat.

My position is that you can eat well and have a diet that includes various meat products and be equally or more healthy as someone who is strictly vegetarian. I don't believe that someone who eats a responsible portion of animal protein once or twice a week as part of a well balanced diet is at greater risk of diabetes or heart disease than someone who is strictly vegetarian. In fact there are accounts of athletes that swear that they perform better and build greater muscle with animal protein in their diet. For me meat of all varieties is a normal and healthy human activity that our bodies were designed to consume, you just have to be intelligent about how much you eat, make sure you eat varied kinds of animal protein, be conscious of how it is prepared and moreover make sure it is part of a balanced and varied diet of other food groups. If you do that you'll be as healthy an any vegetarian imho. Now if one chooses not to eat animal protein for ethical reasons then that is a different kettle of fish. mmm...fish