Gen Z are the new kids on the block. As a cohort of 5 million people born between 1995-2015 encompassing 20 percent of the Australian population and 2 billion people globally -- they're consumers to be reckoned with.
New research by the University of Sydney and Curtin University to published on 8 September in Frontiers in Nutrition, found that, despite having a great concern for the environment and animal welfare, 72 percent of Generation Z were not ready to accept cultured meat -- defined in the survey as a lab-grown meat alternative produced by in-vitro cell cultures of animal cells, instead of from slaughtered animals.
However, despite their lack of enthusiasm for the new meat alternative, 41 percent believed it could be a viable nutritional source because of the need to transition to more sustainable food options and improve animal welfare.
9 percent rejected cultured meat but accepted eating insects.
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[...] [In March], the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that represents the alternative protein industry, published a techno-economic analysis (TEA) that projected the future costs of producing a kilogram of cell-cultured meat. Prepared independently for GFI by the research consulting firm CE Delft, and using proprietary data provided under NDA by 15 private companies, the document showed how addressing a series of technical and economic barriers could lower the production price from over $10,000 per pound today to about $2.50 per pound over the next nine years—an astonishing 4,000-fold reduction.
In the press push that followed, GFI claimed victory. "New studies show cultivated meat can have massive environmental benefits and be cost-competitive by 2030," it trumpeted, suggesting that a new era of cheap, accessible cultured protein is rapidly approaching. The finding is critical for GFI and its allies. If private, philanthropic, and public sector investors are going to put money into cell-cultured meat, costs need to come down quickly. Most of us have a limited appetite for 50-dollar lab-grown chicken nuggets.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:31AM (5 children)
NO ONE is ready to slice a bit off of some blob of goo in a lab, and eat it. FFS, they didn't even eat Frankenstein's monster way back in the early 1800's!
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:42AM (1 child)
And yet Taco Bell serves 2 billion tacos and 1 billion burritos annually.
Victor could have nipped that problem in the bud if he did.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @06:27AM
And how angry would the Monster have been if Victor had "nipped that bud"?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:43AM
Sure, it's a terrible puff piece. What should make that group think different from the rest?
That aside, I would be happy to go cultured meat throughout. But hygiene has to be improved first. The culture medium is still animal derived and thereby (probably) contains viruses/prions/DNA/RNA making it potentially infectious, allergy inducing and otherwise toxic. To me that nullifies many of the potential advantages. Once the culture medium is, say, fully yeast produced, I am in.
Disclaimer: I eat very little meat.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:21AM
Hot dogs, dude. Hot dogs.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @03:29PM
If genZ don't figure out what gender they are, future generations are going to be lab grown meat. Now that's what I'll call Soylent News.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday September 09 2020, @09:39AM (3 children)
It's about the corporations who hold the patents for that. I'm pretty sure given the precedents, that they'll be the wurst.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:13AM (1 child)
Hey! A wireless powermat is your feeding bowl...
Meatworld problems are not concern of yours.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:17AM
Know thy enemy, know yourself, et cetera.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by arslan on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:28AM
Oh, don't be such a brat.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:16AM (13 children)
make it safe. test it. prove that it's safe. eat it yourself. then ask me.
with insects ... we already know that there are insets on the menu in several places. it seems a lot simpler to follow the above rules if someone is already eating insects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:23AM (7 children)
Or you could, ya know, eat an apple. Living creatures don't need to perish every time you open one end of the meat sack to absorb environmental nutrients.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:47AM
Lab-grown meat isn't a creature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:53AM (4 children)
the apple is alive. it's also happy to be eaten, because then the seed gets out in a couple of days in good fertilizer.
by that count, food animals should be very happy for being tasty. their species count in the billions of individuals, whereas most non-insect wild animals are lucky to count in the millions.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:59PM (3 children)
Apples, when they get eaten, get to have children.
Food animals, when they get eaten, do not get to have more children.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:19PM (1 child)
If we stopped eating beef and drinking milk, the cow would go EXTINCT, just as its wild ancestor has.
Its survival is entirely dependent on us eating of its body.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:56PM
I had to mod you up for that.
Cows are a treasured species, and ranchers have great incentives to tend to their needs: provide food and veterinary care, providing shelter, protecting them from predators, assisting them with their younguns.
Yes, all that comes at a price.
But most ranchers I have known are far more humane when the time comes than Nature has been. It's over in minutes. Not being eaten alive by a pack of wolves.
Look at how we treat our homeless, then see how the rancher tends his herds. It is my observation that most ranchers are far more humane in the misery inflicted on a sentient species.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @04:49PM
Apple trees are a big problem in land fills.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:31AM
but.. but.. you're stealing food from living creatures that rely on apples! The travesty!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 09 2020, @12:02PM (3 children)
> With insects
I would be happy to eat insects, especially if processed into something with fewer chewy bits, but the cost in UK is about 10-20 times more than, say, chicken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:18PM
I try to raise as many kids as I can, and they in turn will do the same, and one they my descendants will kill your kind
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:03AM (1 child)
The Chicken converts the insect protein into breasts, drumsticks, wings, thighs, and gizzards for you.
Celebrate the Chicken as a great gift provided for us.
Could any of us come up with a more elegant design for these things?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 10 2020, @08:59AM
> The Chicken converts the insect protein
It's just not very efficient...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @09:05AM
We don't know enough about nutrition to do that. Even now people go on and on about the health benefits of fiber even though humans do better on a zero fiber diet. The food industry is too fucked up to be able to create a new food and determine if its safe to eat or not. Even ignoring the industry, we don't understand enough about our bodies to be able to make that claim. It's completely possible there's something we've overlooked in naturally raised creatures that we won't supplement in lab grow cultures and those food stuffs will end up causing people problems down the road.
And what about the side effects? When we're no longer keeping grassland for cattle are we going to pave over that ground and build cities? The environment and wildlife won't like that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:09AM (7 children)
Normally, this question is worded in the way of "Would you eat lab-grown meat?"
And my response is always: Yes, get on with it.
Fact is, it's always impractically expensive and just not available. I don't want meat-substitute. I want lab-meat. I'll literally scrap a non-descript blob off a petri-dish and eat it if you convince me it meets all the relevant food approval and is as good nutritionally as meat. Hell, people eat "synthetic" food all the time - protein supplements, things like Heul and Soylent(!), dieting shakes, vitamin tablets, etc.
It's not "would you eat it?", it's "where the hell is it?"
An entire country literally consume horse for years and had NO CLUE that's what they were doing. Nobody could tell. Only a DNA test could determine it. Nobody was particularly up in arms because... well, we'd eaten it and not told the difference. We were more concerned about a) hurting the poor horses and b) properly tracking ingredients in food production and labelling them.
Put a product on a shelf with "Made with lab-grown meat". If it's good enough, safe enough and cheap enough... people will buy it and eat it and soon forget that's even what it is.
But all you ever get is hyperbole about "whether people would eat it". Yes. I'll literally volunteer for you if you throw in a couple of free meals.
However, it's just expensive, bad, unscaleable lab processes at the moment.
Stick it in a Findus lasagne, then you can determine whether or not people will eat it.
P.S. I'll literally eat lab-grown meat in preference to something vegetarian, vegan, or "meat substitute", all other things being equal. Any day. Every time. Get on with making it.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday September 10 2020, @06:32AM (6 children)
I've never understood the objections to eating horse meat. They are basically tall skinny cows. If you eat cattle, why not horses?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday September 10 2020, @07:21AM
I've never understood the objection to eating horse meat either.
It's bloody delicious.
I think its because, especially in the UK, horses were basically recreational pets for posh people, not farmed, so posh people stopped eating them but ate farmed animals instead.
Hilariously, the first place I (knowingly) ate horse was in an "English pub" in Italy, that was trying to recreate an olde-worlde English pub and serving English food.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @09:36PM (3 children)
Same reasons we rarely eat dogs or cats - the people that like those animals will brand you as worse than a murderer for doing so. Horses consume way more food and need more land than cattle too.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 11 2020, @08:33AM (2 children)
Cats and dogs are carnivores. It's a bad idea to eat carnivores due to both parasites and toxins concentrating as you go up the food chain.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @07:47PM
Parasites aren't really an issue with farmed meat nowadays, and heavy metal accumulation isn't necessarily either.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday September 14 2020, @08:08AM
Carnivores taste like hell, that's the real reason why. Even their waste stinks far worse. Horse dung smells nothing like dog poo for a reason. The dog poo is the waste of digested meat. Horse poo is digested grass.
I once heard a saying about something like never eat more than "two away from the sun". Sun feeds the grass. Grass feeds the horses. You can eat the horse. But sun feeds the grain, grain feeds the mouse, mouse feeds the cat. Do not eat the cat.
In the natural world, it happens. As a human developing a food chain that tastes nice and is readily available and efficient, you shouldn't be touching carnivores.
Not least, every step along the way is less efficient in terms of wastage. Breeding animals is far less efficient in terms of land and energy use than harvesting a crop. And breeding a carnivore is another layer of inefficiency.
All the food you generally eat - no more than two from the sun. All the meat that's "frowned upon" as extravagant waste or for not tasting nice - exotic animals, dogs, cats, rodents, etc. - are further.
But horses are quite clearly only two from the sun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @08:58AM
Horses are pretty intelligent, they can pass some intelligence tests that dogs can't. Though pigs are highly intelligent too, but bacon just tastes too damn good.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:55AM (7 children)
If that meat ever gets mass-produced, it definitely won't be lab-grown meat. It will be industrial-grown meat.
If you ask about “lab-grown” meat, you'll automatically activate lab associations, especially chemical lab (although even the truly lab-grown variant is almost certainly not made in a chemical lab). And most people don't want to eat “chemical” food (even though a lot of what they eat actually contains products of the chemical industry, and of course even organic food consists 100% of chemical substances).
Give a better name to that meat, and you likely will find a higher acceptance rate. What about “non-animal meat”?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:00PM (2 children)
It's cultured meat... a perfectly cromulent name
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:32PM (1 child)
Ah, so eat the classically educated rich...
mmmm tasty rich cultured soylent green.....
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:43PM
*We don't want tunas with good taste, We want tunas that taste good!*
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:06PM
How about:
Pink-Floyd-meat
The meat for the masses
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5IpYOF4Hi6Q?start=211 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:12PM (2 children)
The-meat-you-have-to-eat-because-we-ignored-overpopulation
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:21PM (1 child)
If by "we" you mean Africa and a few countries in Asia.
The rest of the world is not reproducing itself or on the verge of not doing so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:35AM
Technically sure. But practically aren't we all affected globally? Has science proven that the environmental consequences are completely isolated to only those countries?
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:24PM (1 child)
Do we expect Jews and Muslims to have their own separate meat industry? Somehow I don't see it, but perhaps they will build it for us tree huggers.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @03:18PM
They already [vanityfair.com] have [wikipedia.org].....oh, you mean the other sort of meat?
(Score: 1) by Gertlex on Wednesday September 09 2020, @02:37PM
I think the Science Daily headline writer must have googled waht Gen Z was and copy/pasted...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 09 2020, @04:59PM (1 child)
Start when they are young. Run major ad blitz, for years, on Saturday morning cartoons. If they don't have those anymore, then on whatever medium the kids are glued to these days.
Make it fun and exciting!
Honeycomb's big, yeah, yeah, yeah! It's not small, no, no, no! They're magically delicious. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. Kid tested, mother approved. The breakfast of champions. They're Guuuuuurrrreat! They're baked by little elves in a hollow tree.
Kids! Try new Meal Worms! They're coated in 12 different kinds of delicious sugar frosting!
New, Improved! Soylent Green, now available in bright new fun colors -- like Red!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 09 2020, @06:08PM
Every one of those ad jingles has been stuck in my head since childhood... and I recognize what products they go with.
My brain has already been colonized by the corporations!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 09 2020, @11:40PM (4 children)
First, where did this "Gen Z" shit come from? What happened to "Millineals"? What generation are my kids, born 1985 and 1987? They were millineals until this dubious article.
Second, ever hear of an "Impossible whopper"? Artificial meat that tastes virtually identical to the ones made of ground up cows, I tried one myself. They're a little smaller than a bovine whopper. You're telling me that a sixty eight year old man will try one but a kid won't? I call bullshit on the whole FA, or at least the summary (which was too stupid for me to read the actual article).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday September 10 2020, @12:11AM
I was expecting a significant price discount, not a premium, for accepting a substitute product.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:07AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 15 2020, @12:47PM (1 child)
What I wonder is why the accepted definition was instantly changed, and by whom.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 17 2020, @09:11AM
Given that it refers to a different named generation to your kids, and contains a birthdate range that excludes your kids, the only question that remains is why you persist in bringing up your kids, they're nothing to do with this story?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves