Recently tried an Impossible burger and nuggets and thought that if nobody told me it wasn’t meat, I’d have thought the patty was made out of a weird kind of meat, rather than make a connection with the taste and texture of plants. Honestly, I might not complain if that was the only kind of “meat” I could have for the rest of my life.
Well, maybe I’d miss bacon.
I’ve yet to find the opportunity to try lab-grown meat, but I for sure would like to try it out and don’t see much wrong with it as long as it’s sustainable, reasonably priced, and doesn’t have anything you wouldn’t expect in a normal piece of meat.
Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I’d no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices) or biting into gristle. I’ll happily devour a hot dog, but something about an unexpected bit of cartilage gives me a lingering sense of revulsion.
You’re probably right, these fake meats are ultra-processed so their CO2 emission might not be all that great and regardless I’m not trying to increase how much processed food I eat…
It is complicated. There is land out there that is not suitable for agriculture on one hand so free range grass fed might not be that bad, but herd animals produce methane too which is a powerful greenhouse gas. Then there is the whole question of eating meat from live animals as well if one cares about that and synthetic might be a way around that. Then of course the whole eco footprint issue. It would be interesting to know more.