September 6, 2013 • 37 mins
How expensive was the world's first lab-grown burger? What are the benefits to growing meat in the lab? What are other alternatives to beef?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says, eat beef,
feed beef. It's a mighty good food. It's a great
a meal. When I'm in the mood, I'm Jonathan Strickling,
(00:23):
I'm learning both. I'm Joe McCormick. And that was the
Reverend Hoord need coming up next. No, we wanted to
talk about the future of protein, right the idea, this
idea of protein and the various sources that we depend
upon for protein, everything from beef to to park to chicken,
(00:43):
to plant protein to well, I don't want to spoil it,
we'll get there, but uh, I wanted to talk about
how the way we get protein can make a huge
impact on the world around us. Right. Well, well, why
why are we talking about this in the first place?
I mean, if we've got perfectly good, four legged sources
of food running around, why would we want anything else. Well,
(01:05):
one of the reasons is because those perfectly good, four
legged sources of food put a pretty hefty toll on
the environment, particularly when we're needing to produce it in
the the amounts that we we require, and particularly if
we are talking about meat of the beef variety. Yeah,
that one and that one is the worst of the
worst when it comes to environmental impact. And by environmental
(01:28):
impact we mean everything from clearing enough ground for for grazing,
which you know, as our demand for meat increases, obviously
the demand for land for cattle increases. Uh. That can
impact everything from rainforce to other delicate ecosystems, and uh
we could end up losing lots of other valuable resources
(01:48):
in the process and causing other issues. Then you've got
things like greenhouse gas emissions, which particularly with beef, are
a real problem, things like methane. Cows produced lot of it,
But it's not just emissions directly from the cows. When
you produce the process of meat, right, there's a huge
(02:09):
backstory to that meat and all of the different things
that have had to happen to make that meat available
to you add up over time, right, and uh, you know,
first of all, I want to say that the amount
of meat that we are eating is on the rise.
The world's total meat supply as of ninety one was
like seventy one million tons. As of two thousand and
seven it was more like two four million tons. Yeah, yeah,
(02:33):
it you know, doubled over that period. But in the
developing world it actually rose twice as fast um, which
which basically just means that as people come into better
economic situation situations, they consume more meat. Yeah, there is
a correlation between your financial status and the amount of
meat you typically consume. You being societies out there, that's
(02:57):
that's right, because you don't actually eat meat, Dad, don't.
I don't eat mammals. I I do eat fish and
foul but I do not eat mammals. It is not
It has nothing to do with an ethical situation in
my case, although there are plenty of people out there
who make their decisions based on their own personal beliefs
and ethics, and I have nothing against that. But in
(03:18):
my case, it's because my wife had a bad experience
with food poisoning in college, and due to that, she
associates meat with feeling not well, feeling sick, and so
she just she swore it off and she hasn't really
had any sense then, and so when I was dating her,
I started to phase it out of my own diet,
(03:39):
and in the process that means that over the last
eighteen years or so, I've maybe had meat maybe five times, so,
uh meat from the sense in the sitis of mammals.
There there are other types of animals. I will hunt
down and tackle and chew on. Ostrich, by the way,
delicious and is delicious. I think most things are delicious.
(04:02):
You know, the entire doesn't have a face, doesn't have
a mother kind of scale his I'm like, I'm really sorry,
but adorable creatures are pretty tasty, and I can't really
you know, yeah, we we we have to guard our
our furry friends. Whenever Lauren comes to the office. That's
not true. That's not true. It's true she does eat puppies. No, no,
(04:23):
that's not only only rabbits. Okay, funny, but fuzzy bunny rabbits. Hey,
we cannot, we cannot make jokes about eating kittens. Were
on the internet. Okay, that's true, Lauren would we will
be digitally lynched. But I do, actually, I do actually
limit my meat intake for some of these environmental reasons. Right,
(04:47):
and we've mentioned a couple of greenhouse gases and rainforest
but it goes well beyond that too, right, I mean,
we're talking about think how much of the world's grains
are dedicated to feeding the cattle that we depend the
pond for for our beef. Right right, The number that
I've seen is that it takes about eight pounds of
feed to create one pound of beef. That's a lot
(05:10):
of resources to create that meat that could be used
for other things, uh people exactly. And Uh. Then there's
also how much water is necessary not only to water
the cow, like so the cow has enough water to live,
but from everything else that's involved in the meat industry,
(05:31):
from growing that grain in the first place, to all
the different production uh stages of meat. This is this
requires a lot of energy, resources, stuff that we could
be using for other things, and it's truly unsustainable, right.
Um that that that world consumption of meat is expected
to double again by and these environmental issues are not small.
(05:53):
One study in two thousand seven by the National Institute
of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that for
every kilogram or two point two pounds of beef, it's
it's responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted
by the average European car going two fifty kilometers or
what's that like a hundred and that's that's a significant, huge,
(06:16):
it's it's it's it's enough energy to to burn a
hundred light bulb for twenty days, um and and when
you when you get into the kind of numbers that
we're looking at right as as you know, one of
the things we want to try and solve, obviously, I
would imagine most people would want to solve is a
problem like world poverty. I mean, that's a huge, huge problem,
(06:36):
and obviously we don't want people living in poverty. It's
a terrible thing. But as people do get more more
more affluent than they do tend to consume more meat.
So if we were able to find some environmentally friendly
way to produce that meat, and we'll talk more about
that in a little bit, but let's assume that we
could find an environmentally friendly way that that at east
(07:00):
had a much lower impact upon the environment than the
conventional method of growing beef. A lot of the concerns
I've read, or a lot of the criticisms I've read,
are not that it wouldn't uh, it wouldn't have a
positive impact on the environment. That part seems to be
pretty much cut and dry, that this would be good
news for the environment, The problem is that it would
not actually go to necessarily combating world hunger, at least
(07:24):
not directly. And the reason for that would be because
the issue of access to meet It's not access, it's
the price, right, It's a poverty problem. It's not just
an access problem. Because, by by a lot of estimations,
we produce enough food in the world right now to
feed every for two thousand calorie a day diet. We
(07:47):
have enough to handle everybody, but not everyone has access
to that food, not because of the the actual access problem,
but because of the financial problem. So the while, while
we're going to be talking in a little bit about
some alternate ways of getting at beef besides raising an
animal and slaughtering it, that doesn't necessarily mean that suddenly
(08:09):
we've solved the world hunger problem. That's a much more
complex issue. Although once we can free up more of
that land um to to to go to production of
a more sustainable food source, I think that that would
go that could help it all Again, it all depends
upon how we dispense with that. Sure, So if we're
(08:29):
talking about the future, I think we need to talk
about alternatives because you do have this issue, this lingering
issue that it's hard to overcome. And the issue is
people want to eat meat. They just want it, and
it's going to be hard to just tell them no,
you need to eat beans and grains and not eat me. Right, Well,
(08:51):
it's it's tasting. It's always been a status symbol. I think, yeah, culturally,
So is there a way we can come up with
something that will at the same time, SAT spied this
need people have without causing the same problems that meat does, Right,
are there are there real alternatives? Well, you know, for
a long time at least people who absolutely love eating
(09:13):
meat would have said no that the like, for example,
plant proteins, plant proteins. We can get protein from plants.
There are certain plants that produce the proteins that are
necessary for us that you could switch to those and
receive a lot of the benefits you would receive from
eating various types of meat that they do contain slightly
different combinations of proteins and slightly different fats, and it's
(09:35):
it's very um. There are a lot of questions in
the nutrition industry about whether you know whether one kind
of protein whether is more complete than another, or whether
a certain kind of fat is healthier than another. In
other words, like none of the choices that we're about
to talk about are necessarily like you should like one
one to one replacement, right right There might be combinations
(09:55):
of diet that would be necessary for you to have
a healthy adult diet that is going to provide you
all the nutrients and proteins that you need. Uh that
that it also is not going to have any detrimental
health effects. But you know, in the past, we would
say things like, uh soy based meat replacement things that
soy burgers or tofu or uh tempei which is part
(10:19):
of a that's made from fermented soy. Tofu is unfermented soy.
But then there's a big controversy about the health benefits
and and and drawbacks of soy right now, I mean
right we talked in our last episode about GMOs, and
if you thought that that was a big, big fighting issue,
then you have not read the forums. GMO can be
(10:42):
considered a kerfuffle compared to the chaotic arguments that happened
within the soy community and the people who are absolutely
for the use of soy and those who say that
it is the most poisonous thing you could put in
your body. Uh. Really, the science is kind of still
developing on this. There are conflicting reports from everything from
(11:03):
the way it soy can impact your ability to absorb
minerals to whether it's a carcinogen or it prevents cancer.
Right right, Well, okay, So the thing with soys that
it contains isoflavorans um, which which are that that sounds delicious.
That's no flavor savor its isoflavon that sounds like a
(11:24):
delicious frozen treat. That it's um. They're chemically similar to estrogen's.
So I'm not sure what cand of ice creamstand you've
been going to, but I don't I don't think it's
quite the same thing. Um to two major types, and
in particular found in soy, um can can act like
estrogen in the body, which means that they find estrogen receptors,
(11:45):
which can spur estrogen receptor positive tumor growth. Can sometimes
in some studies. I mean, you know, it's it's any
time that you're talking about nutrition, um, you're you're you're
talking about individuals, all of whom have a different a
different genetic makeup, a different history, a different environment. Um,
they're eating other things differently. You know, no, no one
(12:08):
in any of these studies is is being constricted to
precisely the same diet. So what you're saying is there
are a lot of variables, and there are other studies
that have shown that these same sort of elements can
actually have a limiting factor on tumor growth. So it's
it's there's conflicting information within the science itself. And it
may very well be that it's either a duration thing,
(12:29):
like it's how how long you have been consuming this
particular stuff, whether or not it has this initial boost
to like and usually it's for people who are already
already undergoing cancer treatments that are really at a high
risk here. But there's a possibility that at first there's
a negative impact and then over time there's a positive impact.
(12:51):
There's a possibility that it's an amount thing, but we
don't really know. The problem is that there are people
on either side of the argument who have taken very
concrete stance is on this and uh, and so there's
not a lot of dialogue in the middle. It's a
lot of of you know, firm quote unquote facts on
either side. The problem is the facts don't contradict one
(13:13):
another in some cases. Okay, so I understand how things
like tofu and tempe and satan which which in this
case satan is which is satan. Okay, so we're talking
about protein made from wheat. It's essentially gluten in that case. Right,
Things like this can be a one can be a
(13:34):
good or maybe bad, we don't know, can at least
be some kind of nutritional substitute for meat. But you
wanted to actual like, well, I'm asking, I mean, how
close have we gotten to really replacing meat? I mean
creating a plant based product that actually has the ability
to trick them out into so not just something that
(13:55):
would provide protein, but something that would give you the
same experience as if you were eating actual meat. That's
what you're asking, right, Well, there are several companies that
have been working on this, using plant proteins in various
approaches to create fibers to create a kind of meat
substitute that's supposed to mimic meat so closely that people
who are meat eaters have said, you know, this is this.
(14:17):
It tastes meat, It has that mouth feel of meat.
It sounds I hate using the phrase mouth feel, but
that's the way everyone. Well, the mouth feel of meat,
so you know how it feels when you take a
big old bite of a juicy burger. A lot of
it's part of what the eating experience is, Yes, it
is it is. There's that that, the texture, the firmness,
(14:40):
all of these things play a factor in what we
consider the ideal experience for eating a particular type of food.
Whatever that food might be. It doesn't have to be meat.
It could be whatever, right And for me personally, a
lot of these plant based proteins wake me out the
closer that they tried to get to meet, because it's
it's kind of uncanny valley of meat where almost but
(15:00):
not quite like whatever it is you're trying, and it's
kind of terrifying. Like any any time that chicken has
it has an apostrophe in it, I don't really want
anything to do with it. I would much rather just
eate an actually, like I don't. I don't care for
I don't care for a lot of veggie dogs, for example,
because they just don't really remind me at all of
what hot dogs tasted like. And it's been a long
time since I've had one, so but even then I'll
(15:23):
take a bite like, yes, this is not not it.
I had enough hot dogs back when I Hate meet
to know that this is not the right taste and
not the right texture. But there are companies out there
that have been using plant proteins to create really really
uh compelling products that really, apparently according to people who
eat meat, taste and feel like meat, and those companies
(15:44):
are well one of those. Beyond Meat Beyond Me, Yeah,
it's um. It was the sequel to Son of Meat,
which of course was was the lesser known uh successor
to the great movie or mean a Me tour that
was way downline. I'm talking about meat, just meat, meat,
(16:05):
Son of Meat. Beyond Meat Now. Beyond Meat is a
company that was founded by Ethan Brown. And Ethan Brown
grew up on essentially like a dairy production farm and
went into the clean energy sector before he decided he
wanted to find a way to create vegan friendly option
of using plant proteins in a way that that mimicked
(16:27):
meat so that it would be indistinguishable. And so he
joined up with some researchers and they started working on
this company. They got some funding from some big names.
The founders of Twitter ended up sinking quite a bit
of money in this, not sinking investing money into it,
because it actually has been very successful and according to
the reviews I've read that the products that they create
(16:47):
are they really do taste and feel like meat, so
it seems to have a very positive response. Other ones,
the other companies that also are doing the same thing
include Match, which is a company that came out of
the University of ill Noi at Urbana Champagne UM and Uh.
They mostly supply areas in the Midwest. It's you can
also apparently order their stuff online. Uh. And then there's
(17:10):
another one called Plenty p L E n t I,
which is all of the Netherlands. And all three of
these companies again and again when I was doing research,
were the ones that were mentioned as the companies that
were making products that really did feel like a true
meat substitute, not just a different way to get your protein.
That's that mimics the shape of other things. Like we've
(17:30):
seen veggie burgers everywhere, right, but there's you know, often
a veggie burger can be really tasty, but it's not
something like you don't bite into and think, oh yeah,
that tastes like hamburger to me. It's just like, this
is a different experience, but I like it. It's just
not there's a burger place here in Atlanta that I
think just has an absolutely delicious veggie keenoa burger. But
(17:51):
I like about it that it's like it's really good
because it doesn't taste like it's trying to be fake beef.
It's just of the fake all of the non meat
protein products that I like. I I you know, I
like lentils and I and I and I like tofu. Actually,
I mean mostly when it's deep fried. But isn't that
true of everything? Um? So, you know, chicken fried tofu
(18:13):
is a delicious, delicious thing. It is, um. But so okay,
So if we're if we're looking for something that, let's
say that you don't believe in this whole plant eating
plants things. Right, Let's say that you have just decided
that it's while while close is good, it's not good enough.
You have got to have a beef burger. Is there
(18:34):
any way of making a beef burger or making any
kind of meat, any sort of beef product or or
meat product in general. Is there any way of doing
that that doesn't have this hugely negative environmental impact. Oh yes,
Joe Phillis and you sinister son of a whatever. Go
(18:55):
So this year, uh in London, at an ex in August,
a Dutch researcher named Mark Post from the University of
must riaked cooked up a burger patty. All right, you
do without killing a cow? That was made without killing
(19:18):
a cow. Wait are you just are you telling me
there's just like a cow wandering around the Netherlands that's
missing like a hamburger sized hole in its side. Um no, No,
it is not a cow that you have just cut
a burger out of. Ok this is what's called in
vitro meat, all right, So what does that mean in vitro, Well,
it comes from in glass. It's the idea of meat
(19:41):
produced in a lab. So it's not just taken from
a cow, but it is actually grown from a sort
of cow culture. Okay, So what they did was they
took essentially a biopsy of a cow. Yeah. So all
organisms have these things called stem cells, and these are
or pluripotent cells that can mature into different types of
(20:04):
body cells. So you have stem cells that can make
the cells that occur in a muscle, and of course
the muscle is the part of the cow that you
want to eat for beef. So an interesting thing that
this researcher decided to try was to take a biopsy
from living cow without killing the cow, put it in
(20:24):
a culture in the laboratory UM, and get the stem
cells to grow tiny strips of beef um. And of
course it was a painstaking process that took a long
time and many many cultures UM. But eventually what he
did was he grew enough tiny strips of beef to
(20:45):
mash them all together with some fat cells and make
a burger, a real beef burger. Gosh, that's kind of crazy.
So wait, uh, two questions. How much did this cost? Uh?
The first one costs more than three thousand dollars to make?
(21:06):
Was it supersized? It's a very expensive burger. But of
course it's that expensive because it's never been done before. UM,
and it's actually been estimated. I've got this interesting paper here. UH.
It's called Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production, and it
was a scientific paper from two thousand eleven that uh
(21:29):
predicted or it offered comparisons of the predictions of the
eventual cost of producing lab cultured beef with that of
conventionally grown meat right, and the differences are pretty huge, like,
for example, when it compared uh their estimations for cultured
(21:50):
meat to European raised beef. Uh so their findings where
there was a seven to forty five percent lower energy use,
uh seventy eight to nine six percent lower greenhouse gas emissions,
percent less land use, and eighty two to ninety six
percent less water use. So the demand on resources would
(22:13):
be way lower if we went to some sort of
in vitro be assuming we could scale it up to
a point where it made sense. Obviously, if it never
made economic sense, that it would never happen because we
just wouldn't be able to afford it. But this is
a big thing because the problem with UM getting people
to change their diets is they don't want to write, well,
(22:36):
I mean, beef is tasty, you know. Well that that
also kind of leads me to my second question. Did
either of you see any of the reaction to what
it tasted like? No? I didn't. Yeah, I read some reviews.
They were mixed. I mean, essentially I got the impression
that this was not the kind of burger that you
would be satisfied with if you paid top dollar forward
(22:57):
in a restaurant, but it essentially tasted burger like. So
I get the feeling. The general idea was we're getting there,
but this was this was enough like a burger. I
mean it did taste like beef. Um, it was getting there.
And well it didn't just taste like beef, it was beef.
(23:18):
Again to reiterate, this isn't some weird synthetic thing. This
is the same protein you'd be eating if you killed
a cow and took it out. It's just made without
killing a cow. Yeah. I find it really interesting that
the initial reaction from most people I've talked to when
it comes to this this concept is one of revulsion
that it's you know, that's not natural. Therefore you know
(23:39):
it's it's bad, it's bad, or I can't I can't
stand the thought of eating something that was grown in
a lab. And I sit there and I think, so,
you don't want to eat something that was that was grown.
But it's exactly the same stuff. You know, if you
were to look at the materials, it's exactly the same
stuff as you would get if you had raised and
killed an end moll. So you know, it surprises me
(24:03):
in a way to think that you would have this
kind of immediate reaction. But I guess it's just one
of those things where it's so different from what we've
come to expect that there's that reaction where it's like,
that's not normal, therefore I don't want it. Um. Yeah.
And so there are a lot of benefits that this
kind of meat could actually provide. It. So it's obviously
got the edge on uh energy investure and all that
(24:26):
water resources. It doesn't have the problem of you've got
to put all this grain into it right um, the
way that normal conventionally raised beef does. So you could
actually repurpose that that grain for um. Yeah. Or this
is really interesting. I just read this today. There's the
idea that, well, creating beef like this, you'd actually have
(24:50):
a whole lot more control over the nutritional content of
the beef. Um because in this culture you grow muscle
cells and fat cells separately. What you could actually do,
and this I thought was a really cool idea, was
replaced the normal saturated fat that occurs in a hamburger
patty with something much healthier like Omega three fatty acid.
(25:13):
Interesting that could mean you could get like a hamburger
that would be very low in cholesterol, which is not
the case with hamburgers today. Interesting. Well, that's that's that's
pretty cool. So there's also Sorry, one more cool thing
I thought was was the idea that this could definitely
lead to a decrease in food poisoning and zoonotic diseases. Interesting.
(25:38):
So I have a question for you. Then. Let's say
that we got the invitro beef solution, and we've talked
about plants as a source of protein. Can you think
of anything else that could be a good source of protein?
Can I how many legs are we talking here? Six? Sorry?
(25:58):
I wrote that same joke into the made the same
joke about the supersize me and the script too, So
it's okay, Okay, here's the thing. Lots of people are
talking about the future involving eating insects, and they're not joking, right, Okay, Well,
the thing is that the present involves eating insects. Two
over two billion people on the planet eat insects is
(26:19):
a relatively regular part of their diet. Right those of
us raised on a Western diet, it seems completely alien
to us. It's one of those things that is, it's
one of those easy factors where you show someone like
a bowl of insects or whatever that I haven't even
been prepared yet for eating. Yeah, it's it's what Yeah,
it's it's considered a punishment, right and like you lost,
(26:41):
you have to eat or fear factor now you've got
to eat a cricket and uh not keeping in mind,
you know, ignoring the fact that this is something that
in other parts of the world is a regular part
of a diet. Yeah. For example, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization is really pushing this idea. And one of
the reasons is that if you want to get animal
(27:03):
protein in your diet, insects are a much much more
environmentally sustainable and resource efficient way to do it. Right.
As compared to that eight pounds of feed that it
takes to create one pound of beef that I mentioned earlier,
it would only take two pounds of feet to create
one pound of bump food insect. Yeah. Yeah, And insects
(27:25):
are actually very healthy, low low and fat, high in protein,
high fiber, healthy for you to eat or just like
generally healthy. Like you've got healthy bugs out there, They're wonderful.
There's this misperception that bugs are like dirty right, we
have this idea that obviously, like the cockroach on your
floor is dirty. You don't want to eat that, y'all.
(27:46):
Let me tell you about some pigs. You think that
bacon is delicious, Let me tell you about some picks.
But insects actually, I mean yeah, they're full of good
protein that you can get good iron from insects. You
can and get all kinds of nutrients that we need
are abundant in insects like locusts and caterpillars and beetles
(28:08):
that are already popular delicacies in cuisines around the world.
And essentially all there is is a gross out gap.
People who aren't used to this just need to be
able to get used to the idea. Um, right, right,
they can They admit considerably fewer greenhouse gases required, little
(28:28):
to no land could consume waste products rather than you know,
needing to have um specific crops grown for them. From
what I understand, there's quite a few of them. Oh oh,
there's so many of them. What is it like, there's
two hundred million insects for every person on earth? Yea, um,
there's no there's no problem with supply, so so question
(28:51):
for you Joe, would you eat a bug? Well, I
think if you just offered me a whole bug, I
would amittedly be grossed out about it. But the other
part of me would be I would want to be like, Okay,
I want to try this. You know, I've never had
a bug. But one thing that does encourage me is
the idea that you wouldn't just be necessarily like eating
(29:13):
whole bugs. I mean, we're talking about insect protein, which
could be processed in the same way that any other
protein is processed. If you have a ground chicken patty,
chicken nugget, or you know, or a hamburger made out
of ground beef, you could similarly have ground insect protein
being put into different food products that healthy protein without
(29:34):
you know, the kind of the gross out factor of
the bug. If that's a problem for you, Yeah, it
would be like a like a cricket meal, like an
almond meal or flax meal is sold. Yeah. Yeah, So
it wouldn't just like you know, when you're having a hamburger.
It's not like you're walking up to a cow and
taking a bite out of it some sort of thing.
If you're not Lawrence, I think somebody in here has
(29:56):
actually eaten bugs before. Well I have never voluntari eating
a bug, but also on the back of motorcycles, I
should qualify. I'm pretty sure I eat tons of cockroaches
all the time just because they crawl into my mouth
fall asleep. Yeah, there's well, that was lovely. I did
want to point out that the f d A UM
for for one, has has an allowable amount of bugs
(30:18):
that can be contained within given food products UM without
being considered adulterated. And I'm going to quote a few
things for you here and and all of these I
want you to to understand are even going above these
levels would be considered non hazardous. It would merely be
considered not for example, frozen raspberries anymore. You would have
(30:38):
to label it as frozen raspberries plus larva um the
the The only difference would be in an aesthetic purpose
UM so frozen raspberries an average of four or more
larva poor per five hundred grams, or an average of
ten or more whole insects or equivalent per five hundred
grams UM macaroni, an average of two D twenty five
(31:01):
insect fragments or more per two grams in six or
more sub samples tomato pure average of twenty or more
fly eggs per one grams, or ten or more fly
eggs and one or more maggots per one hundred grams. Yeah, okay,
so here it forward thinking. We think about the future. Yeah,
and the future is insect an. I would I would
(31:22):
like to uh. I would like to say for the
record that I will not be allowing my wife to
listen to this podcast because she will never stop screaming.
But Lauren, how about you? Like Joe and I haven't
voluntarily eaten any bugs? Have you? Yes? Yes, I have? Well,
actually I guess voluntarily was is a contentious term because
(31:43):
one of my friends in college, for some kind of
some kind of world food class project, made some cookies
and uh and brought them along with her one day
when a bench of was were hanging out and was like, hey, Lauren,
have a cookie. And I was like, yeah, cookies and
I ate one and she was like, ha ha, you
just ate gets and I was like it was a
delicious cookie. I don't like trying to you were trying
(32:06):
to to she was. She was trying to gross She
was trying to gross me out, and it did not
work at all. Lauren the cal miterer. It takes more
than that to gross her out. Let me tell you,
not a whole lot more. But no, no, I it was.
It was tasty. I mean it was. It was kind
of an oatmeal oatmeal ish texture to the cookie. Um.
(32:27):
And you know, I had assumed that it was like
an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and uh, and yeah, it
was just made with some some good hearty cricket flower
and the cricket, but oatmeal. You know, I think if
you can dip it in catchup, people eat, yeah, yeah,
or put chocolate chips in it, people will eating, you know,
and you're negating some of the nutritional value at that
(32:48):
point to be fair, to catch up. It's still not
a vegetable. Let's ask Joe, I got a question for
you then. All right, so let's let's say, Uh, let's
say that someone has put down a plate in front
of you. On the left is an in vitro grown burger.
Like it's meat that's made from this in vitro process.
(33:08):
So you've got the beef that's been lab grown on
the left. On the right, you have a burger that's
made from insect protein. Uh. And they ask you they
say that you have to choose one, which one do
you go for? I guess i'd have to see what
they looked like. I don't know. I assuming no, I
have no inherent prejudice, but I well, no, I guess
(33:30):
that's not true. I would like to say that I
wish I didn't have an inherent prejudice, but I'd probably
go for the beef. So you go with the lab
grown beef over the insect, but I'd probably probably Then
I'd go back and try to talk myself into the
insect burger. Okay, Lauren, would you just indulge your voracious
appetite for insects again? Or would you would? I would
(33:51):
ask if I could taste them both and see which one.
I like to say, I would immediately just cut each
of them in half and then smush them together to
make a mega burgers of which have never been don't
I If like you're about to eat your insect burger
and a bug crawled across the plate, would you send
it back right right? If you? If you had a
soup filled with insect protein and there was a fly
(34:12):
in your soup, would that be garnish? Oh? We're funny, um,
you know it's honestly, honestly, I don't have a problem
with either either one. If you were to bring me
like assuming that the insects have been prepared, I agree
with you, Joe. I would have that same sort of
initial reaction if someone just handed me a bug and
said eat this. I think I would definitely balk at that.
(34:35):
But if you're talking about something that's been prepared in
some way, uh, either turned into a kind of meal
and then as in as in like corn meal type
thing and then cooked, or even if you're talking about
something where you've just you know, you removed the legs
from the crickets and then done a quick stir fry
type stuff. I've seen those two. I'd be willing to
(34:55):
try that. I just have never really had the opportunity.
And again, I think I would have to be on
my own because if my wife ever saw me do that,
I would probably end up being divorced because she has
a severe phobia about insects. As for the lab grown beef,
I wouldn't hesitate at all for that other than the
fact that I can't afford it. I would have to
really so, so you wouldn't You wouldn't have a problem
(35:15):
with with lab grown beef. Even though you don't eat
I would. I would eat that. Yeah, I mean a
lot of the objections. First of all, the biggest, the
biggest reason why I don't eat beef is because my
wife doesn't eat, so I don't. Again, I don't have
an ethical issue with it, although as I learned more
and more, because when when I stopped eating beef, it
was before I was really knowledgeable at all about what
was going on with the meat industry. Once I learned
(35:37):
more and more about the environmental impacts, I was like, huh,
I guess it's a good thing I don't do it.
I'm not contributing to that. Uh, that's one of the
reasons why I, you know, don't just immediately try it
again and go back into it. But if it was
lab grown, I was thinking, well, you know, this was
done in a way that what that didn't kill an animal,
it didn't cause a negative environmental impact on the same
(35:57):
level as conventionally grown beef, and I'm curious about it.
I'd go and try it now. I'll probably wouldn't feel
so great afterwards, just from the fact that I haven't
eaten that kind of protein in a really long time.
But that's beside the point. According to those estimates I
came up with and uh, and of course they are
not I came up with the in the paper I found,
(36:18):
um and they are just estimates. But I mean, in
those predictions the lab culture beef was better even than chicken. Yeah,
I mean I would. I'd be willing to try that.
I don't know if my wife would, because again she
psychologically associates meat with not feeling good. And even though
that happened years, even though that happened when she was
(36:38):
in college, I don't know that it necessarily matters where
the meat came from from. The the the human drive
to not poison yourself as a pretty strong one, fairly strong.
It does always make me wonder who was that poor
poor caveman who was given the job of all right,
eat that and find out if it kills you, Chris,
don't eat it? Yeah, all right, Well, do you have
(36:59):
any else you want to talk about the future of protein?
Before we wrap up, I'm just gonna say the future
of food is gonna be weirder than you can imagine. Yeah,
it's gonna be It's gonna be delicious too. I imagine. Yeah,
I'm looking forward to it. Eat all the things, Eat
all the things. All Right with that, we're gonna wrap up, guys.
If you have any suggestions, I recommend you go to
f w thinking dot com. That's our website where we've
(37:20):
got all of the videos, we have the podcast, we've
got blog posts, we've got articles. Everything you would ever
want when it comes to these kind of topics is
all there. You can join in our conversation. We look
forward to hearing from you, and you will hear from
us again really sooner. We're more on this topic in
the future of technology. This is Forward Thinking dot Com,
(37:54):
brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says, eat beef,
feed beef. It's a mighty good food. It's a great
a meal. When I'm in the mood, I'm Jonathan Strickling,
(00:23):
I'm learning both. I'm Joe McCormick. And that was the
Reverend Hoord need coming up next. No, we wanted to
talk about the future of protein, right the idea, this
idea of protein and the various sources that we depend
upon for protein, everything from beef to to park to chicken,
(00:43):
to plant protein to well, I don't want to spoil it,
we'll get there, but uh, I wanted to talk about
how the way we get protein can make a huge
impact on the world around us. Right. Well, well, why
why are we talking about this in the first place?
I mean, if we've got perfectly good, four legged sources
of food running around, why would we want anything else. Well,
(01:05):
one of the reasons is because those perfectly good, four
legged sources of food put a pretty hefty toll on
the environment, particularly when we're needing to produce it in
the the amounts that we we require, and particularly if
we are talking about meat of the beef variety. Yeah,
that one and that one is the worst of the
worst when it comes to environmental impact. And by environmental
(01:28):
impact we mean everything from clearing enough ground for for grazing,
which you know, as our demand for meat increases, obviously
the demand for land for cattle increases. Uh. That can
impact everything from rainforce to other delicate ecosystems, and uh
we could end up losing lots of other valuable resources
(01:48):
in the process and causing other issues. Then you've got
things like greenhouse gas emissions, which particularly with beef, are
a real problem, things like methane. Cows produced lot of it,
But it's not just emissions directly from the cows. When
you produce the process of meat, right, there's a huge
(02:09):
backstory to that meat and all of the different things
that have had to happen to make that meat available
to you add up over time, right, and uh, you know,
first of all, I want to say that the amount
of meat that we are eating is on the rise.
The world's total meat supply as of ninety one was
like seventy one million tons. As of two thousand and
seven it was more like two four million tons. Yeah, yeah,
(02:33):
it you know, doubled over that period. But in the
developing world it actually rose twice as fast um, which
which basically just means that as people come into better
economic situation situations, they consume more meat. Yeah, there is
a correlation between your financial status and the amount of
meat you typically consume. You being societies out there, that's
(02:57):
that's right, because you don't actually eat meat, Dad, don't.
I don't eat mammals. I I do eat fish and
foul but I do not eat mammals. It is not
It has nothing to do with an ethical situation in
my case, although there are plenty of people out there
who make their decisions based on their own personal beliefs
and ethics, and I have nothing against that. But in
(03:18):
my case, it's because my wife had a bad experience
with food poisoning in college, and due to that, she
associates meat with feeling not well, feeling sick, and so
she just she swore it off and she hasn't really
had any sense then, and so when I was dating her,
I started to phase it out of my own diet,
(03:39):
and in the process that means that over the last
eighteen years or so, I've maybe had meat maybe five times, so,
uh meat from the sense in the sitis of mammals.
There there are other types of animals. I will hunt
down and tackle and chew on. Ostrich, by the way,
delicious and is delicious. I think most things are delicious.
(04:02):
You know, the entire doesn't have a face, doesn't have
a mother kind of scale his I'm like, I'm really sorry,
but adorable creatures are pretty tasty, and I can't really
you know, yeah, we we we have to guard our
our furry friends. Whenever Lauren comes to the office. That's
not true. That's not true. It's true she does eat puppies. No, no,
(04:23):
that's not only only rabbits. Okay, funny, but fuzzy bunny rabbits. Hey,
we cannot, we cannot make jokes about eating kittens. Were
on the internet. Okay, that's true, Lauren would we will
be digitally lynched. But I do, actually, I do actually
limit my meat intake for some of these environmental reasons. Right,
(04:47):
and we've mentioned a couple of greenhouse gases and rainforest
but it goes well beyond that too, right, I mean,
we're talking about think how much of the world's grains
are dedicated to feeding the cattle that we depend the
pond for for our beef. Right right, The number that
I've seen is that it takes about eight pounds of
feed to create one pound of beef. That's a lot
(05:10):
of resources to create that meat that could be used
for other things, uh people exactly. And Uh. Then there's
also how much water is necessary not only to water
the cow, like so the cow has enough water to live,
but from everything else that's involved in the meat industry,
(05:31):
from growing that grain in the first place, to all
the different production uh stages of meat. This is this
requires a lot of energy, resources, stuff that we could
be using for other things, and it's truly unsustainable, right.
Um that that that world consumption of meat is expected
to double again by and these environmental issues are not small.
(05:53):
One study in two thousand seven by the National Institute
of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that for
every kilogram or two point two pounds of beef, it's
it's responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted
by the average European car going two fifty kilometers or
what's that like a hundred and that's that's a significant, huge,
(06:16):
it's it's it's it's enough energy to to burn a
hundred light bulb for twenty days, um and and when
you when you get into the kind of numbers that
we're looking at right as as you know, one of
the things we want to try and solve, obviously, I
would imagine most people would want to solve is a
problem like world poverty. I mean, that's a huge, huge problem,
(06:36):
and obviously we don't want people living in poverty. It's
a terrible thing. But as people do get more more
more affluent than they do tend to consume more meat.
So if we were able to find some environmentally friendly
way to produce that meat, and we'll talk more about
that in a little bit, but let's assume that we
could find an environmentally friendly way that that at east
(07:00):
had a much lower impact upon the environment than the
conventional method of growing beef. A lot of the concerns
I've read, or a lot of the criticisms I've read,
are not that it wouldn't uh, it wouldn't have a
positive impact on the environment. That part seems to be
pretty much cut and dry, that this would be good
news for the environment, The problem is that it would
not actually go to necessarily combating world hunger, at least
(07:24):
not directly. And the reason for that would be because
the issue of access to meet It's not access, it's
the price, right, It's a poverty problem. It's not just
an access problem. Because, by by a lot of estimations,
we produce enough food in the world right now to
feed every for two thousand calorie a day diet. We
(07:47):
have enough to handle everybody, but not everyone has access
to that food, not because of the the actual access problem,
but because of the financial problem. So the while, while
we're going to be talking in a little bit about
some alternate ways of getting at beef besides raising an
animal and slaughtering it, that doesn't necessarily mean that suddenly
(08:09):
we've solved the world hunger problem. That's a much more
complex issue. Although once we can free up more of
that land um to to to go to production of
a more sustainable food source, I think that that would
go that could help it all Again, it all depends
upon how we dispense with that. Sure, So if we're
(08:29):
talking about the future, I think we need to talk
about alternatives because you do have this issue, this lingering
issue that it's hard to overcome. And the issue is
people want to eat meat. They just want it, and
it's going to be hard to just tell them no,
you need to eat beans and grains and not eat me. Right, Well,
(08:51):
it's it's tasting. It's always been a status symbol. I think, yeah, culturally,
So is there a way we can come up with
something that will at the same time, SAT spied this
need people have without causing the same problems that meat does, Right,
are there are there real alternatives? Well, you know, for
a long time at least people who absolutely love eating
(09:13):
meat would have said no that the like, for example,
plant proteins, plant proteins. We can get protein from plants.
There are certain plants that produce the proteins that are
necessary for us that you could switch to those and
receive a lot of the benefits you would receive from
eating various types of meat that they do contain slightly
different combinations of proteins and slightly different fats, and it's
(09:35):
it's very um. There are a lot of questions in
the nutrition industry about whether you know whether one kind
of protein whether is more complete than another, or whether
a certain kind of fat is healthier than another. In
other words, like none of the choices that we're about
to talk about are necessarily like you should like one
one to one replacement, right right There might be combinations
(09:55):
of diet that would be necessary for you to have
a healthy adult diet that is going to provide you
all the nutrients and proteins that you need. Uh that
that it also is not going to have any detrimental
health effects. But you know, in the past, we would
say things like, uh soy based meat replacement things that
soy burgers or tofu or uh tempei which is part
(10:19):
of a that's made from fermented soy. Tofu is unfermented soy.
But then there's a big controversy about the health benefits
and and and drawbacks of soy right now, I mean
right we talked in our last episode about GMOs, and
if you thought that that was a big, big fighting issue,
then you have not read the forums. GMO can be
(10:42):
considered a kerfuffle compared to the chaotic arguments that happened
within the soy community and the people who are absolutely
for the use of soy and those who say that
it is the most poisonous thing you could put in
your body. Uh. Really, the science is kind of still
developing on this. There are conflicting reports from everything from
(11:03):
the way it soy can impact your ability to absorb
minerals to whether it's a carcinogen or it prevents cancer.
Right right, Well, okay, So the thing with soys that
it contains isoflavorans um, which which are that that sounds delicious.
That's no flavor savor its isoflavon that sounds like a
(11:24):
delicious frozen treat. That it's um. They're chemically similar to estrogen's.
So I'm not sure what cand of ice creamstand you've
been going to, but I don't I don't think it's
quite the same thing. Um to two major types, and
in particular found in soy, um can can act like
estrogen in the body, which means that they find estrogen receptors,
(11:45):
which can spur estrogen receptor positive tumor growth. Can sometimes
in some studies. I mean, you know, it's it's any
time that you're talking about nutrition, um, you're you're you're
talking about individuals, all of whom have a different a
different genetic makeup, a different history, a different environment. Um,
they're eating other things differently. You know, no, no one
(12:08):
in any of these studies is is being constricted to
precisely the same diet. So what you're saying is there
are a lot of variables, and there are other studies
that have shown that these same sort of elements can
actually have a limiting factor on tumor growth. So it's
it's there's conflicting information within the science itself. And it
may very well be that it's either a duration thing,
(12:29):
like it's how how long you have been consuming this
particular stuff, whether or not it has this initial boost
to like and usually it's for people who are already
already undergoing cancer treatments that are really at a high
risk here. But there's a possibility that at first there's
a negative impact and then over time there's a positive impact.
(12:51):
There's a possibility that it's an amount thing, but we
don't really know. The problem is that there are people
on either side of the argument who have taken very
concrete stance is on this and uh, and so there's
not a lot of dialogue in the middle. It's a
lot of of you know, firm quote unquote facts on
either side. The problem is the facts don't contradict one
(13:13):
another in some cases. Okay, so I understand how things
like tofu and tempe and satan which which in this
case satan is which is satan. Okay, so we're talking
about protein made from wheat. It's essentially gluten in that case. Right,
Things like this can be a one can be a
(13:34):
good or maybe bad, we don't know, can at least
be some kind of nutritional substitute for meat. But you
wanted to actual like, well, I'm asking, I mean, how
close have we gotten to really replacing meat? I mean
creating a plant based product that actually has the ability
to trick them out into so not just something that
(13:55):
would provide protein, but something that would give you the
same experience as if you were eating actual meat. That's
what you're asking, right, Well, there are several companies that
have been working on this, using plant proteins in various
approaches to create fibers to create a kind of meat
substitute that's supposed to mimic meat so closely that people
who are meat eaters have said, you know, this is this.
(14:17):
It tastes meat, It has that mouth feel of meat.
It sounds I hate using the phrase mouth feel, but
that's the way everyone. Well, the mouth feel of meat,
so you know how it feels when you take a
big old bite of a juicy burger. A lot of
it's part of what the eating experience is, Yes, it
is it is. There's that that, the texture, the firmness,
(14:40):
all of these things play a factor in what we
consider the ideal experience for eating a particular type of food.
Whatever that food might be. It doesn't have to be meat.
It could be whatever, right And for me personally, a
lot of these plant based proteins wake me out the
closer that they tried to get to meet, because it's
it's kind of uncanny valley of meat where almost but
(15:00):
not quite like whatever it is you're trying, and it's
kind of terrifying. Like any any time that chicken has
it has an apostrophe in it, I don't really want
anything to do with it. I would much rather just
eate an actually, like I don't. I don't care for
I don't care for a lot of veggie dogs, for example,
because they just don't really remind me at all of
what hot dogs tasted like. And it's been a long
time since I've had one, so but even then I'll
(15:23):
take a bite like, yes, this is not not it.
I had enough hot dogs back when I Hate meet
to know that this is not the right taste and
not the right texture. But there are companies out there
that have been using plant proteins to create really really
uh compelling products that really, apparently according to people who
eat meat, taste and feel like meat, and those companies
(15:44):
are well one of those. Beyond Meat Beyond Me, Yeah,
it's um. It was the sequel to Son of Meat,
which of course was was the lesser known uh successor
to the great movie or mean a Me tour that
was way downline. I'm talking about meat, just meat, meat,
(16:05):
Son of Meat. Beyond Meat Now. Beyond Meat is a
company that was founded by Ethan Brown. And Ethan Brown
grew up on essentially like a dairy production farm and
went into the clean energy sector before he decided he
wanted to find a way to create vegan friendly option
of using plant proteins in a way that that mimicked
(16:27):
meat so that it would be indistinguishable. And so he
joined up with some researchers and they started working on
this company. They got some funding from some big names.
The founders of Twitter ended up sinking quite a bit
of money in this, not sinking investing money into it,
because it actually has been very successful and according to
the reviews I've read that the products that they create
(16:47):
are they really do taste and feel like meat, so
it seems to have a very positive response. Other ones,
the other companies that also are doing the same thing
include Match, which is a company that came out of
the University of ill Noi at Urbana Champagne UM and Uh.
They mostly supply areas in the Midwest. It's you can
also apparently order their stuff online. Uh. And then there's
(17:10):
another one called Plenty p L E n t I,
which is all of the Netherlands. And all three of
these companies again and again when I was doing research,
were the ones that were mentioned as the companies that
were making products that really did feel like a true
meat substitute, not just a different way to get your protein.
That's that mimics the shape of other things. Like we've
(17:30):
seen veggie burgers everywhere, right, but there's you know, often
a veggie burger can be really tasty, but it's not
something like you don't bite into and think, oh yeah,
that tastes like hamburger to me. It's just like, this
is a different experience, but I like it. It's just
not there's a burger place here in Atlanta that I
think just has an absolutely delicious veggie keenoa burger. But
(17:51):
I like about it that it's like it's really good
because it doesn't taste like it's trying to be fake beef.
It's just of the fake all of the non meat
protein products that I like. I I you know, I
like lentils and I and I and I like tofu. Actually,
I mean mostly when it's deep fried. But isn't that
true of everything? Um? So, you know, chicken fried tofu
(18:13):
is a delicious, delicious thing. It is, um. But so okay,
So if we're if we're looking for something that, let's
say that you don't believe in this whole plant eating
plants things. Right, Let's say that you have just decided
that it's while while close is good, it's not good enough.
You have got to have a beef burger. Is there
(18:34):
any way of making a beef burger or making any
kind of meat, any sort of beef product or or
meat product in general. Is there any way of doing
that that doesn't have this hugely negative environmental impact. Oh yes,
Joe Phillis and you sinister son of a whatever. Go
(18:55):
So this year, uh in London, at an ex in August,
a Dutch researcher named Mark Post from the University of
must riaked cooked up a burger patty. All right, you
do without killing a cow? That was made without killing
(19:18):
a cow. Wait are you just are you telling me
there's just like a cow wandering around the Netherlands that's
missing like a hamburger sized hole in its side. Um no, No,
it is not a cow that you have just cut
a burger out of. Ok this is what's called in
vitro meat, all right, So what does that mean in vitro, Well,
it comes from in glass. It's the idea of meat
(19:41):
produced in a lab. So it's not just taken from
a cow, but it is actually grown from a sort
of cow culture. Okay, So what they did was they
took essentially a biopsy of a cow. Yeah. So all
organisms have these things called stem cells, and these are
or pluripotent cells that can mature into different types of
(20:04):
body cells. So you have stem cells that can make
the cells that occur in a muscle, and of course
the muscle is the part of the cow that you
want to eat for beef. So an interesting thing that
this researcher decided to try was to take a biopsy
from living cow without killing the cow, put it in
(20:24):
a culture in the laboratory UM, and get the stem
cells to grow tiny strips of beef um. And of
course it was a painstaking process that took a long
time and many many cultures UM. But eventually what he
did was he grew enough tiny strips of beef to
(20:45):
mash them all together with some fat cells and make
a burger, a real beef burger. Gosh, that's kind of crazy.
So wait, uh, two questions. How much did this cost? Uh?
The first one costs more than three thousand dollars to make?
(21:06):
Was it supersized? It's a very expensive burger. But of
course it's that expensive because it's never been done before. UM,
and it's actually been estimated. I've got this interesting paper here. UH.
It's called Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production, and it
was a scientific paper from two thousand eleven that uh
(21:29):
predicted or it offered comparisons of the predictions of the
eventual cost of producing lab cultured beef with that of
conventionally grown meat right, and the differences are pretty huge, like,
for example, when it compared uh their estimations for cultured
(21:50):
meat to European raised beef. Uh so their findings where
there was a seven to forty five percent lower energy use,
uh seventy eight to nine six percent lower greenhouse gas emissions,
percent less land use, and eighty two to ninety six
percent less water use. So the demand on resources would
(22:13):
be way lower if we went to some sort of
in vitro be assuming we could scale it up to
a point where it made sense. Obviously, if it never
made economic sense, that it would never happen because we
just wouldn't be able to afford it. But this is
a big thing because the problem with UM getting people
to change their diets is they don't want to write, well,
(22:36):
I mean, beef is tasty, you know. Well that that
also kind of leads me to my second question. Did
either of you see any of the reaction to what
it tasted like? No? I didn't. Yeah, I read some reviews.
They were mixed. I mean, essentially I got the impression
that this was not the kind of burger that you
would be satisfied with if you paid top dollar forward
(22:57):
in a restaurant, but it essentially tasted burger like. So
I get the feeling. The general idea was we're getting there,
but this was this was enough like a burger. I
mean it did taste like beef. Um, it was getting there.
And well it didn't just taste like beef, it was beef.
(23:18):
Again to reiterate, this isn't some weird synthetic thing. This
is the same protein you'd be eating if you killed
a cow and took it out. It's just made without
killing a cow. Yeah. I find it really interesting that
the initial reaction from most people I've talked to when
it comes to this this concept is one of revulsion
that it's you know, that's not natural. Therefore you know
(23:39):
it's it's bad, it's bad, or I can't I can't
stand the thought of eating something that was grown in
a lab. And I sit there and I think, so,
you don't want to eat something that was that was grown.
But it's exactly the same stuff. You know, if you
were to look at the materials, it's exactly the same
stuff as you would get if you had raised and
killed an end moll. So you know, it surprises me
(24:03):
in a way to think that you would have this
kind of immediate reaction. But I guess it's just one
of those things where it's so different from what we've
come to expect that there's that reaction where it's like,
that's not normal, therefore I don't want it. Um. Yeah.
And so there are a lot of benefits that this
kind of meat could actually provide. It. So it's obviously
got the edge on uh energy investure and all that
(24:26):
water resources. It doesn't have the problem of you've got
to put all this grain into it right um, the
way that normal conventionally raised beef does. So you could
actually repurpose that that grain for um. Yeah. Or this
is really interesting. I just read this today. There's the
idea that, well, creating beef like this, you'd actually have
(24:50):
a whole lot more control over the nutritional content of
the beef. Um because in this culture you grow muscle
cells and fat cells separately. What you could actually do,
and this I thought was a really cool idea, was
replaced the normal saturated fat that occurs in a hamburger
patty with something much healthier like Omega three fatty acid.
(25:13):
Interesting that could mean you could get like a hamburger
that would be very low in cholesterol, which is not
the case with hamburgers today. Interesting. Well, that's that's that's
pretty cool. So there's also Sorry, one more cool thing
I thought was was the idea that this could definitely
lead to a decrease in food poisoning and zoonotic diseases. Interesting.
(25:38):
So I have a question for you. Then. Let's say
that we got the invitro beef solution, and we've talked
about plants as a source of protein. Can you think
of anything else that could be a good source of protein?
Can I how many legs are we talking here? Six? Sorry?
(25:58):
I wrote that same joke into the made the same
joke about the supersize me and the script too, So
it's okay, Okay, here's the thing. Lots of people are
talking about the future involving eating insects, and they're not joking, right, Okay, Well,
the thing is that the present involves eating insects. Two
over two billion people on the planet eat insects is
(26:19):
a relatively regular part of their diet. Right those of
us raised on a Western diet, it seems completely alien
to us. It's one of those things that is, it's
one of those easy factors where you show someone like
a bowl of insects or whatever that I haven't even
been prepared yet for eating. Yeah, it's it's what Yeah,
it's it's considered a punishment, right and like you lost,
(26:41):
you have to eat or fear factor now you've got
to eat a cricket and uh not keeping in mind,
you know, ignoring the fact that this is something that
in other parts of the world is a regular part
of a diet. Yeah. For example, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization is really pushing this idea. And one of
the reasons is that if you want to get animal
(27:03):
protein in your diet, insects are a much much more
environmentally sustainable and resource efficient way to do it. Right.
As compared to that eight pounds of feed that it
takes to create one pound of beef that I mentioned earlier,
it would only take two pounds of feet to create
one pound of bump food insect. Yeah. Yeah, And insects
(27:25):
are actually very healthy, low low and fat, high in protein,
high fiber, healthy for you to eat or just like
generally healthy. Like you've got healthy bugs out there, They're wonderful.
There's this misperception that bugs are like dirty right, we
have this idea that obviously, like the cockroach on your
floor is dirty. You don't want to eat that, y'all.
(27:46):
Let me tell you about some pigs. You think that
bacon is delicious, Let me tell you about some picks.
But insects actually, I mean yeah, they're full of good
protein that you can get good iron from insects. You
can and get all kinds of nutrients that we need
are abundant in insects like locusts and caterpillars and beetles
(28:08):
that are already popular delicacies in cuisines around the world.
And essentially all there is is a gross out gap.
People who aren't used to this just need to be
able to get used to the idea. Um, right, right,
they can They admit considerably fewer greenhouse gases required, little
(28:28):
to no land could consume waste products rather than you know,
needing to have um specific crops grown for them. From
what I understand, there's quite a few of them. Oh oh,
there's so many of them. What is it like, there's
two hundred million insects for every person on earth? Yea, um,
there's no there's no problem with supply, so so question
(28:51):
for you Joe, would you eat a bug? Well, I
think if you just offered me a whole bug, I
would amittedly be grossed out about it. But the other
part of me would be I would want to be like, Okay,
I want to try this. You know, I've never had
a bug. But one thing that does encourage me is
the idea that you wouldn't just be necessarily like eating
(29:13):
whole bugs. I mean, we're talking about insect protein, which
could be processed in the same way that any other
protein is processed. If you have a ground chicken patty,
chicken nugget, or you know, or a hamburger made out
of ground beef, you could similarly have ground insect protein
being put into different food products that healthy protein without
(29:34):
you know, the kind of the gross out factor of
the bug. If that's a problem for you, Yeah, it
would be like a like a cricket meal, like an
almond meal or flax meal is sold. Yeah. Yeah, So
it wouldn't just like you know, when you're having a hamburger.
It's not like you're walking up to a cow and
taking a bite out of it some sort of thing.
If you're not Lawrence, I think somebody in here has
(29:56):
actually eaten bugs before. Well I have never voluntari eating
a bug, but also on the back of motorcycles, I
should qualify. I'm pretty sure I eat tons of cockroaches
all the time just because they crawl into my mouth
fall asleep. Yeah, there's well, that was lovely. I did
want to point out that the f d A UM
for for one, has has an allowable amount of bugs
(30:18):
that can be contained within given food products UM without
being considered adulterated. And I'm going to quote a few
things for you here and and all of these I
want you to to understand are even going above these
levels would be considered non hazardous. It would merely be
considered not for example, frozen raspberries anymore. You would have
(30:38):
to label it as frozen raspberries plus larva um the
the The only difference would be in an aesthetic purpose
UM so frozen raspberries an average of four or more
larva poor per five hundred grams, or an average of
ten or more whole insects or equivalent per five hundred
grams UM macaroni, an average of two D twenty five
(31:01):
insect fragments or more per two grams in six or
more sub samples tomato pure average of twenty or more
fly eggs per one grams, or ten or more fly
eggs and one or more maggots per one hundred grams. Yeah, okay,
so here it forward thinking. We think about the future. Yeah,
and the future is insect an. I would I would
(31:22):
like to uh. I would like to say for the
record that I will not be allowing my wife to
listen to this podcast because she will never stop screaming.
But Lauren, how about you? Like Joe and I haven't
voluntarily eaten any bugs? Have you? Yes? Yes, I have? Well,
actually I guess voluntarily was is a contentious term because
(31:43):
one of my friends in college, for some kind of
some kind of world food class project, made some cookies
and uh and brought them along with her one day
when a bench of was were hanging out and was like, hey, Lauren,
have a cookie. And I was like, yeah, cookies and
I ate one and she was like, ha ha, you
just ate gets and I was like it was a
delicious cookie. I don't like trying to you were trying
(32:06):
to to she was. She was trying to gross She
was trying to gross me out, and it did not
work at all. Lauren the cal miterer. It takes more
than that to gross her out. Let me tell you,
not a whole lot more. But no, no, I it was.
It was tasty. I mean it was. It was kind
of an oatmeal oatmeal ish texture to the cookie. Um.
(32:27):
And you know, I had assumed that it was like
an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and uh, and yeah, it
was just made with some some good hearty cricket flower
and the cricket, but oatmeal. You know, I think if
you can dip it in catchup, people eat, yeah, yeah,
or put chocolate chips in it, people will eating, you know,
and you're negating some of the nutritional value at that
(32:48):
point to be fair, to catch up. It's still not
a vegetable. Let's ask Joe, I got a question for
you then. All right, so let's let's say, Uh, let's
say that someone has put down a plate in front
of you. On the left is an in vitro grown burger.
Like it's meat that's made from this in vitro process.
(33:08):
So you've got the beef that's been lab grown on
the left. On the right, you have a burger that's
made from insect protein. Uh. And they ask you they
say that you have to choose one, which one do
you go for? I guess i'd have to see what
they looked like. I don't know. I assuming no, I
have no inherent prejudice, but I well, no, I guess
(33:30):
that's not true. I would like to say that I
wish I didn't have an inherent prejudice, but I'd probably
go for the beef. So you go with the lab
grown beef over the insect, but I'd probably probably Then
I'd go back and try to talk myself into the
insect burger. Okay, Lauren, would you just indulge your voracious
appetite for insects again? Or would you would? I would
(33:51):
ask if I could taste them both and see which one.
I like to say, I would immediately just cut each
of them in half and then smush them together to
make a mega burgers of which have never been don't
I If like you're about to eat your insect burger
and a bug crawled across the plate, would you send
it back right right? If you? If you had a
soup filled with insect protein and there was a fly
(34:12):
in your soup, would that be garnish? Oh? We're funny, um,
you know it's honestly, honestly, I don't have a problem
with either either one. If you were to bring me
like assuming that the insects have been prepared, I agree
with you, Joe. I would have that same sort of
initial reaction if someone just handed me a bug and
said eat this. I think I would definitely balk at that.
(34:35):
But if you're talking about something that's been prepared in
some way, uh, either turned into a kind of meal
and then as in as in like corn meal type
thing and then cooked, or even if you're talking about
something where you've just you know, you removed the legs
from the crickets and then done a quick stir fry
type stuff. I've seen those two. I'd be willing to
(34:55):
try that. I just have never really had the opportunity.
And again, I think I would have to be on
my own because if my wife ever saw me do that,
I would probably end up being divorced because she has
a severe phobia about insects. As for the lab grown beef,
I wouldn't hesitate at all for that other than the
fact that I can't afford it. I would have to
really so, so you wouldn't You wouldn't have a problem
(35:15):
with with lab grown beef. Even though you don't eat
I would. I would eat that. Yeah, I mean a
lot of the objections. First of all, the biggest, the
biggest reason why I don't eat beef is because my
wife doesn't eat, so I don't. Again, I don't have
an ethical issue with it, although as I learned more
and more, because when when I stopped eating beef, it
was before I was really knowledgeable at all about what
was going on with the meat industry. Once I learned
(35:37):
more and more about the environmental impacts, I was like, huh,
I guess it's a good thing I don't do it.
I'm not contributing to that. Uh, that's one of the
reasons why I, you know, don't just immediately try it
again and go back into it. But if it was
lab grown, I was thinking, well, you know, this was
done in a way that what that didn't kill an animal,
it didn't cause a negative environmental impact on the same
(35:57):
level as conventionally grown beef, and I'm curious about it.
I'd go and try it now. I'll probably wouldn't feel
so great afterwards, just from the fact that I haven't
eaten that kind of protein in a really long time.
But that's beside the point. According to those estimates I
came up with and uh, and of course they are
not I came up with the in the paper I found,
(36:18):
um and they are just estimates. But I mean, in
those predictions the lab culture beef was better even than chicken. Yeah,
I mean I would. I'd be willing to try that.
I don't know if my wife would, because again she
psychologically associates meat with not feeling good. And even though
that happened years, even though that happened when she was
(36:38):
in college, I don't know that it necessarily matters where
the meat came from from. The the the human drive
to not poison yourself as a pretty strong one, fairly strong.
It does always make me wonder who was that poor
poor caveman who was given the job of all right,
eat that and find out if it kills you, Chris,
don't eat it? Yeah, all right, Well, do you have
(36:59):
any else you want to talk about the future of protein?
Before we wrap up, I'm just gonna say the future
of food is gonna be weirder than you can imagine. Yeah,
it's gonna be It's gonna be delicious too. I imagine. Yeah,
I'm looking forward to it. Eat all the things, Eat
all the things. All Right with that, we're gonna wrap up, guys.
If you have any suggestions, I recommend you go to
f w thinking dot com. That's our website where we've
(37:20):
got all of the videos, we have the podcast, we've
got blog posts, we've got articles. Everything you would ever
want when it comes to these kind of topics is
all there. You can join in our conversation. We look
forward to hearing from you, and you will hear from
us again really sooner. We're more on this topic in
the future of technology. This is Forward Thinking dot Com,
(37:54):
brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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