Is lab-grown the future of meat?
Even after $1.6B in investment into the sector, is cultivated meat a viable long-term solution?
I created a fact-based, humorous video covering the history and future of meat replacements, including plenty of data-driven insights.
The short answer is: YES, it’s an incredible necessary thing for humanity. But that doesn’t necessarily mean these products will be flying off the shelves in the short term.
What about you? Would you eat/support/invest in lab-grown meat?
Watch this as a video.
Why is it so hard to sell lab-grown meat? What is the future of food? Can our food and our meat be more ethical and more sustainable on a planet that will soon approach 10 billion human inhabitants? How did lab-grown meat become a thing? And why are there so many companies getting funding for it while at the same time struggling to reach broader adoption? Today there are more meat replacement options in stores than at any point in human history. However, this is still a niche market, and the global demand for animal-based meat feels kind of silly to say that out loud is only rising. At the start of this, I can give you a 100% ironclad money-back guarantee. I promise you will not change how you feel about any of this, so rest assured, I solemnly swear that your beliefs will not be challenged in any way. Which reminds me of this episode's sponsor, Futility. You know it's hopeless, but you try anyway. Futility, wasting human lives since time-emorial now for the low-low price of just decades of your one, leading life. Future optimist, you sure... We'll break down the future of meat, and meat replacements into three main segments. Why we need meat alternatives, current meat alternatives, and the future of lab-grown or cultivated meat. And lastly, there's a bonus why all of these are a tough sell for the casual consumer with a sub point of why you're likely to write a hateful comment on this video without even watching it. Going into this, I know that this is an emotionally charged topic. People have stronger opinions about this than which member of BTS is the cutest. Obviously, it's Jungkook. Food is like religion for most of us, and there are centuries of evolution and cultural programming behind something as seemingly simple as "I just like the way meat tastes more." And for all the meat purists out there, remember that if you dismiss any meat alternative but you still eat Taco Bell, your opinion counts for nothing. Nothing! Let's start with why so many entrepreneurs are working on meat alternatives. First of all, the alternative meat sector is already a billion plus dollar market in terms of capital investment, yes. AI is the only thing you ever see in the startup world right now, but even still, there is real money out there for aspiring food entrepreneurs. But why do billionaires and VCs invest in a sector that seems doomed to be unpopular? According to an article from The Washington Post, "The environmental benefits are clear. Researchers estimate that 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from raising meat, producing a hundred grams of protein from beef, for example, sends around 25 kilograms of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, making the same amount of tofu on the other hand emits around 1.6 kilograms." Books like the China study in the last 20 years of documentary filmmaking on Netflix tell us that raising beef in particular is one of the most harmful things human beings do to our planet in terms of methane released, in terms of permanently damaging grassland, in terms of permanently destroying rainforest to make room for cows, and much more. And all of that says nothing of the ethical quandary of whether it's moral that we've killed over 29 billion animals for food so far this year alone. Yes, 29 billion, yes, the year is only half over. Some sources say that livestock husbandry, or wifery as the case may be, accounts for more climate harm than all forms of transportation combined. And it might be the single biggest way we're irrevocably harming our planet, especially as our global meat tooth continues to rise in developing nations. So by all statistics and logic, if we value our longevity as a species on planet earth, many smart and wealthy people believe we ought to seriously reconsider our relationship to consuming meat. Conversely, if we don't value our longevity as a species, we ought to get drunk, smoke some cigarettes, and ride our jet ski off a cliff in search of the real most important thing in the known universe, improving the click-through rate of our YouTube thumbnails. Which brings us to our second point. What are the current choices for people who want to consume less meats, but like the taste? Well, there are plant-based meat alternatives, fungi-based meat alternatives, and culture and cell-based meat. Plant-based meat is perhaps the most commonly known, think-impossible, or beyond burgers. For many, these were breakthrough products that brought new levels of taste to plant-based eaters, far beyond what was available for decades prior when tofu was kinda really the only option. Most of us have tasted these in our lives, and most of us have opinions on them. Protein? Yeah. Flavor? Yes. Slash debatable. Healthy? One article from the USDA.gov says many consumers believe that plant-based meat and plant-based foods are minimally processed, more healthful and nutritionally superior to otherwise similar animal-based counterparts. In reality, plant-based meats are ultra-processed too, and contain numerous food-grade chemicals as ingredients. The word is out, plant-based does not necessarily equal healthy, but healthy or not, it does equal fewer animals killed, rainforest destroyed, and dramatically lowered carbon emissions. Of course, who cares about all of that boring stuff? I just care about two things. One, how things taste. Two, my gains at the gym. But yes, even Harvard agrees that many meat alternatives aren't necessarily healthy, because if there's one thing all humans care about, it's being healthy all the time. So obviously eating the real thing is healthier for us, right? Problem solved. Except, one study suggests swapping meat for micoprotein significantly reduces levels of cancer-causing genotoxins in humans, and it's long been kind of known that red meat and processed meat consumption is associated with several types of cancer. So would you rather get more muscle mass in the gym today, or possibly extend your life a couple decades later, decisions, decisions? That word I just used, micoprotein. That's a fancy word for fungi-based meat replacements out there, like corn. But we're not allowed to say mushroom-based, because corn removed the phrase mushroom-derived protein from its packaging after being sued by the American Mushroom Institute in 2002 for misleading labeling, which is a real thing that happened that is so hilarious as to defy belief. I've also interviewed other players in the fungi-based meat replacement space, such as the founder of the Better Meat Co. Paul Shapiro. According to that same article, billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates believe fungus meat is the future of the fake meat industry, but even a billionaire's endorsement cannot make the flaws of fungus meat disappear, end quote. And I know what you're thinking, Bezos and Gates are so popular and so likeable that you'll gladly do anything they tell you to. But here's where meat eaters will rejoice, with micoproteins too. Three ounces of the fungal concoction contains half as much protein as three ounces of real chicken or beef. Fungus-based meat also contains half of the essential amino acid density of real meat. So you have to eat more to get the same short-term health benefits gained at the gym. At all of this, the global market for meat alternatives is anticipated to nearly double in the next three years to 15 billion plus US dollars, making it a solid industry for all of the entrepreneurs who want to build an eco-business. But our exploration of meat alternatives doesn't stop here. I've chatted with people who are turning soy into pork at a molecular level, and even a founder who raised over a hundred million dollars for plant-based meat. It's the company, Tindall. This and entrepreneurs are discovering new avenues and ideas that seemed absolutely absurd just a few short years ago, with fermentation and bio-hacking yeast seemingly making almost anything possible. Which brings us to lab-grown meat. If meat eaters will gripe about the taste of meat replacements never being quite the same as the real thing, even with a self-proclaimed sausage expert, no joke there, being fooled by a plant-based alternative on live TV, then surely lab-grown meat is the ultimate in human evolution. What if we could make something that doesn't just taste like meat, but it is meat, at a cellular and molecular level, without all of the suffering, without all of the greenhouse gases? Wouldn't that be the holy grail? But what is lab-grown meat? Well, once again, grub-hub to the rescue. Lab-grown meat is meat that's grown from small collections of animal cells. The first tissue engineering process was patented in 1999 and in 2001, NASA cultivated goldfish and turkey meat while investigating possible food sources for astronauts. As somebody who lives exclusively off of tang and freeze-dried ice cream, I can say with total confidence, if it's good enough for astronauts, it's good enough for me. The appeal is easy to understand. The same tastes, without killing animals, and with a drastic reduction in resources, land, emissions, and general ethical badness. And it's proven to be a hot investment market. In 2021, cultured meat and seafood companies raised $1.38 billion in investment. But can you even buy lab-grown meat? Have you ever seen it on the shelf near you? As recently as 2020, only Singapore had legalized the sale of lab-grown meat, and I've talked to several entrepreneurs building products in this space globally. In June of 2023, the U.S. followed suit becoming the second country in the world to allow the sale of lab-grown meat. In terms of the morality of killing animals and many of the concerns, this is a wonderful development for humanity. But remember, meat is still meat, and red meat is still likely linked to cancer, and processed fake red meat is probably similar to processed real red meat, aka not that great. Meaning the better it tastes, the more harmful it may be, want, want. Foiled again by our desire to leave the planet better than we've found it, which reminds us again of this episode's sponsor, Futility, Why bother? This brings us to our closing point. Why is all of this such a tough sell, despite how important it is that we as a species continue exploring better ways of existing on this planet? Well, my conclusion is in three parts. One, tradition is a bitch. Two, we're inherently selfish, and three, you might be too far ahead of your time. Or when your grandma used to make you fried chicken for your birthday with her famous southern recipe, well, that's because you were raised in the US south. In Korea, it might be grandma's famous kimchi or barbecued pork. Our nostalgia is cultural, and it's impossible to erase. As a quarter Italian who hasn't had red meat in well over a decade, I can still smell my grandma's meatballs. Until our children's children's nostalgia is for impossible burgers and not real burgers, we're fighting an uphill battle we'll never win. Encouraging on this point, a mere 12% of Americans eat half the nation's beef. I'll let you guess which demographic it is, but it's men, and it rhymes with bouquet bloomer. Gen Z is already doing much better, so let the generational wars continue. But across all demographics, we are inherently selfish creatures. It's who we are. And we unironically believe that Gordon Gekko's greed is good isn't the line of a supervillain, but rather, an ethic to aspire to. Our whole system is based on me getting what's mine, regardless of what's best for you or the planet. It's beautiful. And science backs this up. Darwin's on the origin of species showed us that if you think nature is calm, you aren't looking closely out there. It's a war zone. It's a continuous struggle for survival. And as we battle to the death for resources and mates, we don't have time to consider the needs of others, especially others from a different species. Just remember that when sentient AI murders you because you didn't show charity to any of the species you deemed beneath you. Paying bills is tough enough. Finding a house these days is impossible. It's a war, and many of us feel that we are losing that war. We all have to pick our battles, and sorry, but I just don't have time to worry about how cows feel on my way to working a shitty job that doesn't even pay the bills. It's all about priorities and who can blame us when subsidized meat is so delicious and so cheap. And lastly, vegans don't like black grown meat either because even if you kill one animal instead of 100,000, an animal killed as an animal killed, and an all or nothing ethos leaves zero room for gray area, no animal being killed is ever okay. Consuming real meat in any context is never okay, so no wonder these products aren't exactly flying off the shelves if even those who are most likely to support the cause won't actually buy them or eat them themselves. You can't sell a product to meat eaters by saying it tastes like meat because that invites comparison to the real thing, reminding people that it's not the real thing. You can't sell a product to people who hate meat because saying it's even meatier is like saying now it tastes 10% more like death. Remember Bill Gates? How can you convince someone that lab grown meat is safe and good if they genuinely believe that Mr. Gates is injecting secret microchips into our bloodstream? New is scary, and for many of us, new is not good. Because we are all unflinchingly committed to our own way of living, each totally convinced that we are right, what are these startups and companies to do? If you haven't heard of the adjacent possible described in an excellent TED talk by Stuart Kaufman, and talked about at length in Stephen Johnson's book Where Good Ideas Come From, both of which I highly recommend, you're being punished by this concept. The person who invented the world's first calculator was right, but his ideas wouldn't be implemented until long after his death because the time simply wasn't right. The adjacent possible says that innovations seldom skip steps. But rather, it's usually what's right next to what's possible now. All of evolution works this way. So from a scientific perspective, lab grown meat is the adjacent possible. We can do it. But from a cultural perspective, it's skipping steps. The good news is lab grown meat makers are undoubtedly right, and the world will undoubtedly switch to this means of meat production. The question is only whether or not it happens in our lifetimes, which is less likely. Perhaps when the last YouTube commenter has laid down to rest, true change will come. For now, take it slow. My suggestion is to market fake meat and meat replacements like every other product, which is to say, don't buy McDonald's because it's not Burger King, but buy it because it tastes good and because you like it. Appealing to anything other than self-interest at this point is a losing battle. See? The people who left a negative comment were right. 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