Google's Brin funds $332K lab-grown beef hamburger, looks to make meat a sustainable resource
A project funded by Google cofounder Sergey Brin has yielded the world's first "synthetic" beef hamburger, the first step in what the billionaire hopes is a transformation in sustainable foods.
It was announced on Monday that Brin funded the project looking into lab-grown beef, dubbed "Cultured Beef," which has the potential to change the way humans farm and consume meat, reports The Guardian.
While still a proof-of-concept, and nowhere near ready for sale at the local supermarket, studies by the University of Oxford suggest cultured beef could use as much as 99 percent less space than current livestock farming, while cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.
Along with environmental benefits, cultured beef can help with a rising beef demand that is forecast to outstrip production within 40 years. With synthetic beef, livestock can be farmed less intensively, thus tapering a reliance on antibiotics which are stored in fat cells and can lead to cancer in humans.
"There are basically three things that can happen going forward," Brin said in a video . "One is we'll all become vegetarian. I don't think that's really likely. The second is we ignore the issues and that leads to continued environmental harm. And the third option is we do something new."
Led by physiologist Dr. Mark Post, the research team at Maastricht University took a small sample of cow stem cells and grew 20,000 strands of muscle fiber over the course of three months. These strands were combined to make one hamburger patty. According to Post, the few sample cells can theoretically turn into ten tons of meat.
The first cultured beef patty was cooked up and served to Taste of Tomorrow author Josh Schonwald and Austrian food trends researcher Hanni R?tzler from the Future Food Studio. The synthetic beef, which was colored with beet juice and saffron, reportedly had the texture of real beef, but lacked flavor. This is to be expected, as cultured beef lacks fat cells.
For more information, the researchers have set up a website filled with facts and figures on meat sustainability, as well as video on how cultured beef is made.
It was announced on Monday that Brin funded the project looking into lab-grown beef, dubbed "Cultured Beef," which has the potential to change the way humans farm and consume meat, reports The Guardian.
While still a proof-of-concept, and nowhere near ready for sale at the local supermarket, studies by the University of Oxford suggest cultured beef could use as much as 99 percent less space than current livestock farming, while cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions.
Along with environmental benefits, cultured beef can help with a rising beef demand that is forecast to outstrip production within 40 years. With synthetic beef, livestock can be farmed less intensively, thus tapering a reliance on antibiotics which are stored in fat cells and can lead to cancer in humans.
"There are basically three things that can happen going forward," Brin said in a video . "One is we'll all become vegetarian. I don't think that's really likely. The second is we ignore the issues and that leads to continued environmental harm. And the third option is we do something new."
Led by physiologist Dr. Mark Post, the research team at Maastricht University took a small sample of cow stem cells and grew 20,000 strands of muscle fiber over the course of three months. These strands were combined to make one hamburger patty. According to Post, the few sample cells can theoretically turn into ten tons of meat.
The first cultured beef patty was cooked up and served to Taste of Tomorrow author Josh Schonwald and Austrian food trends researcher Hanni R?tzler from the Future Food Studio. The synthetic beef, which was colored with beet juice and saffron, reportedly had the texture of real beef, but lacked flavor. This is to be expected, as cultured beef lacks fat cells.
For more information, the researchers have set up a website filled with facts and figures on meat sustainability, as well as video on how cultured beef is made.
Comments
Still, even without that, I'm not sure I'd want to eat that. Sort of could be Son of Pink Slime.
Just thinking this over a bit more you have to ask the question why would you want to eat fake food? We already have a wide variety of pseudo-food products that make up most of our supermarket selections so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Why stop at soy filler and high fructose corn syrup?
I can't resist. Must. Make. Samsung. Joke.
"Samsung's response would be to assemble wet shredded newsprint, mix in some FD&C Red #5, put it on sale for the same price then demand 2.25% of each pound sold from other producers because they own a patent. If they don't get it, they run to the ITC."
The better way to reduce greenhouse gases caused by cow emissions (f*rts) is to reduce the number of cows and to get people to eat less animal based protein, something the human body doesn't need in such quantity (or at all). When I was growing up, we didn't eat 5lb hamburgers or 30 oz steaks multiple times a week. We were a lot healthier than the fat people today who cram so much unnecessary meat into their bodies it's no wonder they get sick with cancer and diabetes. Eat healthier, don't attempt to grow animal protein for human consumption.
Agree. It is sad but today in our day and age one must look hard for actual food. Like you said, go to any supermarket and just look. The vast majority of the products being sold are truly what one would call "food-like products." Everything is highly refined and processed --and in many cases altered (with additives, preservatives, hormones, etc). And everyone knows that the more processed the food is the more calories and the less nutrients the "food" has. No wonder we have a society where nearly 70% of the population is overweight (and a lot of them are obese). It is sad but the vast majority of people make their food choices based on taste and not on nutritional value.
I highly recommend anyone to watch on Netflix: "Food Matters," "Hungry for Change," "Forks Over Knives," and "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead." These are great eye openers.
That would be more fruitful.
Might as well be strike 3 for Google...
Also agree. The sad thing --and also the root of the problem-- is that all these beef manufactures are in the business of making money and not in the business of producing foods. If this process were to eliminate the expense of feeding, breeding, killing, and processing the cow... eliminate the expense of needing to administer hormones and vaccination (not to mention farmers will no longer need as much land)... you can bet they will all eventually go that route. It's about the money... health? They can care less...
Quote:
Originally Posted by GTR
I propose everybody eat an Apple a day instead.
That would be more fruitful.
And what type of Apple? A Macintosh?
They haven't come up with an iPad Apple did they?
It cuts back on greenhouse gas emissions? So what happens, these cows fart less per capita? It's reducing the amount of methane gas emissions. I wonder what it tastes like.
On a serious note, Sergey's mama didn't teach the boy how to respect his $$. Google is gonna go down, you know!
On even more serious note (no, I'm serious! :P), we consume too much McDonald already. Thanks!
$332,000...... Did anyone tell him he could have just bought a can of SPAM for about $3.32?
Vegans and those swayed by crazy govt guidelines like the food pyramid, let them eat such franken-foods. The swathing of land to grow monocultures of grains, beans/legumes, nuts and seeds is doing more to damage land than raising animals that continually fertilise the lands they graze on. The seeds (the part we eat) are coated with phytic acid that prevents insects, birds and us from digesting them easily and cause allergies and digestive ailments. Good luck in expecting franken-burgers having all the nutrients to keep humans healthy. The worst crime is what parents' food-practices are doing to children whose brain development is being overwhelmed with sugars/carbohydrates and the lack of fats that feed brain development.
Do No Evil. Whether by design or blunder should Google carry out this venture to success, Woe be the nation that accepts such foods to its children's diet. Let the adults choose what they put into their own mouths but what of the children whose caregivers and governers do not know how nutrition really works.
The over processing of foods in the last century has not lead to greater health. The longevity we may seem to enjoy has come not from our food but from cleanliness and education: hand washing, cleaner homes, hospitals, surgeries; sanitation & the removal of human waste in large communities; antibiotics.
Cancer rates are up by many fold even as the patents on updated formula run out on Chemo drugs got from the concentration/extermination camps of Germany after the Second World War. And even as radiation has become more precise since its first use for cancer in 1899, the scaring, distorting and devastation to healthy cells and tissue is a crime our medical professions will shutter at and joke about just as they now joke about the past insanities of blood leaching and other quirky methods now discarded. Surgery for cancer still sometimes works when a part can be spared. But the craziest philosophy of logic gone mad is the wiggle room that is raised, the false argument of cancer success rates based in numbers of years because 'cure' is so sorely an infrequent ocurance as to actually be an anomaly.
Oh why is dark the light and light the dark when it comes to practical reasoning about what we put in our mouths. For us, the big ones, big deal, eat your Big Macs. But our children are our future yet only ancient and simple cultures seemed to know this and saved the prized food for their babies for it was the babies who were their future.
The future now is measured in status and bank accounts and comfortable old age. Let the kids look after themselves. Yes, but let us at least not bar their way to finding foods enjoyable that actually nurture their brains and bodies and allow them to contemplate upon the possibilities of spirit. When ill and wrongly nourished, such is so difficult to do.
I'm waiting for Soylent Green.
I can't imagine this ever tasting good without additives. Growing up on a farm there's nothing tastier than a steak from a freshly slaughtered cow.
Another UFO: Unidentifiable Food-like Object. That's what I would call food in stalls on the streets of Delhi, Agra or Ahmadabad.
Now, this is truly a genuine UFO.
Heaven help me if the time ever arises and I do an Oliver Twist asking for another bowl of this Son of Pink Slime beef.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhikl
Cancer rates are up by many fold even as the patents run out on Chemo drugs got from the concentration/extermination camps of Germany after the Second World War, and even as radiation has become more precise since its first use for cancer in 1899. Surgery still sometimes works when a part can be spared. And then the wiggle room, the false argument of cancer success rates based in numbers of years because 'cure' is so terribly an infrequent ocurance as to actually be an anomaly
I think people are also not succumbing to quick deaths from simple cuts and injuries. That's one major reason why there appears to be a rising level of cancers and other chronic diseases. As we get older, the probability we get hit by something rises. The other major reason is that we are getting better at diagnosing disease both before and after death.
Thirty years ago, when an elderly person died, it would just be filed as pneumonia or heart attack and no one would really think it mattered what natural cause they died from.
Pellet to a squirrel is near free. Infinitely renewable resource. Gamo Whisper ftw.