Why not just grow mushrooms? Their cells are meaty, super high in protein, and they already exist / the “tech” has already been developed! There is an extremely large selection, some with additional health benefits.
Meat tastes good. Mushrooms taste good, but in a different way.
You can want a perfect world, but it will never exist.
Like it or don't, solving meat consumption and its effects on the planet is something we'll have to do. That probably involves a meaty substitute for meat.
Fungi make up one of three primary kingdoms of multicellular life. Mushrooms and other fungus have a variety of flavors already, and some of them are quite meat-like. Given fungus cells are more similar to animal than they are plant, it is possible that they can be selectively bred or engineered to taste more meat-like.
I wouldn't be too dismissive of the potential here.
I'm not being dismissive, but was instead responding to a completely useless argument based on the ideal. Ideally, people will choose to eat mushroom instead of meat.
An ideal situation only exists in a textbook, and dealing with reality is what we should do, was sort of my point.
I'm not being dismissive of the use of mushrooms as a meat argument. But I was being dismissive of the moral superiority based, "you should do this because it's right" argument being made framed by mushrooms.
Anything is probably possible eventually, you could engineer a fungus to grow and taste like meat. Is it economical and possible with current technology, maybe not.
The only reasons to find ways to end consumption of natural meat are 1. to increase efficiency and 2. ethical concerns relating raising animals in confinement to slaughter and eat them.
The effects on the planet can be completely eliminated with massive expansion of nuclear and/or space-based electricity generation to power vertical farms that a) don't displace natural habitats and b) capture and recycle livestock's methane emissions along with other waste products.
The fallacy here is pretty transparent. On the one hand, you’re saying meat ”doesn’t taste good” because it is usually not served in isolation. But on the other hand, you claim that seasoning tastes good, despite the fact that it is never served in isolation.
Parent claims that because we don’t eat meat plain, this shows that it isn’t the meat that ”tastes good”, its the seasoning. The fallacy is that we could have applied the exact same logic to the seasoning: we don’t eat steak seasoning plain, therefore it isn’t the seasoning that tastes good, its the meat. By parent’s logic, meat both does and does not taste good.
The resolution, which has always been obvious to everyone (except hackernews, apparently) is that flavour is the result of the combination of ingredients. That you typically eat X and Y together doesn’t mean X is tasteless and Y is tasty (or the reverse). It just means X and Y combine to make a good dish.
This is the same site where I read a post about making puree vegetables and freezing them as meal planning, because flavor was secondary to efficiency. So. . .
It's a really silly question. People love the aroma of meat, obviously. Steak is often served with just a bit of extra salt, which has no aroma of its own. The smell of meet on a fire is already delicious, even without salt.
Of course, there are also people who don't like the taste of meat at all. But to claim people who like meat actually like the spices is patently ridiculous, not interesting.
We do eat meat plain. Not poultry typically, but give me a Dutch oven and with little more than some oil and water I can easily prepare a delicious 3 hour braise of chuck roast that can gently shred apart with a fork. The fat is delicious, it melts out to a liquidy goodness that bathes the meat. Get a nice charred sear on both sides before adding the braising liquid, you’ll have flavorful goodness.
Adding more ingredients only enhances the flavor, but it’s not necessary if your taste buds aren’t hyperstimulated. Meat tastes good.
When cooked, most meats have the necessary fats needed to bring out great flavor. Anyone who has done primitive camping can tell you just how good meat cooked in various ways is!
It does to me -- but I think there's a good point here (even if unintentional):
Meats have _textures_ that vegetables don't have. Someone else mentioned how the Impossible Burger replicates "the bloody meat texture". For many folks, that's going to be as important as the taste.
I love vegetables but sometimes I just want a hamburger -- or kung pao chicken, or lamb kadhi, or many other dishes where I _like_ the taste and texture of the meat, and I don't have a better replacement.
I think I looked into the protein amounts back in my vegan days and was disappointed to discover that the amounts are fairly low. Maybe it depends on the type. Lots of other reasons for us to cultivate more mushrooms though. Mycelium Running outlines a lot of cool ideas.
>56oz according to google which lists beef at 7g/ounce and mushrooms at 0.9/ounce
Edit: legumes are more practical, green peas give you 2g/oz and peanuts can be 7g/oz shelled according to google, (though they are different proteins than the beef). Mushrooms are good for texture and some like shitaki can give the umami taste, but they aren’t a nutritional meat substitute on their own.
Not mushrooms but Quorn has been making meat substitute products (some quite tasty) out of vat-grown mycelium since ‘85:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn
Quorn has for the most part been making meat substitutes out of vat-grown mycelium and eggs
I love mushrooms, and am mostly vegan, but the skeptic in me suspects it's not as economically viable (with their current processes) to make meat-like products out of just their "mycoprotein" or they'd be doing more of it.
I realize they have released a few vegan products, but I've never seen them in stores and can't see why they wouldn't be as widely available as their other products if there weren't some texture/flavor issues without the eggs.
The fully vegan products are actually pretty common here in the UK. They taste fine to me. I wonder if it's something to do with certain products needing a particular texture which is hard to get without eggs.
My local animal rights group changed their marketing 15 years ago from mainly using the term “vegan” to “plant-based” which is free from the cult-like elements of veganism, such as disapproval of anything but “100%”. The term “vegan” is back now that it has become more mainstream.
Hence, "mostly vegan". I was vegan for 6-7 years, now I'm begrudgingly consuming oysters and clams. Both have fewer neurons than a mosquito and no brain or central nervous system. I'm not certain they can't feel pain, but I was having a hard time sustaining my health within my budget on a fully plant-based diet, so until I can get back to a place where I feel like I'm getting complete nutrition on plant-based foods and supplements, I've been forcing myself to choke down some bivalves on occasion.
Some vegans including myself consider bivalves to be vegan since bivalves aren’t sentient.
Veganism as a taxonomical distinction between animals and plants/fungi doesn’t make sense because it would entail eating sentient plants which doesn’t track the underlying ethics.
There are none that we know of. But if we discovered one tomorrow or if Santa’s elves fell under the plant taxonomy, I don’t think most vegans would be onboard with farming them for food. Sentience is the variable that matters. Animals have just become a rough proxy for that variable due to the lopsided distribution of sentience.
