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    Fake Test-Tube Meat? I'll Pass on Those Hamburgers

    By Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Mon, Feb 20, 2012
    This story comes from the Yahoo! Contributor Network, where individuals publish their unique perspectives on some of the world’s most popular websites.
    Do you have a story to tell? Become a Yahoo! contributor

    COMMENTARY | A Dutch scientist is launching a new kind of meat: an artificial hamburger created in a laboratory. Mark Post from Maastricht University hopes to design a replacement food source from cow stem cells, AFP reports. It's an inventive workaround to our world's hunger problem. Mostly, the researchers want to meet our growing demand for meat.

    I'll pass on the fake flesh as my goal is to eat less meat in general. Not only is a vegetarian diet, and particularly the vegan variation, a healthy eating style, it also takes a huge drain off the environment, one of Post's goals.

    In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe wrote about macrobiotic foods in his book "Diet for a Small Planet."

    The book came out long before McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken had become our nation's staples.

    Portion sizes, in-home-cooked and packaged meals are growing, too. My dad fed a family of four on 1 pound of hamburger. Now people are eating 8- to 12-ounce meat servings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says U.S. obesity rates back then were three to four times what they are today.

    Over 40 years ago, Lappe was saying the cause for starvation in the world wasn't too little food. Food policies and production practices, especially with meat were to blame. Corporate farms were far less common. It's almost as if Lappe could see the writing on the wall.

    Lappe was ahead of her time in her thinking on protein, too. The objection to vegetarianism is that we won't get enough protein if we don't eat meat. Lappe's first thought was to combine plant proteins to mimic animal protein. She later revised when it was found humans don't require animal proteins specifically.

    Dutch scientists aren't attempting to present meat alternatives for health as much as to provide food for a hungry world. They're barking up the wrong tree, though. We need to quit being secondhand consumers. We could feed 10, maybe 100 times as many people with grains rather than eating grain-eating cows. Instead of genetically modified meat alternatives, we need to curb our national addiction to it.

     

    7 comments

    • Raine
      Raine  •  3 mths ago
      "I'll pass on the fake flesh as my goal is to eat less meat in general. Not only is a vegetarian diet, and particularly the vegan variation, a healthy eating style, it also takes a huge drain off the environment, one of Post's goals."

      ..... is it just me or does the first sentence conflict the rest of the paragraph......
    • Geo
      Geo  •  Wilmington, North Carolina  •  3 mths ago
      Another editorial commentary from Yahoo's Contributor Network. It'll be so nice when Yahoo creates an editorial section that will keep one person's views removed from the genuine "news"!.
    • Steve S
      Steve S  •  Jacksonville, Florida  •  3 mths ago
      Um. One point: It's not fake meat. It's grown from cow cells just like cows.
    • CAP
      CAP  •  Los Angeles, California  •  3 mths ago
      Economic prediction -- as the masses are pressed into eating a relatively affordable vegan diet, the plutocrats will be ranked according to their access to artificial meat specialties on up to "estate-raised" Kobe-style ritual beef cattle. Not Solyent Green -- Umami Pink....
    • Loren
      Loren  •  3 mths ago
      I have only one thing to say, YOU EAT IT!
    • DesertDog
      DesertDog  •  3 mths ago
      So NOW all those silly rumors about KFC headless lab chickens will actually be true...LOL!
    • Kornhusker Kid
      Kornhusker Kid  •  3 mths ago
      Are there any "journalists" left who aren't incessantly trying to shove their cause down everyone's throat ?
      • Steve S
        Steve S 3 mths ago
        If you could only read a byline, you might pass for intelligent. If you had read the byline you'd know that Marilisa is part of the Yahoo contributor network and is not a journalist. Commentaries are designed to push the opinion of the person writing the commentary.
     Post a comment
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