Reply to post: Artificial Protein-Based Meat

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Artificial Protein-Based Meat

As Chris G said above, it is bound to be a race to the bottom, where APBMs cover (and expand) the "junk food" spectrum of nutrition, being as unhealthy and dangerous as they can get away with being.

Why would the APBM industry try to make high-quality products, a market niche where they compete with the already existing and well established real meat industry? It's a losing race, since artificial meat will always be playing catch up to the real one, which is already well established and well optimized. Meat has been on the menu for millions of years, people know what to expect. APBMs will have great difficulty to grow unprocessed meat (like a steak for instance) comparable in flavor and texture to the real deal. Technically it might be possible, but it won't be commercially viable.

No, the only viable market for artificial meat is the low-cost junk food industry, where the issues of flavor and texture can easily be hidden beneath the processing and an abundance of flavoring and texture enhancers. And since in that case they'll need to be as cheap as possible to make a profit, you'd be lucky if your artificial hamburger patty/pasta topping/deep frozen pizza contains something as noble as melamine...

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