• Question: What other foods are scientists working on to produce in a lab rather than on a farm?

    Asked by anon-176611 to Ali, Jenny, Mark, Paul, Simran, Stephen on 19 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Mark Kirkwood

      Mark Kirkwood answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Well let’s see, we have the Impossible Burger, which is a burger made out of plants which still bleeds. Scientists managed to put in plant haemoglobin (the bit that makes blood red) so that it bleeds like a real meat burger!

      Then we have the Memphis Meats lab, who are growing all sorts of meat products from stem cells. Things like chicken fillets and burgers etc. The problem is that the stem cells don’t make all of the other bits that look meaty, like cartilage and sinew and fat bits etc. Still pretty cool though!

      Then we have a fake shrimp product called….oh gosh what was it called….ah the guys at New Wave Foods! IT’s shrimp made out of algae and other plant materials.

      That’s all I cant think of for now, but there are probably plenty more out there!

    • Photo: Ali Hill

      Ali Hill answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Ooh great question! I think Mark and Simran (and maybe Jenny?) know more about this than I do – I only know of the meat ones that Mark’s already mentionned. Oh and Real Vegan Cheese (https://realvegancheese.org/).

      But from a nutritional point of view, as long as the food has the same nutrients in as the farm version, I think it’s a great idea. Fantastic step towards helping the planet and using less animals. I guess the problem is that people aren’t always keen to eat food that’s been grown in a lab. And that’a always going to be something we need to work on.

      What do you think – would you eat it?

    • Photo: Simran Chopra

      Simran Chopra answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      Hellooo!

      Omg!
      My kind of question but the question is will you eat it?

      Laboratories around the world are growing different kinds of meat in petridishes like alligator or the normal beef or maybe even human. Who knows.

      Some are researching on including insect protein in things like crisps and protein bars.

      There are plant substitutes like the impossible burger called the burger that bleeds like real meat.

      Food printers that print complex 3D shapes or maybe grow micrograms in them.

      Then we have food computers which grow plants in hydroponics indoor under grow lights and control the taste of vegetables.

      Using robots to grow food and determine healthy plants from sick ones.

      Also there is mainstream research done to make Genetically Modified Seeds and Food for example putting genes of a lizard into a seed os corn maybe Mark can tell more. And Radiation use to make new varieties of plants.

      We live in a food culture full of dilemmas and uncertainties.

      Let’s go back to old ways of the farm and eat healthy fresh vegetables to save the planet.

      😘🙂
      Sim

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    Yeh, Simran is right, we have been shooting radiation at plants for a long time, to try and force them to mutate into interesting new versions!
    Technically, these mutated versions can be sold as organic, which always bugs me a bit!

    I’m not sure about the lizard genes into seeds, but genetic modification is very much used to improve food crops. Check out golden rice, where they put the genes which make vitamin A, into rice plants, so that the rice contains lots of vitamin A in it. This is to help people in poorer countries, who don’t get enough vitamin A in their normal diet, and it causes blindness 🙁

    What’s really important to remember, when people are telling you that putting genes into plants is bad, is that this is a super accurate way of doing things. Taking one gene, which we know all about, and putting it into a plant, is a lot less risky than shooting the plant with radiation!

    It’s even safer now that we have a technique called CRISPR (mmmmm crisps…) which can change only one or two bases (the single bits of DNA that make up all genes) to change the function of the gene.

    Also, there are bacteria called Agrobacterium, who have been infecting plants for longer than we have been around, and injecting their own DNA in to get the plant to do what it wants. They were the original genetic modifiers! The sweet potato actually still has some Agrobacterium DNA in it’s genome today! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150421084204.htm
    Oh, and humans don’t get away so easily either. About 8% of our ENTIRE genome (the long bits of DNA that make us who we are!) is viral, so it came from a virus and just sort of hopped into our DNA and stayed there!
    Amazing!