Jun 172011
Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces
The technology and science described sounds – at least to me – to be both credible and impressive. If it works on a large scale, it could of course solve a great many problems. Poop is, after all, simply “processed” former food; un-processing it is simply a matter of proper chemistry. But still… bleah.
I mean… bleah.
9 Responses to “Do *NOT* Order The Steak”
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Guess saying it tastes like s**t would be an understatement.
“…Soylent Green is made from PEOPLE !!!…”
PLEASE NOTICE what the label on the door says before he opens it even if you have to stop action it!!
Definitely what it is!!
I’ve seen this before…
There was a novel, “Moscow 2042” written in 1982 that was part serious and part funny. In it Moscow is the only remaining part of the Soviet Union. There, food is ‘primary matter’ and poop is ‘secondary matter’. For all but the ruling elite ‘primary matter IS ‘secondary matter’…
“Oh Kyle! I sorry! That cuttlefish is going right though me!”
God, but that was great episode of South Park. 😀
“Through me”
Here’s the invention of the CentiPad, which had to be the realization of Cartman’s greatest sadistic fantasies regarding Kyle:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e01-humancentipad
One of their best episodes ever.
Every time I wonder how they can come up with funny new ideas after all these years, they throw me an absolute gem like that.
See, this sounds like fundamentally decent idea with a major marketing problem to me.
You DON’T say “Your crap has bacteria in it we can turn into something vaguely edible!” you instead say “Human waste can be used to feed a culture of protein producing microorganisms which when properly prepared make a nutritious meat substitute.”
Furthermore, you do NOT make it the same color as the crap and show in the example video it being *EXTRUDED* from production equipment. Rather, you’d likely be much better off making it the color of cooked meat.
Better yet don’t offer it as weird little scrappy-things which vaguely resemble tripe…or liver flukes, but grind it up and make it into patties or sausages or something. Hell, at least with sausages most people seem to kind of instinctively believe it’s not exactly made from the choicest cuts and accept that.
Plus, mushrooms are grown on manure and most people seem to be able to handle that.
Ultimately though if pseudomeat like this ever becomes accepted I think it’ll likely not be made from crap-bacteria due to the inherent psychological hump most people would probably be unable to get over. Instead I’d imagine you’d see something like growing blue-green algae in tank-farms and either directly processing that or feeding it to the bacteria in question here.
What would really be interesting is if society gets over it’s hair-up-the-ass with GMO’s so you could start tossing some animal protein genes into the bacteria to make it taste more like the animal you’re trying to replicate.
Getting something the size of a rump-roast which tastes like bacon but costs a quarter as much? I think I could get behind that.
I think the trickier problem in the long run will be getting the texture just right. Sure it might suffice as is for burgers and sausages as mentioned before, but and actual *steak* has bits of fat, connective tissue, perhaps a bone depending on the cut. It very well might be possible to replicate all of that but I have no idea how, much less economically.
Sorry if that kind of jumped around, it was written as a stream-of-thought and I didn’t really proofread it as it is almost five in the morning and I really should be in bed…
Pigs pooping hot dogs?