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Comment by DGAP | Hacker News Reader

I have so much hope for lab grown meat and animal byproducts, but between opposition to "gmos" and agricultural lobbying, I think it will take a century before it's the norm.

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Even lab grown red meat will have major issues with inflammatory foreign sialic acid. That's unless a genetic strain is used that has only human-compatible sialic acid.

Red meat, meaning pork/beef/lamb/goat, independent of its source, contains human-incompatible sialic acid, which our immune system attacks. This foreign sialic acid even gets used up in our tissues, and then our immune system attacks our own tissues. It takes decades for this to become sufficiently inflammatory and destructive. Even cow milk is not spared. Only hydrolyzed collagen is likely to be very low in such foreign sialic acid.

To understand, these researched NotebookLM videos will explain:

https://youtu.be/PNg8370HN7k ⤷ Evolution and Legacy of Human Sialic Acids: Neu5Gc and Neu5Ac

https://youtu.be/wkmOKQZP_ak ⤷ Neu5Gc: Medical Mystery

That’s a very unsettled and debated topic. Speculative harms are not going to override very real daily pleasures from meat meals.

It's not that speculative, considering it the reason why in tissue transplants derived from animals, the transplants are specially engineered to not have this reactive substance. There is just no arguing with the hard data that the substance is foreign, is incorporated into our tissues, and is attacked by our immune system. The only debate is about the extent of the resulting inflammation.

Inflammation is a bit like nuclear fission, in that when a lot of inflammatory sources come together, the resulting runaway outcome is very bad, like civil war in the body. Rheumatoid arthritis, hard atherosclerotic plaque, and colorectal cancer are the result.

A carnivore diet leads to ghoulish dreams of mass murder. There only pleasure from is on the way down.

vegetable protein replacements are like 90% there tastewise as far as I'm concerned, the only time I feel a need to eat meat anymore is when someone would have thrown it out otherwise (an outrageous waste)

Vegetable protein is there in taste, but not macros and micronutrients. I think meat substitutes should first aim for the fat/protein/carb ratio of meat (i.e. almost no carbs and over 50% protein), then the micronutrient composition. Maybe it would be an acquired taste, but I think if it’s nutritious, the taste and satiety will come implicitly, better than any shortcut.

There are plenty of meat eaters with critical vitamin insufficiencies, even of B12. Animals that are fed mostly a corn diet aren't exactly going to contain much of micronutrients in their meat. Micronutrient supplements provide a much more reliable solution. I still rely on animals for hydrolyzed collagen and fish oil, but that's all.

Impossible burger is good. Everything else I’ve tried is rather mid or worse IMO. And I think this is born out by low adoption rates.

for many people you could put a gun to their head and they'd refuse to eat an alternative and swear up and down that it's inedible regardless of quality

the US has had a strong lobby propagandizing meat for a century (not to mention the fed subsidizing it) and it will take a very long time to make a considerable dent

there's already an organized resistance to vegetable based and lab-grown alternatives stemming from the same sources, it's nearly on the level of the oil industry which has been caught masquerading as anti-renewable activists

I can’t disagree that there’s a lot of bull-headed people out there.

But I have a pretty progressive social circle and many of them have tried to go vegetarian or been veggie-curious. And honestly I can’t think of a single one who’s stuck with it. (I know many other vegetarians for life).

So that’s my only point. Even among willing participants the acceptance rate is low. Meat is frigging delicious to those who have been raised on it and it’s hard to overcome that, and that’s not a propaganda issue. It’s a technology one.

Otherwise I agree the organized resistance is very frustrating.

there are hundreds of millions of vegetarians in india, so I think a lot of it is cultural context!

meat as status is almost flipped on its head compared to the US, which I will also note eats more meat than any other country per capita!

Totally context is huge. And unfortunately many Indian immigrants or their children become meat eaters in America, I have many of these in my social circle as well.

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