While the little vegan hippie section of my brain would normally never allow me to support anything having to do with animal flesh, I have recently come across a product that has made an exception. That product is called SuperMeat, and instead of trying to explain what exactly it is and why it's better for the planet myself, here's a video that will do just that.
Now, you may have heard of cultured meats before, but there's a big difference between other cultured meats and SuperMeat. Other cultured meats use muscle cells in a bovine fetal serum, which is far from animal friendly as that process requires constant use of animals being that muscle cells can only divide 15-20 times and fetal serum comes from fetuses...gross. SuperMeat on the other hand uses Mesenchymal cells, aka adult stem cells, which can divide indefinitely. And although these stem cells are limited in what they can become, they are able to become all the necessary components of meat: muscle, fat, connective tissue, cartilage, and bone/bone marrow. Delicious! These cells can, unlike the muscle cells used by other cultured meat companies, be grown in a medium that doesn't require any animal product at all.
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The real question is, will I be eating SuperMeat when it finally is released to the public? Absolutely not. First of all, I still believe that a plant based diet is the best for human health. SuperMeat is still real meat which means it still contains cholesterol and lots of saturated fat. Secondly, after not eating meat for over two years, I can undoubtably say that I don't miss the taste of meat. They're are plenty of faux meat products out in the market right now that are unbelievably meat-like in texture and, in my opinion, taste much better.
The overall reason that I, as a vegan, choose to support SuperMeat is because I think it's a more realistic way of turning our currently self destructive world into a more environmentally sustainable one. While I would love everyone to switch to a plant-based diet in order to simultaneously reduce our carbon footprint and better our health, the reality is that many people simply won't give up meat. And although I do believe that every individual has a choice as to what they do in terms of their health, I don't think it's fair for some people to choose to continue to eat something that is quickly destroying the planet we all have to live on. So in a nut shell: I still think eating meat is gross, but if SuperMeat gives people the option to continue eating meat without the effects animal agriculture has on our planet, then I'm all for it.
