Recently tried an Impossible burger and nuggets and thought that if nobody told me it wasn’t meat, I’d have thought the patty was made out of a weird kind of meat, rather than make a connection with the taste and texture of plants. Honestly, I might not complain if that was the only kind of “meat” I could have for the rest of my life.
Well, maybe I’d miss bacon.
I’ve yet to find the opportunity to try lab-grown meat, but I for sure would like to try it out and don’t see much wrong with it as long as it’s sustainable, reasonably priced, and doesn’t have anything you wouldn’t expect in a normal piece of meat.
Also, with imitation and lab-grown options, I’d no longer have to deal with the disgust factor of handling raw meat (esp. the juices) or biting into gristle. I’ll happily devour a hot dog, but something about an unexpected bit of cartilage gives me a lingering sense of revulsion.
I think because of the material position of the meat producers and the economy/state protectionism, lab grown meat would become a culture war issue in the global north (“I’m not eating the bugs” etc).
And the political capital necessary to make people eat “lab grown” meat instead of “natural meat” would probably be so extreme, like land reform and an actual cultural revolution, that at point why not just reduce the amount of meat consumed through plant based alternatives and non meat or reduced meat diets.