Yes, Lab-Grown Meat (Without Animals) Is for Real

Plant-based meat alternatives like the Impossible Burger or the Beyond Burger are capturing a growing share of the market. Consumers are attracted to these products for a variety of reasons. Some believe that plant-based diets are a way to reduce their risk of disease. Others are concerned about the environmental impact of animal agriculture or the welfare of the animals themselves. A lot of people who enjoy meat or value its nutritional profile are nonetheless reducing their consumption.

RELATED: The Problem with Vegan Alternatives

But new technology may soon deliver the best of both worlds to our plates: real meat that can be produced without using any animals. Paul Shapiro recently joined me on the Nutrition Diva podcast to talk about this brave new world of meat without animals. 

Paul is the author of the national bestseller Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, the CEO of The Better Meat Co., and the host of the Business for Good Podcast.

Below are some highlights from our conversation. Please click on the audio player to hear our entire interview.

Nutrition Diva: Let’s start by clarifying for everybody what we're not talking about here. We're not talking about taking gluten and pea protein and soybeans and fashioning them into a darn good imposter for hamburger. We're talking about something very different.

This is a way of producing meat that uses far less land, far less water, and [creates] far fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Paul Shapiro: That's exactly right. When we talk about clean meats, we're not talking about a meat substitute. We're talking about real meat that is simply divorced from the process of raising and slaughtering an animal. So instead of having to go through that months- or years-long process, a clean meat simply involves taking a tiny biopsy from an animal, maybe the size of a Sesame seed.

And within that little biopsy, there are millions of cells that when you put them into a cultivator outside of the animal's body makes them think that they still are in the body. And they do exactly what they would do if they were in the body, which is to produce muscle, which of course is what we eat as meat.

So this is a way of producing meat that uses far less land, far less water, [and creates] far fewer greenhouse gas emissions. And of course, spares animals the cruelty of...

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