June 17, 2021 by Giulia
Cowboy days are over
Few things are more difficult than changing one’s habits.
Like all other living beings, humans are designed to maintain homeostasis. Any threat to our internal balance will be met with resistance – the bigger the threat, the fiercer the reaction. This is not only true of our biology, but also of our psychology. Change is often met with fear and resistance, especially if it threatens habits we have built up over many years.
Intermezzo
/a light dramatic, musical, or other performance inserted between the acts of a play.
A couple of years ago, my doctor asked me to stop eating gluten for a couple of weeks. He suspected I was a celiac, and wanted to test his hypothesis.
Have I mentioned already that I am Italian?
Have I mentioned that I eat carbs at every meal?
Have I mentioned that I am so in love with the smell of freshly baked bread that I can locate a bakery just by sniffing the air two blocks over?
You get the gist here… it was devastating for me!
What was I going to eat now that the cornerstone of my diet was taken away?
During those two weeks, I spent my days feeling hungry and unsatisfied. While I knew I was doing it for my health, that thought didn’t really help. I felt a lot of resistance to the idea of having to upend my eating habits in such a fundamental way, and prayed to the skies that my doctor was wrong.
Luckily, he was, and I wasn’t a celiac after all. Yet, I still wonder: what if I were? How much would I have struggled in transitioning to a gluten-free life?
End Intermezzo
A healthy and sustainable lifestyle will require fundamental shifts to our habits. Are we willing to face the change, or will we just pray to the skies in the hope we don’t need to?
Cultured meat or Lab meat is the new frontier of food innovation, consistently making the news since 2013. However, it has only been approved for sale for the first time in 2020, in a regulatory decision that will certainly make history!
The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed the safety review by the Singapore Food Agency, and they are currently served at the Singapore restaurant 1880, making it the only restaurant currently serving lab meat in the whole world.
This could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, in a very controlled environment and with less waste of resources.
But why is it so groundbreaking, and how will it shape the future of our planet and society?
The high use of energy, water and land, high amount of CO2 emissions, terrible living conditions for the animals & abuse of antibiotic and hormones, make this industry one of the most problematic of our times. The demand for meat is also seeing a constant increase, especially driven by developing countries. Lab meat could be a solution to all these issues.
While producing lab meat requires a lot of resources and highly specialized workforce and equipment, it promises – once scaled up – to be more efficient and produce lower emission, use less water and less land than conventional meat.
Ethical concerns regarding the conditions of animals will be allayed, as there will be no animals involved in the process.
It sounds like a dream, right?
There is still one big challenge to tackle: users’ acceptance of lab meat.
When I decided to write this post and research user-generated content, I knew I was in for perhaps the most heated and polarized conversations on the internet. Let me tell you, reality exceed my expectations.
All is fair in love and war. And when discussing of lab meat online.
To have a more comprehensive understanding of the topic, I also consulted various articles, blog post and scientific literature (you can have a look at the bottom of this post).
From scientific research conducted on the topic, we know that consumers’ acceptance of lab meat is moderate. People investigated in these studies would like to try it out, but they are not sure whether they would eat it on a regular basis.
Needless to say this “moderate” fringe is made up by a specific profile of consumer.
For instance, it is more likely for young people to be more willing to try lab meat and include it in their diet. Male consumers seem more welcoming of lab meat; people with more liberal, left-wing political credos; people that live in urban areas and people with a higher level of education show more acceptance towards lab meat. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, lab meat is more appealing to meat eaters; vegans & vegetarians are not looking to replace meat, as they have already cut it out from their diets.
This sounds promising already but there are still quite a number of barriers to acceptance. Let’s go through some of them.
You should know that if you are looking for hot takes, YouTube’s comment section is the place to be. To keep things entertaining, I paired my favorite comment to each of the barriers I’ve identified. Enjoy!
Unnaturalness
“Lab Grown Meat. Disgusting and no way I would eat it. Natural is better tasting, healthier, and good for our ranchers and farmers who count on us to buy their produce.”
This one came up over and over again. The perceived unnaturalness of lab meat is the most mentioned objection both in the scientific literature and in the online dialogue, and it is also linked to safety and ethical concerns.
It also seems accompanied by the underlying impression that something natural is by default better,
while everything that comes from a lab is altered, artificial and definitely not safe to put in our bodies (this reminds me of what the Clean Beauty movement has done in recent years for the beauty industry, maybe material for another post…).
“I don’t eat anything created by scientists.”
Trust
“We don’t know what these mad scientists will put in our food. If it’s not 100% transparent from start to finish than it can’t be trusted.”
As mentioned above, some users do not like the idea of meat created in a lab. Especially right now, where many people are convinced that the current pandemic has been caused by a lab-engineered virus.
Scientists and labs are getting a terrible reputation and a dangerous aura. This can be quite challenging to change.
On the one hand, lab meat companies could be more transparent and show consumers how cultured meat is made, increasing user knowledge and educating them about the entire process. On the other, regular users do not really know how the meat industry currently works, so they have no benchmarks and no context for the information.
Furthermore, studies reveal that users, especially those living in rural areas, greatly distrust food companies and food labeling, adding to the complexity of establishing trust around lab-grown meat.
Safety concerns
“I would like to know the long-term effects of eating lab-grown, chemical-infused food. Since the food is totally lab-grown, it must be filled with higher quantity of chemicals per unit mass, which may have severe long-term impacts with mass consumption.”
This is another very common take, although I found the composure of this specific user quite refreshing!
In this comment we find safety concerns, in connection to the aforementioned fear of unnaturalness: the word chemical is repeatedly presented with a negative connotation. This stance stems from the idea that chemical is bad and natural is good, disregarding entirely the fact that everything around us is a chemical: the air we breath, the water we drink… the reactions in our brain are chemical!
Like the quoted user, participants of scientific studies have expressed anxiety about the unknown long-term health effect of cultured meat, especially in connection to concerns about unnaturalness. Experts believe transparency around the health and safety profiles of cultured meat will be paramount to the industry’s success.
Mancini and Antonioli (2020) noted that the perceived safety increased significantly when consumers were given additional information about cultured meat, and speculate that it could increase even more if cultured meat received approval from the European Food Safety Authority.
Nutritional values
“If it becomes cheaper but lacks in nutrition to regular meat then our food becomes even less nutritious which will get us sicker. They said that the food is free of fat, in which other essential nutrients is it also free of?”
Another common concern is focused on the nutritional values of lab meat: consumers assume cultured meat is not as healthy as conventional meat. This barrier also appears to be linked to the perception of unnaturalness and artificiality.
While these negative concerns could be overcome by the possible health benefits of modifying the nutritional profile of cultured meat (as it can, in theory, be more easily designed), consumers still perceive lab meat as something novel and thus requiring more study. Consistently, they expect that it will get better in time.
Disgust
“No fucking way I am eating that shite. I’d hunt down my meat. Simple”
Finally, you made it to one of those juicy comments which stir all kinds of feeling inside you! This user is so disgusted by the idea of eating cultured meat that they will simply go and hunt their dinner!
I am picturing an apocalyptic future with no supermarkets, where we just go out in the wilderness and hunt/fetch whatever we can find. Guys, I am telling you, that’s the timeline where I die of starvation. I am not built for that kind of life!
Disgust is a tricky emotion to deal with.
Many recent studies mention disgust as a barrier to adoption, especially in Western cultures.
An interest study conducted by Dupont and Fiebelkorn (2020) found that people judged cultured meat to be less disgusting than eating insects, but judged the latter as more natural and healthy. So, while disgust is connected to other barriers to adoption such as perceived unnaturalness and safety concerns, they are not the same thing. This highlights the emotional nature of the disgust response, and shows how it can occur independently of rational evaluations.
Another important aspect to consider in relation to disgust, is that it can stem from a norm violation, i.e. the feeling of doing something that is against the rules that society imposes onto us. This is known as moral disgust.
This brings up an important distinction. If disgust around lab meat is primarily moral, concerns about unnaturalness might actually be tied to unfamiliarity. These concerns would be easier to defuse, as cultured meat becomes normalized. More research is needed here.
Neophobia
“so this video basically says, that for 1000s of years our ancestors lived completely wrong…..lab meat will become a big industry in the future….if you want to know the truth, follow the money”
Some people do not cope well with new foods and are wary of trying new things
Grasso et al. (2019) identified “food fussiness” as a barrier for cultured meat acceptance amongst older consumers in Europe. This is not too surprising. On average, in fact, when we become older we also become more conservative and resistant to changing our habits and routines. Newness does not excite us, on the contrary: it makes us worry.
What about a burger blind test?
Economic anxiety and fear of losing jobs
“The problem is that there will be millions of unemployed farmers and things could get messy”
I must admit that this concern caught me by surprise. I haven’t considered this possibility. And I haven’t considered this possibility because I have no skin in the game. I am not a cattle farmer.
But there are people out there that reject lab meat because they fear that they will lose their livelihood to it, and this is a scary future.
Scientific research has indeed confirmed broader economic anxieties about the impact of the technology on farming and rural communities. Cultured meat will likely result in fewer agricultural jobs. This should push us to reform the food industry in a more holistic way, and find ways to support farmers and all the people involved in this industry.
Price
“Aside from cost of production, the texture of cultured meat is the main hurdle right now. It won’t be enough to simply culture a bunch of meat, its gotta be at least as good as regular meat or else it won’t take off.”
It is true that currently the price of lab meat is high, and that surely doesn’t help the cause. But there is hope. Many online discussions revolve around the fact that the technology is still new and, once scaled up, we’ll see a substantial price drop.
Right now, eating cultured meat is a luxury experience, but it won’t be like this forever.
Sensory experience
“If the taste and texture are acceptable, I will switch to synthetic meat for all but special occasions. Beyond the environmental impact, I don’t support the cruelty of the meat industry”
I personally feel this is the biggest hurdle to overcome. As discussed at the beginning of the article, cultured meat appeals primarily to meat eaters. Therefore, it must meet their high expectations.
The fatty components that we so much like in our meat are quite difficult to recreate in a lab. For this reason, at the time of writing, cultured meat is unfortunately far from being identical (maybe even comparable) in flavour and texture to regular meat. This is of course a put-off for many meat eaters that truly value the food experience.
As the technology matures, better texture and flavour will be achieved. Scientists are working very hard in order to be able to provide the perfect meat experience, but it will take a little longer to attain a result that can please everyone.
One thing is for sure, the attitudes of consumers will decide where the lab meat market will go next.
Given the advantages and barriers, can we just rely on consumers taking the first bite?
Bibliography used for this article
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GFYxI4tek&ab_channel=InterestingEngineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OO5YpCevfY&ab_channel=BloombergQuicktake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BqsG6AKGI&ab_channel=ExaCognitionExaCognition
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/15/5201/htm
https://medium.com/illumination-curated/future-meat-is-lab-grown-meat-the-answer-1f5717da8027
https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanlow/2020/06/01/are-you-ready-to-eat-lab-meat/?sh=bf5c5494a955