Humans are animals, so every hipster will try Cannibalism. Perhaps we'll just eat people we don't like, as author Iain M. Banks predicted in his short story, "The State of the Art" with diners feasting on "Stewed Idi Amin." But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages from their co-mingled tissues overnight in tabletop appliances similar to bread-making machines. And of course, masturbatory gourmands will simply gobble their own meat.
That's from a discussion of the future of in-vitro meat. The pointer is from The Browser.
You know, I am certainly glad you did not post this WHILE WE WERE EATING!
Is this a sign that your restaurant guide will be exploring new gustatory frontiers?
Tastes like chicken.
Ignores the fact that we rarely eat carnivores, since they just don’t taste good.
I think we don’t eat carnivores because they are expensive to produce for food. Jared Diamond talks about this in “Guns, Germs and Steel”, and even remarks that lion meat is very good. To sustain a lion farm, you would need a lot of meat to feed the lions. Naturally, your output (lion meat) would need to sell for considerably more than the input (beef, or whatever you feed the lions) to cover other costs and to make the venture profitable.
From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tastes_like_chicken
Another suggestion, made by Joe Staton of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, is that meat flavors are fixed based on the evolutionary origin of the animal.[citation needed] Accordingly, birds (the most numerous form of meat by type) would naturally taste more like chicken than mammals. Furthermore, based on evidence for dinosaurs as the ancestors of birds, reptile meat might also taste somewhat like chicken and therefore dinosaurs also tasted like chicken. Seafood, however, would logically have a more distinctive flavor. Staton’s study of the question was published in the Annals of Improbable Research.[1] Where this theory falls apart is the fact that very gamey birds such as woodcock or grouse, or red-meat birds such as ostrich or squab do not “taste like chicken,” while other (bland) sources of protein including reptiles (rattlesnake), insects, earthworms and numerous mammals such as hamsters, guinea pigs and rabbits do “taste like chicken.”
“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.” -H. L. Mencken
3 thoughts:
Easy availability of IVM might mean the extinction of many breeds of domesticated farm animal. Even all domesticated animals (at least those currently bred for food), if we don’t preserve them in zoos. I think this would be a net loss, in terms of genetic diversity as well as aesthetic value.
What about those of us who like offal? Is, for example, in-vitro tete de veau less ethical than steak because it contains brain tissue? Could we have in-vitro foie gras?
Could a luxury market for slaughtered meat develop? For locavores and gourmands maybe?
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