Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.
Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.
The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.
Inhabitat notes that “the meatpacking industry causes 18 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to the release of methane from animals.” Livestock also consume huge amounts of resources and space in efforts to feed ourselves as well as the controversy over cruelty to animals. Ikeda’s recycled poop burger would reduce waste and emissions, not to mention obliterating Dante’s circle for gluttons.
The scientists hope to price it the same as actual meat, but at the moment the excrement steaks are ten to twenty times the price they should be thanks to the cost of research. Professor Ikeda understands the psychological barriers that need to be surmounted knowing that your food is made from human feces. They hope that once the research is complete, people will be able to overlook that ugly detail in favor of perks like environmental responsibility, cost and the fact that the meat will have fewer calories.
Waste not; want not.
Hurray for science?
"I'm just reading through your formspring here, and your responses to many questions seem to indicate that you are ready and willing to sacrifice realism/believability for the sake of (sometimes) marginal increases in gameplay quality. Why is this?"
"Because until I see gamers sincerely demanding that if they get winged in the gut with a bullet that they spend the next three hours bleeding out on the ground before permanently dying, they probably are too." - J.E. Sawyer
aieeegrunt wrote:"Waiter, there's corn in my steak"
Exactly what I thought. My feelings on the matter are the same as Alyrium's, but I'd rather they extensively check it first before packaging it. It helps to be careful, especially when the product in question is recycled human waste.
The USSR is facing food shortages, again, particularly that of butter. However it notices that the amount of human feces in sewers is increasing. So the Politburo decides to get the scientists to figure out how to turn Human crap into butter.
2 years later the scientists are ordered to report on progress. The scientists claims that they are actually getting 50% progress, which is unprecedented in Soviet agricultural science.
"How do you do that?" asked the surprised Soviet leaders.
"Simple. One could spread the 'butter', but cannot eat it."
SpaceMarine93 wrote:
Congrats on the Japanese scientists, though I wonder if the process would be too inefficient and expensive to be marketable in the future.
I think the "ick" factor from most people would be the greater concern for marketability. There's a lot of people who find genetically engineered food to be scary. This goes beyond that.
It's Jodan, not Jordan. If you can't quote it right, I will mock you.
Let's see, I already recycle kitchen waste, including vegetables and fruits gone rotten, into my compost heap which, through the miracle of nature, is recycled into new vegetables to eat.
Part of the water table in the backyard which serves the garden come from my home septic system which, let's be honest here, is a bunch of drainage pipes connected to a tank of shit and piss. So yeah, what comes out of my ass contributes to my garden, which then feeds the other end of the alimentary system.
On a certain level everything we eat is already recycled shit, this is just a new way of doing it.
The biggest obstacles, of course are price and psychological hang ups. Humans evolved to find shit repulsive because raw shit carries health risks for us (unlike for, say, dung beetles for whom shit is ambrosia). Those who avoided eating shit directly, or food contaminated by shit, tended to be healthier and leave more children - and this applied to social and cultural customs as well as any innate revulsion towards feces (which, as anyone who have ever had to clean up after a toddler who had just discovered the joys of a diaper full of "clay" can attest) which isn't as certain or as innate as the culturally conditioned think it is.
I think the biggest obstacle here, once the price comes down, is likely cultural hangups and taboos.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
They should market this as Soylent Brown.
...
Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor.
And also one of the ingredients to making a pony is cocaine. -Darth Fanboy.
evilsoup wrote:Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor.
Think purchase of organs for transplant and you're there.
Yes, we're living in the future. It only gets more intense from here on out.
On the upside - when I was 20 by now we were supposed to have something like 10 billion people on the planet, mass starvation, and a new ice age. Didn't quite get that bad. On the other hand, we were supposed to be able to vacation on the Moon and, dammit, where's my flying car?! And there's global warming now. Oops.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
evilsoup wrote:Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor.
Think purchase of organs for transplant and you're there.
Yes, we're living in the future. It only gets more intense from here on out.
On the upside - when I was 20 by now we were supposed to have something like 10 billion people on the planet, mass starvation, and a new ice age. Didn't quite get that bad.
[does rough estimate]Wasn't there also supposed to be a nuclear war by now?
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.
You win. There, I have said it.
Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
It's OK. The nukes will fly in 2077 and then we'll have a bunch of guys running around with machetes playing make believe as Roman soldiers and no shitwiches.
"I'm just reading through your formspring here, and your responses to many questions seem to indicate that you are ready and willing to sacrifice realism/believability for the sake of (sometimes) marginal increases in gameplay quality. Why is this?"
"Because until I see gamers sincerely demanding that if they get winged in the gut with a bullet that they spend the next three hours bleeding out on the ground before permanently dying, they probably are too." - J.E. Sawyer
I suspect most people won't accept this way of producting food do to the obvious psychological effect, but will much more willing accept food production methods like the following here:
Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory wrote:
SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish.
The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing to eat it.
So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time.
"Now let us be clear, my friends. The fruits of our science that you receive and the many millions of benefits that justify them, are a gift. Be grateful. Or be silent." -Modified Quote
Is there any word on the quality of the meat produced this way thou? I can imagine it wold be something along the line of what industrial farms put out. And I seriously doubt it would be anywhere in the same category as organic grown high quality meat.
But I have nothing but my gut feeling to quote for that. Hence the question.
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.
You win. There, I have said it.
Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
Purple wrote:Is there any word on the quality of the meat produced this way thou? I can imagine it wold be something along the line of what industrial farms put out. And I seriously doubt it would be anywhere in the same category as organic grown high quality meat.
But I have nothing but my gut feeling to quote for that. Hence the question.
I article mentioned that the current drawback is the meat is not 'exercised', therefore not lean. Presumably they could address this by introducing some sort of mechanism to exercise the meat, or grow it having those properties to begin with.
I'd wager on the latter solution rather than the former.
"Now let us be clear, my friends. The fruits of our science that you receive and the many millions of benefits that justify them, are a gift. Be grateful. Or be silent." -Modified Quote
We do have mass starvation. 35 thousand people or so die of hunger daily.
So...while I do have the same instinctual "Ick!" reaction as most people (duh, evolution equipped us with that instinct for a very good reason), frankly I'd rather eat processed poop than nothing at all.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
The future will be disgusting. Wouldn't it be simpler to just make sandwiches from old discarded sandwiches? And robots from old beer cans, and beer cans from old robots.
Seriously though, One would think with all the food waste around (at least in most industrialized nations) it would be more efficient to start with leftover protein from thrown away meat to make the ReMeattm, but I suppose human feces is an abundant supply as well, albeit overly processed.
Should this come about I'll use the rule I always do: If it tastes good and doesn't kill me, I'll eat it.
I'd actually be interested in trying the Feces-Meat. It would probably get easier to eat it the second time you tried it, after you overcome the initial "ick" factor.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” -Jean-Luc Picard
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." -Margaret Atwood
You do realize that every conventional steak you have eaten has probably passed through the bowels of millions of humans, deer, geese, songbirds, dogs, wombats, mammoths, groundsloths, hadrosaurs, mammal like reptiles and a myriad of other creatures. All this does is remove a few stages from the process.
Zor
HAIL ZOR!WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL Terran Sphere The Art of Zor
Singular Intellect wrote:
I article mentioned that the current drawback is the meat is not 'exercised', therefore not lean. Presumably they could address this by introducing some sort of mechanism to exercise the meat, or grow it having those properties to begin with.
I'd wager on the latter solution rather than the former.
They can stick electrodes into the meat. So the meat slab can be floating inside a glass jar and jerking around at random intervals. Strings of sausages floating in tanks and moving in serpentine fashion, free ranging and swimming in water to keep their muscle tone
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
I guess I'm in the minority who doesn't see 'uses protein found in shit' to be the same as 'eating a bowl of shit soup omg shit icky'.
Maybe people just don't know much about hospitality kitchen standards? Eating something like this is way less disgusting than eating at a lot of restaurants; mice were not involved!
So all we need are chips made from toenail clippings and sauce from vaginal discharge and we have a fine meal for anybody disturbed enough to want to eat it lol.
Hurray for science?
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