There are some very good plant-based bacon alternatives. The problem is that they are priced like luxury products, rather than having common sense cheaper-than-meat pricing. Nearly all of bacon’s flavor comes smoke and seasonings, and the texture and crisp can be easily reproduced. Try Thrilling Bakon if you have the chance.

I would be more than willing to eat lab grown meat, though I’d prefer the creation of healthier plant-based alternatives. Even lab grown meat will have “bad” things like cholesterol, and plant-based alternatives should theoretically be able provide more nutritional value at lower prices than “real” or lab grown meat.

I’m an omnivore, so I will eat anything that tastes good. I just think we should be trying to make delicious, nutritious food affordable for normal people, whatever route that takes. I’m not convinced that lab-grown meat is a path to that goal. If reducing environmental and ethical harm is only for the rich, then fuck that approach, we need another.

If the taste, texture, and price are good, I’ll eat it.

That goes for plant based stuff and meat replacements, too. I’ve tried the Impossible burger on a BK Whopper and thought it was plenty passable as a fast food burger patty… But it was a few bucks extra, so now that my curiosity is sated, I probably won’t buy another until it’s the same price as or cheaper than its animal-product counterpart.

Other people have already mentioned how it feels like in your mouth, but I’m going to address a different angle: Ethics and environmental impact.

Modern industrial meat production is incredibly cruel. If you wanted to do the same thing in a more ethical way, the final product would end up being much more expensive, even if you had the economies of scale working in your favor. Meat alternatives would solve that issue.

Producing meat results in a lot of CO2 emissions, so a plant based alternative should be more environmentally friendly. Don’t know about lab meat though. Keeping everything sterile is not cheap or easy, so I guess the LCA of the resulting product should be very interesting to read.

I love Impossible meats. Their nuggets taste better than chicken to me. Their burgers taste good, not quite as good as beef, but still very good.

I would eat lab grown meat given the opportunity. I hope we can get to the point where we can stop killing animals and still have delicious meat.

I enjoy most of them, will eat them if they’re cheap enough. Though I prefer tempeh, seitan, and frozen tofu over stuff that tries to be meat. Quality varies from mediocre to better than the real stuff

I used to unsure about the idea of lab grown meat … but now I think they would be fine. I haven’t seen any in my area yet.

Lab grown meats couldn’t be any worse than the horrendous things we feed and do to the animals (large animals, birds and fish) we eat already.

Lab meat seems like a great idea for those who know nothing about tissue culture. lab-grown meat production traditionally relies on animal serum, particularly fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is a nutrient-rich liquid extracted from the blood of slaughtered cow fetuses to stimulate cell growth. It’s all bullshit.

Some companies are trying to find alternatives, but nothing else is working and all this tech will produce meat only smug Hollywood celebrities can afford.

I’m not a good barometer for this since I pretty much like everything, but I like them. I just bought some vegetarian bacon and it was good. I’m not quite ready to stop eating meat, and I probably won’t ever fully stop, but I do plan on reducing it greatly over the next few years. I’m starting with pork since it’s the easiest one for me (bacon is about the only pork I eat regularly), cow is next, and then chicken which is the hardest one for me but it’s also the ones who suffer the most. I’m starting to buy cage free only eggs. I know the birds still live in bad conditions, but at least they are better conditions somewhat than overcrowded cages.

I am looking for ethical farmers near me and I think I might have found one but I need to visit to make sure.

I do wish lab grown meats become viable soon but in the US, these so called capitalists are already moving to impede progress and market adoption.

The A&W veggie burger is just as good. It’s funny to order it with bacon, (not a vegetarian, just like to moderate beef.) I’ve had a Beyond Meat burger, but it was from a cafeteria that clearly didn’t know how to cook.

Impossible meat is close enough to meat that I genuinely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference without a side-by-side comparison, and it would be virtually impossible for me to tell if it were mixed in with other flavors (eg in a burrito). I’ve heard it’s got high sodium though, so you’ll still have to beware that it’s not much healthier (if at all) than normal meat. I don’t get Impossible often, though I get regular meat even less. I’d say I like Impossible more than normal meat, I just wish it’s a bit cheaper.

Beyond meat simply doesn’t taste quite right, like soy trying to imitate meat. It hits an awkward uncanny valley, so I don’t like it.

IMO lab grown meat feels a bit like a waste of time. With how incredibly uncanny Impossible is to actual meat, I don’t really see the need to grow meat in the lab. And it’ll probably be more expensive than Impossible meat too, if my lab experience is any indication

Lab grown 👍 Imitation 👎

Cause lab grown is actual meat, and I like meat; I’m not vegan or vegetarian, so my only argument against cows is the environmental impact

Apparently food scientists did the research and found out that people liked the imitation chicken nuggets more than real chicken nuggets. I didn’t fully believe it at first so I gave it a try, and promptly got hooked on veggie nuggets lol (I only stopped since no one sells it at where I live now)

Personally I do support reducing meat consumption for environmental benefits. I find meat substitutes a bit of a roundabout way to be vegetarian/vegan especially since some other cultures (e.g. a lot of Indian food) have been making delicious vegetarian food for a long time without needing meat substitutes. But I guess meat substitutes did indeed work?? As long as there is a demand for it I don’t see an issue. Maybe having to make sure ppl have adequate vitamin B intake (which might be less of an issue for lab-grown meat), but that’s pretty much it

I went through a phase of beyond/impossible meats and they’re ok. I generally don’t object but they didn’t hit the same as actual meat or actual veggies. Plus they’re awfully expensive and sold in small packages with excessive plastic packing. I gave up in favor of either meet or plant based.

Except breakfast sausage. My grocery hasn’t reliably had breakfast sausage in over a year and the beyond stuff doesn’t work for me

I love Beyond Meat products, but lab grown still freaks me out a little. It’s hard to articulate, but I don’t know that I could eat it without imagining some kind of wet, pulsating mass of slimy flesh sitting in a bin of some sort in a lab, with tubes and wires hooked up all over it. I know damn well that’s not what it is, but the image is there. I hope I get over it.

I’d rather just give up meat entirely and stick to plant-based alternatives.

I bought some plant burgers a while back and they were pretty decent. I struggled to fully cook them and they ended up kinda carbonized on the outside and a little underdone in the middle so the consistency wasn’t great, but fairly convincing taste-wise.