If you’ve been watching the headlines lately, you may have noticed that lab-grown chicken was approved for production.
Consumers are looking for alternatives that don’t support inhumane butchering practices, but still give them the satisfaction of eating meat.
That means companies are jumping into commercially lab-grown meat, which is touted as being sustainable and even vegan.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the thumbs up to companies to produce this alternative chicken, but what is this meat, and what does it mean for health-conscious consumers like you?
Keep reading to learn more about lab-grown meat and what kinds of risks that you need to be aware of.
What Is Lab-Grown Meat?
Lab-grown meat refers to meat cultured in a lab, rather than taken from a whole animal.
The process consists of taking cell cultures from chicken meat, or eventually any kind of meat, and forcing those cells to replicate unnaturally.
The factories look similar to those of beer breweries, except instead of beer, there is a cell broth that’s growing chicken cells.
From there, a thick sheet of muscle is created, which can then be shaped into recognizable chicken breast shapes.
While it can be technically called chicken, this alternative chicken won’t resemble the chicken meat that you’re probably expecting.
This is because lab-grown meat will never have any blood flowing through it, nor will it build mass and texture from exercise. Rather, this meat is much like the overprocessed meat that you would get in a lot of chicken nuggets.
Potential Risks Of Lab-Grown Meat
The problems that come with lab-grown meat are found at every step of the process.
Not only can the meat culture easily become contaminated by anything at any point, but the way the cells are forced into replication poses a very big problem.
Similar to the way cancer cells divide and replicate out of control, so do the meat cells being cultured.
This means that this meat behaves in the same way that a tumor might.
But not only that, if the cells used to create the base of the chicken have any sort of mutation, then all of the chicken meat created could have further mutations and pose risks to your health.
One of these risks includes exposure to prions, which are misfolded proteins that can affect other proteins as well.
You’re probably familiar with mad cow disease, which develops when cows are exposed to contaminated feed that has cow bones in it.
This disease isn’t just acquired from cannibalism; it can also arise from rogue proteins that mutate in just the right way.
When you’re forcing meat cells to divide rapidly in an environment that isn’t natural, the risk of this happening goes up significantly.
What Are The Long-Term Effects of Humans?
The long-term effects of lab-grown meat are still unknown.
Companies creating this meat product know it won’t make you sick in the short term.
But when lab-grown meat becomes widely available in the coming years, it’s likely that people will make this their main source of protein.
This is worrisome in and of itself because meat cells grown in a vat aren’t likely to be of high nutritional value.
Besides the protein that the cells inherently create, any nutritional value you get from this meat is from enriched sources.
Not only that, but the basis for the nutrient broth is most likely going to come from a cheap source, like non-organic corn, in order to make the production of this meat profitable.
On top of that, you have to take into consideration what impact eating the same identical cells over and over again will have on the human body.
There might not be data on this yet, but there definitely will be in the near future.
Eat Clean Proteins Today!
The phrase “you are what you eat” has never been more true than right now.
While eating sustainably-sourced foods is a great goal to have in your life, turning to lab-grown meat probably isn’t the answer.
Remember that lab-grown meat is a processed product from start to finish. Processed foods aren’t good for your body.
Simply cutting meat out altogether and committing to a vegetarian diet would be healthier than trying to replicate or replace meat with processed foods.
If you would like to learn more about how you can change your lifestyle and experience real health, my book will guide you through this process.
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