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Re:Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? by ghaff on Friday December 07, 2018 @02:36PM (#18630808)
Continuing to improve artificial meat (e.g. Impossible Burgers) to get to the point where it's better than the real thing. You don't change people's minds by taking things away from them. You give them a better substitute.
Re:Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? by naravara on Friday December 07, 2018 @05:17PM (#18632200)
>Continuing to improve artificial meat (e.g. Impossible Burgers) to get to the point where it's better than the real thing.

It already is better than much of the fast-food/cafeteria grade meat people use. Taco Bell's taco meat, for example, was mostly soy protein with other fillers and additives as it is. Swapping it out for lab-meat would actually make it more meaty. The barrier right now is cost, not quality.

You don't need to 100% replace everything. You can have a situation where people eat real meat on special occasions or offered as gifts, but rely on cheaper fake stuff for their everyday meals.

But part of it is also just food-culture. Eating meat used to be a status symbol so once meat got cheap enough to be a staple people insist on having it with every meal. Consequently they've forgotten how to eat and enjoy mostly plant based diets. India, though, has plenty of great and satisfying vegetarian dishes as part of its food culture because meals without meat aren't believed to be any kind of special niche.

Re:Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? by alacombe on Friday December 07, 2018 @03:36PM (#18631371)
Artificial food will always lack the bio-availabilities of real food our bodies evolved to process. For example, vitamin C artificially synthesized from glucose is more difficult to assimilate by the guts than "natural" vitamin C, especially when consumed with carbs.
Re:Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? by mirimir on Saturday December 08, 2018 @01:26AM (#18634190)
Huh? Vitamin C is L-ascorbic acid.

It's a simple compound, comprising just 20 atoms: six carbon, six oxygen and eight hydrogen. It's related to glucose (and manufactured commercially from it). Also, it's water soluble, and I don't believe that there's an associated carrier.

Re:Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? by jcranmer on Friday December 07, 2018 @04:06PM (#18631669)
That sounds surprising. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3847730/ suggests that there is no difference in bioabsorption in humans between synthetic and natural vitamin C, particularly in the cases where you're not taking straight vitamin C (i.e., supplemental vitamin C tablets).
Re:Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? by Scoundreller on Friday December 07, 2018 @03:48PM (#18631466)
But it’s easy to produce, consume and absorb enough vitamin C.

Vitamin C also breaks down fairly easily when cooked (necessary or common with a lot of foods).

Iron is a bigger issue where non-absorption of non-organic sources can cause some GI upset.