While Americans are ambivalent about plant-based ‘clean meat’ protein alternatives, Chinese and Indians are enthusiastic

SCIENCE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER V Still FINAL
A plant-based 'Impossible' burger. Credit: Wired

Would you eat a burger grown from animal cells rather than a whole cow? What about a plant-based burger, once researchers finally pull off a perfect imitation of the texture and taste of a meat burger?

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Modern meat production involves shockingly inhumane conditions, mass use of antibiotics with worrisome public health implications, and….demand for meat is expected to rise 73 percent by 2050….[R]esearchers are desperately working on better alternatives to meat….Some of them are working to invent cell-based products — “clean meat” — that will be, on a molecular level, identical to meat but without the slaughterhouses.

[Editor’s note: Read ‘Factory farming’ poisons our food and harms animals? A veterinarian examines activist claims about modern agriculture.]

That’s exciting….if consumers buy it. Will they?  That’s what a new study of consumer attitudes about plant-based meat and clean meat aimed to find out….The results? Consumers in China and India are substantially more open-minded about clean meat than consumers in the US….

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In America, eating a lot of meat predicted being less interested in alternatives. In China, though, the people who ate the most meat were the ones who expected to get the most out of plant-based and clean meat options….That’s a big deal. China and India collectively contain more than 2 billion people

Read full, original article: In India and China, consumers are eager for lab-grown meat. In the US? Not as much.

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