Eat sh*t, cattle farming industry! No, literally, eat sh*t. Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda has developed a way to make meat substitute out of "sewage mud," which is exactly what it sounds like. He extracts (bacterial) protein from what is essentially a soup of human feces, then blends it with soy protein and steak sauce to form a sort of poop patty. According to initial tests, the stuff actually tastes like beef, which raises the question: WHO THE HELL DID THEY GET TO DO THESE TESTS?
(The funniest thing about that video, by the way, is the artificial hand that Ikeda uses to point to his chart. Because GOD FORBID you touch a CHART. Who knows where those things have been? Okay, time to make the turd burgers!) (No, wait, that's the second-funniest thing. The funniest thing is that THE LAB REFRIGERATOR IS LABELED "SH*T BURGER." BUT WITHOUT THE ASTERISK.)
This isn't just for dubious fun, or even for science — it's also for the environment. Beef farming is an environmental disaster — it uses tons of water and feed, and at large scales it's inhumane to boot. Meatpacking releases 18 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases, from the methane in livestock. And climate change is already leading to food shortages that will need to be addressed. If we can avoid all that nonsense with a simple sh*tburger, isn't it worth it?
Probably not. I mean, you'd be eating poo. That's sort of the quintessential thing that humans don't like to do (although maybe dogs know something we don't?). Also, by the way, it costs about ten or 20 times more than regular meat right now, because of the cost of research, so we could be talking Kobe-beef-and-gold burger prices to eat a sh*t sandwich. But the cost will go down after the research is completed — after all, talk about a renewable resource. Plus, it has less fat apparently? And people will eat anything if it has less fat, even yogurt.
