My Family Is Mad

It all started when The Daughter showed us her vegetarian bowl from Tanuki Raw. It looked like meat. It tasted like meat. It was not meat. It was Impossible Burger mince. If you do not know what is Impossible Meat, click HERE.

The Husband mused, "Wow! Are their shares worth buying?" Apparently, their shares are not publicly listed. So, if you are not Bill Gates, you don't get to invest in them. We did find that Beyond Burger is publicly listed. A closer look revealed that its Earnings Per Share = minus 16 c. It is a loss making company.

The Daughter then mused, "If you really want to invest, you might look into the company researching lab-grown meat. It should taste like real meat, and is real meat - just lab-grown."

I offered that lab-grown meat does not taste like real meat because real meat has muscle to give it bite and texture. Lab-grown meat tastes like mush. So then, my entire family started imagining lab-grown cows with everything cow-ish, but without a head, exercising on a treadmill. Then, there was robust debate on how important it was to not have the lab-grown cow look too much like a cow because then it would be hard to say it is not a real cow. Then, someone said that it made no sense to have the whole cow because you don't need the innards and such... so, why not just pass electrical current through the slab of lab-grown meat to stimulate it to grow muscle.

By this time, I was pretty grossed out already... but the worst was yet to come.

Sometime ago, we came across this article on ethical cannibalism - HERE. If one really wants to eat meat without harming other beings, the most logical thing to do is to eat one's own meat. Hence, the term, ethical cannibalism. If labs can grow cow meat, then it can grow human meat. She said, "Would people eat their own meat?"

The Husband and I protested vigorously, "No... don't bring that up again. Just don't."

The Daughter persisted, maintaining that it was the ethical thing to do. If you want meat, then eat your own meat. Then, The Son said that he would not mind. Meat is meat. Even if it is human and comes from your own leg, it is still meat. The Daughter explained how community gardens are now springing up all over Singapore where people grow their own produce, and harvest to eat. Building from that, a good business idea would be to set up facilities in every neighbourhood that would culture and grow every individual's own human meat, using cells from that individual's body, for self-consumption."

It gets worse. After some joking around about hyopothetical discussions where families try to decide exactly whose meat tastes better and should be cooked that evening, The Husband said that it was just far more economical a business idea to collect individuals' own dead skin cells and make delicious food from that.

At this point, The Son protested, disgusted. The Husband pushed his point. Plants do it all the time. They shed leaves that turn into compost and then the plants absorb nutrients from the compost. The Son demurred. The Son maintained that a more accurate parallel would be to collect dead skin cells, hair and nail keratin, grow mushrooms and eat those mushrooms.

My family is mad.