Je refuse!

There is some shit I will not eat.

Fake Meat Is an Even Bigger Fraud Than I Thought
The most realistic lab-grown fake meat is brewed in automated, stainless steel vats called bioreactors that look like they’re ready for that “Logan’s Run” remake I’ve been endlessly waiting for… except it isn’t. That, according to former and current employees, is just what fake meat startup Upside Foods wants you to think.

From there, things get seriously gross.

There are only two companies in the United States greenlighted by the FDA to sell “cultivated meat.” Instead of being extruded or whatever from scientifically enhanced vegetable matter like Beyond Meat, Fauxjerky, Cow Patty’s, or I Can’t Believe It’s Not Sausage, this stuff consists of “sheets of tissue” made from lab-grown animal cells. The sheets are then processed into something so close to actual chicken cutlets that one fine dining customer said, after his test meal, “the taste and the texture was incredible.”

Five diners at the Michelin-starred Bar Crenn in San Francisco were treated to a special dish created with Upside Foods frankenchicken — and were apparently very pleased with the results. French-born-and-trained chef Dominique Crenn could whip up something with used Odor Eaters Ultra-Durable Insoles and make it tasty, so factor that into just how good Upside Foods’ lab-made chicken might really be.

But the question we need to ask is this: Upside Foods, some employees say, lies about how their faux chicken is created. Why?

Because the truth is disgusting enough to kill whatever appetite you might have ever had for their revolting swill for good, that’s why. But hey, at least this Frankenmeat is economical, right?

Right?!?

Upside Foods was founded in 2015 (originally as “Memphis Meats”) to use science to make lab-grown meat that is made from animal tissue, more or less. The Wall Street Journal reported two years later that the company’s technology could “yield one pound of chicken meat for less than $9,000.”

And you thought Bidenflation was bad?

But there was progress. The $9,000-per-pound cost was “half of what it cost the company to produce its beef meatball about a year ago.”

According to a Food Dive report from earlier this year, Upside Foods had also developed “a cell line that grows in a culture medium without platelet-derived growth factors” which, in addition to sounding super-gross, costs “between $20,000 and $30,000 per gram.”

And that is supposed to do what, exactly, in a market where you can buy an eight-pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts at Walmart for about 15 bucks?

So there you have it, folks: it doesn’t taste good; it’s not particularly nutritious; and it’s orders of magnitude more expensive than actual, y’know, food. Hard pass for me, YMMV. While we’re at it, you scheming, diabolical pricks can hold the cricket paste, cockroach chips, grubworm fritters, caterpillar canapes, and all the other insect-related offerings too, thanksveddymuch. You seriously want that shit to be eaten, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to eat it yourself.

But that’s not the whole story; as it happens, not only are artificial sweeteners like saccharine, sucralose, and aspartame foul-tasting, they’re extremely bad for you into the bargain.

Researchers discover learning and memory deficits after ingestion of aspartame
Ongoing work by Florida State University College of Medicine researchers into how aspartame affects the brain has linked the artificial sweetener with learning and memory deficits in mice.

The offspring of male mice that consumed aspartame at levels equivalent to much lower doses than those deemed safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), demonstrated spatial learning and memory deficits over the course of a controlled 16-week exposure. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

And while recent World Health Organization guidelines point out potential associations between the consumption of aspartame and other artificial sweeteners and increased risk for metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer, they did not address potential effects on cognitive abilities.

"This is a cognitive function that is distinct from the anxiety behavior, so the effects of aspartame are much more widespread than the previous paper had suggested," said co-author Pradeep Bhide, the Jim and Betty Ann Rodgers Eminent Scholar Chair of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Because of COURSE they are.

At the end of the day, what have we learned from all this, then? Simple: the dietary advice urged on us by FederalGovCo and its bevy of bought-and-paid-for “health” Chicken Littles, nutritional-science “experts,” and miscellaneous panic-ninny scolds and Church Ladies should never, EVER be trusted. Remember: these selfsame “experts” spent years telling us a lot of alarming things about the error of our mealtime ways:

• Butter is hazardous to your health for numerous reasons; eat only margarine instead

• Eggs are artery-clogging death-spheroids, stay away from them altogether

• Red meat? Oh good LORD, no!

• Stick strictly to the guidelines of the hallowed Food Pyramid and you can’t possibly go wrong, trust us

• Bacon? PLEASE tell me you’re joking

• Salt is the Silent Killer©, a more serious threat to life, limb, and longevity than hang-gliding, bungee-jumping, and hitch-hiking COMBINED

All these warnings and many more were used as clubs to beat Normal Americans into changing their ideas about what they should and should not be eating…and then, twenty or so years later, the “experts” turned on a dime and reversed every last one of them.

As of yesterday, butter is again the preferred choice, since margarine is chock-full of carcinogens. Eggs are called a “Superfood,” one of the most nutritional things humans can consume. Red meat remains the best source of protein and all the right sorts of fat. The Food Pyramid is an unfunny joke. And of course salt is essential for human survival, our bodies simply cannot do without it for long.

The moral of the story: Trust not in governments or their “experts,” for they are dishonest and motivated primarily by financial considerations. Eat what you like, with moderation, variety, and common sense always foremost in mind—ie, don’t make a pig of yourself. As a rule, your Grandma was a lot more knowledgeable and intelligent about such matters than FederalGovCo will ever be, with the added benefit of wishing only the best for you, always.