Worrying trend

[TylerDurden]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9605048/China-now-eats-twice-as-much-meat-as-the-United-States.html

Once all developing/undeveloped countries all want meat, most of us are going to be in trouble, facing vast rises in food-prices.

[aLptHW4k4y]

Get land and put some cows on it then, sounds like it will be a very good investment.

[TylerDurden]

Get land and put some cows on it then, sounds like it will be a very good investment.

I live in an urban environment. Cows are too massive to handle, can't easily stuff a whole carcass into the freezer etc.. I suppose pigs, chickens, goats, ducks etc. might be an option, but that means leaving the urban cesspit.  How much money does one first need to build up a (European) farm big enough to completely support 1 person all year round thereafter? What would be the year-round costs in veterinary fees or whatever?  Answers in pounds/euros please.

[Löwenherz]

I live in an urban environment. Cows are too massive to handle, can't easily stuff a whole carcass into the freezer etc.. I suppose pigs, chickens, goats, ducks etc. might be an option, but that means leaving the urban cesspit.  How much money does one first need to build up a (European) farm big enough to completely support 1 person all year round thereafter? What would be the year-round costs in veterinary fees or whatever?  Answers in pounds/euros please.

I would say 4-5 hectares per person of green pasture with enough precipitation should be sufficient for self-subsistance on a raw paleo diet based on animal foods.

I can give you some numbers for Germany:

The current prices for grassland lie between 10.000 EUR (Thuringia for example) and 24.000 EUR (North Rine-Westphalia).

+ costs for fences
+ costs for building plots
+ costs for construction
+ costs for veterinary (very low)
+ costs for insurances
+ costs for butchering

etc.

Löwenherz

PS: Leasing land makes more sense. Prices lie between 60,- EUR and 320,- EUR per hectare grassland.

[Dorothy]

You could raise your own insects in your present situation. You could also set up an aquaponics system indoors for seafood. If you are willing to eat small mammals you could raise them inside as well as some birds.

You can take similar ideas and extrapolate them to the outdoors. The more land you have the more varied your farming efforts can become. I could feed both of us from my small backyard and home if it were necessary. I would prefer not to though.

[cherimoya_kid]

We'll be growing meat in vats cheaply before this becomes too big a problem. 

[Dorothy]

We'll be growing meat in vats cheaply before this becomes too big a problem. 

Do you think such stuff would be of value to a raw paleo Cheri?  Once it is grown like that do you think grass-fed will still even be available? What  effect do you think such "vatmeat" would have on us?

[cherimoya_kid]

Do you think such stuff would be of value to a raw paleo Cheri?  Once it is grown like that do you think grass-fed will still even be available? What  effect do you think such "vatmeat" would have on us?

If it's grown in sufficiently nutrient-rich solution, I don't think it will be a problem.  It's simply a matter of tweaking it until it's as good or better than the best grassfed.  It's all chemistry. 

The important thing will be to test it on several animal species, and perfect it before humans start eating it. 

[TylerDurden]

I doubt it would ever be even closely comparable to grassfed meats. One only has to look at the dire quality of astronaut-food to see that humans could have done much better by now, if they really had tried. Plus,  one of the reasons why wild game is so superior is that wild animals do lots of exercise, something one could not replicate in a hydroponics lab etc.

[Wolf]

Plus,  one of the reasons why wild game is so superior is that wild animals do lots of exercise, something one could not replicate in a hydroponics lab etc.

I'm sure they could probably "zap" the muscles to force them to contract and "exercise," but more likely I doubt they would realize this would  be something beneficial to even do.

Lab-grown meat however, does not appeal to me in any way whatsoever.  The reason I want to eat a raw paleo diet is because I want to eat a more natural diet, and meat grown in a lab is as far from natural as you can get.  The thought of it just disgusts me, and if they ever do start producing lab-grown meat, they better be labeling it as such, because I do not want to consume any of it.  However it might be healthier for the rest of the world's SAD eaters if the meat is more highly nutritious than grain-fed meat, and might also tempt some people to try eating the meat raw since lab-grown meat won't be infested with salmonella and e. coli so they won't have to fear such things anymore.

Though in my opinion, lab-grown meat will probably end up having similar and/or unknown effects such as Genetically Mutated-I-mean-modified Organisms do..

[TylerDurden]

I'm sure they could probably "zap" the muscles to force them to contract and "exercise," but more likely I doubt they would realize this would  be something beneficial to even do.

Many years ago, pre-RPD diet, my muscles were so wasted and weak that I bought a very expensive electronic gadget which was advertised as exercising my muscles through electrical stimulation. It was a total waste of money, so I doubt the above would replicate exercise at all. To my shame, I, at the time, asked an allexperts.com fitness/weightlifting expert about this sort of gadget and he told me honestly that it would not work - I duly gave him a very poor rating as that wasn't the answer I'd wanted to hear at the time. 

[cherimoya_kid]

I doubt it would ever be even closely comparable to grassfed meats. One only has to look at the dire quality of astronaut-food to see that humans could have done much better by now, if they really had tried. Plus,  one of the reasons why wild game is so superior is that wild animals do lots of exercise, something one could not replicate in a hydroponics lab etc.

It's not fair to compare astronaut food to lab-grown meat.  There are severe weight restrictions on what can be taken into orbit.

Eventually vat-grown meat will be do-able on a small scale, very cheaply, at home.  At this point all you'd have to do is make sure the meat was getting all the necessary micro-minerals, etc., and it's going to be just as healthy as grassfed.

Getting the meat to have the same chemistry as grassfed is simply a matter of--yes--chemistry.  Different chemicals/nutrients/etc. are associated with epigenetic triggers in cells.  Figure out what those triggers are, and you can change the cells into whatever you want. 

Yes, it will take time to get to that point,  but probably not more than a few years.  Meanwhile, the cost of grassfed meat probably won't go up too much, because the masses will be so willing to buy the cheaper vat-grown meat.  When vat-grown meat gets to the point where it's as good as grassfed, then it will be safe to switch to it.

[Wolf]

Many years ago, pre-RPD diet, my muscles were so wasted and weak that I bought a very expensive electronic gadget which was advertised as exercising my muscles through electrical stimulation. It was a total waste of money, so I doubt the above would replicate exercise at all. To my shame, I, at the time, asked an allexperts.com fitness/weightlifting expert about this sort of gadget and he told me honestly that it would not work - I duly gave him a very poor rating as that wasn't the answer I'd wanted to hear at the time. 

Lol, though I'm still pretty sure a huge, fully-funded government laboratory could develop a much better "zap"-ing muscle-contraction equipment than your commercially produced item made for human use and for making money off people who -mostly- just want to work out while being lazy.  Or, even without zapping it, they could probably make machines that physically expand and contract the muscles to better simulate exercise than just electrically zapping it.. or even do both.  And now that I think about it, zapping your muscles to make them contract is probably about the equivalent of just flexing your muscles to see how big they are, which isn't much of a workout at all, though still might be better than -nothing- I guess.

But still, they probably wouldn't spend the money developing equipment to simulate exercise for lab-grown meat unless it would greatly increase the size/gain of the meat in a cheap way and so help them make a profit.  They don't care about health, just making money.

[TylerDurden]

The whole point about health is that there are many combinations of methods needed to achieve it. Just isolating a method to build up muscle would make no difference if the other countless aspects such as enzymes bacteria etc. etc. aren't also factored in.

[Wolf]

See, I was right about the electric pulses being used to "work out" the meat..
I don't like that they're calling it cultured meat though, because that makes me think of high-meat.

Lab-Grown Meat