McStemCell's

Yummers!

Scientists have managed to grow enough stem cell beef to make a couple of patties--to the tune of over $300,000--so I guess it won't be anytime soon that engineered burgers will be on the fast food menus of the world. I wouldn't read this report  on an empty stomach, or a full one, either.  Burgers with a "yellowish tinge" even though they've been tinted with beet juice? No, thanks. 


Of course, these were scientists in the UK, and it probably seemed like a good idea after all that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy going around a few years back.

Makes me happy that I am old enough to have eaten any number of juicy, thick, medium-rare burgers (accompanied by fries cooked in beef fat) without one iota of guilt and old enough that I won't be force-fed lab meat at the Sundowners' Club.

I don't know why this mystery meat seems more disgusting than any other edible.  If you've ever worked in a restaurant, studied a nutrition label on a salty snack, or read any of the scary bestsellers about the food chain, you know what I mean. Want to supersize that pink slime?

However, the test tube beef is getting a bit too sci-fi even for me.  I'm old and my head is filled up with all kinds of cultural rubbish, so all I can think of is a bloodied and battered Charlton Heston searching the back alleys of The Future (New York in 2022 which looks a lot like Kabul 2012) to find the secret* of the "tasteless, odorless crud" that passes for food:  Soylent Green.

*Spoiler alert:  it begins with the letter "P" and rhymes with "Creeple."