Juggling Dynamite

While plant-based burgers are deliciously gaining popularity, a handful of startups are working to make real, environmentally friendly beef and chicken from animal cells without farming animals.  For those who want to embrace clean food solutions, but can’t imagine giving up steak-like texture, this one’s for you.

Aleph Farms announced this week that it has incubated a prototype steak made from real animal cells in a food lab.  See An Israeli start-up with ties to Americas most popular hummus brand says it made the world’s first lab-grown steak–a holy grail for the industry:

Instead of growing only one or two types of animal cells on a flat surface, Aleph grows four types of animal cells in three dimensions. The company also claims to be growing them in a medium that is free of fetal bovine serum, the rich cow-based liquid that’s currently the lab standard for nourishing cells.

Here is a direct video link.

In addition:

The Silicon Valley-based startup New Age Meats let Business Insider taste its lab-grown-sausage prototype in September; the vegan egg and mayo company Just (formerly Hampton Creek) claims to have made prototype chicken nuggets; and the Bill Gates-backed startup Memphis Meats said it produced the world’s first chicken strips from animal cells last March.”

Good news:  a study by The Nature Conservancy projects that “the conservation, restoration, and improved management of land in order to increase carbon storage or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in landscapes worldwide – can provide up to 37 percent of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperatures under that 2°C mark”

This means while we are transforming our food and energy systems for necessary emission reductions on a large scale, we can greatly reduce existing pollution and greenhouse gases by planting and nurturing the vegetation that naturally draws carbon out of our air and back into the ground where we need it.

This is not just trees, but also wetlands (mangrove forests store up to 5 x as much carbon as land forests) and replacing shallow-root plants like grass with deep-rooted plants around our buildings and homes.  The picture below is a good reminder of the type of plants that best advance the goal here.

The bottom line is that we individuals play a huge role in helping our health, home and earth by eating a plant-based diet, and planting and preserving carbon-extractors all around us.  Plants are here to help.  Humans need to let them.

What we ingest makes a huge difference to our overall health and vitality, especially as we age.  In fact, because developed world living is mostly sedative in nature, in terms of weight management, what we eat and drink plays an even larger role than intermittent work- outs.  It’s really hard to outrun a bad diet.

However, cultivating and retaining strength and acuity requires more than just a healthy diet and portion control.  ‘Death by chair’ is a leading cause of physical and mental deterioration today, and a new study confirms that a powerful antidote is to keep moving and strength-training our muscles as we age.  Regular aerobic and resistance training yield priceless compound benefits over time, and all we have to do is invest our effort.  See Exercise wins: fit seniors can have hearts that look 30 years younger:

As for muscle health, the findings were even more significant…researchers were surprised to find the 75-year-old muscles of lifelong exercisers were about the same as the muscles of the 25-year-olds. “If I showed you the muscle data that we have, you wouldn’t know it was from an older individual. You would think it’s from somebody that’s a young exerciser.”