Lab-made dairy products are now a reality

It seems like you would want to build a high surface area framework/scaffold of the 3-5 dependent layers above the actual production of milk. One semi important question is how do you determine which genome to use. Each cow for instance produces genetically different milk which is based on its genome and epigenome. My guess is we can probably get to a near product pretty quickly with known tech and the next century will be consumed with making adjustments as more is uncovered about the role played by systems not included in the model. Eventually you will likely end up with a basic model of every system in the cow to achieve actual milk.

It is curious how so much bio technological/financial effort is spent on something that not only does not contribute to the extension of human life but also serves no other purpose than it’s own end. In general milk is more of a cultural commodity than an anything close to a necessity.

Personally I would much rather biotech focused efforts on life saving/extending tech and then we can address other desires later like more perfect hairlines, longer orgasms and memories ect, but such is the conundrum of capitalism trying to determine which humanitarian goal to solve.

> lab-made cheese is far away from being in the shelves

My local grocery store has a ton of them, mostly based on soybeans or nuts like cashews. Presumably you had something different in mind?

> Milk is substitutable. You loose the taste for it in a year or so. Cheese? I have tried many vegan cheeses. They all suck.

I think there's also a marketing issue with these things. This reminds of two anecdotes.

A few months ago, I got curious and tried one of those "alternative milks". As "milk", they all tasted terribly. Some tried to mimic the taste more than others. Some had tons of seed oils, which, I've heard, aren't all that great for the body. But one of these, I actually liked. It didn't really taste like milk, and it had next to nothing aside from oats and water.

A few years ago, I was out at a bar in Paris and caught a discussion between three people, one French, one Italian and one Wisconsinite. The subject was the cheese brought from the US. And the part that stuck with me was along the lines of: "This doesn't taste like Parmigiano at all. / But it's still very, very good cheese. / I think you'd have much more success selling it as its own name".

My point is that maybe instead of trying to recreate "vegan steaks" or "vegan cheese" or whatever, call it something new and let it stand on its own. It will probably never be the same as "the real thing", and that's OK. Even better if it can forego all those weird, highly processed ingredients needed to try to give it a semblance of texture, etc.

> Milk is substitutable. You loose the taste for it in a year or so. Cheese? I have tried many vegan cheeses. They all suck.

I've been trying to make more environmentally conscious food choices: pretty much cut out meat, I didn't drink milk in the first place, but cheese... cheese is my nemesis.

The work toward this kind of 'ready to eat' food has already started, with companies selling things like https://mealsquares.com/ or https://jimmyjoy.com/.

The zeitgeist seems to be about going back to more natural food though, at least in my circles.

The underlying fear is that what is sold as 'nutritionally complete' food is actually incomplete, but that we don't know enough about nutrition yet to notice it : so the best strategy is to keep a tried and true diet, like a Mediterranean diet.

> I'm really interested in foods that could be created that don't mimic existing foods derived from animals or plants. You could imagine a nutritionist defining requirements - combinations of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, various micronutrients.

This is what milk is, really. It's specifically designed to be the exact balance of nutrients needed -- by an infant. (And in this case, an infant cow.) It'll be hard to beat what we already have.

>don't mimic existing foods derived from animals or plants

But all good tastes we know and enjoy are from animals or plants. You have to mimic existing foods for people to like (and buy) it.

With every sentence I read, I kept saying "quorn. quorn. quorn." and it just kept applying more and more.

The problem with Quorn [0] is that it's only just acceptably tasty. People looking for price will just buy rice and beans and oatmeal, and people looking for taste will buy meat or tastier, more modern meat substitutes (think Impossible).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn

> Lactose intolerance is rising in the US population

Isn't it just the logical consequence of non-European immigration? AFAIK lactose intolerance is a pretty well-known phenomenon (unlike gluten): mamals are lactose intolerant after weaning, and as such most humans are so. There exist a few places (northern Europe, subsaharian Africa, southern? India, somewhere in the middle East) where the same kind of nonsense mutation on the gene responsible for weaning appeared, so people from there are usually lactose tolerant even after being weaned. The more people not coming from there there is in your population, the less lactose tolerant your population will be.

Edit: incorrect english wording

New studies indicate that adults should not have more than two servings of dairy products per day.

Citation needed.

It's not natural for any mammal to keep producing milk. So it's unlikely that the cow had a "sweet and free life".

Cows are forcefully inseminated and once born their calves are taken away.

How would you feel if someone kept you in a Matrix-like farm to harvest energy or protein from you?

I'm worried that there might be regulatory hurdles. The article says:

> nobody has to convince regulators that the foods are fit for human consumption, because they are made using microorganisms and processes that are already “generally recognised as safe”.

But the only mention of the "food industry" is FDA, which is specific to the USA:

> When Perfect Day asked the FDA to approve its whey protein in 2020, the agency said yes right away.

is it not easier to simply buy carbon offsets, if that's your actual concern in the first place?

We will never replicate the real thing closely enough. Microbiome/proteome alone is going to be impossible, without all the small peptides and antibodies - it will never be the same.

Milk itself isn't the healthiest food either. Cow milk is the most prevalent allergen, but it's mostly chronic inflammation instead of full blown anaphylaxis and thus ignored. You do not have to be lactose intolerant, it is true allergy to proteins in milk.

https://www.arthritis.org/health-wellness/healthy-living/nut...

Humans were not supposed to eat it. It was just something that helped us survive in frozen wastelands.

Not reading an article and then claiming you know what’s in it is a bad look.

You posted this comment using PROCESSED SILICON instead of organic garden variety sand. Perhaps you should switch back.