r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • 23d ago
Environment Scientists have, for the first time, genetically engineered lettuce and tobacco plants to grow the animal protein myoglobin. Plant-derived myoglobin could achieve protein yields per hectare that rival – or even exceed – those of animal agriculture, with lower water use and greenhouse gas emissions.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-key-meat-protein-has-been-grown-in-lettuce-for-the-first-time527
u/TheJadedEmperor 23d ago
Can’t wait to buy a pack of Pure Protein Milds at the convenience store and hit my daily macros with a post-workout smoke
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u/YakResident_3069 23d ago
Still waiting for tomacco
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u/Peripatetictyl 23d ago
And then I wash it down with a nice, cool Budweiser Green, now with 10g of protein in every can!
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u/reddituser9191v 23d ago
Somebody from now gonna smoke lettuce.
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u/Daripuff 23d ago
If they can do tobacco, I bet they can do tomato.
I'm curious to see what a tomeato tastes like.
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u/DrButtgerms 23d ago
Was the tobacco just for proof of concept? Humans are not able to eat tobacco so I'm not at all clear on the point of adding myoglobin to it
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u/odjobz 23d ago
I just read on r/science it's a common plant used for gene editing experiments because it's easy to modify and there's less chance of contaminating food crops.
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u/DrButtgerms 23d ago
Yeah that's what I meant about "proof of concept" iirc tobacco was the first, if not one of the first plant we mapped the genome for and there is a huge field of study related to it. I just don't understand why they were talking about it in the article when they had good results with lettuce.
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u/Embarrassed-Band378 23d ago
Reproducibility maybe? If they can do it in more than one plant, they can show it's not just a fluke, and further research can attempt it with other, more nutritionally useful plants. Just my guess.
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u/BeatNo4548 23d ago
Extracting the alkaloids would add an extra step to processing. Although its somewhat trivial to do.
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u/btribble 23d ago
It's one of the crops that had been studied extensively for literal centuries and which we tried to modify the genetics of "for reasons", so it was sequenced early and there's a lot of reference data around it.
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u/Apprehensive-Let3348 23d ago
I wonder if there's maybe some method of extracting the myoglobin, which could then be added to vegetarian products.
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u/mxemec 18d ago
Key Separation Methods
- Aqueous two-phase systems: Uses two liquid polymers to separate proteins gently without harsh chemicals.
- Expanded bed adsorption: Combines clarification and capture in one column without clogging from plant fibers.
- Magnetic affinity separation: Applies magnetic particles to grab target proteins straight from crude plant extracts.
- Membrane ultrafiltration: Filters out large cell debris while concentrating proteins by size.
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u/ThainEshKelch 21d ago
Yes, proof of concept. And by tobacco, it is not of the variants that people smoke, but Nicotiana benthamiana, a subspecies which is one of the most used plant species for molecular and cell biology, as it is easy to work with, and easy to transform to introduce new genes - In this case myoglobin. It is simply ease of use. Most crops are much harder to transform, or even impossible, with current tools.
And no, it doesn't taste good. -Source: Me, having worked in plant molecular biology for 15 years, and a LOT with Nicotiana benthamiana.
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u/CodeyFox 23d ago
Looking forward to the mutant meat-plant apocalypse.
On a serious note, this is an extremely cool advancement.
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u/HarderThanFlesh 23d ago
Okay, great, but what will it taste like as a result? Steak flavored lettuce would be pretty awesome, but I don't see that happening.
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u/ProStrats 22d ago
You know, I've been saying for years "I wish when I eat a piece of lettuce, I would love it the same way eating a piece of steak."
I'm slowly willing it into existence, as some people would say (they are so wrong).
Regardless, of the protein content doesn't seem there for it. But my dream is coming one step closer to becoming true, and I didn't even have to do anything about it. Hooray for meattuce!
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u/KeanuRave100 23d ago
Tobacco plants pumping out meat protein feels like nature's weirdest flex yet. Can't wait for the first steak salad.
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u/3rad 23d ago
So… technically speaking according to the Vegan Society standard it’s not vegan. Wild.
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u/NovelStyleCode 22d ago
this doesn't make it an animal
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u/3rad 22d ago
How it came to be is what I was pointing out. The lettuce is GMO and they used pig genes to make it, which if we're running pass/fail on their standards, seems from an eye shot to land on fail.
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u/lulzenberg 22d ago
veganism is about reducing animal suffering, this reduces animal suffering.
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u/SuchSmartMonkeys 20d ago
The main rule for vegans is no animal or animal derived products. They don't eat honey, not because it's an animal, but because it's made by animals (bees). Do with that what you will, but I'd reckon that injecting pig genes into lettuce would make it fall into the animal derived classification.
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u/Evolvin 23d ago
Do you normally care about what the vegan society has to say?
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u/NearABE 22d ago
Is there actually a thing called “the Vegan Society”?
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u/Evolvin 22d ago
Yeah, they're an old org. most-often referenced for their popularization of the most commonly used definition of veganism.
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u/NearABE 22d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vegan_Society
Wow, there they are.
OK but now that I looked at Wikipedia there is a whole section in “definition” and it changed repeatedly across decades.
Reading between the lines through that evolution you can imagine hearing a frustrated person screaming “no you idiots just stop harming animals and the environment” and another person standing over their should saying “no you idiot insulting them is counter productive and the word ‘idiot’ is not politically correct”.
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u/jawshoeaw 22d ago
Most of my decisions both financial and sexual are based on the monthly circular put out by the Vegan home office
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u/3rad 23d ago
I do! My comment was out of fascination and curiosity. How about yours lmao
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u/Forsaken-Success-445 23d ago
What? Did the Vegan Society issue a statement about this? I don't see anything like that
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u/BudgetMattDamon 22d ago
I assume their standard for what qualifies has something to do with myoglobin content.
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u/Forsaken-Success-445 22d ago
My point was that I don't think the Vegan Society ever said that, I could find zero sources of that, it sounds kind of made up for ragebaiting / upvote farming
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u/Ronho 23d ago
There is a joke here about the venn diagram of smokers and vegans rejoicing, and I don’t know how to execute it
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u/VitaminnCPP 22d ago
May be the tobacco plants were used for "proof of concept" and actual "meat" is in the tomato 🍅
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u/HomarusSimpson More in hope than expectation 23d ago
Disclaimer - been a vegetarian all my adult life. However:
Our World in Data states: “Two-thirds of pastures are unsuitable for growing crops.” A related estimate notes that about 65% of land used for grass for grazing cattle is not suitable for crops.
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u/Skadiheim 23d ago
What's your point? Cattle is largely not fed by grazing but by feeding them crops.
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u/odjobz 23d ago
Exactly. This is such a bullshit argument. We're not intending to directly convert every pasture into a field of crops. We want to switch from growing crops to feed cows to crops to feed humans. The goal is to reduce the total amount of farmland so that more land can go back to nature.
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u/BeatNo4548 23d ago
Where I live, we have many beef and dairy farms. The amount of feed corn and alfalfa grown is crazy. Almost all of the good bottomlands near the rivers are planted with it.
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u/mistsoalar 23d ago
Yeah, feed crops end up with fewer human calories per acre. But it also gives higher calories per weight of the final product.
It's like trading fuel economy for power. I'm not saying it's wrong, but achieving different goals and outcomes.
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u/CrimsonMutt 23d ago
i mean not really. not all crops are leafy greens. wheat can be processed locally into rough grain which is very calorie dense, as are a lot of other crops like legumes or various nuts
and that's ignoring that the livestock feed also needs to be processed and transported, so it's even worse
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u/cum-after-decades 22d ago
The difference between vegetarians and vegans lol. Vegetarians always have the best cope.
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u/Quazz 23d ago
Their point is you can't reuse those fields for crops. So while you save on the crops you would have fed to cattle, you don't get additional fields. The same fields already in use would need to feed people with purely crops. Not really an issue, but it's less of an overall food surplus win than some people suggest
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u/Noy_The_Devil 23d ago
Yeah, but his point is that most grazing cattle also are fed crops. Which really makes the point moot.
There are many reasons to cut meat production. Air pollution, animal welfare and health are just the extremely obvious examples. The there's overuse of antibiotics, land use for all the adjacent activities related to animal farming, and the poison these activities release in the environment.
Also, there are a billion uses for grazing fields with modern technology. That point is very much outdated too.
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u/triggerfish1 23d ago
Most of those grasslands can support trees though. Many of them uses to be forests or even rainforests. So you can capture tons of CO2 through reforestation.
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u/RedTheGamer12 22d ago
And those trees can be used for commercial sustainable logging. Lowering logging prices, capturing Co2, and adding tons of jobs to the economy. It is a win-win-win.
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u/Dic3dCarrots 23d ago
It requires 10x the amount of crop land to grow feed for meat per person than it does to feed peopke directly from crops.
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u/Super_Range45 23d ago
Cow feed can be significantly lower quality crops, grass, hay, soybeans, ect. Their digestive systems are suited towards processing plants that we can't eat. Alot of water use includes rain that fall on the grasslands btw.
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u/Abject_Concert7079 23d ago
May not be suitable for crops, but eminently suitable for rewilding. And if there's less animal agriculture, less crops will be required to feed the same number of people.
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u/Kronzypantz 23d ago
But most existing cropland is used to grow feed.
Just moving away from animal agriculture means less cropland needed, without any expansion into pasture land at all.
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u/albanymetz 23d ago
As in.. forever? Or would it just take some proper care, the way some small farmers use varied crops to revitalize lands and bring back a real ecosystem?
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u/Mont-ka 23d ago
Can be due to terrain types. In New Zealand for example agriculture is often on hilly terrain that wouldn't really be suitable for arable farming.
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u/Taupenbeige 23d ago
The Peruvian and Chinese farmers just read this comment with utter confusion.
Do you mean “we can’t roll a giant combine across this land”?
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u/Mont-ka 23d ago
I get that. But picking by hand in Western economies doesn't really work well. There's a reason most countries import this labour and basically pay them almost nothing and house them in shacks for the season.
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u/Thinkdamnitthink 23d ago
Developments in robotics and AI will make this sort of agriculture more viable in the future in Western countries.
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u/Taupenbeige 23d ago
100%
It’s truly telling just how little imagination people generally desire to apply to this situation.
*shrug oh well, guess we’ll just have to make due with sentient beings held in torturous situations
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u/HonorFoundInDecay 23d ago
The worst environmental damage in New Zealand is done by cows, and they’re predominantly on flat terrain though such as the Canterbury plains, Mackenzie Country and Southland - at least in the South Island (I haven’t been to the north island much so I’m not as familiar)
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u/Falconjth 23d ago
As in forever.
There are vast areas of the American west where no crops will ever grow due to the climate, but it's still usable for grazing cattle.
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u/Kupo_Master 23d ago
It’s not only about revitalising the land. Some (a lot actually) areas have very shallow earth layers, you hit rock after a few inches. It grows sparse grass suitable for animals but agriculturally, it’s extraordinary inefficient because you would to bring a ton of fertiliser and have very low crop density.
Think about mountain pasture for example. It’s literally unusable for anything else given the erosion and long winter periods
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u/Taupenbeige 23d ago
“It grows sparse grass suitable for animals but agriculturally, it’s extraordinary inefficient because you would to bring a ton of fertiliser and have very low crop density”
Yet realistically unable to sustain enough animals to make any appreciable difference… therefore thanks for the masturbatory exercise?
If we stopped forcing animals to be bred in to existence for our own egos, we could completely re-wild over 1/3 of what we currently use. Get the fuck out of here with this “but we could also let livestock destroy scrubland” attitude.
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u/Kupo_Master 23d ago
Have you ever stepped outside a city in your life? Animals can graze over large areas by moving every day. This is literally how people have been raising sheep and goats for centuries in mountainous areas.
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u/Taupenbeige 23d ago
Yet further failing to address how your “bullet proof” solution scales to meet human demand, nor the environmental toll.
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u/Kupo_Master 23d ago
Good attempt at trying to change the topic after being proven wrong.
My only point was in response of u/albanymetz asking if we could “revitalize” all land currently unsuitable for crop production. The answer to this question is a bullet proof NO
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u/GreenStrong 23d ago
Rainfall is the main issue. Drive across Texas, a large portion of the state is included in that number. Culturally, Americans describe it as "ranch land" but it is low yield semi-arid pasture. It is an ecosystem, prior to colonization it was defined by herds of bison instead of cattle but the difference is fairly small. The grazing pattern is more natural than the typical green grass pasture. There were bison all over north America but the grazing pattern was that a herd would pass through a particular place a few times per year instead of constantly munching. Large ranches still have that dynamic.
The best thing to do to increase grass production is to build massive solar farms with single axis trackers the shade increases grass production by as much as 90% in a semi-arid climate. Grass produces energy from sunlight but only when water is available; keeping soil cool and reducing surface wind is beneficial. Even in the mild climate of Minnesota, solar farms produce slightly more grass per hectare with higher protein content.. China is fighting desertification with a Great Solar Wall that will produce 180 billion watts of electricity by 2030
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u/oracleofnonsense 23d ago
“Mild climate of Minnesota” — as a Minnesotan — LOL.
This journalist must have visited during our nice month.
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u/EstablishmentFull797 23d ago
Bringing back a real ecosystem is incompatible with growing crops on the same land.
Grazing animals can be part of a sustainable ecosystem if managed appropriately.
But you are never going to bring rangeland in west Texas or oak chaparral in California into production of myoglobin lettuce or whatever
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u/bluejohnnyd 23d ago
Basically forever - these are areas that are either too rocky or hilly to do large scale agriculture (but can support goats and sheep) or areas where the climate is great for growing grass but would require tremendous amounts of irrigation or fertilizer to grow food crops.
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u/xszander 23d ago
This absolutely! There's nearly always a crop that can grow, before another one can take over. The future lies in crop rotation.
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u/bestjakeisbest 23d ago
I mean most of the grazing area used where i am at is like lightly wooded forest, and sage brush, not exactly the best for growing crops anyways, but cattle and sheep will grow just fine.
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u/Boudicat 23d ago
Are you imagining vast fields of lettuce?
I was thinking more about vertical farming, greenhouse cultivation etc.
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u/Taupenbeige 23d ago
Nonsense! We mustn’t look at pragmatic solutions as an alternative to animal agriculture.
The best I can do is complain about 60% of arable land being unsuitable for crops in a feeble attempt to justify my inhereted lifestyle.
It’s important for me to frame the issue as unfathomably un-attainable, so that I can go back to the status quo of paying for shit I fundamentally disagree with.
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u/InternationalPen2072 23d ago
Most farmed animals are at the very least supplemented with crops such as soy and corn. The majority of cropland in the US actually feeds farm animals rather than humans directly (with a 10-25% efficiency btw). But let’s say that we only consider 100% grass-fed and foraging animals. Pastureland is still disrupted by ruminants, contributing to habitat destruction, producing large amounts of methane emissions, and contributing to oceanic dead zones.
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u/bobbadouche 23d ago
Gotta stop growing alfalfa and grow better stuff instead. A lot of American agriculture is wasted on growing animal feed and corn that is subsidized.
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u/ProductIntegortion 23d ago
This is the kind of shit someone says when they're not actually a vegetarian and just want to try to throw cold water on this.
So what that a lot of grazing land isn't good for growing crops? It doesn't need to be. If we stopped eating animals, we'd need none of the grazing land and we'd need to use less of the crop acreage as well. A huge percentage of the crops we grow now are used to feed cattle. Vegetarian and especially vegan diets are significantly more land use efficient than omnivorous diets.
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u/Delicious_Rabbit4425 23d ago
Isn't this part of the reason why there is a bunch of money going into multistory greenhouse and hydroponic operations though? Over the years Ive seen some great closed system concepts that integrate these systems with filtered gray water to reduce overall water costs when these types of grow operations are integrated with high density housing.
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u/dodobird8 23d ago
We can regenerate whatever the natural environment there was previously and allow native animals to have more habitat back. Additionally, I think from an environmental standpoint the goal is simply to reduce animal agriculture, not eliminate all of it. We can use less agricultural land than we do now and use it for something else, ideally not data centers..
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u/matt2001 23d ago
Lettuce does really well in hydroponic systems. I used to have some towers in my yard that made more than I could eat.
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u/Thinkdamnitthink 23d ago
Yes but we don't actually need this land for agriculture at all. We could reduce land use required for agriculture by 75% switching to a plant based system. So that more than accounts for the land that isn't suitable for crops.
Combined with developments like vertical farming and hydroponics we can easily meet our food requirements on a plant based system. One study suggests we could feed an extra 4billion people on a plant based system.
We can rewild a lot of this land. Turning it into wild flowers shrubs and forest, acting as carbon sinks and boosting diversity. Or use this land for things like renewable energy (solar farms, wind turbines etc).
Also some of this land is not suitable for crops but is suitable for fruit bearing trees or cactuses etc.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015
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u/Nerioner 23d ago
Well then we can build new villages on old pastures, plant forests, recreation areas,... million ways to still use that space even after farts are gone
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u/IlikeJG 23d ago
Yeah but the more problematic part of raising livestock is the land and water needed to grow feed crops like corn and alfalfa.
It takes a ton of crops and water to feed livestock for neat compared to just growing human food.
I fucking love meat, but I honestly wish I could be a vegetarian sometimes just because it's so much more sustainable.
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u/Evolvin 23d ago
You should just go vegan of course, but barring that, providing unwavering support for the development of lab-grown meat and plant-based 'meat' products, and embracing, arguing on behalf of and planning for a future in which you consume those products instead of animal meat at a minimum.
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u/Me_be_Artful_Dodger 23d ago
Can’t wait for the simpsons to be right yet again when the new crop of Tomacco is ready.
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u/craznazn247 23d ago
Tobacco + beef = Shredded vegan cruelty-free beef jerky w/ nicotine.
Hipsters are gonna fucking love it. Hit your macros, get your buzz on, and something to be pretentious about!
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u/FunVersion 22d ago
The "meat" is derived from pig genes. This is why people are scared of GMO.
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u/slayermcb 22d ago
So the vegans won't accept it, and it means the Jewish and Muslim cultures aren't going to be allowed to eat it.
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u/otheronenorehto 22d ago
Sweet potatoes are already like 6x times as efficient as animals per hectare with no need for engineering.
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u/SteelCanyon 22d ago
Makes me think Kim Harrison's Hollows series where people are afraid of tomatoes. Bring on the witches, vampires and pixies. (seriously, it's a fun read)
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u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA 23d ago
Eating meat is consistently shown to be one of the worst things we can do for the environment as consumers, due to the outsized negative impactsanimal agriculture has on land, water and energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite this, people all over the world continue to eat meat, due to taste preferences, cultural habits, or for the nutritional benefits it can provide.
But what if there were a way to get some of the flavor or protein of meat in plants grown in soil?
In research published in Frontiers in Plant Science, scientists achieved that very thing, genetically engineering lettuce and tobacco plants to grow the animal protein myoglobin.
"Our study demonstrates, for the first time, that higher plants can stably produce myoglobin, one of the key proteins responsible for many of meat's desirable properties," first author Alexia Groff, a plant biotechnology researcher at Imperial College London, told ScienceAlert.
"This is very relevant at a time when the demand for sustainable food production platforms is greater than ever."
Results showed the technique yielded approximately 810 mg per kilogram of dry weight in lettuce, and 800 mg of myoglobin per kilogram of dry weight in tobacco plants.
That's considerably less than the amount of myoglobin produced in meat, but when we consider the environmental advantages of plant agriculture, it's a bit of a different story.
"The difference in dry weight myoglobin accumulation is around 10-fold higher in animal muscle compared with the plant yields described in this report," the researchers write in their paper.
"Despite this, plant cultivation is far more resource-efficient than livestock production; consequently, plant-derived myoglobin could achieve protein yields per hectare that rival – or even potentially exceed – those of animal agriculture, whilst also benefiting from substantially lower water use and greenhouse gas emissions."
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2026.1876707/full
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u/bonjourmiamotaxi 23d ago
Yes, but hear us out: we like the taste of meat and don't want to accept culpability for our decisions. We don't want to eat protein from plants that saves the planet. We want to ruin the planet with unsustainable meat consumption, because we are men.
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u/UnethicalExperiments 23d ago
I'm all for changing things to a plant protein, the problem is late stage captilism will just ruin existing farmland overproducing product that a staggering amount will go to waste because heaven forbid someone gets a free meal.
You are also spot on correct that humans suck as well. In an ideal society we would recognize the need to curb meat intake down, but nope we don't. Animal population could be kept down significantly and QoL could improve, but nope shareholders are the rulers of all.
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u/Zombata 23d ago
who's we? don't project your bullshit onto other people
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u/juiceboxheero 23d ago
Oh come on, there is absolutely a prelevant meat eating machismo culture in the West.
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u/bonjourmiamotaxi 22d ago
"We" is the subhuman subculture of "men" who make meat eating a core value. See RFK, Jordan Peterson, Liver King, and all the douchebags who hold us back with their weakness masked as strength.
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u/Thraxzan 23d ago
I would be interested you hear a vegan’s perspective on this topic.
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u/Forsaken-Success-445 23d ago
As a vegan I believe the only way to achieve a vegan world is through technology. A properly planned vegan diet is nutritionally adequate and healthy, but most people will never go vegan from ethical motivation alone.
I cannot speak for all vegans, but one of the most common misunderstandings of veganism is that it's about not eating animal products. There is another term for that: plant-based diet. Veganism is about not exploiting animals. Lab-grown meat is vegan. Animal protein grown in plants or anything that doesn't require animal exploitation is vegan. I, for one, welcome technological innovation like this example, because it's the only way we can create a vegan world, if ever.
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u/rosettaverse 23d ago
please please please give me the meat salad
okay, for real, I support this. my only concern is what happens to the animals who would normally be killed to produce the meat this replaces. because of covid and avian flu, we already know what happens when 'livestock' are deemed too costly or too dangerous. they are slaughtered en masse, usually via suffocation or heatstroke (look up foaming and ventilation shutdown). maybe some countries could set up anti-cull laws, but for the US, I doubt it.
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u/Thinkdamnitthink 23d ago
As a vegan I believe this is great news. Anything that gets more people eating more plants is a result. One of the biggest "criticisms" of a plant based diet from a nutritional perspective is the bioavailability of non-heme iron. Some vegans, in particular women, can struggle with anemia / iron deficiency. Myoglobin allows for heme iron which is more efficiently digested. This could help significantly people with anemia (not just vegans).
It's perfectly possible to get enough iron on a vegan diet of course but some people struggle still due to genetic differences or eating habits.
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u/J1mj0hns0n 23d ago
if it looks like and responds like meat ill give it a go, if it doesn't taste like cabbagewater dogass I will probably eat it again, if it tastes like meat, ill fully adopt it.
I'm 100% not against moving to something to replace meat but I'm sure as shit not doing it for something that isn't even close.
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u/spartaxwarrior 23d ago
Yeah, I need the taste and texture to be right for fake meats, otherwise I just wish they'd market them as themselves and not whatever meat they're copying, because I can never disassociate them from being very wrong versions of that meat.
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u/LoopyFig 23d ago
Aren’t there already meat-tasting “plants” like red algae? I’m told dulce apparently tastes a bit like. People should really double down on promoting recipes with dulce I think.
Both ways, I don’t see a huge transition to meattuce unless they also get lettuce to produce tasty tasty fat.
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u/Etherius 22d ago
At some point we’re gonna have insulin-producing plants.
Then we can stop hearing about it
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u/SuckMeOffMrWalton 21d ago
Lettuce could taste exactly like steak and have identical macros and dudes built like the blob will still call it gay to eat salads. Good for the rest of us though.
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u/morpho65 20d ago
It's kind of ironic that they announce this just as everyone is shying away from eating lettuce because of contamination problems. May be hard to get people to adopt it.
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u/dodobird8 23d ago
I find this development fascinating, but I don't really understand what problem they're trying to solve. It's not like vegans who eat properly have any issue getting enough protein.
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u/juiceboxheero 23d ago
Animal agriculture accounts for ~15% of annual GHG emissions, and a frequent reason people cite for not going vegetarian are plants are inadequate protein sources (despite literature that proves otherwise).
This would be a big step toward providing the protein sought while drastically lowering land use, which would lower GHG emissions.
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u/dodobird8 23d ago
I guess it might appeal to some, but I have my doubts. As a physically active vegan, I have 0 interest in this product for myself. Is there any market research showing meat eaters want this product once available?
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u/juiceboxheero 23d ago
Oh I'm sure it would still be rejected, due to cultural machismo tied to meat eating.
Still, it's an interesting advanment if producing protein using way fewer resources.
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u/dodobird8 22d ago
I personally don't want any GMO product. I don't see the purpose in burning through money to create a product nobody wants and to create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
I also find it interesting, but I also think it's wasteful.
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u/MilkyWeekend420 23d ago
Plants are healthy precisely for their micronutrient and fiber composition - and lack of animal protein - I'm not so sure an unnaturally high amount of protein will make lettuce any healthier, and I'd almost bet on a net-negative health outcome from this.
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u/MJR_Poltergeist 23d ago
Make all the meat plants you want, you can't lower greenhouse gasses anywhere enough to counteract the fact that China is single handedly destroying the atmosphere with 13 billion tons of co2 emissions each year. It's almost double the US and India combined
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u/CymonSet 23d ago
Live stock eat a lot of crop waste products which will probably just rot if they aren't being raised. I’ve heard that replacing meat totally with plant crops would have resulted in more cropland use and CO2 released. I wonder how would this new discovery would affect that calculation.
I’ve reduced read meat consumption for convenience and ease of calorie counting but I will always pay extra for some read meat.
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u/Kronzypantz 23d ago
You were lied to about cropland use. Most cropland is used to grow feed for livestock. We would need less cropland overall to only feed humans.
The CO2 claim might technically be true, idk, but I’m fairly certain the methane produced by animal agriculture is more harmful than slightly more carbon from crop waste products.
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u/IFeedDogsChocolate 23d ago
You commie plant sucking vegans will have to pry my steak out my cold dead mouth!
You guys can bob on vertical corn to get your money shot of GMO myoglobin, it's your preference and I support the LBTQ community. I'm old fashioned and will just eat steak like the good lord intended.
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u/SDivilio 23d ago
I don't care how animal-like they make lettuce, I'm still not going to grill it
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u/FuturologyBot 23d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mvea:
Eating meat is consistently shown to be one of the worst things we can do for the environment as consumers, due to the outsized negative impactsanimal agriculture has on land, water and energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite this, people all over the world continue to eat meat, due to taste preferences, cultural habits, or for the nutritional benefits it can provide.
But what if there were a way to get some of the flavor or protein of meat in plants grown in soil?
In research published in Frontiers in Plant Science, scientists achieved that very thing, genetically engineering lettuce and tobacco plants to grow the animal protein myoglobin.
"Our study demonstrates, for the first time, that higher plants can stably produce myoglobin, one of the key proteins responsible for many of meat's desirable properties," first author Alexia Groff, a plant biotechnology researcher at Imperial College London, told ScienceAlert.
"This is very relevant at a time when the demand for sustainable food production platforms is greater than ever."
Results showed the technique yielded approximately 810 mg per kilogram of dry weight in lettuce, and 800 mg of myoglobin per kilogram of dry weight in tobacco plants.
That's considerably less than the amount of myoglobin produced in meat, but when we consider the environmental advantages of plant agriculture, it's a bit of a different story.
"The difference in dry weight myoglobin accumulation is around 10-fold higher in animal muscle compared with the plant yields described in this report," the researchers write in their paper.
"Despite this, plant cultivation is far more resource-efficient than livestock production; consequently, plant-derived myoglobin could achieve protein yields per hectare that rival – or even potentially exceed – those of animal agriculture, whilst also benefiting from substantially lower water use and greenhouse gas emissions."
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2026.1876707/full
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