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by colobas 2486 days ago
A plant-based burger. Lab-grown meat is made from animal cells
1 comments

The "lab-grown" term is [EDIT: sometimes and apparently incorrectly] used for plant-based meat substitutes like Impossible Burger. It probably shouldn't be, but it is.
I honestly don’t think there can be any argument there. Plant-based meat substitutes have been around for a long time, are emphatically not “lab grown meat”, and I have never heard anybody refer to them as such. That’s a distinct category which has also been receiving a lot of attention in the past few years.
For example:

https://www.cnet.com/news/meet-impossible-foods-lab-grown-ve...

http://www.makery.info/en/2018/05/07/jai-teste-limpossible-b...

I expect with actual lab-grown meat substitutes starting to get attention, people are more precise to distinguish between the substitutes today.

These say "lab-grown veggie burger" and "lab-grown Impossible Burger" but never "lab-grown meat"
I guarantee you that people are only doing this by accident when you see it.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-grown-meat/

I, too, used to confuse Memphis Meats with Impossible Food / Beyond Meat.

It's just that news of lab-grown meat and outfits like Impossible Food kinda sprung up at the same time in the news within the last 5 years and it's easy to confuse the endeavors. In fact, I see this misconception enough that I think IF/BM benefit from the confusion.

I have never heard anyone so confused that they can't tell the difference between "animal that was never alive" and "made from vegetable products". This isn't confusing, and I will need evidence to believe that it is "widely used". I don't think I've ever even heard someone attempt to conflate the two before you.

But I acknowledge that just because this is completely obvious to me and I've never met someone who was confused about the difference doesn't mean they don't exist.

I honestly don't care what people call the different types of meat substitutes. Plant-based meat seems a bit odd to me because it's not, you know, meat. But it seems to be the term in use.

Yes, I understand that there is a difference between grown from meat cells and made from plants with components that make it look and taste more like meat.

I haven't seen many offerings saying plant-based meat.

I've seen plant-based burger, plant-based sausage, etc.

There are only 579,000 results for that phrase from a Google search.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22plant-based+meat%22&oq=%2...

102,000 of those are "plant-based meat alternatives". 46,700 are for "plant-based meat substitutes". I'd imagine there are quite a few other synonyms that continue to winnow it down.