[helsinkiandrew]

> Aren't there good arguments[1] that lab-grown meat is a long way from being cost-competitive due to fundamental thermodynamic reasons?

And cheap, fairly low processed, easy to make non lab grown fake chicken can look and taste like the real thing enough to be accidentally switched with no one noticing.

It would make more sense to try to make red meat - but I guess that is much harder.

[bayesian_horse]

I think it will be easiest to make fish muscles or even use cells from reptiles and insects. Those are less technologically advanced and sophisticated than red meat, speaking from an evolutionary perspective. And I heard at least some companies are trying to commercialize cultured tuna meat.

Even easier would be to identify the proteins that make up the taste of those meats, then use them in plant based meat replacement programs. Much of the satisfaction we get from meat seems to come from hemes, a class of proteins using iron to capture oxygen, and this is what makes meat red in the first place. There are also plant-based heme analogues. All of that is of course limited by consumer feelings.