New Meat and Inflammation [Self-Love Letter]
Hi Byte Wellness Fam!
How are you feeling?
Lately, I’ve felt energized. That’s the vibe our #PhyteWellWednesday Workshops are on. In the second week or our Wellness RESET challenge, we’re covering the WHAT, WHY and HOW of supercharging our wellness resilience…and it’s invigorating.
This week, we spent a few extra minutes breaking down the ways that chronic inflammation disables our regular functions to cause diseases like heart attack, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
Check out the recording below to:
see WHY it’s so important to block chronic inflammation
check WHAT wellness superpowers you might want to practice.
If you’re not getting weekly invites to the discussion, text TEXT to 1(866)717-1919 to join the text thread.
Discussion Question
How high is wellness on your list of priorities? How do your everyday activities reflect that?
When we pay attention to the WHAT, WHY, HOW of building wellness resilience, there’s always new information to consider. A change in work hours, shift in the support you get from friends, even a new snack in the eating rotation can throw off our wellness balance, making it harder to prevent disease and boost wellbeing.
As hard as it can be, we have to stay vigilant and keep adjusting our habits.
There’s a new “food” hitting the market that we can’t ignore: cell-cultivated meat (“meat” made in a lab). There’s a whole conversation to be had about the health impact of eating lab-grown meat, a food product that humankind has never before used as food.
Cell-cultivated meat appears to be a cross between an ultra-processed food and a genetically-modified organism, two food product categories that have had unpredictable and/or problematic effects on our health.
What is Cell-Cultivated Meat?
As of this summer, the USDA and FDA have approved the sale of meat made in a lab (called cell-cultivated meat).
This cell-cultivated meat is not to be confused with meat-alternatives, which are also made in a lab (like Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger).
Plant-based “meat” is made from mixing non-animal ingredients together to form a substance that looks, feels, and (ideally) tastes like meat.
Cell-cultivated meat is actual meat tissue, but it’s not cut from an animal. It’s grown from an animal’s stem cells, isolated in the lab, fed in a petri dish until they multiply into a product that (by all intents and purposes) is meat.
It turns out that cell-cultivated meat isn’t 100% meat. The Eat Just/Good Meat CEO notes in the Gastropod podcast that their cell-cultivated chicken includes about 40% plant products (including binders) and dye, minerals, etc.
Also, is this product really “meat” if it was never connected to a breathing, moving animal? It’ll be interesting to see how this conversation unfolds publicly.
Where will we find cell-cultivated meat?
There are two companies approved to make and sell cell-cultivated meat in the U.S: Uprise Foods and Eat Just.
Until now Singapore was the only other country where cell-cultivated meat was sold. Now that these “meat products” are cleared for sale in the U.S, we might come across them anywhere meat is sold…including grocery stores and restaurants.
Cell-cultivated chicken from Eat Just/Good Meat is currently being served in Iron Chef Jose Andres’s Washington DC restaurant, China Chilcano. Celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson has agreed to sell cell-cultivated steak from Aleph Farms.
McDonalds has been quick to adopt plant-based meat products, so be sure to check the ingredients of those McNuggets and McChicken Sandwiches to see whether they’re using cell-cultivated meat.
How to identify cell-CULTIVATED meat?
Check the ingredients list on all the packaged meat and meals we buy! The FDA’s labeling guidelines say that cell-cultivated “meat” products have to be labeled as “cell-cultivated meat” in the ingredients.
Why Are Some People In Favor of Cell-CULTIVATED Meat?
The discussion around benefits of cell-cultivated meat highlights the hope of reduced environmental toll, with the claim that cell-cultivation of meat may produce fewer carbon emissions and consume fewer natural resources than actual farming of animals. However, an MIT Technology Review article suggests the environmental benefits may be exaggerated or even non-existent.
Something to chew on…
Would love to hear your thoughts on cell-cultivated meat.
Meanwhile, Happy Healthy Living,
Dr. Wuse