Chicken!

When we were kids, calling someone a chicken was an insult in the same vein as calling someone a scaredy-cat.  It was sorta like daring someone to try something.  The fact that we wouldn’t try it was often academic.  If we’re honest with ourselves, a lot of times we would dare someone else to do the thing we were afraid to do.  Even ad agencies picked up on this idea.  Remember “Let’s get Mikey to try it”?

Well, a company from San Francisco, Eat Just, Inc. has grown chicken cells in the lab from real chicken protein – from chicken muscle cells, and is marketing its chicken bites under its GOOD Meat brand.  Businesswire recently ran an article announcing that Singapore has approved the sale of Eat Just’s chicken.  

Among the advantages noted are this chicken is more humane (i.e. no more slaughtering of chickens), environmentally friendly (no chicken farms needed), doesn’t involve the addition of antibiotics and with far fewer microbiological organisms present, is cleaner than the traditional process of delivering chicken products to market.

But, when I shared with friends that the concept of lab-grown foods is going to come quickly, they immediately pushed back.  “Gross!  Who would eat it?”

Why not?  It is real.  It’s grown from real animal protein.  There is absolutely nothing artificial about it.  It isn’t even a GMO.  The only thing that is truly different is it will be 3-D printed.

Sound familiar?  Where have I read about this?  Oh, yeah, Existential Thread.  Hmm…

So, go ahead and try it – or are you chicken?  Come on.  I double-dog dare you.