Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

“Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter.” Actually, this story made us think of the classic 1973 Charlton Heston science fiction movie “Soylent Green”. In that grim cinematic scenario, the world was so crowded and resource-starved that human beings weren’t cremated or buried upon their death, they were turned into breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. No one is really sure if we are headed for a similar future; but just in case we are, a scientist in Japan has figured out a way to take our feces and turn it into….steak. Actually, this strange journey from the toilet to the dinner table began when the Tokyo Sewage Company asked Okayama Labs scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda where there might be value in the many tons of excess sewage mud generated in the Tokyo metropolitan area every year. Ikeda found that the mud contains vast amounts of usable protein molecules which can be synthesized into a viable, edible meat product with the addition of a little food coloring and soy protein. At the moment, the “excre-meat” costs an average of 15 times more than real beef, largely due to research and development costs. But science has a way of making new discoveries affordable very quickly, so in the next several years you might be able to find this stuff in your grocer’s freezer. (Yahoo News – Feces Filet Mignon) Daily Tech also has a report on this with some additional information on the technology: Daily Tech Fake Steak
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