290: Lab-Grown "Clean Meat" & the Future of Food

At age 23, I was overweight, drinking too much and smoking constantly. I was stuck in life and wanted a new one, so I finally got up the courage to attend a 10-day meditation retreat just before my 24th birthday. I'd booked and canceled the same retreat once before, and it was a big deal for me to get on the bus from New York City out to rural New Jersey to do nothing...

... But it turns out, it led to a big turning point in my life. Many changes I experienced were subtle and played out over months or even years, but one change happened instantly. I stopped eating animal foods.

During the retreat, they didn't serve any meat, so I just kept up with it afterwards, and I felt great. I started reading books and going to lectures. Back then, most of the smart people in nutrition all believed that a low fat, no-meat diet was the best way to go for health. So I was sold.

Fast forward 15 years later, I'm still eating this way, but I'm no longer naive enough to think that just cutting burgers from your diet is going to fix your health (in fact, sometimes the opposite is true). But I am absolutely certain that the way we eat today is not the way my grandkids will eat. Our foods system is beyond broken, it's a total disaster.

Enter: lab-grown meats. Just like it sounds, this is fish, chicken, and burgers grown from cloned and cultivated cells. It might sound gross, but it also might save the planet. My guest on this week's show just wrote a book about this next revolution in food, CLEAN MEAT.

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Listen & Learn:

• How clean meat is safer than factor foods
• How clean meat, like clean energy, is way better for the environment
• Why many foods we eat today are weird if you stop to think about it—so why not this?
• Why the future of food is probably a lot less convenient than chickens, pigs, cows, corn, rice, wheat and soy

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Paul Shapiro served for 13 years as a spokesperson and vice president for the Humane Society of the United States. He is the founder of Compassion Over Killing, a TEDx speaker, and an inductee into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame. His first book, Clean Meat, is available on Amazon.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

• Maca

Links & References from the Show:

• Paul's website
• Clean Meat Book Website

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