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Frankenfood | The Mistakes Series · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: So I went to California at your behest?
0:24
Speaker 3: Did I wish? Because first of all.
0:28
Speaker 2: I know you wish that you had been there yourself,
0:30
Speaker 2: because this is your favorite place.
0:31
Speaker 3: This is one really hurt and I'm.
0:35
Speaker 2: We should just say where we're talking about, Okay.
0:38
Speaker 3: So I sent you Ben on a mission because I
0:43
Speaker 3: couldn't go because my wife would leave me if I
0:47
Speaker 3: took one more trip, basically, and so with a heavy heart,
0:51
Speaker 3: I handed the reins to one of my favorite places
0:54
Speaker 3: in America, which is the food lab at Matson Madson
0:59
Speaker 3: is like Madison's like the R and D. If you
1:04
Speaker 3: if you were a food company in America and you
1:05
Speaker 3: want to do something new or cool, you maybe tried
1:09
Speaker 3: in your own lab, but mostly what you do is
1:11
Speaker 3: you pick up the phone and you call Matson out
1:15
Speaker 3: of the Bay Area and you say, can you make
1:17
Speaker 3: me and fill in the blanks the most delicious potato
1:20
Speaker 3: chip that also prices you know, is priced under X.
1:25
Speaker 2: Or got Like the walls, the walls are lined with
1:27
Speaker 2: like a pantry shelf of just like every product you've
1:31
Speaker 2: ever had and enjoyed, and like they're like Phrensias on there.
1:35
Speaker 2: It's just like all the hits, things that I can't
1:38
Speaker 2: even mention because they're nbaight are on the walls.
1:40
Speaker 3: Oh my god. It's like if you walk through a
1:42
Speaker 3: grocery store after going to Matson, you're like, Oh, that's Matson. Oh,
1:45
Speaker 3: that's Matson. Oh, and you realize my diet is basically Matson.
1:51
Speaker 2: I interviewed two people out there who you know, of
1:53
Speaker 2: course from other Revisionist history episodes. Steve Gundrum, their chief
1:58
Speaker 2: AI officer, who was at the time of our first
2:00
Speaker 2: mistake the CEO and knows everything about why we like
2:03
Speaker 2: what we do.
2:04
Speaker 4: And carro Cake became a phenomenon at first because of
2:08
Speaker 4: the air.
2:09
Speaker 2: And Barbara Stuckey, their chief New Product strategy officer, who's
2:13
Speaker 2: an old hand on revisionist and is just a font
2:16
Speaker 2: of amazing tales from the Matson archives.
2:18
Speaker 5: In the case of this, the challenge was if you've
2:22
Speaker 5: ever opened a pomegranate, it's not exactly you can't squeeze
2:27
Speaker 5: the pomegranate.
2:29
Speaker 3: Like I've really met someone who is clearly so psyched
2:33
Speaker 3: to go to work everyone, did you get that sensor?
2:35
Speaker 2: She's she was so pumped it was I found it
2:38
Speaker 2: so delightful. She's so excited and like a in a
2:41
Speaker 2: true believer in this amazing sense in what they do.
2:45
Speaker 3: I want. I wanted to take my when they're old enough,
2:48
Speaker 3: take my two daughters out to the Bay Area, and
2:52
Speaker 3: I want Barbed to do a version of take your
2:54
Speaker 3: daughter to work day, only we take my daughter's to
2:57
Speaker 3: work day. I'm I want my daughters to observe what
3:00
Speaker 3: it means to be psyched about your job. So I said,
3:08
Speaker 3: you out there now, Now, why ben you tell us
3:11
Speaker 3: what was? Why did I send you bout there?
3:13
Speaker 2: So you sent me out there because you had reached
3:17
Speaker 2: out to Barb about a mistake that has loomed very
3:22
Speaker 2: large over the entire food industry that she wanted to
3:26
Speaker 2: tell us about. And so the story is basically, Barb,
3:34
Speaker 2: who's more excited than anyone you've ever met to go
3:36
Speaker 2: to work every day, is going to work in twenty eighteen,
3:39
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen area and is at a conference
3:44
Speaker 2: where she comes face to face with the future of
3:47
Speaker 2: the food industry and then realizes that the food industry
3:53
Speaker 2: is about to commit Harry Carey on a much broader
3:56
Speaker 2: scale than even McDonald's, and she has to try and
3:59
Speaker 2: stop it and So it is the story of two mistakes.
4:04
Speaker 2: The first one a mistake that we made in the nineties,
4:07
Speaker 2: and the second one a mistake that Barb is trying
4:09
Speaker 2: to stop us from making. Today. Welcome to revisionist History.
4:17
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Mattapaffrey, and in this our final episode of
4:20
Speaker 2: the Mistake series, Malcolm sends me out to California to
4:24
Speaker 2: the pantheon of food science, the Hallot Halls of Matson.
4:28
Speaker 2: It's a place you may remember from way back in
4:31
Speaker 2: season two, episode nine, McDonald's broke my heart, all about
4:35
Speaker 2: McDonald's French fries. But my mission wasn't as greasy. I
4:39
Speaker 2: was sent to Mattson for a more cultivated reason. Okay,
4:52
Speaker 2: so our story begins in twenty eighteen. Barb's at this
4:55
Speaker 2: conference for an amazing new technology that everyone's calling lab
4:59
Speaker 2: grown meat, and she starts to get this hit in
5:02
Speaker 2: her stomach.
5:04
Speaker 5: It was really the year where this technology was starting
5:08
Speaker 5: to happen and companies were figuring out how they were
5:13
Speaker 5: going to isolate the cells that they wanted to use
5:17
Speaker 5: to make the type of meat that they wanted to use,
5:22
Speaker 5: and it was just mind blowing. So the idea here
5:26
Speaker 5: is very simple. It is to be able to make
5:32
Speaker 5: meat by using cells of meat to make more meat,
5:37
Speaker 5: and that idea just to me, it was just brilliance.
5:43
Speaker 2: And also, know no animals will suffer, and there's not
5:46
Speaker 2: factory farming things like this, you won't have so.
5:48
Speaker 5: Many things that we don't have to worry about anymore.
5:51
Speaker 5: It can be done inside. So it just seemed it
5:54
Speaker 5: seemed like magic. It just felt like something's happening here.
5:59
Speaker 2: This would be like huge for me because my wife
6:02
Speaker 2: is an ethical vegetarian and if I could tell her
6:05
Speaker 2: that there was nothing killed in producing meat that we
6:08
Speaker 2: were eating, I would say, suddenly be eating meat again
6:11
Speaker 2: at home, which would be thrilling.
6:13
Speaker 3: Steak would return.
6:16
Speaker 2: And not just when Julia's out. But there's like there
6:20
Speaker 2: are all sorts of there are all sorts of potential
6:22
Speaker 2: upsides to this technology, and Barb's just sitting there thinking
6:25
Speaker 2: about them.
6:26
Speaker 3: There's like ten different environmental reasons why we would want
6:29
Speaker 3: to Cattle farming is one of the single greatest contributors
6:32
Speaker 3: to global warming. It sucks up enormous amounts.
6:35
Speaker 6: Of water, methane emission, methane emissions, but you could you
6:39
Speaker 6: could make a case that we're replacing the cattle industry
6:42
Speaker 6: with something that comes out of a lab would be
6:44
Speaker 6: one of the single biggest things we could do in
6:46
Speaker 6: favor of of of the environment.
6:48
Speaker 2: I mean is no. See, there's like there's obviously there's
6:51
Speaker 2: like runoff to runoff from cattle farms, fertilizer any so
6:56
Speaker 2: there's there are all these like huge upsides and barb,
6:59
Speaker 2: who's you know, the person who's most excited to go
7:01
Speaker 2: to work is just thrilled about this. However, there was
7:04
Speaker 2: a problem.
7:05
Speaker 5: It started with an image, and I'm going to show
7:10
Speaker 5: you the image.
7:12
Speaker 2: So we're looking at a Petrie dish of what looks
7:17
Speaker 2: like a perfectly round patty of raw ground beef.
7:22
Speaker 5: Yes, And to me, having it in a Petrie dish.
7:27
Speaker 2: Not good, not at.
7:29
Speaker 5: All appealing, delicious or anything I want to put in
7:32
Speaker 5: my body.
7:33
Speaker 2: And already like raw meat is not something I see
7:35
Speaker 2: and think not super repeated.
7:37
Speaker 7: It's so sexy.
7:38
Speaker 5: So I sat through the conference and it was probably
7:41
Speaker 5: three or four days, and I kept hearing these terms
7:45
Speaker 5: cell based meat, lab grown meat, and it just I
7:50
Speaker 5: was so horrified by the language that I grabbed the
7:55
Speaker 5: executive director and I just you know, pulled on his
7:57
Speaker 5: jacket and I said, can we talk.
8:00
Speaker 7: I think that we need to.
8:03
Speaker 5: Work on the naming and the communication around this technology.
8:08
Speaker 5: That if we don't do it now, and we don't
8:11
Speaker 5: explain it right, and we don't bring the consumer along
8:14
Speaker 5: from the beginning, we're going to end up like GMOs.
8:18
Speaker 5: And nobody's going to want to use GMOs and their formulations,
8:22
Speaker 5: and consumers are not going to want to eat it,
8:24
Speaker 5: and we're going to lose this possibility of progress in
8:29
Speaker 5: terms of feeding the world. I have tasted meat made
8:33
Speaker 5: this way and I was shocked at how much it
8:35
Speaker 5: tastes like real meat.
8:37
Speaker 2: But it's not No one's going to get there if
8:40
Speaker 2: it's called lab grown meat, exactly going to end up
8:44
Speaker 2: like GMOs, which is our first mistake. That's after the break.
8:56
Speaker 2: So the first mistake. We had to talk to Steve
9:00
Speaker 2: who was the CEO at the time, And it starts
9:06
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, eight nineties, early two thousands when
9:11
Speaker 2: a company called Zenica now known as Astrozenica, so of
9:15
Speaker 2: the COVID vaccine fame, approaches Mattson and says we have
9:20
Speaker 2: created a genetically modified tomato and we need your help.
9:25
Speaker 2: We're here to talk about the story of the tomato.
9:28
Speaker 2: I mean, what what why did the why did this
9:31
Speaker 2: GMO tomato exist? What problem? What problem was it solving?
9:34
Speaker 4: It was all about harvesting and transportation and processing. So
9:42
Speaker 4: tomatoes by their very nature are delicate. So the most
9:47
Speaker 4: optimum tomatoes for the hedonics and the organ eleptics and
9:53
Speaker 4: how it tastes and you know all those criteria. They
9:57
Speaker 4: were very difficult to harvest economically.
10:01
Speaker 2: Because you had if you let it ripen on the vine,
10:04
Speaker 2: you had too long, it was a very short window
10:07
Speaker 2: in which you could ship it, or if it was
10:09
Speaker 2: easier to puncture.
10:10
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, they became delicate, they were harder to harvest.
10:15
Speaker 2: Basically, it's like tomatoes are a really difficult crop because
10:19
Speaker 2: if you pick them ripe, then they're very soft. You
10:22
Speaker 2: have lower yields because they're using these huge combines to
10:25
Speaker 2: harvest them, and so you're likely to lose a lot
10:28
Speaker 2: of tomatoes, which then drives up the price of the
10:30
Speaker 2: tomatoes that you do ship. And then you're shipping these
10:33
Speaker 2: ripen tomatoes, which means they have a very short time
10:37
Speaker 2: to get to wherever they're going to be sold and
10:39
Speaker 2: then used. So the way they would handle this, there
10:42
Speaker 2: are a few ways people handle this, but one way
10:44
Speaker 2: was that you would literally pick a tomato green, ship
10:47
Speaker 2: it green because it was firmer and not yet ripe,
10:49
Speaker 2: and then gas it with that ethylene gas before it
10:52
Speaker 2: hit the market shelves, which gave it the sort of
10:54
Speaker 2: red look that you expect from a tomato. So it
10:57
Speaker 2: was like, overall a suboptimal situation for tomato lovers and GMOs,
11:02
Speaker 2: which are genetically modified organisms, first developed to make human insulin,
11:08
Speaker 2: and then in nineteen ninety four it's applied to foodstuffs
11:13
Speaker 2: and the first thing that gets approved by the FDA
11:16
Speaker 2: is a tomato. It's called the Flavor Saverer tomato, which
11:19
Speaker 2: is basically trying to solve this basic problem of how
11:23
Speaker 2: you like pick and ship tomatoes. So there's an This
11:27
Speaker 2: is one of those first GMO products that Zenica brings
11:31
Speaker 2: to Matson, and what they're asking Matson to do is
11:34
Speaker 2: not develop the tomato, which they've designed basically with the
11:38
Speaker 2: end use of pures, soups things like that, but basically
11:43
Speaker 2: solve this crucial problem of GMOs, which is how do
11:46
Speaker 2: you get consumers on board? How do you get people
11:49
Speaker 2: to buy into this thing.
11:50
Speaker 3: It's funny because I was in the early nineties covering
11:55
Speaker 3: the FDA for an nih for the Washington Post. So
11:59
Speaker 3: I was writing about all these early things in that period,
12:03
Speaker 3: and I feel like it was there was predictable. It
12:08
Speaker 3: was predictable in the sense that there was always going
12:10
Speaker 3: to be people suspicious of of genetic modification on all levels,
12:19
Speaker 3: right because it was so new back then. I mean,
12:21
Speaker 3: you twer sent now where we've you know, we've had
12:25
Speaker 3: thirty years of this, but in ninety four it was
12:29
Speaker 3: like science fiction. That's the sort of problem the grappling
12:32
Speaker 3: with that. I mean, people don't even can even really
12:35
Speaker 3: wrap their mind around what it means to genetically modify something,
12:40
Speaker 3: and so that I feel like the backlash has shifted
12:43
Speaker 3: over time, but the initial backlash, a lot of the
12:46
Speaker 3: initial backlash is simply a kind of mystification.
12:50
Speaker 2: Well, so I was thinking about the favor say, the
12:54
Speaker 2: Tomato is nineteen ninety four, Jurassic Park comes out in
12:57
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, So it's like, if you have a
12:59
Speaker 2: cultural reference point for what the scientists are doing, it's
13:02
Speaker 2: like dinosaurs, We're going to eat you alive. You're kind
13:05
Speaker 2: of like, that's we're not supposed to be doing that right.
13:07
Speaker 3: Yes, it fits in with you know, there's a there's
13:11
Speaker 3: a kind of moral element which we don't see as
13:15
Speaker 3: much today, that we should not be disrupting God's creation
13:19
Speaker 3: in this way.
13:20
Speaker 2: So Steve talks about this. Actually they begin to bring
13:26
Speaker 2: people in to actually encounter the tomato and the zenka
13:31
Speaker 2: tomato and study how they respond to it in these
13:35
Speaker 2: focus groups when people try the tomato. So do you
13:39
Speaker 2: recall how people would react when they tasted it?
13:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, this is a great tomato. And I remember,
13:46
Speaker 4: especially cutting them open. There was one thing, you know,
13:49
Speaker 4: people handle them.
13:50
Speaker 2: And so you put a tomato in front of a
13:53
Speaker 2: consumer and you say, one of these is genetically modified. No,
13:56
Speaker 2: not that.
13:56
Speaker 4: When you just start talking about how are they grown,
14:00
Speaker 4: where are they grown? Are they good for you? What
14:04
Speaker 4: makes a bad tomato? What makes a good tomato? You
14:06
Speaker 4: kind of build up to the aha moment. You do
14:11
Speaker 4: a slow reveal. You know what if the pasta sauce
14:17
Speaker 4: you ever had was made with a high bread tomato
14:21
Speaker 4: that had never been grown before. You kind of start
14:24
Speaker 4: off with baby steps and this is a this is
14:28
Speaker 4: a news, this is a new high bread tomato. Then
14:35
Speaker 4: we just kept going deeper and deeper into the story
14:38
Speaker 4: until we finally found the point where they pushed back
14:41
Speaker 4: that Okay, now now you've crossed the line where was
14:45
Speaker 4: where you've got scientists who are not just breeding. These
14:50
Speaker 4: aren't agronomous and agricultural specialists. This is like stuff in
14:56
Speaker 4: the lab where you're modifying the seed genetically. I mean,
15:01
Speaker 4: these were words that were not Genetics was not a
15:06
Speaker 4: common word back then. The word modified organism sounded like
15:13
Speaker 4: I remember consumers selling sounded like bugs, you know, or bacteria.
15:18
Speaker 2: Or you know.
15:19
Speaker 4: They were all kinds.
15:20
Speaker 2: Of three words modified.
15:25
Speaker 4: And you have a nuclear franken food, right. It came
15:28
Speaker 4: from professor at Boston College and then got picked up
15:33
Speaker 4: by the New York Times and ended up in an
15:35
Speaker 4: up ed and off it went.
15:38
Speaker 2: Lewis wrote, quote, if they want to sell us franken food,
15:42
Speaker 2: perhaps it's time to gather the villagers, light some torches,
15:46
Speaker 2: and head to the castle. Steve basically finds that everybody
15:50
Speaker 2: has already been freaked out by the name genatically modified organisms,
15:53
Speaker 2: and they call it franken food, and so like what
15:57
Speaker 2: they try to do at Mattson has come up with
15:58
Speaker 2: a story that says like this is not really that
16:01
Speaker 2: different than what we've already done for centuries, Like think
16:05
Speaker 2: about the way we make apples by grafting parts of
16:08
Speaker 2: one apple tree onto another apple tree. And they come
16:11
Speaker 2: up with these analogies, and the thing is like it
16:15
Speaker 2: just it doesn't really stick because they've got this name
16:19
Speaker 2: GMOs that hangs over everything. And he even talks about
16:22
Speaker 2: how people just shortened the acronym, like pronounced it by
16:25
Speaker 2: the acronym, like they call them GMOs. And it was this,
16:28
Speaker 2: it was like this banner that nobody could really get past.
16:33
Speaker 2: And what the banner meant to people is science is
16:37
Speaker 2: involved in this. There's like some sort of like hubris,
16:40
Speaker 2: we're treading in a place where we shouldn't tread. Like
16:43
Speaker 2: what they were eating may look and taste like a tomato,
16:45
Speaker 2: but it's it's just like in some fundamental way, it's not.
16:48
Speaker 4: There was some kind of line. What they wanted to
16:54
Speaker 4: be sure was that what they were still eating was
16:58
Speaker 4: truly a tomato, that it somehow was not so synthetically
17:06
Speaker 4: bred that it kind of crossed the line that it
17:10
Speaker 4: was no longer truly a tomato, but some kind of red,
17:15
Speaker 4: delicious fruit.
17:16
Speaker 3: It's a zombies.
17:17
Speaker 2: It's a zombie tomato.
17:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
17:19
Speaker 1: It is.
17:21
Speaker 3: They have attached one of the most kind of elemental
17:27
Speaker 3: dystopian human fantasies.
17:30
Speaker 2: Right right, this thing looks like what I'm familiar with,
17:33
Speaker 2: but actually.
17:34
Speaker 3: Yes, it has the appearance of nomalacy, but inside there
17:37
Speaker 3: is something foreign. And I mean every you know, there's
17:41
Speaker 3: a huge category of sci fi movies that are just
17:43
Speaker 3: about this thing.
17:44
Speaker 2: Yes, everyone's worried that they made the zombie tomato, and
17:47
Speaker 2: I think basically it's like, however good The analogy is,
17:51
Speaker 2: it's Xenica's tomato loses out, Like at one point it
17:54
Speaker 2: has a sixty something percent it sells way better than
17:58
Speaker 2: like the average tomato pure in UK supermarkets, and then
18:03
Speaker 2: after some of the backlash to the flavorsaverer tomato, Zenica
18:07
Speaker 2: like vastly loses market share at plummets. So now you
18:10
Speaker 2: can't get a Zeneca GMO tomato on the market. I'm
18:13
Speaker 2: sure there are all kinds of reasons, but like a
18:15
Speaker 2: big one is that there's this huge resistance to GMO's
18:19
Speaker 2: frank and food GMOs.
18:20
Speaker 3: Wait, so when I buy tomatoes in them in the
18:23
Speaker 3: supermarket today, none of them GMO.
18:27
Speaker 2: I don't think that none of them are GMO, but
18:29
Speaker 2: I suspect that the vast majority are not GMO, which
18:32
Speaker 2: honestly I get. I think if you gave me a choice,
18:34
Speaker 2: I would prefer a naturally occurring tomato, which is not
18:37
Speaker 2: something I'm proud of. But there is something about the
18:40
Speaker 2: intensity of the anti GMO thing that I relate less to.
18:44
Speaker 2: This morning, I open up my morning yogurt and when
18:46
Speaker 2: I opened the lid. On the lid, it says made
18:49
Speaker 2: from milk from non GMO cows. It's like and it's
18:52
Speaker 2: sort of like screaming this thing at me that I like,
18:54
Speaker 2: it was a question I wasn't even asking. It's just like, oh,
18:58
Speaker 2: or had I had? Like I made my friend Mutter
19:00
Speaker 2: Pinier the other night and I use this these like
19:03
Speaker 2: this chili spice I had and it says like non
19:06
Speaker 2: GMO chili, and I was like, That's what didn't even
19:10
Speaker 2: occur to me that this might be Emotionally, It's become
19:14
Speaker 2: this rallying cry where whatever Matson wanted to happen, whatever
19:19
Speaker 2: Zeneca wanted to happen with the way people would respond
19:22
Speaker 2: to GMOs, the exact opposite happened. And it's because I
19:25
Speaker 2: think like they never could change the name.
19:28
Speaker 4: The first time I heard franken food, I was like, Okay,
19:31
Speaker 4: this is bad. Words are very powerful, and for whatever reason,
19:38
Speaker 4: I think that was a hard stop.
19:42
Speaker 2: So all of this brings us to our second mistake,
19:46
Speaker 2: the one that we are that Barb is trying to
19:49
Speaker 2: stop us from making again, which is it's twenty eighteen.
19:53
Speaker 2: She goes to this conference and it's all about this
19:56
Speaker 2: thing called lab grown meat, and she's sitting there getting
20:02
Speaker 2: all excited about this technology and then hearing this word
20:05
Speaker 2: thrown around and she's just like, oh no, we're about
20:08
Speaker 2: to do it again. Whiplash, whiplash. Maybe this is a
20:15
Speaker 2: this is a good time for a commercial break.
20:18
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll be right back.
20:49
Speaker 2: All right. So back with Barb at the lab grown
20:52
Speaker 2: meat conference, and she keeps hearing these names for it,
20:55
Speaker 2: lab grown meat, cell based meat, and she's like, it's
20:59
Speaker 2: happening again. So how did you go about trying to
21:02
Speaker 2: solve this problem because you basically, let's not make the
21:05
Speaker 2: GMO mistake twice. That's right.
21:09
Speaker 5: It was really a rallying cry for everyone on the team.
21:12
Speaker 2: Imagine if it were lab grown organisms.
21:16
Speaker 5: It that makes my stomach lip not so happy.
21:21
Speaker 2: So she starts doing the mats and things. She gets
21:23
Speaker 2: a bunch of people together in a room. She starts testing,
21:26
Speaker 2: how do you feel about this? What do you think?
21:28
Speaker 2: How does it look to you?
21:30
Speaker 5: It was one of my friends that I was trying
21:32
Speaker 5: to explain the technology to her, and she said, oh, no,
21:36
Speaker 5: I don't think God wants us to eat that interesting, Yes,
21:40
Speaker 5: one of my friends. I don't even know how to
21:43
Speaker 5: explain it. But it did occur to me that there
21:46
Speaker 5: could be some very different opinions. And turns out that
21:52
Speaker 5: even to this day, there is a very political skew
21:59
Speaker 5: for whether or not you're interested in this kind of
22:02
Speaker 5: a product.
22:03
Speaker 2: Florida, in fact, has banned this product, and Alabama and.
22:08
Speaker 5: Yes, so yeah, but it's now become a political issue.
22:11
Speaker 5: So it was like a like a religious thing that
22:13
Speaker 5: something could.
22:13
Speaker 2: Come political somehow in a weird way. It's like it
22:17
Speaker 2: plays in the cluster of neurons that has something to
22:20
Speaker 2: do with abortion. Also, like there's like in vitro is
22:23
Speaker 2: a word that applies to both of these, to the
22:26
Speaker 2: gray areas of both of these universes.
22:28
Speaker 5: I would say, you know, the ven diagram of people
22:32
Speaker 5: who are anti abortion are going to be anti cultivated
22:38
Speaker 5: meat too.
22:38
Speaker 2: It's really interesting, anti lab road meat.
22:42
Speaker 3: So what does she does? She have a tone that
22:44
Speaker 3: she wants to use.
22:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, she gets these people together to start thinking about
22:51
Speaker 2: the story and what name can emerge from the story
22:53
Speaker 2: somewhere better than others.
22:55
Speaker 5: Okay, well here's I'm sorry.
22:59
Speaker 2: Nano pastured meat got five votes?
23:03
Speaker 5: What unbounded meat, slaughter free, propagated, minimalist agriculture. I don't
23:16
Speaker 5: remember these celebration No, definitely not.
23:22
Speaker 2: You know, we went through this huge list of names.
23:23
Speaker 2: I think she has something like one hundred, and it
23:26
Speaker 2: is a really hard problem to solve, like what to
23:29
Speaker 2: name this thing? Because the whole challenges you have to
23:31
Speaker 2: come up with a new name for a thing that
23:33
Speaker 2: doesn't foreground the fact that this is a new thing
23:36
Speaker 2: and it's just this that paradox inherent in the project. Right,
23:41
Speaker 2: So then the question is meat, like what is how
23:43
Speaker 2: do you package it such that it's not like they're
23:46
Speaker 2: lying to me this was grown in a lab. You're like,
23:48
Speaker 2: this is slightly different. But they do land on this
23:51
Speaker 2: one name that splits the difference. I think pretty well,
23:56
Speaker 2: do you remember when you hit on the one that
23:57
Speaker 2: you landed on.
23:59
Speaker 5: We had a short list, and I think once we
24:02
Speaker 5: got to the short list, it seemed like a no brainer.
24:06
Speaker 2: And what was it?
24:07
Speaker 5: And that was cultivated meat?
24:10
Speaker 2: How does how does that name strike through? Well?
24:12
Speaker 3: On the list of names that she was considering, the
24:16
Speaker 3: one I liked the most was minimalist meat.
24:19
Speaker 2: Because it's it's it's the it's the claim about it's
24:23
Speaker 2: more about it's foregrounding the benefits.
24:27
Speaker 3: And also it's capturing the kind of virtue of this,
24:31
Speaker 3: which is this is meat that's leaving a much smaller
24:34
Speaker 3: footprint on everything. It's it's and minimalists suggests a kind
24:39
Speaker 3: of clarity and elegance and simplicity in the way it's produced.
24:44
Speaker 3: I mean a bit about cattle farming is this is
24:46
Speaker 3: insanely messy and convoluted.
24:49
Speaker 2: I don't know.
24:49
Speaker 3: I like that, but I'm not, you know, I would be.
24:52
Speaker 3: I'm not. I'm not the typical consumer here. I'm I
24:54
Speaker 3: was already pro this before I even needed a new name.
24:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think like minimalists. I would I like minimalists.
25:02
Speaker 3: I like cultivated, You like cultivated?
25:05
Speaker 2: I like cultivated?
25:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like it. Well, there is a lovely pl
25:09
Speaker 3: lay on a cultivated person as a sophisticated, you know,
25:12
Speaker 3: as a kind of person of elegance.
25:14
Speaker 2: Well, and I think also like there's there's the old
25:16
Speaker 2: truism about lawmaking and food. You know, how the sausage
25:22
Speaker 2: gets made, the lesson of which is that nobody nobody
25:25
Speaker 2: wants to know how the sausage gets made. That the
25:28
Speaker 2: sausage becomes less appetizing if you know how it gets made.
25:32
Speaker 2: And so there's something it like genetically modified organism really
25:35
Speaker 2: spells out how the sausage gets made. Lab grown meat
25:39
Speaker 2: spells out how the sausage gets made. Cultivated meat, I
25:42
Speaker 2: think is obscuring that in an you know, it signals
25:48
Speaker 2: that it's different. It's not misrepresenting, but it's also not
25:52
Speaker 2: like throwing the peach redish in your face, which I
25:54
Speaker 2: think is kind of crucial because at the end of
25:56
Speaker 2: the day, people basically don't want to know a lot
26:00
Speaker 2: about how their food gets to them. But that is
26:03
Speaker 2: why she's trying to change the name, because it's like,
26:07
Speaker 2: can you obscure? Is there a way to like hide
26:10
Speaker 2: the words that make it clear that this is an
26:13
Speaker 2: innovation and not just she's the way things should be.
26:16
Speaker 2: She's absolutely right and I agree. I remember being really
26:19
Speaker 2: excited and being like, I can't wait to try that.
26:24
Speaker 2: And so, obviously, because Mattson has unnecessary connections, I went
26:28
Speaker 2: to try it.
26:29
Speaker 1: Oh, I tried it.
26:30
Speaker 2: I tried it.
26:31
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I didn't know that. And now I
26:33
Speaker 3: feel even more bummed about letting you go.
26:43
Speaker 2: So I did. I had to try. I had to
26:46
Speaker 2: try like grim meat, sorry, cultivated meat, ben cultivated meat.
26:51
Speaker 2: So I would say the cultivated meat industry is uh
26:55
Speaker 2: somewhat downtrodden these days, but there are still people doing
26:59
Speaker 2: this and figuring out how to scale it. And and
27:01
Speaker 2: the big one is a place called Upside Foods. So
27:06
Speaker 2: they are conveniently located in Emeryville, so also in the
27:11
Speaker 2: Bay Area. And I went there and they had these
27:15
Speaker 2: like huge tanks, and I think they're like stainless steel
27:19
Speaker 2: tanks basically on an industrial floor. And in these tanks
27:23
Speaker 2: they are using cells taken from a chicken egg years
27:28
Speaker 2: ago to brew cultivate this meat at scale chicken and
27:35
Speaker 2: chicken in this case. And so I met with a
27:38
Speaker 2: woman there named Aaron Santi, vice president of PR and
27:42
Speaker 2: Communications at Upside Foods.
27:44
Speaker 8: Honestly, I think the number one thing to me, is
27:47
Speaker 8: tasting is bleeving?
27:48
Speaker 2: Right?
27:50
Speaker 8: People ask us all the time what does it taste like?
27:52
Speaker 8: And the most common thing someone says after they try it,
27:55
Speaker 8: We'll see I'm preempting this before you try.
27:57
Speaker 2: It, like chicken.
27:58
Speaker 8: Taste like chicken, And we say, funny thing that because
28:01
Speaker 8: it is chicken, right, And I think that's a big
28:04
Speaker 8: part of it.
28:05
Speaker 7: I mean, at the end of the day, what we do.
28:07
Speaker 8: And the innovation that has led to us being able
28:10
Speaker 8: to do this has tons of science and technology at
28:13
Speaker 8: its core, but.
28:14
Speaker 7: Ultimately, we make food.
28:16
Speaker 8: It's something you eat, and so what better way to
28:18
Speaker 8: have you connect with that than have the opportunity to
28:20
Speaker 8: try it.
28:21
Speaker 3: So you go in there and they prepare in front
28:24
Speaker 3: of you. They take their meat and it looks just
28:27
Speaker 3: like chicken.
28:28
Speaker 2: Tell me what I'm looking at?
28:30
Speaker 7: Yes, okay.
28:31
Speaker 8: So we have a little appetizer which is a buttered
28:35
Speaker 8: chicken samosa and then this is a butter milk fried
28:39
Speaker 8: chicken sandwich.
28:40
Speaker 2: Both look like the normal version of the product.
28:45
Speaker 7: And it's got a little mint chutney on top.
29:00
Speaker 2: Okay, that is delicious?
29:01
Speaker 7: Did I call it? Does it taste like chicken?
29:03
Speaker 2: That is seriously delicious? That's a really good one. Credible,
29:09
Speaker 2: it tasted exactly like normal chicken. Granted they have a
29:12
Speaker 2: very excellent chef on staff. But if you had not
29:16
Speaker 2: told me, if I were not in this pristine, futuristic
29:20
Speaker 2: place where they're making this thing, if I didn't know
29:24
Speaker 2: the whole story, I would have had no questions. I
29:27
Speaker 2: would not have wondered was this chicken produced differently than
29:33
Speaker 2: the chicken I get at a fast food place that
29:35
Speaker 2: comes from god knows where.
29:36
Speaker 3: What did the people at Upside say about the name
29:40
Speaker 3: in question? What do they call it?
29:42
Speaker 2: They call it cultivated meat.
29:43
Speaker 3: So Barb one as one of the day Barb.
29:45
Speaker 2: Was able to basically get like a coalition of people
29:47
Speaker 2: together through the people who are hosting that conference and
29:52
Speaker 2: like get a lot of buy in from the people
29:54
Speaker 2: in this space to like use this term cultivated meat.
29:58
Speaker 2: And so we'll see what happens in the future if
30:01
Speaker 2: that can actually that plus the storytelling around it, can
30:05
Speaker 2: actually overcome people's anxieties. But to me, I think like
30:11
Speaker 2: what Upside seem committed to is the idea that like
30:14
Speaker 2: tasting is believing that where they want to start here
30:18
Speaker 2: is not in packaged goods that you get off the shelf.
30:21
Speaker 2: But basically like with restaurants, So you will go to
30:24
Speaker 2: a restaurant, you'll try this, you'll know you're trying something different,
30:27
Speaker 2: and you'll have the experience that I had, which is like, Okay,
30:30
Speaker 2: this is like it's it's quite good and and like
30:33
Speaker 2: in no way doesn't taste different to me.
30:35
Speaker 3: Do they think they'll be safer? Do you get do
30:38
Speaker 3: you get salmonella outbreaks? And there's no any biotic.
30:41
Speaker 2: You don't get salmonella outbreaks from from from cultivated meat.
30:46
Speaker 2: And in fact, they're like in the future, you could
30:48
Speaker 2: imagine things like low cholesterol beef. So if you like,
30:51
Speaker 2: for if your doctor says like cut down your cholesterol,
30:53
Speaker 2: that you want to keep eating beef, like, there are
30:55
Speaker 2: ways to handle this process such that you make a
30:59
Speaker 2: healthier piece of meat. So they're now doing this at scale,
31:05
Speaker 2: a greater scale than they've ever done before. And then
31:08
Speaker 2: it'll be a question of can we get the story right,
31:11
Speaker 2: can we get the communication right? Yeah, and I think
31:15
Speaker 2: cultivated meat we'll see, but at least it's an attempt
31:18
Speaker 2: to not make the same mistake twice.
31:19
Speaker 3: I am so down for this. I wish Barb every
31:22
Speaker 3: good luck in her campaign, and I, for one will
31:26
Speaker 3: be lining up to have my cultivated steak.
31:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just hope bad when that steak hits the market.
31:32
Speaker 2: There's a name in this story that makes you want
31:34
Speaker 2: to eat it. Revisionist History is produced by Nina Bird
31:47
Speaker 2: Lawrence and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Chakerji, fact
31:51
Speaker 2: checking by Angelie Mercado. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
31:56
Speaker 2: Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence, original music by Luis Skara,
32:01
Speaker 2: Sound design and mastering by Marcelo di' OLIVERA special thanks
32:05
Speaker 2: to Justin Shimmick. I'm Ben Mattahaffrey.