Japanese Scientist Turns Feces Into Food

I've decided to lay off the political threads for awhile (but you can visit my blog for more politics), so here's a kind of gross, yet interesting one.

This video explains it all:


Discuss.

Okay that is nasty, but is a good new thing.

But, I will stick to my regular steaks ;)

インフェルノの津波 said:

Holy crap (no pun intended).

So...let's think about this.

First, we can drink our urine. Now we can eat our feces.

So...what comes out of our bodies...our waste...we can eat now?

Still won't help 3rd world countries though, unless they install functioning toilets everywhere/

Click to expand...

3rd World Countries would be getting our turd burgers.

I can see how this would be a good idea. Our bodies aren't very efficient at processing what we eat. We loose a lot of the nutrients and energy in our waste. I just hope they're aiming to make this sustainable otherwise it's probably more useful as compost.

Haha, I remember this.

I'd love to say that I'd be able to eat it, but really I don't think I could bring myself to.

I'm suddenly reminded of 2girls1cup. *shivers*
Except without the cup.

huuuuuuuuuuuuuahahahaha mado scientist.

Well, i guess it could be useful.

This is pretty old news :P

It's nothing too revolutionary either, but it needs special mention because it does come from fecal matter. Most people would probably avoid this type of meat substitute knowing that, but it's not really as gross as it would seem. All the actual waste is washed out and all that remains is bacterial protein (from the heavy amount of bacteria that is in the feces). They break the bacteria and refurbish the proteins as meat protein, then color it and flavor it to make it taste like meat. It's completely clean and harmless. There's no feces in it.

If that still bothers you, then so should chicken nuggets. They take all parts of the animal and blend it into a pink puree, wash it with ammonia to kill off bacteria, then reflavor it as chicken because the ammonia happens to also wash out flavor. It's kind of the same concept.

We can also make paper out of animal poop that has high fiber content (https://www.poopoopaper.com/).

Yuuuck.... I think imma faint... I'm hoping this doesn't get to the market because before you know it, people will be eating it as a substitute for regular meat. Okay, I learned my lesson. Stick to my vegetables. Stick to my vegetables...

I really wouldn't see me eating it, as for I'm not a big fan of meat, but mostly fruits and vegetables. It would probably be best if it was used for the poorer states/countries. It's funny, since I've seen worse really. Like Gymnotide said, think about other foods like the chicken nuggets(I don't like em, since last time I ate one, a tiny nerve was wiggling after I bit it.....disgusting times.). I mean, we eat intestines and leftover meat and even eyeballs in foods...must I mention insects?

At first I thought I was eating feces, but we're not...well...if you listen to it.

I'd absolutely would be revolted if I had to eat meat made from our feces.

Even if it had the same taste, the same texture, the same everything, I just couldn't bring myself to eating it, knowing where it came from.

I'd be very interested, in seeing people eat it without knowing where it came from, and being told after they ate it where it came from. It would be cruel but, it would be interesting, to see if people will still eat it without knowing where it came from and assuming it came from animals.

Thats just me ranting away anyways haha

I'm apprehensive to this like everyone else but I think that we will need to get over a few of our species "taboos" when it comes to eating in drinking if we are really going to sustain a rising population. I suppose its better than treating it and removing all nutritional benefit from it. I would prefer to use it as fertilizer. But it's just so. . . yuck.

I guess it's a good thing "if" the world runs out of food however if the price after a few years will cost about the same seems a bit unrealistic to people who are put off knowing how its produced, since Japan is recovering from the tsunami it will help there food reserves last longer if they didn't have any international support but at the essence of there economy.

It would be handy to be able to do that on the international space station however I feel that its just a alternative solution to a problem that doesn't exist at the moment.

The hole thing is turning my gut a tiny little bit, I'll stick to the supermarket and the butcher for the mean time thanks.

But, the thing is, it would just be the same as swabbing the ground for bacteria and collecting it to do the same thing--or just growing the bacteria out of culture. We only pick feces because it's has a high volume to bacteria (and it's a waste product; we're very keen on recycling nowadays). There's absolutely no fecal matter in the stuff. In fact, we could use anything with proteins. We could use mushrooms, or trees, or fish, if we were dedicated enough to process them.

It's disturbing, but I could be the way to stop food shortages in the future. The food would be sent to the lesser off countries obviously.

Excuse me, waiter, but there is corn in my steak.