An assistant professor of public health policy and administration in the Zilber School of Public Health, UW-Milwaukee\u2019s Linnea Laestadius focuses on the intersection of public health, technology and behavior. She looks at the impact of new food technologies as public health interventions, as well as e-cigarette content on social media.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about how technology might be a means of getting around some of the negative environmental impacts of meat consumption. I just finished a project studying \u201cin vitro\u201d meat, which is lab-grown meat where you take stem cells from an animal and then culture them in a lab. It\u2019s supposed to be much more sustainable because it bypasses the raising of the animal, but it also raises a host of ethical questions.<\/p>\n
With\u00a0plant proteins as meat alternatives, you\u2019re taking something like pea protein or soy protein isolate and making that into a meat-like substance. One of the challenges is getting people, particularly in the Western world, to let go of or cut back on meat consumption.<\/p>\n
Yes, that\u2019s why the technological options are so interesting. Rather than getting people to learn new dietary habits, if you can engineer something to take the place of meat on the plate, it makes it a lot easier for people to change their diets. Silicon Valley investors have taken a real interest in food because of this.<\/p>\n
Not in vitro meat, but for the plant-based stuff there are cutting-edge companies like Hampton Creek.<\/p>\n
Right, they want it to be for everybody, not just vegetarians, and want to make it accessible to everybody right down to your local Walmart. I think we have to be careful to not put technology on a pedestal as this magic fix for all our problems. It doesn\u2019t get at food insecurity caused by inequality in the U.S, and it doesn\u2019t necessarily get at our public health problems related to unhealthy eating. It\u2019s not necessarily clear that all these companies are ethical actors. We\u2019re not sure where they\u2019re sourcing their products or if they are paying people minimum wage. Hampton Creek was just sued for labor violations.<\/p>\n
This a huge simplification of things, but you take a biopsy from an animal and then put the cells in a bioreactor, which contains a growth medium like fetal calf\u2019s blood \u2013 they\u2019re looking for something more humane and cheaper than that. Obviously, people have concerns. If we can culture animal cells \u2013 why wouldn\u2019t we culture human cells? The problem is that there is very little precedent for how you regulate something like this because it\u2019s not cloning and it doesn\u2019t necessarily involve genetic engineering.<\/p>\n
Probably about 10 years for in vitro meat. Plant-based products are already out and getting better every year. Increasingly, the consensus is that people should be eating less meat, and people who do eat meat are branching out to buy these products \u2013 it\u2019s not just vegetarians.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that intersection of public health and technology. That project was \u00a0trying to understand how people are talking about e-cigarettes online. We went onto Instagram and searched for everything with the hashtags \u201cvape\u201d or \u201cecig.\u201d We found a good amount of people documenting their e-cigarette use. That poses a real concern in that it can\u2019t be regulated because it\u2019s a free speech issue. One problem is that it gives the impression that a lot more people are vaping than actually are. So you get the sense that everybody is doing it, which is certainly not true. The other thing is that it\u2019s easy for companies to mine this data.<\/p>\n
We hope to talk to to people who post this content.\u00a0Why are you documenting your vaping? Is it because you think it\u2019s cool, you want to share information with your peers, you\u2019re showing off a new expensive device, or you\u2019re just documenting every part of your life? We could develop some behavioral interventions to get people to think before they post. So, if your 14-your-old cousin follows you on Instagram, do you really want to be posting about your e-cigarette use? There\u2019s also plenty of work to be done about youth access to e-cigarettes since it\u2019s clear that more and more teens are vaping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plant-based meat substitutes are available and eventually we will grow meat in a test tube \u2013 but will the public buy them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":835,"featured_media":29988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[],"section":[135,137],"display_categories":[114],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[166],"class_list":["post-29904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","section-health","section-public-health","display_categories-top-story-primary","uwmnews-feed-public-health"],"yoast_head":"\n