Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today we are joined by Paul Shapiro. Paul is the author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, and the CEO of The Better Meat Co., a company that produces lab-grown meat, as an alternative to meat as we know it.

Now, you may ask, since this isn't a science podcast, why are we talking about cultured meat and the future of meat? Well, as you will discover in this podcast, clean meat, meaning cultured, lab-produced meat, is an amazing way that humanity can solve our nutritional needs and in fact, as we discovered during the episode, it is a way for us to do better. To alter and improve our performance as human beings by engineering different typed of foods that could make us SuperHuman.

So, why have Paul on the show? Because he wrote the book on clean meat, he is a four-time TEDx speaker, and the host of the Business for Good Podcast. He is also widely considered as one of the top experts in the space!

As you can tell already, it was a really great episode, and I learned a ton. I'm sure you will enjoy it as well!

-Jonathan Levi

This episode is brought to you by Ambronite's AmbroGreens! Click here to grab your exclusive 5-Day AmbroGreens pack now, and treat your body to a full serving of the most powerful greens, veggies and berries nature has to offer.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Paul Shapiro, what does he do, and how did he get here? [3:40]
• A conversation on the sustainability of the current way we produce meat [9:45]
• How the technology behind clean meat can help us do better in the world and for ourselves [17:00]
• What is the current status of the clean meat industry? [24:25]
• How does Paul feel about meat alternatives compared to clean, cultured meat? [28:45]
• What can we do to help this revolution happen faster? [33:00]
• When will the average American be able to buy clean meat in the supermarket? [38:00]
• What are some things that Paul does to perform at a SuperHuman level? [40:30]
• What does Paul's company do? [45:20]
• Where can you learn more about Paul Shapiro? [48:45]
• Paul Shapiro's final takeaway message [49:15]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World by Paul Shapiro
• Clean Meat website
• Eat JUST, Inc.
• The Better Meat Co.

Favorite Quotes from Paul Shapiro:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Award-winning SuperHuman Academy Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to give you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Greeting, Super Friends, and welcome. Welcome to this week's episode, which was lovingly handed stitch, thanks to a review from Clarice Gomez who says “awesome podcast, five stars, Jonathan hosted the superhuman academy podcast highlights all aspects of health, fitness, and more in this can't miss podcast, the host and expert guests of our insightful advice and information that is helpful to anyone that listens.”

Thank you so much, Clarice. This totally brightened my day. It is the last review that I have to readout. So if you've not left a review, I'm out of reviews to read. So please take a moment. It takes 30 seconds and I will read it out on the air. Thank you.

On to today's episode, ladies and gents today, we are joined by Paul Shapiro. He is the author of the book, clean meat, which is about the future of alternative meats. He's also the co-founder and CEO of a company that produces a meat alternative product. Now you might be wondering, this is not a science podcast. Why are we talking about cultured meat and the future of meat? Well, As you will discover in this podcast, clean meat, meaning cultured lab-produced meat is an amazing way that humanity can solve our nutritional needs and in fact, as we discovered in the process of the show, it is a way for us to actually do better, to alter and improve our performance as human beings, by engineering, different types of foods that could make us SuperHuman. Now, why have Paul on the show? Because he wrote the book, the book on clean meat. He is also a four-time TEDx speaker. He's the host of the business for good podcasts and he's widely considered one of the top experts in this space. Let me tell you, I read his book and pretty soon I felt like I was one of the top experts in his space. It was a great podcast, really, really enjoyable. I learned a lot and I know you will as well. So please enjoy this conversation with Paul Shapiro.

Mr. Paul Shapiro, how are you, my friend?

Paul Shapiro: Jonathan. I'm doing awesome. Thank you. How are you?

Jonathan Levi: I'm doing really, really well. Yeah. I'm very excited to speak with you today because I read your book. I normally don't allow myself to read books before I interview the authors, but I read your book, and combined with all the super learning stuff that I do in teach, I actually went into a meeting with, uh, one of the larger, uh, People in the space, two founders in the space and they were like, so how long have you been in the industry? I was like, I haven't, I just ran a really good book about it.

Paul Shapiro: Good. Well, first of all, I'm honored that you read Clean Meat. Thank you. And second, why, let me ask you the first question here. Why would you not read people's books? What's the strategy behind, uh, interviewing them without reading their books first?

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. If I read the books, I don't ask the beginner questions. I, uh, I dig deep and I go advanced, and then the audience is like, okay, wait a minute. First, tell us what the book was about. So we can start thereon, on your book, which is, tell us a bit about yourself. Uh, and, and how you got interested in the space because it's a space. I think a lot of people don't even know exists and you've kind of become one of the best-known names and experts in the space.

Paul Shapiro: Well, that's nice of you. And I hope that you are now an expert at least when you meet founders of companies, you can act like an expert since you've read the book. Um, but yeah, you know, I was very proud to say that I wrote the book on the cultured meat industry because I had written the only book on the cultured meat industry when it came out um, and the book is, you know, it's about this race. So about the race between the entrepreneurs, the scientists, the investors who are all racing to commercialize the world's first slaughter-free meat. Now we're not talking here about alternatives to meat, like, uh, beyond burgers or impossible burgers. Those are cool, but that's not what this book is about. This book is not about meat, substitutes, or alternatives. It is about real meat grown from animal cells that is identical to the meat that people eat today except it takes far fewer resources, far, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, far less animal cruelty, and so on.

And so that is the whole premise of the book. It's as you know, it's not very, science-y, it's a science-y topic, but it's more of like a pop business book than it is a, a science book I think. Um, because I am not a scientist and I don't want to pretend to be, but I'm somebody who admires this industry and so wanting to tell the story about the entrepreneurs who are forging this new type of protein production that just may upend, uh, our entire agricultural system.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, and I, I, my angle from it, I mean, first off, I'm very interested in it from an ethical perspective, from a business perspective, I've recently invested in a, in a VC fund, that's doing a fund just around alternative protein. They call it the carnivore fund, but I'm also interested in it from the health and superhuman perspective, because a lot of the things we talk about on the show day in and day out is first off, you know, getting clean food products that are not full of antibiotics and all that stuff is going to make you SuperHuman but, you know, we all, I believe at least after interviewing 260 experts on human performance, I believe that a diet with healthy animal protein, which is to say clean animal protein is just going to be healthier than a diet full of soy and grain and the other things that people eat, uh, because they don't want the ethical burden of eating meat. So I'm interested in this space, from every possible angle. How did you get into this?

Paul Shapiro: Well, I have for a long time been concerned about the treatment of animals and the sustainability of our food system. The issue is that we have seven and a half billion of us now on the planet and that number only continues to rise to go back to 1900. It was around 1 billion go to 2000. It's around 6 billion. Now we're at seven and a half and by 2050, so only 30 years from now. Uh, the projections are that will probably be around 10 billion people.

But as humanity continues to get bigger, the planet is not getting any bigger humanity's footprint on the planet is getting much bigger, but the planet isn't getting any bigger, the chance of us moving on to another planet, anytime soon seems pretty remote to me and we just can't continue to sustain, we feed ourselves the way that we currently do. People eat more meat today than humans ever have in the past and it is a diet that extremely resources intensive. It just takes a lot of land, a lot of water, a lot of other resources to produce so much animal protein compared to plant proteins, but, uh, well, that's, I think a pretty compelling argument eat lower on the food chain. There are many people, in fact, most people who just say, you know, I'm not interested in vegetarian eating, um, or they want to continue eating some meat or they don't want to change their diets at all. But, you know, the fact is most people want to eat meat and so the question is how can we give them their meat without all of these negative consequences? Not only for the planet, but also for things like you were just talking about like antibiotics and, uh, other types of ill effects of the conventional meat industry today. And so the theory behind this movement of, of the clean meat movement is that. We no longer have to associate the slaughter of animals with meat-eating, that we can actually produce the same meat without having to slaughter animals.

Um, it, it's kind of like if you think about the ice industry that for millennia, we had the only way to get ice was out of nature and frozen lakes and frozen rivers. Uh, then we have the advent of industrial refrigeration, and all of a sudden, we have a way to make ice ourselves far more efficiently and far more safely.

Uh, but the end product is still the same. It's just ice. It's made up of water. Well, this is in clean meat, the end product is the same. It's made up of the same animal cells that you would eat. If you were eating meat from a slaughter, an animal. But you didn't get it out of nature. You got it through human technology in the same way we make ice with human technology today. So that's really the premise behind it and none of these companies have commercialized their meat yet, but that's probably going to change in the near future and the hope of this book, queen meat is really to help introduce the topic to people, to help bring a greater understanding of the motivations behind why people were actually doing this.

Jonathan Levi: Right, right. No, I, I will say I, uh, as soon as I read your book, I went to a buddy of mine, Rob Wolf. Who's like the paleo advocate, uh, you know, and, and is a big advocate of, we need to be doing grass-fed meats and all that stuff and he and I rapped about. You know, the sustainability of this, I actually asked him if he wanted to debate you he's like debates are theater, but I would be more than happy to do like a back and forth blog post thing. But anyway, he was talking about, you know, some of the things that people are worried about, for example, water use is a big thing in, in meat. He's like, well, a lot of its rainwater anyway, but I still agree that what could be more effective and also like it's pretty hard to justify the amount of animals that we have to kill.

Even if those animals are raised ethically, even if they're raised sustainably, right. It's still, what is it? Like 150 billion animals killed every year.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. And so, you know what I would say to Robin up, I'd be happy to, you know, have an online conversation with them or, or an on-air conversation to seems like a thoughtful dude.

Um, is the following right now, the percentage of farm animals who are being fed like on a grass-fed diet, exclusively is less than, probably less than 1% in America and my guess is it's a tiny fraction around the world. So, you know, if you look at uh, probably about 99% of the land animals who are farmed our poultry, chickens, and turkeys, and almost none of them are living out on a pasture. Almost all of them are inside of what most people would consider, um, you know, conditions that are really not that savory. You know, there's tens of thousands of them packed inside of these warehouses where they're often waned away and living in their own feces. Often pumped full of antibiotics and so on.

And you know, most people don't want to hear about that, but it is the reality of how nearly all meat is produced today. Um, and if farm animals were going to be raised in the way that you're referring to Jonathan, I think a lot of people would think, oh, okay, well there's not as much of a need, but we can't eat the same amount of meat on that type of a system, it takes a lot more land. It takes a lot more time to produce the animals. Uh, just as an example, you know, grass-fed cattle are typically slaughtered at two years as opposed to one year. So now you're doubling the amount of time that these animals are out on this land. So, you know, the point is that um, it's not that the solutions like grass-fed, aren't better than the way that we produce meat today. I wouldn't go that far. It is to say that it is not a solution to feed, uh, nine or 10 billion people who want to be eating meat at the per capita rates that we're eating it today.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with you there, and I think I should connect you and Rob, and I would be super happy to host this, not debate, because I think it's interesting. And I think, I think everyone could learn a lot from it. You know, he, he made the claim and told me, uh, Cows don't spend their entire lives in, in feedlots and they're sometimes out on the grass and, but at the end of the day, I'm with you and I think he would be with you as well. That like, if there is a way to make this protein more efficiently and we can figure out some of the challenges that you talk about in your book, right? Like, okay obviously growing this stuff on fetal bovine serum, which for those who don't know is like the blood of an unborn cow fetus, right? That has to be killed. It's like, that's not, that's not sustainable or ethical, but also if we have to grow it using soy that presents a whole host of problems, like deforestation for the growth of soy. So, you know, I think at the end of the day, your, your point is exactly right. Like, we need to figure out a way to feed 10 billion people, the amount of protein that they're going to demand sustainably.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So I think you're hitting the nail on the head, Jonathan, in that if people were willing to eat a diet very low on the food chain, it might not be so critical. But the reality is, is that people want to eat meat. In fact, people were eating more meat today than ever before again. So I just think we have to find a way to efficiently give people the, meet the demand, because otherwise they're going to have, you know, pretty massive, uh, social chaos if you consider the fact that, you know, right now, Americans are eating like over 220 pounds of meat per year, that's like double what the Chinese are eating, but they are continuing to increase their per capita demand for meat as well.

Because as they increase their middle class, people who are escaping poverty want to eat more meat. So one of the very first things that nations do when they escape poverty is they start eating more meat and that's the same, not just in China, but in India and Brazil and Mexico and all these other places where the standard of living is increasing and they want to eat more like Americans and other rich Westerners do.

And so, you know, who are we to tell them? Well, no, no, no, no only we get to eat this type of really resource-intensive diet and you have to continue subsisting on far, far more efficient diet. I don't think that's going to spell for good consequences. I'm also concerned about the actual treatment of, as you mentioned, Jonathan, the billions and billions of animals who are treated in ways that most people don't even want to think about.

And I do think that, you know, future generations are not going to look that fondly on what we did to these animals. Think it's very easy for us to look back and point out the flaws of our grandparents and other ancestors who held social sociable. We have some that are now anathema to us, but I don't think that it's going to be, I don't think it's that hard to understand why future generations are gonna think pretty poorly about the way that we treated the animals, who we raised for food in our era.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. And you give an amazing example in the book that kind of blew my mind. Like for hundreds and hundreds of years, whaling was just unnecessary evil. Like we needed the oil from whales and unfortunately, we replaced it with something just as bad, if not worse for the environment, which is, you know, petroleum-based products, but yeah.

We look back and we're like, holy crap. How was this passable for people to kill millions and millions and millions of whales for lamp oil?

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. I mean, it's actually pretty interesting how big of an industry, the whaling industry is, it's hard for us in the 21st century to imagine it, but this was one of the largest industries in colonial America and in really the pre-civil war America as well.

So a huge industry in virtually every home had lamps in it that were lit with whale oil.

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Paul Shapiro: And there were, you know, there were people who were concerned about the treatment of oils are people concerned about the extinction of whales, but it was not. The those type of sustainability concerns that led to the downfall of the whaling industry.

Yes. There were environmental crusaders who were arguing against whaling, but in reality, it was the invention of kerosene that really exacerbated and sped up the default, uh, the downfall of the whaling industry and, uh, eventually then, you know, kerosene lamps got replaced by electricity and then we had electric light bulbs.

And, uh, hopefully, you know, now as we continue to move forward, we'll have more and more cleaner forms of electricity as well. But the point is that in the same way that the whaling industry was really replaced by new technology. You can see how that would happen to an industry like the factory farming industry, which has been a dominant industry for decades in America. One of the biggest political lobbies there is, and so on, and lots of people have concerns about it from an animal welfare perspective, from an environmental perspective. But now maybe it's going to be technology and not humanitarian concerns that are going to actually find a better alternative to feeding ourselves.

Uh, I think that is a far more likely scenario than that people were just simply going to have a moral epiphany and start willing to make sacrifices.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Now I want to talk about. The potential here. I mean, this show is called the SuperHuman Academy podcast. Although I've been thinking about doing a podcast on, on future of food, I'm sure someone else is already doing it, but I want to talk about the potential here for not just meeting protein needs, but there's actually a very real opportunity here to do better.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, the reality is the following. Right now the meat that we're eating is, um, you know, really not something that most people want to know about right? Like most people eat meat, not because of how animals are treated, not because it's so resource-intensive, not because of contributes so much to climate change, but they eat meat in spite of all of those things right? And so what if there were an alternative that would allow people to continue eating meat, but without all of the downsides, I believe that that would lead to a meat industry that wouldn't only mimic the meat that we have today, but might actually create entirely novel culinary experiences for us then that you know, that nobody has ever had before.

So for example, think about a time when we had domesticated cows, that people were drinking milk but before cheese was invented, you had this entire world of culinary experiences from Swiss cheese, American cheese, Gouda, Brie, and so on that no one had ever even dreamt of no one to conceive of it and then once you invent cheese, now, all of this new culinary stuff experience becomes available to humanity. Well, in the same way, when you divorce livestock, rearing from meat consumption, what other types of, uh, culinary experiences might we be able to enjoy. Foods that we may never have even dreamt of might all of a sudden become possible and I'll give you an example.

Think about, uh, trains. If you go back to 1830, um, there was a big transition from the, the early trains back then were all pulled by horses and then all of a sudden you had a steam-powered train that could out-compete horses and, uh, you know, the stagecoach coach operators of the day said, oh, there's no way that you could ever have a self powertrain that could be better than horses. Well, we all know what happened in the end, right? We don't have horses dragging our transit anymore. We'll compare the horses of 1832, the horses of today and there's really not that much difference. So compare the trains of 1830 to the trains of today. In other words, when you are divorcing transport from the animal and you have technology, the opportunity for advancement and accelerated advancement really exponential is huge.

So instead of having transit back then for example, would go at about 30 miles an hour. Now we have Maglev trains. Well, not we in the United States, but if you live in China, you live in China, you might have Maglev trains. But, you know, there are trends that are going 200 miles an hour, or, uh, you know, I mean, Elon Musk is talking about the Hyperloop going 700 miles an hour.

And so it's like night and day compared to the trends of 1830. Whereas horses today are really not night and day they're, they're largely the same and I think the same as, so for farm animals, like how much more efficient are farm animals going to get? How much better a hundred years from now, or chickens or turkeys or cows or pigs going to be compared to technological advances. Once we divorce livestock rearing from animal slaughter, and we can start domesticating, not animals, but animal cells and picking the most succulent strains of meat, picking the best varieties of eggs and milk, and so on that we can control at the cellular level to ensure that we have these new experiences.

Uh, just take as an example, Jonathan uh, they're turducken right. Many people know about their turducken. It is a chicken stuffed inside of a duck stuffed inside of a Turkey and then you eat all three of these birds together. I don't know anybody finds that appealing, but you know, there's a market for it, people like it. Well, what if, instead of just stuffing one bird inside of another bird inside of another group, you could actually grow chicken duck and Turkey cells altogether interweaving the proteins together. You'd be creating a type of experience that nobody had ever had before and that's the type of promise that I think a clean meat industry has to offer.

Jonathan Levi: I love that and what I love about what you said is because you talk a lot in your book about the resistance that people are going to have, and that, you know, people have enough of an issue with, with GMO, you know, a tomato that's been modified to survive the cold a little better or whatever. And I love where you start out. It's like she thinks Swiss cheese is natural. Do you think Swiss cheese comes out of a cow? Like there is a lot of engineering that happens for you to have your cheese or your, or your milk even, or many, many other things bacon. I mean, good god, that's, that's processed food. If ever there was one. And, and what you're saying is like, look, we could, first off, we could have things that nature code allow us, but we can't actually, right?

Like there's only so much tuna that we can have before we've depleted it completely, but also we could potentially do better. We could modify it so there's more protein or less protein or less cholesterol or whatever it may be.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Imagine if you had, for example, a burger that instead of being so high in saturated fat, maybe had more omega-three fatty acids.

So you could see radically, you have a hamburger that instead of causing heart attacks actually helps prevent them, or imagine that you could, um, produce quantities of food that would be so vast that you really would have more food than you would know what to do is, I mean, in this particular case, you're talking about from a single cell single microscopic cell, you could produce literally thousands of tons of meat from that one cell, or imagine a world in which you don't have to treat raw meat like hazardous waste.

I mean, think about it right now. Right now you go to the supermarket, you get raw meat, you have to put it in a different bag, you can't let it touch your other groceries, you bring it home, if it touches the counter, you have to disinfect the counter, if it touches your hands, you need to wash your hands.

That's because raw meat is unsafe to handle. Um, it is, uh, oftentimes filled with Campylobacter, Selma NOAA, e-coli, and other pathogens that can sicken us and now keep in mind. Those are intestinal pathogens. Uh, those, those common pathogens that are come on meet. Uh, so what that means is you have to cook the crap out of your meat.

Literally you have to literally cook the crap out of the meat in order to make it safe for you to eat. Otherwise, you could get sick. Well, when you're dealing with clean meat, You don't have to worry so much about intestinal pathogens because you're not growing intestines at all. These companies are not growing intestines. They are growing the muscle and the fat that people want in their meat. They're not necessarily growing intestines. So you're more likely to infect the meat with your hands than you are for the meat to infect you and what that means is meat with much longer shelf life. So you're going to have less food waste. You can really reduce food safety concerns. I mean, it really would be like a dream come true in many respects for the meat industry. Uh, because they could have meat that would not have to be treated again, like a hazardous waste in its raw form.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah and, and I think that's massive. I think it's going to take a long time for people to get used to this, but I mean, this is happening and I was kind of shocked. I think everyone's heard about the, you know, the 2011 hamburger that costs $300,000. Where is the industry now? Uh, and I think things have changed even since you published your book from, from the meeting that I had, I was like, wait, what? Like what now? So give us an update. Like how far away is this, is this science fiction for, for our listeners.

Paul Shapiro: It's really more science fact. So, I mean, first of all, I've now eaten, uh, cultured meat, uh, probably about a dozen times from a variety of companies. In fact, just a, just a couple of weeks ago. Uh, I ate. Um, cultured fish from two separate culture at fish companies, uh, in the same week. And so, you know, the pace of progress is, is certainly getting much faster.

Now you mentioned this early tasting of the first queen hamburger. This happened back in 2013 and yeah, it was about $300,000 per burger, US towers. So, you know, like the most expensive burger ever produced probably um, but now, you know, people were saying that they're producing these burgers for less than a hundred bucks per patty.

Now, of course, you know, who's going to go buy a hundred-dollar burger. Well, I imagine there's a lot of people who would like to be one of the first humans to ever eat meat that was cultured from animal cells that would do that. But it's obviously not going on the menu at McDonald's anytime soon, but you see the trajectory.

I mean the first iPhone, uh, you know, God knows how much it costs, maybe a billion dollars. I don't know. Uh, and now, you know, we have tons of us walking around with them in our pockets. Uh, even Instagram, you know, if you would want it a decade ago to have the photo editing capacities that Instagram offers you, it's about $2.2 million for all of that, whereas today it's just a free download. So you can see how technology ends up driving the cost down. It's not even like Moore's law. I mean, it really seems to be faster than that with these companies. Uh, one company in the space just based in San Francisco is, uh, saying that their chicken nuggets now are about $50 a nugget.

I mean, that's remarkable to have gotten the costs down that much. So you can see how within a couple of years, maybe this will actually be an affordable source of meat for lots of people.

Jonathan Levi: Is this the same as autonomous vehicles? My, wife did a lot of research on autonomous vehicles, and actually what's holding that back is not the technology its regulation. Do you think that this is going to be the same?

Paul Shapiro: Uh, yeah, well that is, what's holding it back right now. So not a single country on earth has yet authorized the sale of queen meat. Now, the reason is, you know, is probably multifactorial and there are countries that seem to be moving fast in this direction.

Uh, countries like Singapore and even the United States. Do you seem to be moving in the direction now of getting ready to allow for the sale of these products? Although it's still pretty nebulous as to how these products will be marketed, what they'll have to be called and so on. But yes, if there were a country that would allow for the sale of this product right now, Absolutely.

You would see companies selling their products. It would be a novelty item. It would be expensive. It wouldn't be something that's going to be on grocery store shelves, but it would be something that people could actually start purchasing for sure and I, I do think that self-driving cars are a really good example because of how revolutionary that technology is.

If you think about just how many lives would be saved and how much even fuel would be saved because the cars would drive more efficiently and some more safely, right. Um, you can see the real parallels between that and a queen meat industry and how this could be truly transformative in many ways.

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In your book, you talk about cellular agriculture, which is let's take a biopsy. Let's reproduce these cells. You talk about a cellular agriculture, which is, you know, let's let's engineer, a yeast to essentially make milk for us and you don't talk obviously, cause it's not the topic of the book about meat alternatives and I think everyone's heard of, you know, your beyond burger and stuff like that. How do you feel about those as competition compliment to engine, you know, engineered meat.

Paul Shapiro: Well, first and foremost, we need both. So you know about it like energy, right? Um, the problem with fossil fuels is so bad that you don't want just one alternative. You don't want just solar. You don't want just when you don't want just geothermal, you want to hold a variety of queen energy alternatives to fossil fuels. Well, similarly, the factory farming of animals is so problematic.

It's so severe that you want lots of alternatives. Yes, you want people simply to eat less meat. Yes, you want people to switch over from animal meat to plant-based meat. Yes, you want a cultured meat industry as well. So I don't view them necessarily as in competition, but if they were a competition and plant-based meat would be destroying cultured meat because, uh, right now plant-based is in fast food com, uh, fast food chains all over the world. Whereas culture meat has never been sold anywhere on earth yet. Uh, but, uh, there is a difference. I mean, I think these products are great. Um, you know, my wife and I actually were just eating beyond burgers a couple of days ago. So, uh, you know, I'm a fan of them, I'm a customer of theirs. Uh, but we have to keep in mind that there is a group of people that is probably pretty large, that wants what they perceive as the so-called real thing and they want to eat meat from an animal. Now, maybe there's a lot of people who say they don't care. If they can just replicate the sensory experience, they don't really care. But I do think there's a lot of people who psychologically or for whatever reason really do think that they want that co quote unquote so-called real thing and for them, uh, cultured meat, I think will be a good product eventually for them to be able to enjoy.

Jonathan Levi: I agree with you. I mean, from, from the health perspective, not that I'm a nutritionist, but again, being around health experts and learning from them for years and years and years.

My concern with eating a strictly, you know, meat replacement diet is like, well, what are you getting? You know, and, and if it's, if it's soy and if it's based on grains or if it's some kind of bizarre, you know, uh, uh, proteins that, that are, are just pretty far from natural. I mean, we can argue that a turducken protein is far from natural, but in its, in its infancy, at least, you know, the chicken nuggets that are being made by a company like super meat right now.

Our chicken nuggets, you know, are identical in every way. Uh, and that's, that's my concern. I like the beyond burger. I recently finally got a chance to try one out here in Israel, and I think it's delicious, but, uh, I have concerns about the health factor and, and our, do we really want to replace all of our protein with something that far from the evolutionary blueprint?

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So I, I hear what you're saying and I do also, uh, resonate it was something that you said earlier, Jonathan, which is that, you know, nearly all of the food that people eat today is the product of science and technology right? It's very little of the food that we eat is in really a so-called natural state anymore, even fruits and vegetables, bear very little resemblance to the fruits and vegetables that our ancestors ate a thousand years ago or so.

And so I view these products as inline with the types of foods that most people eat today? No, I don't think that they're necessarily competing for the, you know, like a grass fed bison market? But I do think they're competing for the, uh, factory farm to meat market, which is nearly all meat that is produced. So I, I don't, you know, for me, like if somebody says, oh, like I will still have my grass fed bison. Um, but you know, when I can't get that and I really want to eat meat, I'm gonna eat beyond meter or whatever. And that, to me, it seems more like the role of the beyond meat than competing with, with again that like grass-fed bison type of natural market.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Now one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the show and why you and I have been interacting is, what can people do? Because right now, you know, unless you're an accredited investor, you can't be investing in these companies that are not on the stock market. You can't support them in your grocery store by buying their products. If this is something that people are passionate about. And as I've said, I am passionate about it. What can we do to help? What can we do to, to make this revolution happen faster?

Paul Shapiro: Well, there is a number of things that people can do. So one, if you have the wealth to be an accredited investor, which means that you can, you know, there's certain, uh, there being accredited is.

Uh, you know, not as hard as it sounds right. Um, you can invest in these companies. I mean, many of these early stage startups, if you have, you know, $25,000, they'll happily let you be an investor in a part of their company for the very early stage companies and not for the later ones, that's not really true, but you can still place your bets on early-stage companies if you think they're promising.

Uh, however, uh, I think what the average person can do is the following. Yes, there are really three hurdles to the commercialization of slaughter-free meat. One is regulatory, as we discussed. There's very little that you can do about that as a private citizen. Uh, the second is technological hurdles to bring the price down, unless you're a scientist, uh, this very literal, you're going to be able to do on that. But the third is consumer acceptance and we know that people are often influenced by what those in their social groups have to say and so even by posting on social media, something favorable about clean meat. Um, and no, it doesn't have to be promoting the book, although you're certainly welcome to do that.

But even, you know, if you see an article or this podcast, or you see something about the industry and you post something to your friends about how cool this is, and then have a conversation with them about it. You know, people are going to have all types of thoughts. I mean, there's an instant yuck factor. An ick factor that sometimes comes about and people are like, oh my God, you know, you're growing meat without animals and then you can ask them. You know, what is savory to you about the way that we produce animals today? Why do you think, you know, you know, what is it that you like about it? And most people then think, ah, yeah okay I understand. Um, and so I think that's a really helpful thing. However, I will say on the consumer acceptance surveys, you know, depending on how it's worded, I wrote a piece for medium about this last week. Um, you know how the surveys are worded, you have widely diverse responses from consumers. So the way, if you ask, you know, would you eat lab grown meat, which is like this, you know, really disgusting way to make it sound.

It makes it sound like it's like almost like a dare, you know, like, would you be lab-grown meat? Uh, only about 20% of people tend to say that they would do it, but when you start asking them about eating cultured meat that has environmental benefits. All of a sudden you're staring to get up to like two thirds to 75% of people who would say yes.

So, you know, it's good for people to make sure that the first impression they hear of this food is a positive one from you, rather than hearing something negative from somebody who is not interested in this type of advancement.

Jonathan Levi: I think that's really valuable and, and I've been playing around because I'm clearly not a scientist, but playing around with different ideas as to how I can contribute and I think, I think that's a big one and potentially having these types of conversations, maybe on this podcast, maybe on another podcast. Uh, I, I think there's value, right? Because we have to get our heads around this, um, and, and come to it. If we can have a situation where it's looked at like cheese or alcohol, all of which go through pretty intense processes, not to mention like the drugs people willingly put in their bodies. Like this is a lot more natural than a, than a lot of the drugs that, that people very happily put in their bodies, uh, legal and illegal.

Paul Shapiro: Totally true and I mean, you just brought up a really good point, Jonathan, about alcohol. I mean, just think about it. If you walk into a Sam Adams brewery, just think you're going to see microbiologists with PhDs in white lab coats, with clipboards and pens, walking around checking pH levels. I mean, there's so much that they're doing in these industrial fermentation facilities so that people can have beer where they can have wine, but nobody calls it lab grown beer right? Everybody calls it engineered beer. Uh, they just think of it as beer and I think the same as, so with cultured meat that, you know, you're going to go into this facility, it's going to look like a bar of your brewery actually. Uh, but instead of brewing, uh, Brewer's yeast that is producing alcohol is going to be brewing animal cells. That's producing muscle meat and the meat that will come out will be queen. It will be nutritious, it will be, um, uh, a, you know, ethically, preferable than what we do to animals today and it'll have a far less impact on the environment. So what's not to love.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. When do you think maybe not me. Cause everything happens slower in Israel, but when do you think the average American goes to the grocery store and buys uh, a beyond burger, but a burger that is animal product and never involved in animal is that two years, five years, ten years?

Paul Shapiro: You know, the predictions on this have all been so vastly wrong. Jonathan. So a friend of mine, uh, Jason Matheny who is, uh, one of the characters in the book, queen meat. He, uh, always says the same, no matter when he is asked and he was really like one of the early prophets of this movement, so to speak.

And he, he was a real, um, proponent for it publicly and no matter what year I ask him, whenever I say, when do you think this will be on the market? It's always five years. It says five years, no matter what. Uh, so, uh, but I think that's shortening, uh, I, I do think that you will be able in some place in the world. I don't know whether it will be America or Singapore or China or somewhere, maybe even Israel. I mean, Israel was a real hub. I mean, it's like a. It's actually like a promised land of the culture meat industry. You guys have a ton of cultured meat startups there. Um, and in fact, it was an interesting fact for you, a little Israel, this tiny country has more cultured meat startups than the entire continent of Europe. Think about that, I mean, that is a remarkable thing, but anyway, so maybe it will be Israel who knows, but I think to answer your question, I'm making this projection in January of 2020, and I think that within two years there will be people who are buying cultured meat. Now it probably will be in restaurants, not supermarkets, but I do. I do think that that is actually going to happen.

Jonathan Levi: I really hope you're right. And, uh, and who knows? We might even have kosher pork. Not that I keep crushing. Wouldn't that be funny? If all of a sudden, like a rabbi's and imams all over the world, like if one of the major buyers is like, Muslims who want to try bacon?

Paul Shapiro: Uh, uh, you know, my, the only thing I hope about that is that I am there personally to enjoy it with them when they are ready to go, you could even see like, you know, a rabbi and imam, a long time vegan, you know, people who would always shoot pork and then all of a sudden they sit down and eat like a, you know, a bacon cheeseburger or something together.

Jonathan Levi: Peace Treacook, this is the way. This is the solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflicts to bacon cheeseburgers.

Paul Shapiro: Just cultured culturing, poor sign cells. That's going to solve the problem.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. Now, Paul, I have to ask you, since you are on the superhuman academy podcast, tell me a bit about the things that you do every single day to perform at your highest level and feel SuperHuman?.

Paul Shapiro: Well, uh, first and foremost is being a good husband because the maximum that happy wife equals happy life I have learned to be, uh, I've learned to be quite true. So I, you know, in many times people are going to give you like life hacks of things they do or whatever. I'm just saying that having a, uh, having a happy domestic partnership, uh, for me is definitely one of the, uh, one of the most important parts of my life. So uh, so, uh, that's number one.

Uh, number two is that I surround myself with people who I believe are more effective than I am when I'm hiring people at my company. When I'm working with people on anything, I always want to get people who are better than I am and for some people there's a psychological hurdle there because they might feel inhibited or they might feel like a, you know, uh, cautious about bringing on people who they think are better than they are at as certain tasks because it, you know, what does it say about you? Well, what it says about you, I think is that you're smart enough to recognize that there are lots of people who are better than you at all types of things. So, uh, that's another, um, component that I have really tried to base my career on is trying to always bring people around me who are going to be more effective in whatever ways, you know, I'm looking for. Um, then, and then third, and this is far more granular, far less general is the following. I'm an avid Google user, meaning Gmail and variety of other things there. So if you haven't started using snooze on your emails, where you can snooze an email and have it pop up at a later date, highly recommend it. Great for inbox, zero management. Great for all types of reminders for yourself. Really love it. And then also on your calendar, I like to put blocks on my calendar for times when I don't want to have to talk to anybody. So many of my colleagues can see my calendar. They can schedule meetings with me whenever I'm open.

So normally what most people would do is just have on your calendar is like blocks when you're on a call or when you're in a meeting and then everything else is like free time. I've blocked things out. So that I don't have so much free time so that I can do more deep work and not have to worry about people trying to schedule times with me.

Jonathan Levi: I'm very glad that you shared that because every year, at least I do one secret of adulthood. It's an idea I got from Gretchen Rubin. I've actually shared, uh, 30 plus of them on the podcast before, but it's like these ideas of a maybe happy wife, happy life should be one. It's these ideas that you can only learn by coming of age and the last week I came up with what it was going to be for the whole of 2019 and it was for anything that you truly aspire to achieve. If it's not on the calendar, it won't happen.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. I like it. If it's not on the calendar, it won't happen. I, you know, I'll tell you, this is like, I, you know, I, I'm going to be frowned on for this. I can assure you, but. I also think I give us I not on my calendar, it probably didn't happen and so if my wife and I are going out on a date or something, it's on the calendar, like I'm like, I'll send a calendar invite to my wife, or she will do the same to ensure that. So, yeah, it's definitely.

Jonathan Levi: And what I realized I had an epiphany around it, which really solidified that this was going to be the secret of adulthood for the year was I was doing my annual goals right? You know, I like to do goals every year or every six months. And I write out, and then what I realized is like, I was reading Keith Cunningham's the road less stupid and he talks about like a goal without a simultaneous shift of resources is just wishful thinking and it occurred to me, like I can set a goal right? So for example, uh, I just had a real estate deal fall through. So I want to find another real estate deal and do a big investment in 2020. So that's a goal, right? And it's specific, measurable, actionable, whatever, timely, all those things. But I, if I just put that on my calendar and then I don't block off time every week, every month, whatever to actually look for real estate deals is not going to happen right? If I say I've had this goal on my calendar for three years to do, to get first aid certified. But because I never put it on the calendar and block off the time, it just doesn't happen. So my realization was like, if you actually want to do something enough, do it, like put it on the calendar and then you'll do it. Otherwise, it's always going to be tomorrow.

Yeah, that's so wise. That's why I saw it, then I totally agree. I love it.

Awesome. Well, Paul, we've pretty much come up on time here and I feel like you and I could continue talking for ages and ages and ages. I aspire to continue to learn from you. One thing I realized we didn't get a chance to talk about at all, was your company. You are also in this space yourself. I want to give you an opportunity to chat about that a little bit and, and share with people what you do and why you do it?

Paul Shapiro: Sure. So in addition to writing the book queen about the industry of slaughter free meat, I also, um, I'm a co-founder and CEO of a company called the Better Mico and we do not produce clean meat. What we do is we're an ingredients company and we make plant-based protein formulas that we sell to largely to meat companies. Although we do also sell just some of the cultured meat companies too, but we sell to the meat companies for them to blend our plant-based protein formulas into their meat so that they can make more sustainable, more nutritious and taste your product.

So in short, imagine that you are getting a burger or a sausage or a chicken nugget and instead of it being, uh, just solely made of meat, what if it was meat that was even more delicious that was lower in cholesterol, lower in calories, lower in saturated fat, had more fiber and it was better for the planet and it had fewer animals.

That's what we enable these companies to do and so I like to think of the beyond and the impossible is really, it's almost like the Teslas of this space. They're really cool. They're totally animal free or totally electric. Uh, but they cost a lot more. They're just a lot more than the conventional cars cost.

Uh, and that's one reason why, um, electric cars are still less than 1% of the vehicle market. Whereas, um, you know, you still have in plant-based meat less than 1% of the meat market is all plant-based. Well, we offer a technology that allows for meat companies to hybridize their products, to improve their products and we're partnered with large meat companies and small meat purveyors as well to basically help them do better. So that's what the better Mico does and I'm honored to be able to work with some really talented folks in the space who are, uh, oftentimes as I owed it to, we are more effective than I am, uh, and lots of things.

Yeah and so, uh, it's a, it's a real journey to be on and we've had a great time doing this. We founded it in, uh, early 2018. So we're nearly two at the two year mark and I think it's going well for us.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic and is it proprietary, you know, what types of ingredients go into the product?

Paul Shapiro: Well we have different lines for different species of meat.

So, you know, different ingredient decks for pork or for beef or chicken. Um, but we use a variety of different types of plant-based proteins, fats, fibers, and flavors that are queen-label. That are short labeled, but are processed in unique ways to really help them seamlessly blend directly into meat so that you can't tell the difference. You know, as an example, um, Perdue farms, the award's chicken company has, uh, chicken nuggets, tenders, and patties that they call chicken plus and, uh, we are part of that plus that is in the chicken plus there they're about 50% chicken, 50% plant-based. So that particular formula that we're using for them as a combination of wheat protein, along with plant-based fibers, fats, and flavors, and other types of vegetable nutrition, uh, including like cauliflower and chickpea.

And when you bite into it, it's hard. It's just like a regular chicken nugget. It looks just like a regular chicken nugget. But it has all of this beneficial vegetable nutrition it's using half the animals that would have otherwise and it's better for the planet, better for the consumer. It's a, win-win all around.

Jonathan Levi: Very, very cool. All right. So I want to, I want to be respectful of your time. Where can people reach out and learn more about you? Get in touch? Uh, what, what should be the call to action for this episode?

Paul Shapiro: Well, if you're interested in the book, just go to the website, clean meat book.com. Again, that's cleanmeatbook.com and you can get in touch with me from there. Uh, you can email me, uh, I'd love to hear from you anytime you can also hit me on Twitter, which is Paul H Shapiro. Again, Paul H Shapiro and if you're interested in my company, we'd love to hear from you to just go to better meet.co again, that's better meat.co.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. And Paul, before I let you go, one question I always ask at the end of every episode is if people take away one big message idea or takeaway from this episode and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives, no pressure, what would you hope for that to be?

Paul Shapiro: Well, just think about it this way Jonathan, the foods that we eat have a tremendous impact on the world around us too often. We think about our foods merely as being a personal choice as if they only affected us and not the world around us, but that's not true. The foods that we eat have a tremendous impact on not just our health, but on the health of the planet and on the health of a huge number of animals as well.

And so the question is really the following. We have a choice. We can choose foods that are going to heat up the planet. Or we can choose foods that we've made lighter impact. We can choose foods that are going to be helpful, or we can choose foods are going to be harmful. We can choose foods that are going to cause cruelty to animals, or we can choose foods that are more compassionate to those who cannot defend themselves, including other animals.

I believe that we should look at our food choices as a serious uh, ethical choice that we make and should no longer just blindly eat, whatever is in front of us, but rather think about what we can do to make the world a better place and technology is going to make it easier and easier for us to align our habits with our values, but that still has not come about yet and we need to think more seriously about the impacts of our food choices.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. Paul Shapiro. Thanks for coming on.

Paul Shapiro: Jonathan it's an honor. Thank you.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the award-winning SuperHuman Academy podcast for more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit superhuman.blog while you're at.

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