Dr. Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, will debut the first stem cell burger the world has ever seen this Monday. Why? Dr. Post breaks down the theory and goals behind this lab-grown hamburger in his TEDTalk talk below. However, for those of you who do not have the 20 minutes to watch, we have attempted to explain his interesting theory in this post.

Dr. Post explains in the video how inefficient meat production is. He claims that pigs and cows never went through an evolution to become dinner for us, and therefore they are very inefficient. For every 15 grams of meat we eat, we have to feed these animals 100 grams of vegetable proteins, making their bioconversion rate 15%; and livestock is currently using 70% of our arable lands in the world. [Read more…]