A load of mince, if you ask me

In this time of over-indulgence in the finer things of life, I suppose it’s safe to assume that most of us have been giving little or no thought to the sorry consequences of said stuffing of faces. If Christmas is not about living in the moment, it is about nothing, as far as I can see.

Of course, with the appalling “New Year, New You!” mantra inevitably about to be trotted out again as it is every January, our attention will inexorably be drawn to our failures and failings and what bad and disgraceful people we have been to make such pigs of ourselves with no thought of tomorrow and the costs to ourselves and the NHS-supporting taxpayer.

These health Jonahs are, of course, quite right which doesn’t make it any more palatable to hear what we ought not to be doing/eating/buying or even thinking as we stagger flabbily into the great unknown that is 2019.

Live now, pay later? Never was a truer word spoken. We will all pay for it, you mark my words. And paying through the nose seems to be what the powers-that-be have in mind when it comes to showing us the error of our ways.

And now, of course, hot on the dinky little porcine heels of the seasonal, streaky-basted turkey and the Terracotta Warrior-type ranks of pigs in blankets, there is much loose talk of a bacon tax. Also a sausage tax, a processed food tax and a general meat tax which would increase the costs of these tempting commodities by up to 80%.

Um. In a spirit of sweet reason not usually associated with my outlook on life, I don’t suppose it would do most of us much harm to cut down on the collective carnivoring and balance the old diet a bit more effectively.

But if they want riots in the streets, increasing food prices at a time when we literally don’t know where our next imports might be coming from and when austerity is still biting, is definitely the way to go about it.

So looking at this problem laterally, it’s no wonder that boffins a’ways are applying themselves to inventing meat substitutes. And no, I don’t mean Spam or the contents of a Fray Bentos can.

An Israeli company is hard at work on this, so one presumes, at all levels, that it is kosher.

The world’s first lab-grown steak has been created, a cell-cultured meat that takes samples from living animals.

The samples are then incubated in a petri dish for about three weeks to make a thin piece of “steak” the size of a credit card. Which you will need to pay for it as it is currently being offered at up to 50 dollars a pop. Drooling already, huh?

The USP is, apparently, that this method emulates the “complex animal structure” of steak, as opposed to producing sloppier offerings that can only be got up to resemble mince or chicken nuggets.

Already we have seen the introduction into supermarkets of the “bleeding” vegan burger, a doubleedged description if ever there was one. This plant-based patty is supposedly made more palatable to serious meateaters by oozing a crimson liquid sourced from beetroot juice.

To what end? I find myself asking. I don’t see the point of manipulating something perfectly edible that has its own taste and texture to look and taste like something else.

Anyone who likes their meat red – or even blue – in tooth and claw will not be swayed by beetroot juice into thinking they are masticating a slab of prime Aberdeen Angus.

And vegans and vegetarians will just eat the beetroot in the first place.

Or is that just stating the bleeding obvious?

What disgraceful people we have been to make such pigs of ourselves with no thought of tomorrow and the costs to the NHS.