Japanese Scientists Learn How To Make Meat From Poop (EWWW!)

by

What if I told you the image above was poop? Would you eat it, even if it tasted like meat? Luckily for you, the image above is not poop – it’s just regular old meat (how boring!). Despite having perfectly good, poop-free meat (like the image above), Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda has come up with a way to turn human feces (from sewage mud) and turn it into steak. How / why is would anyone do this? No, seriously. WHY!?

How To Make Poop Burgers

I’m sure it’s harder than it sounds, but here’s the recipe on how to make steak for your poop burgers (I know you’re dying to try something new for that upcoming barbecue!).

  1. Find some sewage with a bunch of human waste in it.
  2. Extract the protein from said human waste (it has a lot of protein because of all the bacteria).
  3. Add a reaction enhancer.
  4. Put it in an “exploder.”
  5. Watch tasty meat appear before your eyes!

The meat itself is made up of 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 9% minerals, and 3% lipids. In order to make it taste and look better, they add some red food coloring and some soy protein. Apparently, people actually think it tastes like real meat.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6QfuIh0g']

So, why in the world would you want to make, let alone eat, poop burgers? First of all, it’s good for the environment. Cows supposedly cause around 18 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, it will help with the whole “Sewage Mud” thing (and having too much of it). In fact, Ikeda was originally contacted by Tokyo Sewage because they wanted to do something with all their crap.

If that doesn’t do it for you, then also know that Ikeda’s meat is better for you too (less fat). Right now, the poop-meat costs 10-20 times more than regular meat, but eventually he hopes to bring the price down to make it comparable to regular meat. The only question is, will people actually eat it, knowing how it’s made? If it tasted the same, I’d probably give it a shot. It seems sanitary, and everything is killed anyways. My only concern is the taste. Maybe if they serve it to people who don’t know that it’s made from poop proteins.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfWixqkROWE']

So what about you? Would you eat a poop burger? What kind of side would you get with it? Important questions for an important topic…

[Source]

[Header Image]

Newer Comments →
  • http://www.vietamins.com Viet

    So.. Does this mean there is a legitimate market for poop… and I can now live the dream of running a poop farm?

  • C J

    if this hits the mainstream supermarket then there will be a neverending cycle of poop.
    we’ll be re-eating the same thing over and over and over and over again.

    i could enjoy last weeks lunch all over again sometime next year!!

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    human poop farm?

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    ewww, haha

  • http://www.vietamins.com Viet

    Why limit to humans? Go for something exotic like cheetahs, bears and dolphins. Then market it as a product that makes you agile, strong & stout, and as a aphrodisiac. It’ll sell well in Asia.

  • http://www.vietamins.com Viet

    I can see the categorization of how human poop tastes like…

    Asians: Fluffy and sweet because of the rice diet
    Westerners/Americans: Poopy and corney

    It’ll follow the same taste profiles as described by those Islander cannibals.

  • Catherine44123

    Aghhh, I so would not be able to eat that, brilliant invention but….just no

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    hahahahaha oh man, I don’t know what to say. I want cheetah poop meat.

  • ya

    Quick question, how is this different from spam? (:P j/k)

  • scott

    anyone else notice the fridge at 1:34 is labeled “shit burger”?

  • Jon E.

    Guess I’ll be the first to say I’d try it. I mean, if you just stop thinking about it when you put it in your mouth, you’ll forget about it.

    If it tastes bad, though, gives whole new meaning to, “That tastes like shit!”.

  • Mitchell

    Soylent Brown?

  • http://www.facebook.com/emily.montalbano Emily Montalbano

    I can’t look at that burger the same way now….. poop meat is way too disturbing

  • http://www.facebook.com/emily.montalbano Emily Montalbano

    I can’t look at that burger the same way now….. poop meat is way too disturbing

  • http://www.facebook.com/emily.montalbano Emily Montalbano

    So does this mean that people can start selling their poop or will we end up developing human poop farms?

  • http://www.facebook.com/emily.montalbano Emily Montalbano

    So does this mean that people can start selling their poop or will we end up developing human poop farms?

  • http://www.tofugu.com koichi

    hahaha yeah, that’s the best part of that video… those scientists aren’t fooling around.

  • Mac @ JLPT Boot Camp

    I’m sure if this were mixed with something else, I would be able to eat it, but as a burger, I’m not sure if I could stop thinking about the typical men’s restroom here in Japan.  Bleh!

    Loving the pointer finger with the red nail polish.  Believe it or not, I have the exact same one in my classroom as a joke prop.  Now I can say a famous poop scientist uses it.

  • http://www.jasonn.com jasonn

    What’s kind of amazing is how much it looks like pork.

  • http://profiles.google.com/japan.alana Alana Green

    This is disgusting! But, maybe we could make it into dog food?

  • Alvin Brinson

    We’ve known the secret of turning poop into food for thousands of years, and I think it’s one we can all agree on: FERTILIZER. Works wonders. Increases crop yield. I, for one, am happy to let NATURE continue to be the one making this conversion…. Of course in our infinite wisdom, most countries have BANNED the use of human excrement as fertilizer due to health concerns, but that dates back to the days when raw shit would be used without any way to neutralize potential health risks, that obviously is no longer a problem as it is easy enough to neutralize any pathogens.

  • murasaki

    “Reaction enhancer”, my butt.  Actually, well, yeah…

  • Anonymous

    If cows are the problem, make real meat more expensive to lower the demand :x

    The day this goes mainstream, I graduate to vegetarian..

  • http://www.facebook.com/FamousLoser Andrew Smith

    oh man…so this is why dogs eat their own poop.

  • http://www.facebook.com/FamousLoser Andrew Smith

    I like how you described poop as “poopy” haha

  • pimple

    Well, the water you are drinking could have been in the piss of a great scientist years ago so…
    but this is poop we’re talking about…uaghds;kjfporeiscjkdf

  • Pingback: Zeitgeist Movement Eats Shit Because Scientists Say So « Zeitgeist Movement Exposed

  • http://www.facebook.com/j.s.p.wigham Jennifer Samantha Wigham

    you know the popular sci-fi concept of the protein vat? 

    Makes sense if the process can be assured of safety and the public won over, but I suspect it’ll face as much of an uphill struggle and nuclear power does these days, no matter how clean and safe the process is, any setback, any problem would potentially be the end of it. 
    But it does make the idea of going to other planets more feasible. Unless it’s all just an April fools that’s landed a little late.. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/j.s.p.wigham Jennifer Samantha Wigham

    you know the popular sci-fi concept of the protein vat? 

    Makes sense if the process can be assured of safety and the public won over, but I suspect it’ll face as much of an uphill struggle and nuclear power does these days, no matter how clean and safe the process is, any setback, any problem would potentially be the end of it. 
    But it does make the idea of going to other planets more feasible. Unless it’s all just an April fools that’s landed a little late.. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1372476926 Crystal Eio

    …. do we really have to come down to eating our poop? O_O

  • deer

    They’re doing it wrong!! COMPOST the poop.  Spread soil on ground, Grow grain and Raise cattle.  That’s how you make poop burgers. T_T

  • http://twitter.com/malydok Marek Pietrzak

    Brings a whole new meaning to “human centipede”.
    Human perpetuum mobile.

  • http://dprize.tumblr.com/ Prize

    Cat poop actually contains more protein than human poop. Target the cats for healthy eating! :-)

  • http://twitter.com/jyuichi jyuichi

    In Meiji period Japan there actually was a legitimate market for poop. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Night_soil#Japan

  • Anonymous

    Dogs are years ahead of us

  • Tawlar98

    Seriously? I was just about to eat, and I think I lost my appitite. I thought raw fish was bag=d!

  • Pingback: Rahat pe bat sau carne de lux — Cuibus – Tomorrow starts today

  • Well Done Eater

    o___O that was the most disgusting post EVER!!!

    It feels immoral somehow…

  • Well Done Eater

    o___O that was the most disgusting post EVER!!!

    It feels immoral somehow…

  • Well Done Eater

    o___O that was the most disgusting post EVER!!!

    It feels immoral somehow…

  • http://twitter.com/mayliu Mayliu

    So… Given that no animals are killed to produce vegetarian poop, I guess that vegetarians could ethically eat poop meat as long as it’s made of vegetarian poop. The funniest part would still be “Nutrition Facts” on poop meat packaging.

    Anyway, yuck.

  • Blipton

    What’s the name of that song at the end of tofugu’s video?  It sounds jewish!

  • Roguemusic

    You got that right! lol

  • Roguemusic

    The only problem with this concept is: human feces are toxic to the environment compared to other shit producing organisms.

  • Paradise Khulood

    why the pictures don’t appear with me ????

    XP

  • 1337 Etoile

    This isn’t real  btw….. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyRZdMBwojU&feature=feedu

  • Michaeljmoore717

    There is a reason why our culture describes things which are bad as crappy, or other expletives we have been known to say. Simply put, this would be great in a time of famine, when resources were limited; however, I could never see myself entertaining guests or asking a girl out to go get crap burgers.

  • Anonymous

    A friend sent me a link about this, and I had to write something about it.  I mean how can you not?  Poo and meat are not an association I really want to make.  You know how some things sound good in theory?  Making a Soylent Brown Burger (Cue the panicking man screaming “Soylent Brown is made out of s**t!!!) doesn’t even sound good in theory.  It’s interesting news, but I’m not interested in eating one. 

    Going green?  ABSOLUTELY!  Going brown?  No Sir!

    Donald Ash
    The Japan Guy
    http://thejapanguy.com
    A foreigner’s perspective on life in the Land of the Rising Sun

  • Alex Gochenour

    As someone living in China, I am terrified. I really hope this technology never makes it over to this side of the pond. Thanks for scaring the buhjesus out of me.

  • aderow

    …..I think I’m good.

Newer Comments →