The film Eat a Swede follows Erik Karlsson, a Swedish entrepreneur and scientist, who believes the best protein for humans would be made with flesh grown from cells of Swedes, and most preferably Sweden’s biggest actor Alexander Skarsgard. In Karlsson’s clumsy but determined attempts to launch Swedes as the new meat, we see shock, confusion and revulsion from focus groups and investors alike when they try what they believe to be human lab-grown meat.

I have been eating human meat for quite some time now.

And I am not crazy.

Guess who is having a meeting with Alexander Skarsgård.

Swedish …

So actually what you are having is human meet.

-Seriously? Did I just eat a Swede?

Yes, you are what you eat.

So maybe I should eat a Swede tonight.

Today, if you take a look at planet Earth,

we have a growing population.

And with that, we also require more food.

It is not only that we want more food.

We also need more proteins because that is a big part of our diet.

Today we have alternatives.

We have plant-based, fungi-based, and so on.

But it is not meat.

And I believe that meat is a product

that many are asking for.

So, we have to think about that.

How can we generate meat in a different way.

What technology has done today is that,

technology has been advancing so that

now, we can actually grow meat in a lab.

Now we can actually take cells from

an animal, put them in a lab

and make sure that those cells divide

and grow out into meat.

But I want to take it a step further.

Proteins are something that exists

in all different organisms and proteins

are built up of different amino acids.

And of course, different proteins

have different amino acids.

But I mean for a human, to make sure

that we get the right amino acids

and right proteins, ideally we should eat human protein.

So what I want to do is that

I want to grow human meat.

And sell that.

So please take a seat.

My name is Erik and I work in the food industry.

You see that you have a food product there.

It is something that looks like a taco.

I cannot identify the meat.

If I look at the texture, I immediately think of dogfood or tuna.

I do not know if this is meat or..

I have never seen it actually.

Well, take a bite and see what you think about it.

So, actually, what you are having is cultivated human meat.

It is human? Seriously?

- Seriously?

Yes. I am eating a human? This is human meat.

Wow!

Ok. I do not believe you.

I mean, that is one of the greatest taboos there is,

to eat a human.

So, I do not think that it will be successful to call it human meat, even if that is

actually what it is.

So, I had a chance to ask questions to an audience.

To what extent they would like to eat

various meat products with different types of content.

One type of content was human content.

This study indicated that some

8 percent of the audience

would consider eating, or at least testing,

meat products with human meat content.

It is really surprising given that there are

so strong taboos regarding eating human meat.

There are probably many firms out there

who could make a decent living out of serving just 8 percent of the total population.

So, how would you describe the taste of human meat?

Well, it is a little bit like crocodile.

And what does crocodile taste like?

Like chicken.

Or some people also say that it tastes a little bit like tuna.

So, if you have had sashimi, for example.

We do not say that we have pig meat, for example.

We say that we have pork.

And I think we should do the same thing with human meat.

Of course, this is branding, but I think that we should call it Swede Meat instead.

I believe that you are what you eat.

And if you take Swedes, for example,

Swedish people, in general, are quite righteous people.

We love being out in nature and we care about the environment.

We try to stay fit and eat healthy food.

The type of food that we are growing,

we will do it in such a way that is quite sustainable.

We do not use a lot of chemicals.

We do not use a lot of antibiotics to our animals.

We want to make sure that our animals are treated right.

The things that we are eating that can actually

go on to the cell stem.

I believe that we can use that to say,

why not ‘eat a Swede’?

You get this entire package by eating Swede Meat.

Hello, this is Michael.

Hi, this is Erik Karlsson.

Erik! Hey, how is it going?

Fine. Great!

Really happy you called.

I spoke to Alexander and he seems interested. He actually

had a few more questions.

He wanted me to talk to you because… I am actually vegan myself.

I know there are vegan options out there.

Guess who is having a meeting with Alexander Skarsgård?

-Really?

-Yeah! Yeah!

(Swedish).

This business is crazy expensive and requires so much equipment at present.

The components have to be the right quality.

It has to be the right components,

otherwise it will not grow.

And it costs. And of course, I have to be able to scale this up

and I need money for that.

So, I have been reaching out to different investors.

I have actually gotten a few that seem interested.

I am on my way to my first investment meeting now,

and I believe that we are going to have great discussions.

I think we can have a good collaboration.

I believe that it is time for the world to realize

that there is something else that we Swedes are good at, food!

So that is actually my dream.

That, in a couple of years, when I'm doing this trip

again and go into a supermarket, I will have my product there.

The Swede Meat will be sitting right next to other products.

So, feel really, really optimistic about this.

Hi.

Ethan.

Erik.

Nice to meet you.

Same to you.

Before we begin, let me just show you something.

Ok.

Do I have your attention? That is good.

You would not eat them.

Is that’s your voice?

But you would eat this.

You would not eat them,

but you surely would eat this.

You would not eat her

but you would eat this.

Because this meat is made of a Swede

with all her nutrients, vitamins and goodness.

So, since you are what you eat,

why not eat a Swede.

Eat a Swede because we are good.

This is my business, my idea.

What is the idea exactly?

To culture meat in a lab.

By doing that, we can actually generate meat.

OK.

What we have is a typical image of a well-trained, fit and healthy Swede.

And that is a little bit what we want. This option should be something

that you consider when you see it in the supermarket.

Why should I go for this?

Let us say that you are what you eat.

Why shouldn´t I eat this?

Are you saying to …use a human sample to make meat…that is human meat?

It is not human anymore.

So how far away from this are you?

I have already been able to produce it.

What do you mean?

I tasted it myself, and I have even been giving it to my son for half a year.

Did you tell your son what he was eating?

No. I mean, do you tell your kids always what they are eating?

Or are you just giving them a plate?

I think if I gave them my friend's meat… meat from my friend.

But it is not a human anymore. I mean, it is only cells.

It is though! It is a human.

I do have a bunch of meetings today and I should head out.

But thank you. It was really a treat to meet you.

But listen…

Thanks a lot. It was very nice to meet you.

Yeah, it could have been better.

I mean, it did not really feel like we had a match.

I do not believe that he got my point.

In this industry or this business, I think personal chemistry is quite important.

I did not feel that we had a connection.

We did not speak the same language.

The things that I was talking about, It just went over his head.

He did not grasp the content, at all.

But hopefully, the next investor will be much more on my level.

You know, on the same page as me.

We are going to go with her instead.

I am confident in that meeting.

Hi there! How are you?

Thanks for coming in.

Hello.

Bettina.

Erik.

Nice to meet you.

Ok, so this is your pitch or…

Yes, it is a start.

You know what they say, you are what you eat.

So why not eat a Swede.

Enjoy 100% prime family man Björn,

perfect for summer barbecues.

Or the climate activist Anita, nutritious and sustainable.

Or Ahmed, passionate about equality and packed with lean proteins.

Eat a Swede. Because we are good.

OK. I am not totally sure I get what that is saying.

Basically, my idea is that we can take cells, put them in the lab and grow meat from them.

So, I see like sizzling burgers… So you are taking flesh or are you taking cells?

Well, I actually want to have human cells. They will produce the amino acids

and assemble the proteins.

Then we can consume that type of cells with the right proteins.

Uhm…

Ok, If you just relax. Sit back up and close your eyes.

I am not going to close my eyes.

Imagine that you are a newborn,

You know, more or less, nothing.

But you do know some things,

you can feel certain emotions.

Hunger for example.

You feel that you are hungry.

Yeah.

What if I do this or this…

Or this…

Are you asking me to eat Alexander Skarsgård?

Yes! I mean, if you are hungry.

What would you choose here?

Well, I would not choose to eat him.

It is a terrible idea. I am sorry. It truly is.

It was so, so nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in.

I am sorry you traveled all this way.

So, thank you. Very nice to meet you guys.

Good luck with whatever it is you are doing.

So how do you feel?

Well, what do you think?

Swedish on telephone

Welcome to my workplace.

This is the factory where the magic is happening.

Basically what we are going to do now is thatwe are going to do a small surgical incision on you.

What was your name by the way?

Sara

Sara

And we are going to extract that.

Swedish talk

Yeah. What we will do is that we will disinfect your skin and make a small surgical incision.

So, we will take from your gluteus maximus.

We will just disinfect that area, take a small biopsy and then we will

continue extracting those cells.

Basically, we are going to have an endless cell culture.

I mean, it is the only product where we actually have consent that it is fine to eat it.

We have a donor. That person has said that you can take my cells, you can grow them, and it is fine with me that you eat them.

If you take a carrot. We just rip it up. We eat it.

We do not have the consent from the carrot to say that it is ik to be eaten.

Swedish

I do not think that they actually can grasp the context.

But I believe maybe if we start in Sweden and they see that there is a product,

that it is working. That people are actually buying it.

Then it might be easier for them to actually accept it and see that, ‘hey

this can actually be something’.

I will continue working.

I think I can come back when I have the product and they see that it is working.

Then, I believe that they will be ready.

But I am not giving up.

I will have the world to eat a Swede.

So, when I had finished this pre-study I gave some interviews to traditional media companies.

I was trying to say what the results were of this study, and not much else.

But some of these companies interpreted the outcome in such a way

that the net result was not at all what I said.

It was further twisted when it ended up on various alternative fact related web sites.

So, the end product was basically something like, ‘crazy scientists suggest

that we should eat up each other and particularly our children, our human children,

in order to save the planet’.

But that was not at all what I was saying.