It’s hard to understand some folks’ fascination with fakeness. Fake fur, fake fiber, fake wood, fake leather — even fake food.

While proponents of fakeness maintain that food, fiber and other material cobbled together in test tubes are in some way superior to real materials, most are not. They’re just, well, fake.

Fake food is a hot topic these days. So hot, in fact, that government regulators had a hard time figuring out what to call it. We have some suggestions, but they can’t be printed.

Laboratory grown meat is an example. The theory is that beef and other meats can be grown in a Petri dish instead of by raising animals. According to the narrative, this would have less impact on the environment.

Except it doesn’t.

A recent study by researchers at the University of California-Davis found that growing lab meat is not as sustainable as raising animals.

“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea,” Edward Spang, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, said in a statement.

It’s easy to see why that is. To grow meat in a laboratory, you first need to build a laboratory. Then you need high-tech equipment, monitors and systems to keep the stuff growing. Then you need to manufacture the sterile medium in which to grow the meat.

By the time that fake burger is ready to eat, nothing natural — other than beet juice used for coloring — is in it.

Natural beef, however, is far less complicated. It requires a cow, some grass and water. Left pretty much to its own devices, a cow will grow to market weight. A butcher then turns it into a selection of steaks, roasts, brisket and hamburger.

But there’s more. If you have male and female cows, they will reproduce. Try that in a Petri dish.

Researchers are also discovering the benefits of grazing cattle as way of producing high-quality protein on land that may be rocky or otherwise unsuitable for growing crops. They also have found that cattle eat a lot of the vegetation that feeds wildfires.

Cattle also produce milk, which in turn can be used to make cheese, ice cream, butter and other dairy products.

All told, dozens of products come from cattle.

Here’s a thought. If someone wanted to win a Nobel Prize, he, or she, could develop a device that converts grass and water into a high-quality protein that can be raised where other crops can’t.

That device would be called a cow.

“Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea.”

— Edward Spang, Department of Food Science and Technology