In the Netherlands there is a “National Week Without Meat”, Google is pushing for plant-based meals and less meat on its cafeterias for employees, and Beyoncé has recently announced she would become a vegan, having an impact on some of her most dedicated fans.
The impact of eating meat and animal-based products on the environment and the world is massive. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations with 2006 data observed that Animal Agriculture was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions and for 34 to 76 trillion gallons of annual water consumption – in the US alone accounting for 80-90% of the total water consumption. Furthermore, it has a massive impact on soil fertility and on the quality of water sheets, polluting the surrounding areas of livestock farms.
In 2006 the world population was around 6.6 billion people. In 2018, this number escalated to 7.6 billion people in the world, mostly due to emerging markets in which meat consumption levels, in general, are still lower than those in the West, but are on the rise.
Although the number of vegans and people adopting a plant-based diet has been increasing, it is not growing at a rate fast enough to decrease the environment destruction trends. Actually, beef and animal-based products consumption keeps increasing.
I have seen rational and smart people confronted with the impact of meat on the environment, not to mention on health, and, still, they are not willing to make a change. And why is that? The answer is always the same: they love the flavor, the sensation, and the pleasure eating meat generates for them.
It seems the answer to tackle this would be some sort of plant-based meat that mimics the effects of meat. Gladly, this solution is already being developed. Recent breakthroughs in food technology are allowing some scientists to use neuroscience to create plant-based beef-like patties, made with wheat, potato proteins, and coconut oil, with even 25% more protein than a comparably sized beef burger.
By splitting real meat, molecule by molecule, they found one that is crucial to deceive human sensory experience, heme – the catalyst for all the aroma compounds and color that make meat sense like meat to human beings. This molecule can be extracted from soy plants, which allows for plant-based hamburgers to taste like real meat hamburgers. This company is called Impossible Foods, but there are many other companies and start-ups, like Miyoko’s Kitchen, and Beyond Meat, using science and technological advancements to create new, better tasting, substitute products for meat and other animal-based products. I really believe these products would incredibly disrupt the meat industry and the agricultural sector.
Imagine the possibility of not eating meat with the same pleasure of being a meat eater. I already do not eat it. Would you meat me in the middle?
Rita Guégués
Sources:
Food Revolution Network (2018). Vegan Statistics: Why The Global Rise in Plant-Based Eating Isn’t A Fad. [online] Food Revolution Network. Available at: https://foodrevolution.org/blog/vegan-statistics-global/.
Rompaey, S. (2018). Meat industry ready for disruption. [online] RetailDetail. Available at: https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/food/“meat-industry-ready-disruption”.
Steinfeld, H. (2006). Livestock’s long shadow. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Hi Rita, thanks for sharing this interesting article!
Do you think that this disruption will already happen in the foreseeable future?
There are still big costs involved in making this lab grown meat. The first lab grown hamburger even costed €250,000. Even though the prices are going down quickly, lab grown meat still costs a lot more than normal meat. Another problem might be that a majority may not like it because it is unnatural. This could be similar with the concern a lot of people have, mostly in europe, with GMO’s.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/96156/the-pros-and-cons-of-lab-grown-meat
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/world-first-synthetic-hamburger-mouth-feel
Hi Rita, excellent choice of topic – I agree that the reduction of meat consumption should be one of our main goals in the following years. That is why the exploration of alternatives, such as the start-ups you have mentioned (Impossible Foods, Miyoko’s Kitchen, and Beyond Meat) is very relevant.
However, I think it’s also important to note that the main ingredient of the plant-base burgers produced by Impossible Foods is soy leghemoglobin (SLH), derived from genetically engineered yeast. I find it alarming that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to sign off on the safety of SLH, as it hasn’t been previously consumed by humans. Apart from that, the Impossible burger contains a number of other highly processed GMO ingredients.
This raises the question if the burger really fits its positioning of a healthy alternative to meat. What is your opinion? Should we ignore health threats in order to be more eco-friendly?
Sources:
https://www.gmoscience.org/impossible-burger-boon-risk-health-environment/
Hi Rita,
This article is really getting my attention! I am personally a chef and can’t deny the fact about meat that you are mentioning. It taste good and knowing how to make it even taste better creates like a vicious circle that it is hard to escape from. However, I shifted my mindset from making meat taste great to making vegetables taste great again. It is much harder to convert plant-based products or vegetables to comparable meat products because they lack texture and flavor molecules that provide an unique and distinct flavor. Also due to the fact that we over-engineered our vegetables and used up our most fertile soil, it becomes even more challenging to extract flavor from the things we eat. Science is focusing on the lab meat but it should also not neglect the vegetables that used to taste great back in the days. For me as a chef it makes it really challenging if our food loses flavor and taste over the years even though you can compensate that with spices but it is not the same.
Hi Rita,
Interesting article topic!
With the developing countries continuously increasing their meat consumption, and the developing countries increasing quickly in population, it is important to find an alternative to meat consumption, in order to sufficiently supply the increasing population with the right foods necessary.
I think it’s great that startups are taking an initiative to improve the environmental impacts on the globe as well as finding alternative ways of food production that will deal with the increasing global population! Just like you pointed out, a lot of people claim they could not reduce their meat consumption because they would miss the taste; as well as the protein, they receive from it.
I would definitely meat you in the middle
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/impossible-foods-makes-international-debut-in-hong-kong-300632638.html
Hi Rita,
Thank you for stimulating this discussion!
I believe that it might seem to be far easier to “disrupt” in a laboratory than on people’s plates. Taste is something very intimate and also complicated to evolve. I experienced myself that it is hard to get people to eat things that they do not recognise or even understand. So instead of trying out unknown food and textures which deliver the same amount of protein that meat has or even has the same flavour (by using different spices) people seem to be focused obsessively on reinventing things we already have.