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APRIL 13 - 26, 2016 | 5
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COURTESY OF BEYOND MEAT (HAMBURGER);
RADU SEBASTIAN/ISTOCK (MAN);
MUENZ/ISTOCK (TABLE); OLVAS/ISTOCK (NAPKIN);
JENS ALMROTH (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION)
Fu Hung – much faster than growing chickens, pigs or cattle to
maturity at a farm.
Kent Kirshenbaum, an NYU chemistry professor and adviser to
Beyond Meat, says much of the extruder technology used in these
products is similar to what has been done in the food processing
industry for decades, while the biggest technological advance is
really in the area of flavour science.
“You really need something that tastes bloody because that is what
really gives people the satisfaction when they eat a steak,” he says.
Animal blood is formed by an iron-rich, oxygen-carrying protein
molecule known as heme.
Getting that flavour in a plant-based product involves “very technical biochemistry”, “functional MRI” [a procedure that measures
brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow], and “complex
neuroscience”, he says.
Impossible Foods says on its website it has spent three-and-a-half
years understanding the science of plant blood. Now it says it found
heme in the root nodules of plants.
“Impossible is perhaps at the pinnacle in taking a very hightech approach, breaking down into the constituents, and
breaking down the eating experience at a molecular level,”
Kirshenbaum says.
A picture of a hamburger on the startup’s website shows a mindblowing burger patty oozing with this plant blood.
Easy on the planet
Plant-based meat, as an industry, presents itself to consumers as the
environmentally friendly choice. The founders have also zeroed in
on this benefit.
Ethan Brown, the vegan CEO and founder of Beyond Meat, told
Civil Eats, “There are very few things I’ve seen in my lifetime
that could simultaneously solve so many problems: human
health, climate change, water resources, and lastly, animal
welfare.”
Impossible Foods founder and former Stanford biochemistry
professor Patrick O. Brown said in a rare CNBC television interview
last year, “animal farming is the single biggest environmental threat
on the planet today”.
And Hampton Creek CEO Joshua Tetrick has talked about why
he created a mayonnaise alternative using yellow pea protein to
replace the eggs. Hampton Creek is another food tech company
with serious venture capital funding – £85 million so far.
In a video posted on YouTube by Gates, Tetrick says: “We see a
system that is broken. And rather than trying to incrementally
improve upon a system, we want to create a whole new model that
makes the current system obsolete.”
Machine-grown meat is understood to be more efficient than
animal agriculture, since the protein comes from the first tier of
the food chain – vegetables. And it has long been understood that
a vegetarian diet is easier on the planet.
To illustrate, it takes approximately 22 pounds of feed to produce 2.2 pounds of beef, 11 pounds for pork, and 5.5 pounds for
chicken, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO).
Another example: “Beef production uses about three-fifths of
the world’s agricultural land, yet produces less than 5 per cent of
the protein,” states a report published by the nonprofit Union of
Concerned Scientists.
However, more research is still needed in order to get a complete
environmental-impact comparison.
An associate professor of Food Process Engineering at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has suggested that plant meat
may have environmental impacts comparable to animal protein
owing to the water and energy used to extract the proteins and
other ingredients for manufacturing.
The Epoch Times was unable to confirm the complete environmental impact of products like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods,
as both companies did not respond to requests for specific comment, and information about Beyond Meat’s suppliers is not public.
IMPOSSIBLE FOODS
FOUNDERS
Patrick O. Brown
Tal Ronnen
Monte Casino
HEADQUARTERS
Redwood City, California
MAJOR INVESTORS
Li Ka-shing
Vinod Khosla
Bill Gates
AMOUNT INVESTED
£130 million
MAIN PRODUCTS
Plant-based burger
Plant-based cheese
COURTE SY OF IMPOSS
IBLE FOODS
Impossible Foods is working on a
plant-based cheeseburger, due to hit
select restaurants by the end of 2016
Necessity or choice?
Most everyone involved in the business of plant meat mentions at
some point the world’s growing population, which is expected to
double by 2050 and place increasing demands on our food supply.
Most experts also say there is not enough land to double the food
supply if we rely solely on animal agriculture.
With talk like this, it becomes implicit that while consuming
plant meat may be a choice today, it may not be a choice for many
people in the future.
Americans are the biggest meat eaters in the world, consuming
279 pounds per capita in 2005, according to the FAO. It is deeply
ingrained in their culture that meat fits in the centre of the plate,
and most people feel lost as to what to cook without meat.
Beyond Meat explained in an email that its approach is to “create
mass-market solutions that perfectly replace animal protein with
plant protein, so consumers can enjoy the dishes they love with
the upsides of a plant-based diet”.
Plant meat can sometimes take on a kind of “techno allure” – a
kind of save-the-planet solution that can also save us from our
own unhealthy eating habits.
Kirshenbaum points out that scientists who work on these
products can ensure a complete balance of amino acids for the
consumer, effectively taking the guesswork out of eating a
vegetarian diet.
“We can create new food traditions and a plant-based
diet where we can not only survive, we can thrive,” says
Kirshenbaum.
Protein is one of the four fundamental building blocks of the
human diet, and consuming protein satisfies hunger like nothing
else.
The complex molecules are made up of animo acids in sequences
as short of 17, and as long as 27,000. Each can bond and interact
with all manner of other molecules, catalysing the biological
functions that maintain life.
Berenstein says the fear of scarcity, of not enough protein, is a
perennial concern for Americans, and sometimes technological
solutions have gotten them out of a crisis. However, she said, it
is also important to remember that past fears have not always
materialised as they may have expected.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the US-led Green Revolution introduced
to developing countries hybrid strains of wheat, rice, and maize
seeds that were based on years of scientific research. Commodity production nearly doubled in the case of wheat in just a few
short years, while degraded soils from the intensive industrial
agriculture are a new concern.
Genetically modified (GMO) seed technology, another scientific
fix that promises to feed the world, has now encountered widespread consumer rejection, effectively stalling a lot of research,
according to Olsen.
While plant meat presents itself as the next future of food, at
this time, products like Beyond Meat remain a luxury that most
people cannot afford. While Ethan Brown has said he aims to get
the price down as the company scales, it cannot yet compete with
most meat products on the market.
It costs £4.63 on Amazon to buy 11 ounces of Beyond Meat crumbled beef, and one has to buy a case of eight. The same amount
of ground beef cost £1.93 in February, according to the Bureau of
Labour Statistics, which is less than half the cost of plant meat.
Weighing factors like the impacts on the environment, nutrition,
taste, culture, and our wallets, it is up to consumers to choose
what they will eat.
Berenstein suggests it as a choice people can make to consume
consciously. “They can have their cake and eat it too.”
Kirshenbaum says different ways of eating have their own starting points. Cooking like grandmother did is a cultural connection, he says. In the future, eating only rehydrated foods, like an
astronaut, might be a cultural connection.
“Whatever choices we make, let’s think about the impact on
future generations,” Kirshenbaum says.