Download “Cows…are an obsolete technology” STEVE TAYLOR

IT'S ALL A MATTER OF TASTE: AN INNOVATION CONSULTANT’S PERSPECTIVE
ON FUTURE PROTEINS
STEVE TAYLOR
Steve is a consultant,
coach and writer who
specializes in working
with entrepreneurs and
innovators.
[email protected]
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The psychotherapist and author Adam Phillips says that in affluent
countries not only do we eat more food than we need but we ‘make a
cult of eating’. This may seem an odd place to begin writing about
future proteins, but bear with me for a moment. Phillips actually
captures the paradox of modern food consumption (at least in the
West and other parts of the world that imitate our lifestyle) between,
to caricature the extremes he mentions, food as a ‘need’ and food as a
‘cult’. We’re dependent on eating - humans are only able to survive
without food for a maximum of 21 days as long as there’s water
around – but we also fetishise food; on TV, in our spending habits, in
our choice of leisure activities and so forth.
And this paradox repeatedly comes up in the conversation
about future proteins.
On the one hand, there is a plethora of statistics about humanity’s
future protein requirements. And the numbers are alarming. Two
billion people worldwide are already suffering from ‘undernutrition’,
which produces serious health risks. Global animal protein
consumption – if extrapolated from current trends, especially in the
becoming-affluent world – is predicted to double by 2050. Yet
livestock production already contributes almost 15% of human-caused
greenhouse gas emissions. Massive expansion of current animal
agriculture is clearly not the answer. “Cows”, as it has been said, “are
an obsolete technology.”
Population growth, understandable regional aspirations, health risks,
serious issues with livestock production and over-fishing – a perfect
storm is brewing that cannot be quelled by doing more of the same.
That we need new sources of protein, ones that can be produced at
scale, is very hard to argue with.
“Cows…are an obsolete technology”
At the same time, in the affluent parts of the world – where much of the impetus behind future proteins is
being generated – we are reluctant to see food as mere fuel. We regard it as a measure of our ‘progress’, of our
apparent ‘sophistication’ that we’ve gone beyond that.
In this world innovation doesn’t come cheap; at Boragó in Santiago, charismatic chef Rodolfo Guzmán forages
in remote areas of Chile for forgotten ingredients and previously unidentified flora and fauna. Guzmán has
said that “In the next 30 years humans are going to face new problems. There’s not enough food. Not enough
water.” His concern is patently genuine and he goes to enormous lengths to find new foods. Nevertheless
Boragó’s tasting menu, at around $150 a head (wine-pairing included), is only going to benefit a very small
number indeed of already well-fed humans.
However Boragó’s prices are a snip compared to some of the early attempts at fashioning experimental proteins
into foodstuffs that will satisfy first world tastes. In 2013 a team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands
fabricated a lab-grown burger patty ‘cultured from cow’s muscle cells’. It cost $325,000, reducing the potential
clientele to just the members of Donald Trump’s cabinet.
American innovators Impossible Foods have made their plant-derived burger far more accessible; it’s now
available at several high-end US restaurants, including Manhattan’s Michelin-starred Public. Eighteen months
ago Google tried to buy Impossible Foods for $300m; the company rebuffed the offer – indicating just how
‘hot’ the sector is, and the potential longer-term gains that bullish new protein entrepreneurs are anticipating.
One of this burger’s big selling points is the fact that when cooking it appears to ‘bleed’ fat and a pinkish juice
(this is due to the presence of a protein called heme which occurs in both plants and animal muscle;
apparently, it ‘tastes of blood’).
“How many protein innovation hours and dollars are being applied to
making new foods taste just like old ones?”
Which brings me to a moot issue; how many protein innovation hours and dollars are being applied to making
the new foods taste just like the old ones? We’re told that fried dulse – a type of seaweed – tastes like bacon
and has twice the protein content of kale. Well, nutritious and hipster-friendly as kale may be, I’m still not sure
it’s a ready protein benchmark for too many people. And why can’t seaweed taste of seaweed? Japanese diners
seem to be perfectly OK with it.
Grasshoppers consumer a twelfth of the feed that cattle need to produce the same amount of protein. Globally,
around two billion people eat insects as a regular part of their diet. Yet many of the wave of bug-eating startups
go out of their way to roast, grind and meld grasshopper and other insect ‘flours’ into energy bars, shakes,
snacks and other food products that mask the true provenance of their ingredients. Hardly the future of food,
unless we’re reconciled to a kind of bad science fiction-style future where our ‘meals’ come in a tastefullydesigned wrapper accessorised with snappy witticisms to take our minds off the inert dark brown brick inside.
Reports and commentaries on the alternative protein scene are marbled throughout with the notion of
‘changing consumer perceptions’ – in other words, getting affluent eaters to love their worms and larvae. Most
of us are a long way from the radical nature writer Charles Foster’s gourmet appreciation of the way regional
terroir affects the complex flavours of raw earthworms; worms from Chablis, he reports, have ‘a long mineral
finish’.
“Algae, peas, hemp seeds, rice, flax, lupin, canola, moringa,
quinoa…they’re all on the radar of future protein innovators.”
Perhaps, as food consumers, we’re more comfortable with the idea of eating plants: ‘natural’ fast-food chain
Pret A Manger experimented with a meat-free, plant-based branch last summer and boosted comparable sales
by seventy per cent. Algae, peas, hemp seeds, rice, flax, lupin, canola, moringa, quinoa, chai…they’re all on the
radar of future protein innovators. Take just one of those, the tropical moringa or drumstick/horseradish tree,
the leaves of which are rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins A. B and C. Parts of the moringa have
antibacterial properties, are used for water purification and as a dietary supplement for babies, pregnant
women and livestock. The plants can be harvested once a month and require no fertiliser; arboreal scalability.
‘Deal flow’ – the number of investment opportunities in a given sector – for alternative proteins is growing,
albeit cautiously; whilst investments in 2015 amounted to a mere $160m, chicken feed compared to the
amount going into driverless cars or mobile ecommerce, 2016 has seen high-profile investors like Khosla
Ventures and Founders Fund jump in. Earlier in 2016 bug bar startup Exo raised $4m dollars, the first insect
protein startup to secure Series A funding.
Last year also saw the launch of New Crop Capital, a boutique investment fund whose mission is to “invest in
talented, focused entrepreneurs whose products or services replace food derived from conventional animal
agriculture.”
Big Food producers are not far behind; in October 2016 Tyson Foods, one of the sector’s biggest meat
producers, took a 5% stake in plant-based protein startup Beyond Meat.
“Tyson Foods took a 5% stake in plant-based protein startup Beyond
Meat.”
So who’s going to nail that first big win? One of the twenty-something entrepreneurs proselytising the
yumminess of crickets? The white-coated lab technician conjuring burgers out of molecules? A food business
giant hedging their bets against the planet’s uncertain future?
It is not easy to persuade individual humans to alter their own daily behaviours even when they accept a wider
existential threat to the species, so the issue of taste may prove to be pivotal in translating awareness into
action. And I suggest that we need to think about taste not just in terms of what the receptors in our tongues
tell us, but in the more general sense of ‘a personal preference or liking’.
Food, beyond mere fuel for survival, is intensely personal; just look at how it becomes an identity battleground
for very young children almost from the moment their parents start to try and wean them.
Perhaps success at scale will go to the first company that engages our brains, hearts and taste buds by
producing plant-based proteins that help solve planetary problems, that we can use to make the things we love
to eat, and that get us licking our lips in anticipation, almost despite ourselves.