Mock meat
Issue 85 - 25 January 2022 (7.5-min read)
Set your dinner menu with The Global Tiller this week! Join us as we bite into artificial meat, looking at the latest developments in this sector and how it impacts the future of food.
When it comes to artificial meat, there are many different options available. For decades, we’ve seen veggie burgers on supermarket shelves — a not-so-delicious but definitely non-meaty alternative to a standard beef patty.
But veggie burgers have taken a giant leap forward with the recent innovations in plant-based meats that look and taste exactly like beef. Trust me, I recently tried an Impossible burger in San Francisco and was taken aback by how much it tasted like real beef. Here in Tahiti, we’ve cooked with Beyond Meat patties and were keen to make the switch away from minced beef until the promotion prices ended. Now, it’s twice the price of the alternative.
Another kind of artificial meat that is still less common is lab-grown, cell-based or cultured meat made from animal stem cells and then grown in a controlled environment. You may not find it on the shelf at your grocery just yet but, if you are living in Singapore, you may have already taken a bite of Eat Just’s chicken bites, which were approved by their food regulators in 2020.
There are two main motivations for people to go for artificial meat: health and environment. As far as being healthier is concerned, it would be naive to presume that plant-based meat is healthy by default. While made from vegetables, it is still processed food containing GMOs and heme (a protein found in red meat that is believed to cause elevated risks of cancer and heart attacks). Yet, it does not contain those growth hormones and antibiotics that are fed to cows so there’s that. Plant-based meat is healthy if consumed in moderation but that’s an argument that could be made for actual beef too.
Artificial meat emerges as a winner when it comes to its environmental cost, mainly because the meat it replaces — livestock — is one of the most greenhouse gas-intensive activities. The carbon footprint of an Impossible burger is 89% smaller than a burger made from cow. However, the fact that artificial meat is being produced at a small scale as compared to livestock contributes a lot towards its low carbon footprint. What happens when plant-based meat is manufactured at scale?
Some scientists also warn against focusing entirely on CO2 and insist that sustainability metrics like soil health and biodiversity should be part of the calculation. They argue that if we switch from livestock to planting soy or peas needed to manufacture plant-based meat, we run into the issue of monoculture farming — large fields only planting one type of crop leading to soil erosion, problems with biodiversity and their dependency on fossil fuelled-fertilisers.
The verdict may not be out on just how healthy or environmentally friendly artificial meat can be but there is no denying that the trend is gaining traction across the world. Surveys show that, while Americans are still hesitant on meat alternatives, Indians and Chinese are eager to adapt. This is reflected in the industry with China’s plant-based meat market estimated at 6.1 billion yuan in 2018 with projections to grow up to 25% annually.
Overall, Southeast Asia saw a 440% increase in vegan and plant-based product launches between 2016 and 2020 with several startups offering plant-based versions of traditional rendang, satay, jackfruit-pork, etc. Even countries relying heavily on meat exports, such as New Zealand, are jumping on the bandwagon.
In fact, all kinds of protein sources are now on the table. New Zealand’s Breadcraft launched wraps made out of hemp seed and cricket flour but, had to close shop not longer after, as Kiwis weren’t ready for an insect-based diet just yet. But, in Southeast Asia, where insects have always been a part of the diet, new biotech startups are paving the way for the future of food with crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, mealworms, silkworms and black soldier flies.
No doubt, our dinner tables are going to look and taste significantly different in a decade from now. The question is: how are we arriving into this future. Have we allowed healthy competition in this industry to find the best solution, or are we complacently watching the emergence of Big Food that will monopolise our food consumption? Are our regulatory bodies equipped to test these innovations? Food cultures are as diverse as the people on this planet. How will different cultures adapt to this new meat? Will the billions of Muslims and Jews across the world finally get a taste of pork?
Do let us know if you have had a chance to try artificial meat.
Until next week, take care and stay safe.
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Dig deeper
This Aeon article on ‘Will we ever get a clear idea about what foods we should eat?’ takes us back into human’s quest for the “right” food. Who determines what is ‘healthy’ and is food just a sum of a bunch of nutrients put together or does it provide something else? I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
…and now what?
This week in our French podcast Pacific Hoe, we talked with a chef about artificial meet and he could see both the good and the bad arguments of artificial meat. One of his main concerns was the longterm impact of this innovation but he was also keen to point out that our relationship with food is more than just utilitarian.
As a chef, food is about love for him. It may seem weird as it’s involves killing an animal, plucking off a fruit or cutting a plant which can all be classified as 'violent' somehow but, in his own words: “We show respect to them as we use them,” we understand the sacrifice and the cost of it for our own sake.
For him, it’s hard to have a connection with food that didn’t have a 'real life', one that hasn’t been through the long process of being taken care of by someone. For that matter, he even considers industrial cow rearing as something equally unnatural.
For centuries indeed, human cultures have developed a strong connection to their food. Some have elevated it to some form of art but, for many if not all of us, eating is more than just sustaining ourselves, it’s about enjoying life.
So can we enjoy life when everything is designed, fabricated and industrialised? Can we have a connection to a food we’re not even sure what’s inside? Can we feel comfortable eating something so new that we don’t really know what good it’ll do to us?
Artificial meat may be forcing us to ask these deeper questions about the evolution of food but, rest assured, we have asked these questions before when processed food came into our life. An innovation that we now know brought us obesity, diabetes and other modern illnesses. Should artificial meat be dismissed as another good-for-nothing innovation or will it make our food more sustainable, even more equitable?
It’s hard to give a clear and immediate answer to this question and it depends a lot on how we perceive progress and technology. I’ve eaten artificial meat and I have to say, I enjoyed it. The burger was tasty and flavourful.
Maybe, it’s just a matter of becoming used to it in the years to come. Maybe, it depends on the narrative that promotes those new products that will determined whether or not we become hooked. Maybe, as with every form of progress, we need to get over our natural resistance to change that makes us refuse new things until it rings our own doorbell.
Because, at the end of the day, the stories we tell ourselves about our connection to food, the feelings we have towards the plants and animals that feed us, the consideration of what’s natural or not in our lives are mainly social if not personal constructions that have evolved through time. For the best or the worst, things change. There are always upsides and downsides to every situation today, tomorrow as there was in the past. After all you can make yourself quite sick by eating great food: high cholesterol, gout, cirrhosis are not modern illnesses and they all come from food too!
We learnt to live with many “unnatural things” in the past: clothes, houses, books, horse carriages, cars, computers. Each and every one of them making their way in our daily lives with great benefits and some great inconveniences too.
Artificial meats, as any other innovation, carries a promise to us all: helping fight and adapt to the challenges of our times. Let’s hold it to its promise while making sure it doesn’t bring with it other challenges that we’ll have to solve down the road.
But let’s also not dismiss our chef’s arguments focusing on the pleasure of eating and our relationship with the beings that feed us. As we move forward, let’s make sure these innovations are beneficial for all and for the better.
Philippe - Founder - Pacific Ventury