Can plants replace meat and dairy? The 2014 documentary Cowspiracy lauds plant-based egg, dairy, and meat products as the future of food.1 Bill Gates has even supported projects such as Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek Foods and has spoken consistently in favor of pursuing these alternatives.2 But, what would a food economy of only plant-based products look like, and are there are drawbacks?
The Rise of Plant-Based Products
iSlowly, and to the dismay of the powerful livestock lobbies in the United States, researchers are beginning to discover just how , eutrophication (also known as explosion of algae growth), and a myriad of other environmental catastrophes.4
A few innovators recognized the severity of this problem – the unsustainability of our animal agriculture system – and decided to create solutions. For instance, Professor Mark Post and his team from Maastricht University in The Netherlands created the world’s first lab-grown burger; the prototype was first cooked and eaten two years ago. The burger was created from stem cells of cow muscle tissue. After three weeks, these stem cells develop and multiply into over a million stem cells that form small strips of muscle. The muscle strips are then layered together.5 Peter Verstrate, who collaborated with Professor Post to form a company called Mosa Meat said, “I feel extremely excited about the prospect of this product being on sale. And I am confident that when it is offered as an alternative to meat that increasing numbers of people will find it hard not to buy our product for ethical reasons.” One of Mosa Meat’s key objectives is to find ways to mass-produce lab-grown meat with competitive prices.6
U.S. companies have also taken initiative in the burgeoning plant-based products world. Beyond Meat currently sells plant-based chicken strips and ground beef in supermarkets, and Hampton Creek’s eggless mayonnaise is a bestseller at Whole Foods Market.7 Josh Tetrick, the CEO of Hampton Creek, stated, “For some reason, innovation decided to pass food along the side of the road. And yet there is this incredible innovation — at least in some part — in energy, in software, in mobile, across the board, and we’re still getting our eggs from chickens crammed in rusty cages?”8
While many alternatives already exist for vegans and , these start-up companies aim to replace meat and dairy in the diets of people who love meat and dairy. Therefore, they are aiming to replicate the textures and flavors of real meat and dairy products. Patrick Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods, stated, “We want to have a product that a burger lover would say is better than any burger they’ve ever had.”9 Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown stated, “There’s meat that you can arrive at differently, in terms of thinking of meat as amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, minerals, and water. Those five parts can all be harvested from plants directly and actually provided to consumers in the form of ‘meat.’“10
In terms of food safety, researchers believe that plant-based alternatives are more reliable. Plant-based eggs avoid issues such as salmonella and cholesterol.11 These innovative food product companies are still working to make plant-based meat substitute products more affordable – Professor Post’s burger cost $331,766 to create several years ago. However, once they have the technology down, these sustainable foods companies expect their products to be less expensive than conventional meat and dairy products.12 Already, Tetrick reported that Hampton Creek’s egg substitute is profitable and is 48% cheaper than conventional eggs: “We have no interest in being looked at as a premium product, we always want to undercut the competition.”13
Hopefully these sustainable food companies will be more transparent with their processes and ingredients than the current companies that dominate the U.S. food industry. Rachel Cheatham, CEO of Chicago-based Foodscape Group, observed, “The irony is that people who cried out for those kinds of products, the last thing they wanted was a lot of engineering in their food. If you build a better non-meat patty, you’d better think ahead to the transparency around how many ingredients are in it, what they are, and the supply chain.”14 Time will tell if there are drawbacks to this new way of producing food. Well, after overcoming the steep hurdle of people’s aversion to eating engineered food.
