Enlarge / A stack of plant-based Impossible Burgers.
impossible foods
If you're an environmentally conscious meat eater, you probably carry at least a little guilt at the table. The meat on our plates has a significant environmental cost due to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and air and water pollution: an uncomfortable reality, given the urgent need to address to climate change.
That's one of the main reasons there's such excitement today around a newcomer to supermarket shelves and burger menus: products that look like real meat but which are made entirely without ingredients of animal origin. Unlike the bean- or grain-based veggie burgers of decades past, these “plant-based meats,” the best-known of which are Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat, are heavily marketed to mainstream meat eaters. They claim to replicate the taste and texture of real ground meat at a fraction of the environmental cost.
If these state-of-the-art meat substitutes can meet much of our demand for meat, and if they're as environmentally friendly as they claim, which isn't easy to independently verify, they could offer carnivores a way to reduce the environmental impact of their culinary choices without giving up their favorite recipes.
It could be a game-changer, some think. "People have long been educated about the harms of animal agriculture, but the percentage of vegans and vegetarians remains generally low," says Elliot Swartz, a scientist at the Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit organization that supports the development of meat alternatives. "Rather than forcing people to change their behavior, we believe it will be more effective to substitute products in their diets when they don't have to change their behavior."
There is no doubt that today's meat industry is bad for the planet. Livestock contribute about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, both directly (from methane released by cattle and other grazing animals and released through manure from feedlots and piggeries and poultry houses) and indirectly (largely from fossil fuels used to grow fodder crops). Indeed, if the world's livestock were a country, its greenhouse gas emissions alone would rank second in the world, behind China.
Worse still, the United Nations predicts that global demand for meat will increase by 15% by 2031 as the world's growing and increasingly affluent population seeks more meat from its plates. This means more methane emissions and the expansion of pasture and cropland in formerly forested areas such as the Amazon, deforestation that threatens biodiversity and contributes more to emissions.
Global demand for meat continues to rise with few signs of slowing down. Much of the increase is coming from middle-income countries, where consumers are using their growing wealth to put more meat on their plates.
However, not all types of meat animals contribute equally to the problem. Grazing animals like cattle, sheep and goats have a much larger greenhouse gas footprint than non-grazers like pigs and chickens. This is largely because only the former burp methane, which occurs when gut microbes digest the cellulose in grasses and other forages.
Pigs and chickens are also much more efficient at converting food into edible flesh: chickens need less t...
Enlarge / A stack of plant-based Impossible Burgers.
impossible foods
If you're an environmentally conscious meat eater, you probably carry at least a little guilt at the table. The meat on our plates has a significant environmental cost due to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and air and water pollution: an uncomfortable reality, given the urgent need to address to climate change.
That's one of the main reasons there's such excitement today around a newcomer to supermarket shelves and burger menus: products that look like real meat but which are made entirely without ingredients of animal origin. Unlike the bean- or grain-based veggie burgers of decades past, these “plant-based meats,” the best-known of which are Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat, are heavily marketed to mainstream meat eaters. They claim to replicate the taste and texture of real ground meat at a fraction of the environmental cost.
If these state-of-the-art meat substitutes can meet much of our demand for meat, and if they're as environmentally friendly as they claim, which isn't easy to independently verify, they could offer carnivores a way to reduce the environmental impact of their culinary choices without giving up their favorite recipes.
It could be a game-changer, some think. "People have long been educated about the harms of animal agriculture, but the percentage of vegans and vegetarians remains generally low," says Elliot Swartz, a scientist at the Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit organization that supports the development of meat alternatives. "Rather than forcing people to change their behavior, we believe it will be more effective to substitute products in their diets when they don't have to change their behavior."
There is no doubt that today's meat industry is bad for the planet. Livestock contribute about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, both directly (from methane released by cattle and other grazing animals and released through manure from feedlots and piggeries and poultry houses) and indirectly (largely from fossil fuels used to grow fodder crops). Indeed, if the world's livestock were a country, its greenhouse gas emissions alone would rank second in the world, behind China.
Worse still, the United Nations predicts that global demand for meat will increase by 15% by 2031 as the world's growing and increasingly affluent population seeks more meat from its plates. This means more methane emissions and the expansion of pasture and cropland in formerly forested areas such as the Amazon, deforestation that threatens biodiversity and contributes more to emissions.
Global demand for meat continues to rise with few signs of slowing down. Much of the increase is coming from middle-income countries, where consumers are using their growing wealth to put more meat on their plates.
However, not all types of meat animals contribute equally to the problem. Grazing animals like cattle, sheep and goats have a much larger greenhouse gas footprint than non-grazers like pigs and chickens. This is largely because only the former burp methane, which occurs when gut microbes digest the cellulose in grasses and other forages.
Pigs and chickens are also much more efficient at converting food into edible flesh: chickens need less t...
Enlarge / A stack of plant-based Impossible Burgers.
impossible foods
Global demand for meat continues to rise with few signs of slowing down. Much of the increase is coming from middle-income countries, where consumers are using their growing wealth to put more meat on their plates.
