Plant-Based Meat

Plant-based meat is slowly but surely becoming a reality. Yes, you read it right. Meat, made from plants. Now, I have to start by saying, I am not a vegetarian. I love meat. I have had some form of meat in almost all meals in my entire life. But when I heard about plant-based meat, I had to know what I was actually seeing. So, this is a summary of all the articles I have gone through on this topic so that everyone can understand how plants produce meat. This article will focus on three main topics: taste, production, and effect on our body and effect on the planet.   

Taste:  

So firstly, I will not dwell on this topic much mainly because I didn’t have the privilege to ever taste real plant-based meat. But from all that I have read and seen on this topic, all of them claim that the meat not only tastes the same but also the cooking feel, textures and juiciness are nearly identical to real meat. So, I have to take their word and believe that it actually tastes and feels like real meat.  

Production and Effect on Human Body:  

When I heard about plant-based meat, the first thing that came to my mind was some form of disgusting tissue culture process. But fortunately, the production process of this meat does not even go close to animals. Not even a single cell is taken from any animal. All of it is purely plant-based. “Beyond Meat” and “Impossible Foods” are two of the leading companies in this market. “Beyond meat” makes the meat with a mixture of various vegetables which include: beetroots, apples, and tomatoes for texture and color. Coconut and sunflower oils for the fat, potatoes for carbs, and various nuts and beans for protein. These meats are good for the body as they don’t have cholesterol but they have saturated fats so they are not as healthy as a plain bowl of salad.   

At “Impossible Foods” they use a bit of a complex process. So, most of the above ingredients are present in this one as well. However, they use a product called “Heme”. Heme is made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast. Now Heme actually is hemoglobin but it is sourced from soy plants and then fermented. The topic of Heme is very vast and “Impossible foods” discovered the significance of Heme in making this sort of meat. I will not talk much about Heme as it can be a completely separate topic on its own.   

The hungriest of meat-eaters get half of their protein from various plants. Studies have also shown that plant protein causes less inflammation after exercises and as such many professional athletes prefer a plant-based diet. So, if plant-based alternatives are good for professional athletes, they are most probably more than enough for us regular people.  

Effect on the Planet:  

Let us first consider the case of animal farm. Animal farms are not made for good quality life of an animal, rather to reduce the cost of meat production. As such, it takes little thought to imagine the horrible condition of the animals. Maybe, if we are so optimistic, we may think that the farms are not so much bad in Muslim countries, where meat must be kept halal. But in non-Muslim countries, I don’t think I need to paint the picture.   

But even if we don’t care about the animal’s quality of life, let us consider the fact of nature. It takes a lot of resources to make a cow. In fact, the livestock industry emits more Carbon-di-oxide than all the cars, buses, planes, ships, and trains combined. And the land used to grow agricultural products that we actually eat, that land is almost 20% the size of land required to raise livestock and produce their food.   

Humans are mostly solar-powered. That is, we get energy from plants, which in turn get energy from the sun. But we also eat cows and chickens, which also get their energy from plants. And considering the fact that the meat, which already requires a lot of resources, only makes about 20%-40% of our daily diet, they turn out to be very inefficient middle-men in the cycle of energy transfer. So, using the same number of resources, a plant-based diet would last a much longer time than a traditional meat-diet. A statistic shows that we can feed an additional 3.5 BILLION people only if all the countries just ate what they fed the animals.  

Another statistic: as people are moving more towards the middle class, they want to consume more meat. And as such, the demand for meat is growing day-by-day. And this growing demand only means that farmers will clear up forests to raise more livestock, which will be a severe blow to climate change  

Now, in conclusion, plant-based meat tastes good, is good for us, and good for the planet. To preserve the climate, we need to make sacrifices that are hard. But these innovations like this plant-based meat makes those sacrifices much easier. And as things go on, these will become much cheaper so that people will be able to adopt them on a wider scale. Now, even after all this, I am not a vegetarian, but these innovations are a step in the right direction. 

*Information collected from YouTube Channel: Mark Rober.