I have written a few blog posts about plant-based foods recently but I think about it so much that I feel compelled to write more about it so here goes* ...
Inputs and outputs
Listening to Pat Brown, Impossible Foods CEO, talk about his company and their mission was one of the a-ha moments that got me hooked on this subject. He believes that a cow is a very inefficient ‘machine’ that turns plants into meat. Cows bred for agriculture eat a plant-based diet and when they’re slaughtered their ‘meat’ is used for human consumption. There are inputs (plants) and outputs (meat). His company is trying to do the same thing but without the cow to increase efficiencies (and help save the planet and avoid unnecessary slaughter of animals).
Assumptions
Companies like Impossible were not conceived with vegetarians or vegans in mind. Long-term plant-based eaters generally don’t want their food to taste like meat. There are a lot more non-vegans/vegetarians in the world than there are vegans/vegetarians. If you currently eat a plant-based diet you are in the minority. They are going after meat-eaters. They are betting on the idea that if it tastes like meat, has a meaty texture and costs the same/less than meat, consumers would choose their product over meat from an animal any day of the week. When we reach this tipping point, big agriculture as we know it will need to adapt fast. There will be so many positive outcomes as a result.
The key issues I have been thinking through the past few days are processed versus non-processed meats and scaling.
Processed vs non-processed
A lot of critics of Impossible point to the fact that their products are highly processed. But if we come back to Brown’s idea that cows are inefficient meat-producing machines, then cows themselves are processing plants into meat. Whilst Impossible are constantly iterating on their processes and they would admit that they are far from perfect, meat - whether it comes from plants or animals - is processed.
Scaling and food miles
Whilst Impossible products are not yet available in Australia, products from the company it is most often associated with - Beyond Meat - are. I am a little uncomfortable with the idea that they are produced in the US from plant proteins from who-knows-where? before being shipped here. Whereas I could buy beef at our local farmers’ market that came from a cow on a farm within an hour’s drive from here. There are local competitors to these global plant-based meats but they are a couple of years behind on their roadmap. So which is the least worst option? How much land was cleared, how much water was used in raising the cow that produced the beef sold at the local farmers’ market? To me, plant-based alternatives seem to scale much better. Less land, less water, less emissions.
However, imagine if there were local ‘producers’ of plant-based meat (of a similar quality to Impossible) - maybe one-day someone could open-source their IP?
*I’ll just call these types of posts ‘Plant-based musings’ from now on and number them.