31st January, 2021
As the only vegan at home, I must say — I cannot imagine life without faux meat. If not for OmniPork, my mom wouldn't know what to cook for dinner, and without Beyond Burgers, many restaurants would have potatoes as their only vegan option. Over the past three years, I have proudly watched the plant protein section in my neighbourhood supermarket grow from one pack of burger patties to two entire freezers. But is faux meat the future forever?
The debate over meat analogues is by no means new. Skeptics of veganism commonly question the motivations of replicating flesh with plants, pointing to it as a "moral cop-out" for those who claim to be vegetarian for ethical reasons. There are also controversies over the health implications of consuming high amounts of processed alternative protein. Surveys have shown that most fans of faux meat are in it for health reasons, but with sodium and saturated fats on high, it might be worth asking, how much healthier is the Beyond Burger, really?
To get things straight, I am completely for the rise of alternative protein. While concerns around it are not unfounded, its benefits by far outweigh its costs. Meat analogues reduce the friction for dietary change in a way that traditional plant-based ingredients simply cannot. We could create a bolognese sauce with a lentil-walnut blend, but the learning curve would be too steep for restaurant chains to adapt to, especially when there isn't a mass consumer demand for beans and pasta. From a purely utilitarian perspective, alternative proteins quite undebateably reduce animal suffering. After all, does it really matter that our tastebuds yearn for animal flesh if no animal is killed in the process? Most of all, faux meat undeniably has a lower carbon footprint than its traditional counterparts, and with the climate crisis looming upon us, that can seem to be the end-all-be-all argument. Nobody cares about sodium when the very existence of our species is under threat.
The question is not a so what? — the benefits are clear.
It's a then what?
Let's say the entire world now consumes Impossible sausages for breakfast, OmniPork pad krapow for lunch and some yet-to-rise brand of plant-based steak for dinner. Mass players in the food industry all have their own line of plant-based protein products, and slaughterhouses are now replaced by manless production lines that assemble an assortment of protein isolates into burgers, nuggets and a range of other creative shapes. This is "The Future" that everybody from food tech entrepreneurs to utilitarian animal ethicists have been dreaming of for decades. We can all agree that, compared to what we have now, this is a world with far more compassion and far less carbon. Now what?
Fast food culture continues to separate us from our ingredient sources, 10 companies still control our entire food supply chain, and the Earth's land is still oversaturated with soybean and wheat crops — just that, perhaps now, these crops can feed actual people.
Maybe, our great-grandchildren will be asking their parents what the word “beef” means and learn that people used to kill actual cows for food, and they will look at their soy-made ground “beef” in stark realisation that their dinner is symbolic of something so unimaginably brutal. I can't help but wonder — will they feel just as disgusted and disillusioned?
Animal cruelty and climate change are problems that must be solved with urgency. Yet, they are also symptoms that point to a far deeper and more fundamental problem with the human-nature relationship and our exploitative, extractivist model of consumption that extends far beyond factory farms and carbon emissions. Meat analogues are a necessary transition (at least in my view) but not sufficient in the long run. There needs to be a deeper change, not just in the literal ingredient composition of our food, but also in the way we relate to it.
True to the nature of free market capitalism, the meat alternative industry can one day be big enough to have powerful political influence, and they, too, would push down costs through land-degrading agricultural practices, commission crooked health research to manipulate consumer interest and lobby against policies that work against their profit maximisation. For sure, a plant-based exploitative food system would still be far less exploitative than a carnivorous one, but until we successfully counter the forces of extractivism and contemporary society’s reductionist ways of relating to nature, the fight for planetary healing is far from over.
None of this is to discredit the valuable momentum that the plant-based protein industry has gained over the past decade. In fact, it is thanks to this momentum that we can even begin to think about the "then what". Going plant-based alone will not fix the food system, but — at least for now — it’s a good strategy to both buy time for the climate and protest against today’s food industry, letting them know that running a million more “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” ads will not stop us from prioritising the planet. And until the day Beyond and PepsiCo’s partnership evolves into an acquisition (please tell me I'm uttering absolute bullshit), I will continue to eat my burger in peace, knowing at the back of my mind that this is the future, but not the future forever.
