Where Shall We Meat?

There is a new meat-like substance in town and it tastes pretty meaty.  I read about the Beast Burger, which is coming to a supermarket near you, in last month's issue of Outside Magazine.  What makes this meatless burger stand out from its tasteless drywall like competitors is that it is purported to taste like beef.  That doesn't sound uncommon: most animal protein-less patties claim to taste something like the real thing but Beyond Meat, a small but rapidly growing company in California (where else?), has apparently done it.

Their chicken -free strips fooled Mark Bittman of the New York Times who thought that the strips not only tasted just like chicken, he thought they were chicken.  I have purchased this product twice  to test it for myself and I was pleasantly surprised by how chicken-y the product was but I am shocked that Bittman mistook it for the real thing.  Perhaps if I were used to eating mass produced poultry I might make the same mistake but my locally raised and slaughtered birds taste and feel like what they are: chicken.  I say "feel" because this is when the English language, again, falls short when it comes to the sensual.  Chicken meat has a particular texture as does good ground chuck.  the problem with previous incarnations of fake meat is that even if the flavor was close, the texture missed the mark.  This globby consistency of meatless burgers is due to the use of gluten as a texturizer.  The people at Beyond Meat, through a combination of determination, science, money and ethics, have come closer to any of their competitors in achieving what has long been a dilemma for health conscious individuals (there are lots of people who think it is unhealthy) and those who have sworn off meat for ethical reasons.  The problem is people like the way animals taste, which includes smell and feel.

Ethan Brown, the CEO of Beyond Meat, started his business because he wanted to change the world's reliance on animals for protein and he believes that he is creating meat from plants.  (An interesting note:  it is now believed that the old theory of taste buds and how they are positioned on the tongue is inaccurate.  Scientists now think that we have taste buds throughout our entire body and they are not sure why, but what is clear is that taste does not end at your gullet. Another digression of note:  We have far more taste receptors for bitter than we do for sweet because poisons are bitter, which is another reason we have made it this far on the planet.)

Most of the animal we eat is muscle, which consists of bundles of columnar and parallel fibers that your mouth recognizes as meat.  At Beyond Meat they have extruded pea and soy protein so that the substance that comes out of the other end of the hopper possesses a similar fiber structure to the real deal.  I can't wait to try the Beast Burger, but currently neither of my two local health food dispensaries carries it, so if you see some pick it up and post your results.

Here is the head to head comparison between the beast and the Beast Burger:
Beef burger:19 grams of protein, 0 grams of fiber, 80 milligrams of cholesterol.
Beast Burger: 24 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber, o grams of cholesterol and it contains more omega 3s than salmon, is rich in calcium, B vitamins (all statistics come from Mr. Rowan Jacobsen's article, "The Perfect Beast" in the January edition of Outside Magazine.) and it tastes and feels like hamburger.

Now for the ethical portion of the Post:
According to the Worldwatch Institute the annual production of meat (22 billion animals) leads to the release of 103 million tons of methane which is exponentially more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.  Fifty-one percent of global greenhouse gases are a result of raising livestock for consumption.  A few other startling statistics that Mr. Jacobsen listed in his article: "It takes 9,000 calories of edible feed to produce 1,000 calories of edible chicken...(and) 36,000 calories (are) required for 1,000 calories of beef."  The sad news for all of us grass-fed junkies is that grass-fed cattle produce more methane than factory raised cattle and leave twice the carbon footprint as those that are raised in pens.

My cognitive dissonance meter is bumping around eleven right now because I am experiencing severe discomfort on multiple levels of my psyche.  The notion of "Franken food," the current term for man-made food leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  Even though Beyond Meat is using all natural ingredients this is a highly processed food.  I don't know enough information about the differences in the types of proteins between the Beast and the boeuf (yes, that's my name), so I can't weigh-in on which is healthier.  The fact that the Beast has no cholesterol is a selling point, but there are many who believe, as you have read in these blogs, that cholesterol is less of a concern than was previously suspected.  And what about moderation?  Would you rather have one stupendous grass fed burger or a couple of these Beasts if given the choice?  But perhaps we, as a species, have entered an era where moderation in all things is no longer the best option when it comes to world food supply.  I will make a few enemies with this statement: There are too many fucking people on this planet (and too many people...) and they have to eat, so the production of their food must not destroy the ability to cultivate more of it.  Therefore, a thoughtful and ethical manufacturing model is a better alternative to killing animals for protein and the collateral damage to the environment that process entails.

The second one is the obvious ethical dilemma I have struggled with off and on for decades.  I love animals.  My dog and cat are my greatest teachers, my best friends, they smell good, they feel luxurious, they are more amusing than anything on the computer, they love unconditionally and they are meat.  In various parts of the world my tender young mutt would make a delicious roast and I kid him about that fact.  My seven year old cat, Alice, on the other hand, would require some tenderizing, which could be achieved through parboiling.  She purrs when I tell her this - probably because she and I both know that while my dog, Ranger, would sit faithfully beside my cold and fetid corpse for weeks she would dig right in. And dear baby Alice has hit the nail on the head, as cats often do: If it is in your DNA to eat meat at what point does your over-sized cranium with well-developed pre-frontal and frontal lobes decide the time has come to buck "nature?"

For millennia we killed for food and many people still need to do this to survive, we would not be here without it, but the world has changed.  No, that's not accurate - we have changed the world, and in order for it and us to continue we must alter our behavior.  Many of us now have the economic resources to make a choice.  It is a decision that runs counter to many cultural norms and genetic wiring, but don't most difficult decisions fit this mold?  Is it O.K. for me to kill for food and how far up the chain can I go?  The more I look at it the answer is "No." But I love the taste, smell and feel of meat, and the ritual of cleaning and preparing it, so I am conflicted and perhaps the Beast Burger is an answer.

I have looked for pithy and provocative quotes from brilliant minds to end this piece but I have found none, largely because they were written a century or two ago when the issue was based solely on the ethics of killing for human consumption.  Of course this issue remains germane but the newer concerns are broader, more tangible and portend greater catastrophe.

So I will end at the other end of the spectrum: "Soylent green is People!  It's People!" (the late and not so great Charlton Heston from the movie Soylent Green (1973).)