Why clean meat and plant-based meat are the future
Seven and a half billion people currently populate the earth. By 2050, it’s estimated that number will rise to 9.7 billion. So how are we going to feed them all?
One action that will help: Eat less meat. In a recent interview with Rich Roll, Bruce Friedrich, executive director of The Good Food Institute, talked about the many ways animal agriculture harms the planet, including emitting around 20 percent of global greenhouse gases, squandering feed that could go to people, polluting air and water, and accelerating species extinction.
No one, or at least 97% of people, according to one study, likes factory farms. Neither do people like the idea of pollution and global warming. But understanding that something is a problem doesn’t always equate to behavioral change.
So The Good Food Institute focuses on making it easier for people to do the right thing, by producing delicious plant-based burgers and cruelty-free meat derived from animal cells, and making it affordable. Friedrich says that when foods taste and cost the same but one option is free of antibiotics, added hormones, pollution, and cruelty, people will tend to choose it.
Clean meat, or meat grown outside an animal from animal cells, is expected to be price-competitive for expensive meats in as little as four years, and should hit markets for cheaper meat in ten years.
Takeaway: One widely available plant-based meat supported by The Good Food Institute is Beyond Meat, which supplies more than 11,000 stores with its chicken strips, crumbles, and burgers. To see if there's one near you, check here. The Impossible Burger, nicknamed "the burger that bleeds," is another plant-based meat that has hit a few select restaurants in California, New York, Nevada, and Texas.
Listen to the whole interview on Rich Roll’s Podcast