By Richard Tardif
According to the plant-based company, Beyond Meat, the warming influence of greenhouse gases surged 40 percent between 1990 and 2016. It’s time to curb these surges. We can do it by eating more fake meat, plant-based. Livestock, particularly farting cows, are seen as a major source of these gases. Around the world, people are eating more and more meat, having much larger environmental footprints than 20-years ago. The solution? Plant-based alternatives that look and taste like meat.
Fake meat is here. Well, it’s been here a few years. A Californian biotech startup behind the plant-based company, Impossible, raised $75 million in August of 2017, bringing its total investment to $257 million. Where, do you wonder, the investments come from? The latest round in 2017 includes funds from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, as well as Khosla Ventures and Horizons Ventures, as well as actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio.
More than a trend
Fake meat is not the only new trend company. Gardein, Canadian Owned, which sells a menagerie of non-meat meats; Tofurky, famous for its fake poultry; Field Roast, which does fake meat in wholesome packaging; and Morningstar Farms, maker of “America’s #1 Veggie Burger”, all have sprouted up (great pun) in the market. The idea of plant-based eating is not going away.
What all these fake meat, vegan junk food producers have in common is that most make their products from peas and beets, and a powerful push to shift global diets by discouraging animal products, which, if you’ve been following nutrition trends, may also curb climate change.
Cows do what cows do
The impact on the environment from food is part of EAT philosophy, a global, non-profit startup dedicated to transforming our global food system through sound science, impatient disruption and novel partnerships. According to its website, “the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health brings together more than 30 world-leading scientists (and corporate supporters) from across the globe to reach a scientific consensus that defines a healthy and sustainable diet”.
EAT says, cows let off too much methane. They take up too much land. Plants, don’t. That’s debatable. What’s not debatable is the small number of vegans and vegetarians, who for all intents and purposes will be the number one consumer of fake meats.
Plant-Based eating down in US, increasing in Canada
But despite the apparent rise of “plant-based” eating, the number of vegans and vegetarians in America is small and hasn’t grown much in the past 20 years. According to
a 2017 Gallup poll, the Washington Post reported, five percent of Americans identify as vegetarian, while three percent said they were vegan. The last time the poll was taken, in 2012, the percentages were six and two.
Plant-based eating is increasing in Canada. A 2017 study from Dalhousie University finds that nearly 10 percent of Canadians consider themselves vegetarian or vegan. According to the research, 2.3 million Canadians are vegetarian, an increase from just 900,000 in 2003, while about 850,000 label themselves vegan. Growth is consistent among millennials.
Change people’s behaviours isn’t easy. People will do anything not to change.
Just. Eat. Right. And that means real food.
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Richard Tardif is an award-winning investigative journalist, fitness trainer, speaker, author based in Montreal. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth About Fitness, challenges, surprises, and inspires you to embrace a fitness lifestyle that will work in achieving your individual goals.
Richard’s second book, Still in Denial: The Reasons for Embracing the Truth About Fitness, will be released in May 2019.
Another book in The Denial series, Beyond the Denial: Embracing Your Fitness Trainer and Your Health, is scheduled for release on September 1, 2019.
