To help bridge the gap in knowledge, specifically how these products are manufactured compared to conventionally farmed proteins, many experts try to give examples in parallel industries. For food and energy industries, common analogies have been the transition from gas-powered to electric vehicles, digital photography in place of film, incandescent lightbulbs changed to LEDs, and a number of other narratives. Of course, none of these actually teach the consumer what an alternative protein is, but they can be a helpful tool used to illustrate how necessary a technological transition can be.

Today, Trash Talkers, we discuss a new analogy that I have not seen used before: lab-grown diamonds and cultured pearls.

Old Habits Die Hard

In my experience, the hardest part of adopting a new technology is letting go of the old one. Consumers feel exceptionally attached to their choice foods and food types. We use favorite foods as icebreakers. Most holidays involve a consistent meal year to year. We have label terms for what foods we eat, and they often become a critical anchor of our identities: omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians. Religious acts also revolve around food: Christian communion, ancient Greek libations, kosher meals, fasting. We celebrate wins and lessen the pain of losses with our favorite foods.

These habits and values are thousands of years old because they were born from instinct. Food is social for us because it benefited our ancestors to eat together for protection. What started as necessity has become an incredible privilege and often an act of love. So, when products like cultivated meat, fungal mycoprotein, and plant-based burgers threaten our food values, our natural reaction is to resist. I do it, too even though 50% of my life is spent thinking about and researching alternative protein technologies.

What will drive consumers to change their attitudes?

What Do We Hate About “Lab-Grown?”

To go back to our “parallel industries” discussion, I see interesting overlap between alternative proteins and jewelry. Lab-grown diamonds and other gems are becoming more and more popular for their cost affordability, increased quality, and sourcing. These products look and function identically to their mined counterparts because they appear and function identically. They do the job. However, some consumers continue to resist lab-grown diamonds, labelling them as “fake.” People continue to want the “real thing” even though the alternative they are presented with can play the exact same role.

I recently learned that the vast majority of pearls bought and sold today are cultured, with some estimates reaching as high as 95%. If you have real pearls and your name isn’t Queen Elizabeth, they are almost guaranteed to have been made with human intervention. Significant intervention. In fact, we’ve been culturing pearls on a commercial scale for nearly 100 years.

Pearls form when a mollusk experiences tissue damage. To heal the damage, the organism will secrete a chemical that forms a cyst, which later becomes the pearl. But relying on chance to meet the massive demand for high quality pearls is too risky. To culture pearls, a tissue graft is inserted into the mollusk from a donor mollusk to kickstart pearl formation. The resulting pearl is functionally the same. You can even control the shape of the pearl by manipulating the shape of the tissue graft:

Consumers don’t seem to care whether their pearls were made via culturing. But for diamonds, the conversation for some people becomes more complicated; lab-grown and mined diamonds do not hold the same value for every consumer.

The difference is in perception, not in substance. Cultured pearls and accidentally-formed pearls function exactly the same way. Lab-grown diamonds and mined diamonds function exactly the same. They both look great on you.

So when we see news about cultivated meat, insect protein for flour, and proteins from plants, what drives our resistance to try and adopt?

In my opinion, there are two critical points for each person to decide for themselves what drives this resistance: 1) is the alternative product functionally the same as the product you currently use and 2) if you could not perceive the difference between the products (appearance, flavor, aroma, nutritional value, allergenicity), would you still care enough to resist?

Obviously alternative proteins are not functionally the same as our beloved meats. The worst thing for alternative protein messaging has been the black bean burger. That depressingly bland, dry plant-based patty is not a burger. Alternative protein products can definitely lack in taste, texture, aroma, and nutritional value. So, that first question is generally easy to answer.

If the products were functionally the same, would you still care enough to resist?

For the second question, it’s tempting to imagine this scenario like some sort of puzzle. You are presented with two identical burgers, stacked to the ceiling with your favorite toppings, condiments, and seasonings, and you are tasked with determining whether these burgers are different from each other. But that’s not how we interact with food day-to-day.

If you went to the grocery store, walked to the meat section, purchased a lab-grown steak, cooked it to perfection, ate it, and felt satiated and energized, would you care enough to resist lab-grown meat technologies? Would the “fakeness” get to you?

(For my more grim readers: If 40 years after you ate the steak, you had the same heart attack that a lifetime of eating farm-grown steaks would have given you, would you care enough to resist?)

And while we discuss this question, the rest of the alternative protein industry will continue to make incremental changes to their plant-based burgers, cultivated steaks, mycoprotein not-chicken nuggets, and every other meat-oddity until we cannot tell the difference anymore.

Most importantly, this is NOT a crystal-ball-style prediction saying that 100% of our current meat products will be replaced by alternative protein technologies. I guarantee that will never be the case. But identifying affordable ways to produce these foods while maintaining the flavors, aromas, and nutritional benefits that we know and love will secure our food future during environmental, public health, and sociopolitical crises.

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Our nation is not short of flesh, but of imagination.

I have therefore taken it upon myself, after a lengthy period of study and consultation with numerous experts in the fields of molecular gastronomy, tissue engineering, bioethics, and marketing, to put forth a most modest and reasonable proposal. It is this: that the impoverished and working poor, so long as they remain unable to secure nourishment by conventional means, ought to contribute small portions of their own tissue, that these might be cultivated into meat for public consumption.

I make no extreme demand. A single biopsy, extracted painlessly from the posterior or thigh by licensed technicians, yields sufficient cellular material to generate upwards of 500 grams of cultured protein in the first month alone. With modern techniques in bioreactor scaling and myogenic stimulation, this quantity may double by the second month. A modest tissue bank drawn from our nation’s most populous and underfed districts could thus produce many tons of lean meat each year.

There is little novelty in consuming one's own species. History is full of examples: the Aztecs in ritual, the Donner party in desperation, and the current electorate in metaphor. Yet my proposal requires no violence, no desecration of the dead, and no more discomfort than the average blood draw. The donors may even receive vouchers for their contribution, redeemable at participating grocers for discounted portions of themselves or others.

Such a system would serve many ends.

First, it would greatly reduce our reliance on industrial livestock, the maintenance of which has long plagued our environment. The methane produced by cattle has been decried by climate scientists, yet I observe that human tissue releases no methane in its post-biotic state. Cultured human meat, properly processed, is clean, low in saturated fat, and free from the hormones, antibiotics, and ancestral guilt associated with traditional animal flesh. One might even say that it represents a more ethical form of consumption, in that its source has chosen, voluntarily and with full knowledge of the facts, to have its cultured flesh be eaten.

Second, it would restore dignity to those now mocked by food insecurity. Rather than relying on charity or subsidies, they might take pride in providing for their families by the most literal of means. A mother could serve herself to her children in the form of lightly seasoned meatballs; a grandfather might return to the Sunday table as a roast. No longer would families be torn apart by hunger. They would be brought together, in nourishing communion.

Of course, I am not so insensitive as to ignore potential objections.

Some will claim that this proposal invites cannibalism. I assure these readers that the cells involved are far from sentient, lacking even a central nervous system. They are, in every functional sense, indistinguishable from the muscle fibers of a swine or steer, save for their genetic elegance and absence of hooves.

Still others will raise questions of taste. To these I say: have you eaten a chicken nugget? Have you examined its provenance?

I have consulted with numerous scientists, many of whom assure me that the nutritional profile of cultured human meat is superior to that of beef. With appropriate seasoning—a little rosemary, perhaps, or a balsamic glaze—the meat is said to possess a flavor reminiscent of pork, though more tender. It has been suggested that the thigh yields a robust stew, the cheek a delicate tartare.

I think it unnecessary to multiply the advantages of my scheme. Anyone with an elementary grasp of supply chains or empathy fatigue can see the promise herein. If but a tenth of our population were to contribute a small sample of their flesh each year, our nation might feed itself indefinitely, and do so without a single additional pasture or slaughterhouse.

Let us no longer gnash our teeth about the rising price of meat. Let us grow that meat, from ourselves, for ourselves. Let us eat, and be eaten yet not harmed, in turn.

A Modest Proposal By Jonathan Swift

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I invite you to think about why we pay people to donate blood, plasma, sperm, eggs, hair, and other bodily parts for money. These provide someone else with the gift of life—just as food does.

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Welcome back to the (limited) history of alt protein, Trash Talkers! Be sure to read the first post in the series to get up to speed.

Next in our alternative protein timeline is a spotlight on Quorn, a protein made from fungus, first launched in 1985.

Single-Cell Protein: A 1960s Buzzword

In 1960, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recognized the growing “protein gap,” which stated that 25% of the population had a dietary protein deficiency. The protein gap was a worldwide call for new protein innovations; how could we produce more protein without using more land and water?

One potential solution was (and still is) single-cell protein (SCP), or protein derived from microbes like bacteria, fungi, and algae. In the case of SCP, the microbes are the food product, rather than the food as a byproduct of fermentation, like wine or dairy.

A particularly exciting application of SCP in the 60s was creating more sustainable agricultural feedstocks; many SCP cultures can grow on waste products like sawdust, coffee grounds, and other food industry byproducts and could then be fed to livestock, creating a more circular food system. These incremental improvements in sustainability are essential for maintaining the longevity of our global food system. Small improvements have a profound impact when translated across the globe!

The greatest challenge in SCP production is species selection. How do you pick a microbe that grows quickly, is safe to eat, has nutritional value, requires minimal processing, and produces enough biomass to be economically feasible?

That’s the golden ticket that made Quorn, a microbial protein made from the filamentous fungus Fusarium venenatum, first isolated from soil in 1967.

(Quick vocab lesson: a filamentous fungus is a fungal species that produces mycelium, the root-like structure underneath many mushrooms. Yeasts are examples of non-filamentous fungi).

Why mushrooms instead of bacteria, algae, or yeast?

The general industry perspective at the time was that consumers would be more willing to try foods made from fungi, since fermented products like miso, soy sauce, and tempeh were so culturally widespread. Plus, many mushrooms have distinct, meat-like sensory properties, so maybe they’d make a pretty decent meat replacement if fermented.

With some ingenuinity, perseverance, and a bit of luck, the founding members of Quorn identified the edible fungus Fusarium venenatum as the ideal microbe to grow as food. Of course, it took some time to tune the process; F. venenatum is now grown on a well-defined feedstock (biologists often refer to the food for microbes as media) and industrial-scale fermentation technology.

Former President of the British Mycological Society wrote a lovely historical review of Quorn mycoprotein if you’d like a deeper read on the biology of F. venenatum. Turns out Quorn mycoprotein was so delicious we couldn’t just save it for our livestock—humans love it, too!

Quorn is a Big, Big Deal

Quorn dominates the edible SCP market, partially because of branding, but mostly because of technological innovation allowing them to produce large amounts of affordable protein. Many alternative proteins are cultivated in bioreactors, which are large stainless-steel tanks that have controlled agitation (or, the rate of mixing), nutrient flow, oxygen levels, pH, and waste removal. The Quorn bioreactor is particularly special in that the microbial culture is mixed by aeration rather than physical mixing, which can damage the cells. Protein is continually harvested from the bioreactor outlet and fresh nutrients are fed into the inlet. Check out Controlled Mould’s Quorn post for more information about their bioreactor technology.

I’ll remind you that most alternative protein products have only launched since the 21st century, with most products launched within the last ten years. But Quorn is celebrating its 40th birthday in 2025.

Maybe it’s just me, but to think that my parents could have seen Quorn in the freezer aisle at the grocery store while Tears for Fears topped the music charts is mind-blowing (maybe not my parents—Quorn was first launched only in the UK).

Wrap-Up

A short and sweet post for Quorn mycoprotein—next up in the timeline is MorningStar Farms’ plant-based burgers. See you in two weeks, Trash Talkers!

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"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked.
"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Where should we start, then?

The Turn of the Century

No, not that one—I mean the turn of the 20th century.

In 1894, a publication in The Times estimated that nine feet of horse manure would bury London by 1950 due to the booming population. The article incited a mass panic, with the crux of the issue being the increasing number of horses (and consequently, the enormous amount of horse manure) needed to transport people and products. Moreover, these tens of thousands of horses would require many acres of land and massive amounts of agricultural feed, but people especially feared the stinking, ever-expanding piles of manure that would cover the city.

The average horse produces between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day. London alone had 50,000 horses for shipping and transportation in 1900. That’s anywhere from 750,000 to 1.75 million pounds of horse manure every day, just in one city.

Four years after the article’s release, dozens of international leaders, public officials, and urban planners convened in New York to discuss solutions for supporting this rapid urbanization (and preventing the accumulation of horse manure) over ten days. Overwhelmed and intimidated, officials abandoned the effort after only three days of discussion; they could not see an outcome in which we solved the problem; humanity would simply cease to exist in 50 years.

In a 2004 article, economist Stephen Davies coined this event, “The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894.”

And yet, 50 years later, civilization continued to thrive. London even avoided the predicted nine-foot pile of horse manure—the automobile soon phased out any need for the horse-and-buggy.

Why Are We Talking About Horse Manure?

Great question. As an alternative protein scientist, it’s important in my presentations, writings, and conversations to convince people why alternative proteins matter and a big reason is sustainability. In 100, 500, or 10,000 years, we can’t expect that agriculture will be exactly the same as it is now. Our current agricultural practices are unsustainable; we have a finite amount of arable land, but our economic system is built on the assumption that we have infinite resources. We don’t have enough food, water, energy, and land to support our growing population. Changes will be necessary, like diversifying our food supply with alternative proteins.

The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 has become a popular example of demonstrating how a simple invention (the automobile) can solve a seemingly impossible problem (a gigantic, stinking pile of horse manure). We’re approaching a similar crisis in agriculture. Many journalists, policymakers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and just plain ol’ people are stressed about the fragility of our global food supply, and if we expect to exist a few hundred years from now, we need serious, large-scale innovation. We need the food version of the Ford Pinto (without the spontaneous combustion, of course) to save us from that pile of poop.

This is where alternative proteins come in. What food technologies are radical enough to revive our food system? Proteins that are produced in a fundamentally different fashion than conventional animal protein can help us build a more climate-friendly food supply. Cell-cultivated proteins like Vow’s cultivated foie gras, microbial proteins like Quorn and Spirulina, plant-based proteins like Impossible Meat, and other alternatives can be our Ford Pinto (again, no exploding, I promise!).

Churchill’s Prediction

Three decades after that failed urban planning conference, former UK prime minister Winston Churchill published a short essay titled “Fifty Years Hence,” detailing his vision for humanity 50 years from its time of writing in 19311.

In his essay, he focuses on humanity’s major technological advancements and details how they will undoubtedly enhance the quality of life. Here, I focus on his predictions about food:

“Microbes…will be fostered and made to work under controlled conditions, just as yeast is now….We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. Synthetic food will, of course, also be used in the future. The new foods will be practically indistinguishable from the natural products from the outset, and any changes will be so gradual as to escape observation.”

He rightly mentions that microbial fermentation will become more precise and tunable in future society. Fermentation is the process that microbes (mostly bacteria and fungi) use to chemically break down sources of energy (like sugar) so they can grow and reproduce. In the process, they release byproducts like alcohol and carbon dioxide, which give rise to the characteristic flavors in beer, wine, kombucha, cheese, and more.

At the time of Churchill’s writing, scientists were just beginning to understand the mechanisms of yeast fermentation in wine, dairy, and brewing; just two years before this essay was published, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to two scientists studying biochemical reactions in yeast. Fermentation was an emerging technology that many people felt was a necessary research endeavor.

Now, fermentation has become an essential pillar of our food and healthcare systems. Beyond beer and wine, we harness microbial fermentation to produce insulin, food pigments and dyes, chocolate, cheese, soy sauce, vitamin B12, and emerging alternative proteins like chicken-free egg protein, cow-free milk, and even infant formula. The important distinction here is we have figured out how to precisely control fermentation over the last century. Humans have always, always fermented beer and wine, but for 99% of our history, those fermentations were uncontrolled and the resulting product taste was somewhat random. Now, we can produce targeted products and flavors, which is safer and cheaper!

Churchill also managed to predict our consumption of meat grown without raising a full chicken or cow. Animal farming is calorically inefficient; the average chicken requires 9 calories of energy input to produce only 1 calorie of chicken meat (and chickens are even regarded as the most efficient energy converters in the animal world). That’s a lot of lost energy! If we could produce the same amount of chicken, beef, pork, fish—whatever you like—with greater energy efficiency, we’d have more available land AND more protein to feed our population.

(I’m not going to touch on Churchill’s comment about synthetic food—I’ll leave it as an exercise for you lovely Trash Talkers.)

Companies like UPSIDE Foods, Mosa Meat, Vow, Good Meat, and many others have been leading the charge in bringing cell-cultivated proteins to market; these are meat products grown without the slaughter of a farm animal. While I won’t get too much into the details (full-scale cultivated meat post coming soon 😉), cultivated proteins essentially start with a stem cell sample from an animal (cow, chicken, etc.), and then scientists grow those cell cultures until they form a larger piece of meat! This process generally uses less land, water, and energy compared to conventional agriculture.

Fluke or Premonition?

How did Churchill conceive of such a technology in only 1931? We weren’t anywhere close to cell-cultivated protein!

Well, it probably wasn’t his original idea. His inspiration likely came from the famed birth of tissue engineering in the early 20th century, often attributed to the work of French biologist Alexis Carrel.

The field of tissue engineering involves using cells, biomaterials, and biochemical principles to study tissues like skin, heart, brain, and muscle. But the applications aren’t just medical—we can use tissue engineering principles in food, too! Cell-cultivated protein is a modified version of tissue engineering; instead of growing 3D tissues to study wound healing or drug delivery, we can use them to make meat.

Carrel’s famous contribution to tissue engineering was his immortal culture of chicken liver cells. What is an immortal cell culture?

Most cells are not immortal. Imagine you start a cell culture with one cell; you give it plenty of fresh nutrients to grow, grow, and grow until it divides to make two cells. Then those two cells keep growing until they divide and make two cells for a total of four. The process repeats until you have a Petri dish with millions of cells after just a few days.

But that first cell is still dividing, too! It doesn’t stop after the first division. It continues to divide, divide, and divide until it starts to act…funky. Soon, it doesn’t divide quite as quickly, it changes shape, and ultimately dies. After a while, your whole culture starts to die—the cells have reached their dividing limit!

Carrel managed to avoid this process by keeping the same cell culture alive for over 20 years, the first documented observation of an immortal cell line. TWENTY YEARS! 20! Read that again! The average lab cell culture is only kept alive for a few weeks at most!

Well, it might not have actually been so impressive. Many scientists years after this experiment have questioned Carrel’s observations; he may not have been truthful or his employees may have continually replenished the culture with fresh cells to make it appear immortal. Regardless of the integrity of his experiment, the concept still marks the beginning of tissue engineering.

Immortalized cell lines are absolutely real, though! Many biomedical scientists have observed spontaneous immortalization in mammalian and fish cells, though we still don’t understand what causes the immortalization. The most famous immortal cell line is the HeLa cell line, named for Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s. Unfortunately, her cells were taken without her consent, and the thousands of scientific discoveries that use the HeLa cell line often fail to address the unethical isolation of her cells. Even Johns Hopkins’ official statement contains no apology or reparations to her and her family. I invite you to read more about HeLa cells and scientific consent here.

Science Must Right A Historical Wrong

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That’s it for the timeline, for now. We’ll pick up with the 1985 release of Quorn mycoprotein—the most intellectually mind-blowing alternative protein of our time, in my opinion!

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What Did You Say?

Yep, holographic meatloaf. You might recall, in an excellent episode of Spongebob Squarepants, Plankton comes home to his computer wife Karen and a tasty plate of his favorite dinner, holographic meatloaf. He excitedly drives his Plankton-sized fork into an odd, ghostly rendition of homemade meatloaf, a futuristic “whoosh” sounding each time he picks up a bite—food made from air.

Other mainstream entertainment has featured futuristic food made from air, too. Fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series might remember the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser, a device that produces a customized drink based on your neurological signals. The beloved FLDSMDFR (pronounced phonetically) from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs can produce complex meals like cheeseburgers, donuts, spaghetti, and of course meatballs from clouds. In the Star Trek universe, replicators synthesize complete meals just from energy. Even the Jetsons eat meals condensed into tiny pills or instantly produced out of thin air, reimagining the future of food culture with their Dial-a-Meal and food-o-matic systems.

Now, we might get our fair share of Plankton’s holographic meatloaf. Maybe you’ve seen an article like this one in the past few months, featuring companies that are growing edible protein from air, like Air Protein (aptly named, I might add) and Solar Foods.

Value Proposition

Why bother trying to make protein from air? You might already know, intuitively; this fermentation—the chemical breakdown of air by microbes—requires very little land, and we can make protein from air anywhere with a fermentation facility (or the potential to build one). Conventional agriculture requires arable, grazable land, limiting its capacity for protein production. With fermented protein, there is more available land to produce food, and fermentation facilities can run on renewable energy, reducing environmental impact even further. Air protein fermentation is also a carbon negative process, meaning it removes carbon from the atmosphere, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Science

How do people make air from protein? Let’s break it down (pun fully intended).

Although we may forget in our everyday lives, air does actually contain “stuff.” Air is full of oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen—everything that microbes need to survive! As microbes digest these gases, they grow and grow and grow, until it’s time to harvest, purify, and dry the protein.

The inspiration for microbial protein from air hails from NASA; the original pitch included using carbon dioxide that the astronauts exhaled for biomass fermentation, creating a completely circular process for protein production. As astronauts breathed in oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide would be fed to microbes to produce biomass, adding another available source of protein in space. Though, at the time, the major barrier was psychological; astronauts didn’t want to eat food like that.

But times are changing, and these novel foods are back on our plates. Companies are utilizing novel branding strategies to change our perception of microbial protein. Take a look at some of Air Protein’s marketing tools found on their website:

To make protein from air, companies grow microbial cultures in bioreactors, or large, usually stainless steel, closed containers. Bioreactors allow scientists to precisely control growth conditions like temperature, the rate of nutrient flow, pH, and culture density. Scientists first clean the bioreactor (to prevent any unwanted growth) and load it with liquid nutrients, called broth. When the culture reaches a certain threshold of growth, they empty the contents of the bioreactor and separate the broth from the microbes, resulting in a paste-like mass of cells.

After the fermentation, they break open the cell membranes, also called lysis (pronounced lye-sis, rhymes with crisis), in order to access the proteins that are inside the cells. But there’s a lot of other stuff inside cells, too, so they have to separate the protein from the cell debris (mostly water, cell membrane remnants, DNA, and other small molecules) through purification steps. The extracted protein is then dried to create a flour that can be added to baked goods or turned into other functional foods spanning dairy, meat, and grains. Some companies even use this protein flour as a supplement in pet food or agricultural feed.

Closing

Let’s just take a moment and peruse the myriad of futuristic food featured in our favorite films.

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Don’t Think Too Hard

In my first post, I briefly mentioned plant-based protein as an example of an alternative protein (remember, alternative proteins are plant-based or food technology alternatives to meat). A relative who read my post said to me:

“I’ve never eaten a plant-based protein.”

“Well, have you eaten a bean?”

Or, for that matter, nuts, lentils, peas, chia seeds, or quinoa? Don’t think too hard about it; not all alternative proteins are fancy technologies. Sometimes, they’re just beans. Regular ol’ plants. But, let’s take a deeper dive.

So, welcome to the first installment of The Alt Protein Breakdown, a series where I dissect different kinds of alternative proteins. We’re starting with plant-based proteins—some of the oldest in the book.

History of “Plant-Based”

The term “plant-based” was originally coined by nutritionist Dr. Thomas Colin Campbell starting in the 1980s. Campbell, an extremely prolific scientist, has dedicated his life to advocating for a diet full of whole foods, low fats, and plants; in fact, his own diet is “99% vegan,” but he prefers the term plant-based. Now, alternative protein companies, consumers, enthusiasts, and researchers alike apply the term to plant-based proteins, which are exactly what they sound like—protein alternatives made from plants. Plant-based proteins exist on a spectrum spanning two broad categories: meat mimics, which aim to replicate the taste, texture, smell, and appearance of traditional meat—or any animal product, like cheese, eggs, milk, and yogurt—and non-meat mimics.

Non-Meat Mimics

Humans have relied on plant-based proteins long before we started calling them that. In other words, these are proteins that do not aim to recreate the sensory experience of eating meat; they have different textures, flavor profiles, and appearances. In addition to farming trusty veggies, fruits, legumes and nuts, our ancestors fermented plants into more robust proteins. Tofu, made from soy, is over 2,000 years old; tempeh, a soy-and-edible-fungi hybrid, is estimated at 400-1,000 years old. Both tofu and tempeh are popular plant-based choices for home chefs, as they can be roasted, sautéd, fried, and put into soups or stews.

Both tofu and tempeh have a strong soy flavor, which might not be appealing to every eater. Fortunately for us, there is so much nutritional and culinary diversity in the world of plant based proteins! For vegetarians, vegans, and flexitarians—people who eat a semi-vegetarian diet—beans are often a major dietary staple, since they are high in protein and fiber, shelf-stable, affordable, and easy to prepare. There are thousands of bean varieties to satisfy even the pickiest of eaters.

Beyond beans, other substantial plant-based proteins include nuts like almonds, peanuts, and cashews; chia, hemp, flax, and pumpkin seeds; and protein powders, many of which have soy protein. And remember—just because something is a plant doesn’t mean it’s automatically a fruit or a vegetable! Many grains also have high protein content, like quinoa and oats.

While whole food plant-based proteins are amazing, many people struggle to give up the sensory experience of eating meat. That’s where meat mimics come in!

Meat Mimics

Meat mimics are proteins that recapitulate the experience of eating meat through texture, appearance, taste, and aroma. Meat mimics can be homemade or commercially produced; you may have heard of seitan (pronounced “say-tan”), a plant-based protein growing in popularity made from wheat gluten. Another popular homemade meat mimic is pulled jackfruit, which looks and tastes very similar to pulled or barbecued meat when tossed in the right sauce.

If you’re interested in eating plant-based meat or animal mimics, you don’t have to go full caveman and make them yourself; there are plenty of options at the grocery store. Animal product mimics like Just Egg, a scrambled egg replacement, are readily available, not to mention the plethora of plant-based milk (almond, coconut, soy, macadamia nut, and rice, just to name a few), yogurt, and cheese mimics lining the aisles of the dairy section.

The most prominent meat mimics on the market are Beyond Meat, Impossible Meat, and Quorn (which is a special case for us Trash Talkers—I’m saving Quorn for another post).

Beyond Meat, founded in 2009, sells plant-based meats including burgers, meatballs, steak tips, sausages, and ground chicken products. The main plant proteins in these meat mimics are peas, lentils, and beans. They make a pretty remarkable burger.

What makes this meat mimic better than a bean burger or a veggie burger? It actually tastes like meat. Humans are exceptionally good at detecting small differences between food products, especially foods that we eat often and in large quantities, like meat. We’re sensitive to small changes in texture, taste, and appearance, and veggie burgers just don’t do the trick most of the time. While the taste and texture experience of Beyond Meat isn’t 100% the same as real meat (they have a pretty distinct nutty flavor), I’d have no problem eating a Beyond Burger any day of the week. They look spot on, though.

Impossible Meat makes very similar products but with one key distinction. Like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods makes many ground meat products like burgers, sausages, meatballs, chicken nuggets, and even prepared meals. Impossible Meat products have soy and potato proteins; like most soy products, they have a pretty strong soy flavor that can be off-putting for many customers. The strong flavor soy imparts is a common challenge for plant-based products across the board.

These two products target the same audience, but market research suggests Impossible Meat is taking more and more of the plant-based meat market. Initially, that was due to a simple price difference—Impossible Meat was cheaper on product launch. In response, Beyond Meat decreased their price to stay competitive, but consumers often still chose Impossible Meat. Both companies have presence in commercial products, too, like the Impossible Whopper from Burger King and KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken. In late 2023, their market shares were almost equal.

Why do people like Impossible Meat? Let’s talk about heme.

Impossible Meat has a distinct, bloody, umami flavor that Beyond Meat is arguably lacking. This bloody flavor does a better job of imitating traditional meat, which is essential to influence consumers to choose a plant-based meat over an animal-based one. A compound called heme (think hemoglobin, the iron-containing oxygen carrier in our blood) gives rise to this unique savory taste and aroma. Plant cells contain small amounts of heme, but not nearly enough to impart a meaty flavor; how does Impossible Foods do it?

The answer is a pretty amazing biotechnological feat, starting with DNA. DNA contains special, detailed instructions that tell cells how to make proteins, including hemoglobin, which contains four hemes per protein unit. Scientists at Impossible Foods isolated the portion of DNA that contains the instructions for making heme, generally called a plasmid, and gave that plasmid to a yeast cell (actually, millions of yeast cells). The yeast picks up the plasmid and starts making heme, which they can later harvest and use in their plant-based meat products. The original source of the heme DNA is actually a soybean—once again, beans to the rescue!

Soy Long & Farewell

Plant-based proteins will continue to evolve as consumer needs and preferences change. If you’re a meat eater looking to diversify your diet with some added plants, take a crack at making jackfruit “pulled-pork,” seitan deli meat, or fried tofu. And if that sounds like biting off more than you can chew, ready-to-eat proteins like Impossible Meat, Beyond Meat, and many other plant-based brands have you covered.

A Strange Aside on Beans

Famous mathematician Pythagoras (as in, the Pythagorean theorem for right triangles) was a vegetarian who refrained from eating beans, for he feared their chewy and fibrous texture was too similar to that of human flesh. Some records say he believed that beans contained the human spirit, and consuming them would thus be cannibalism.

According to a record originating from Greek historian Neanthes, his fear of beans was so intense that it led to his death. While fleeing a violent attack at a meeting with his followers, he came to a field of fava beans and, rather than run through it to escape his captors, stopped running.

He was captured and killed at the foot of the bean field.

Note, there are contradictory records detailing his death—he may not have died because of beans (and for the sake of the field of mathematics, I sincerely hope he did not).

So. Have you eaten a bean?

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