Will Plant-Based Proteins Brewed in Bioreactors Save the Planet?
BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY The Austrian family business Fleischlos (“Meatless”) grows king oyster mushrooms and turns them into sausages and other products that taste like meat, but are From Lab entirely plant-based. to Fork Will plant-based proteins brewed in bioreactors save the planet? by Andrew Standen-Raz o the late chef Anthony “We know from retailers like Spar that Bourdain, “Life with- 80% of the veggie products are bought by out veal stock, pork fat, meat-eaters who want variety,” confirms sausage, organ meat, Felix Hnat, an environmental economist demi-glace, or even and chairman of the Vegan Society Austria stinky cheese is not a (VGÖ). Plant-based familiar favorites are life worth living.” drawing in omnivorous “flexitarians” Vegetarians, he wrote in Kitchen Confi- tempted by ice cream, fish and chips, fried dential, “are the enemy of everything good chicken, scallops and even foie gras – Tand decent in the human spirit, an affront to all made with vegetable protein. Billionaires all I stand for – the pure enjoyment of food.” like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are Bourdain was no kinder toward vegans, investors in competing plant-based burg- calling them vegetarians’ “Hezbollah-like ers. Celebrities help, too. The increasingly splinter-faction.” popular “Veganuary” vegan month this In the ’90s, when a veggie plate meant year attracted Jay Z and Beyonce, who soggy courgettes, it was easy for the red lasted 22 days. meat guys to laugh along to Denis Leary’s “Should the methods we invented at the standup routine No Cure for Cancer. start of the Industrial Revolution always be “Eggplant tastes like eggplant, but meat the right answer to everything?” asks tastes like murder.
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