The “plant-based meat” craze took a massive hit last year. If in 2020, the sector had grown by 46% in the United States, 2021 ended with a fall of 0.5%. In the United Kingdom, another of the most important markets, sales also decreased in the second half of the year. Although the underlying trends are still there, the health of this entire industry in the post-pandemic world is unclear.
A problem that keeps getting bigger. And yet, scientists are not losing hope that we will be able to find ways to replace beef with another type of protein. After all, as the negative environmental impacts of ruminant meat consumption become more apparent (and we’re not just talking about greenhouse gas emissions) incorporating animal-free alternatives becomes juicier — health and sustainability.
The problem is that it is not easy to find proteins capable of generating a similar experience to that of beef and, at the same time, that protein does not generate problems on its side. The fake meat boom that we have seen over the years, without going any further, does not even come close to solving the problem. The hope was, rather, that they would facilitate a change in consumption patterns (which, having seen what has been seen, they have not ended up achieving either).
There are no alternatives, really.. If we keep an open mind, fermentation seems to be a promising system, as long as we learn to give it structure and textures at an industrial level. We are not talking about science fiction, there are already examples of this type of fungal protein on the European market.
Mycoprotein presented as a meat analog | Daniel Neville
Currently these mushrooms are grown in constant temperature fermentation vats using glucose syrup as feed. In this environment (by regulating the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and adding nitrogen, vitamins and minerals), the fungi can double their mass every five hours. The methodology offers great versatility at an organoleptic level.
This, added to the fact that the available studies speak of greater satiety than traditional protein sources such as chicken and a lower caloric content, make it a very solvent alternative. The question is whether it is really worth betting on this type of technology. Being direct: if they will solve problems or only replace them with others.
A future without animal protein. Florian Humpenöder and his colleagues therefore investigated the possible land-use-based environmental impacts of partially replacing beef in the diet with sugar-based microbial protein on a global scale. The authors also considered socioeconomic factors such as increased demand for livestock, population expansion, and increases in income.
Their conclusions say that replacing 20% of the beef consumed globally per person with microbial protein by 2050 would result in a 56% reduction in annual deforestation and associated carbon dioxide emissions. However, and this is curious, replacing more than 20% does not have really disruptive impacts.
A menu full of alternatives. Even with methodologies like these (which take into account many more variables than usual and attend to situations such as the industrial reconversion of agriculture) they draw uncertain scenarios. However, the general idea is quite clear: we cannot put all our eggs in one basket. The world will have to start eating differently, but the process is far from simple.
Image | lynn b
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism