Agriculture, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the meat industry, is growing so robustly that it will \u201cwipe out all of the world\u2019s forests and savannas\u201d by 2050, reports Friedrich, founder and president of the nonprofit Good Food Institute. Among the disasters already occurring are the pollution of lakes, seas, and oceans due to field runoff; the devastating decline of biodiversity; increasing zoonotic diseases and global pandemics; and the uncontrolled release of climate change-causing carbon. All told, it takes nine calories of crops to make one calorie of chicken, \u201ca staggering amount of food to produce food,\u201d the author notes. But there is hope. Alternatives being developed include plant-based meat; cultivated meat using animal cells; and genetic engineering of meat proteins to bulk up other foods. Around 2020, a few countries, including Singapore, Israel, and Japan, began tackling this new endeavor, including its biggest challenge: making such \u201calternative meats\u201d taste exactly like real meat. So far, this has not happened\u2014and that is the only way such a paradigm-shifting market can take off. But the author, who grew up in Oklahoma\u2014\u201cthe land of cattle and steak houses\u201d\u2014makes many indisputable points. Cars replaced horse buggies shortly after their invention. Cell phones replaced landline phones shortly after their invention. Furthermore, we once freaked out about \u201cartificial ice\u201d\u2014\u201cThe natural ice industry branded artificial ice as impure, unnatural, and inferior\u201d\u2014and \u201cartificial light\u201d generated by Thomas Edison\u2019s strange bulbs. But we got over it all. If the price\u2014and the taste\u2014is right, we may\u2014may\u2014get over meatless Big Macs and lab-grown Whoppers. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Agriculture, which is overwhelmingly dominated by the meat industry, is growing so robustly that it will \u201cwipe out all of the world\u2019s forests and savannas\u201d by 2050, reports Friedrich, founder and president of the nonprofit Good Food Institute. Among the disasters already occurring are the pollution of lakes, seas, and oceans due to field runoff; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}