Frankenmeat: Yea or Nay?

This week, a molecular biologist at Stanford named Patrick Brown told the world that he’s developed the first veggie-based “meat” that tastes exactly like animal meat, and that it could be ready for consumption by the end of the year.  This isn’t your average veggie meat from companies like Gardein, Brown claims this new meat is indistinguishable from “real” meat – even by “hardcore foodies”.

His motives seem to be good – he pursued this work in order to avoid what he calls “by far the biggest environmental catastrophe”.  The benefits are obvious – if this new meat can wean omnivores off the animal-based stuff, how can it possibly be a bad thing?  It would free up grazing lands to grow plants for humans, and could make it possible to feed a planet with 9+ billion people.  And of course it could save billions of lives of animals that currently suffer horribly in factory farms.

A planet of vegans and vegetarians could do the same thing, by the way.  And do we want to become a world living on engineered food?  The Frankenfood that Monsanto has created via their GMOs is wreaking environmental and bodily havoc on the world.  Do we want to encourage more genetic altering of our food?  Maybe this new veggie meat really is made from whole-food sources without harmful chemicals – I’m sure we’ll learn more in the months to come.  And maybe this is the only answer to save the environment and the animals in a world completely addicted to the stuff.   

But to be safe, I’ll continue to focus on organic, whole plant-based foods as nature intended.