Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat

[flvegan]

The desire to eat meat has posed an ethical question ever since humans achieved reliable crop production: Do we really need to kill animals to live? Today, the hunger for meat is also contributing to the climate-change catastrophe. The gases from all those chickens and pigs and cows, and from the manure lagoons that big farms create, are playing a part in global warming. So the idea of fake meat has never been more alluring. What if you could cut into a juicy chicken breast that wasn't chicken at all but rather some indistinguishable imitation made harmlessly from plant life?

This spring, scientists at the University of Missouri announced that after more than a decade of research, they had created the first soy product that not only can be flavored to taste like chicken but also breaks apart in your mouth the way chicken does: not too soft, not too hard, but with that ineffable chew of real flesh. When you pull apart the Missouri invention, it disjoins the way chicken does, with a few random strands of "meat" hanging loosely.

<snip>

What has confounded fake-meat producers for years is the texture problem. Before an animal is killed, its flesh essentially marinates, for all the years that the animal lives, in the rich biological stew that we call blood: a fecund bath of oxygen, hormones, sugars and plasma. Vegan foods like tofu, tempeh (fermented soy) and seitan (wheat gluten) don't have the benefit of sloshing around in something so complex as blood before they go onto your plate. So how do you create fleshy, muscley texture without blood?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993883,00.html?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0qJswbcCg

Okay, I know that many folks abhor the "mock meats" because of what they stand for. BUT, this is Time Magazine, and this may well reach a lot folks that aren't veg*ns. And I might add that the more folks moving away from real meat to mock meat means a lot fewer bites of our suffering animal friends and a lesser impact on our planet.

Anyway, I post this here for my friends. I'd cross post in GD, but I just don't have the energy for the :eyes: responses tonight.

[beac]

1. Thanks for posting. I've been a fan of Quorn products for a while b/c

they are a) non-soy and b) make a "chick'n" breast that is most like the real thing in terms of being able to marinate, grill, bake, bread, dice, etc. for use in recipes.

I don't think I've really missed the "texture" of chicken, just the versatility. Now that I'll forever associate the texture of chicken with marinating in blood, I quite sure I won't miss it. :)

[Ignis]

3. Hell yes! I just wish they'd ditch the egg whites.

But my initiatory nibbles of my wife's Quorn products make this vegan jealous!

[LaurenG]

2. I'm with you on "fake" meat

If people crave it and it can be made to taste like it I'd say it's a win win situation.

[CrispyQ]

4. I don't understand why veg*ns would have a problem with fake meat.

Well other than the egg white issue & the fact that it's highly processed. I avoid them for that reason, but as long as fake meats alleviate the suffering of animals, I'm all for them!

snip...

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has offered a $1 million prize to anyone who can bring in vitro chicken meat to market by 2012. As with so much of what PETA does, it is largely a publicity stunt: according to Jason Matheny, a vegetarian who runs a venture-capital firm called New Harvest, in vitro meat is "at least five or 10 years away."

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Maybe this incentive will hasten the process.

[Codeine]

5. I'm not ashamed to admit I love fake meat.

Meat tastes wonderful. I grew up eating meat and enjoyed every bite. If I can have "meat" without contributing to the slaughter of animals then I'm a happy boy.