The answer to the sustainable future of humanity and the earth lies in our food
2019-11-22
By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion, and the demand and price of meat will increase accordingly. Currently, the earth is already overwhelmed, and by then it will be under even greater pressure. The answer to the sustainability of humans and the earth in the future lies in our food.
— Why do people love to eat meat? —
1. Scarcity of meat
To discuss this issue, let's go back to the time when humans began to eat meat. As we all know, as early as the Stone Age, humans obtained meat by going out hunting. However, hunting itself is dangerous, so meat became a scarce commodity and was not as easy to obtain as wild vegetables and fruits.
Before the industrialization of livestock and poultry meat, meat remained scarce because it was difficult to raise and required more resources (water, food, and land).
I believe that in the childhood memories of many people born in the 1970s, meat was still a food that only appeared on the table during festivals. Therefore, meat has become a symbol of "abundance", "celebration" and "affluence" in collective memory. Its scarcity has also made humans have a higher desire for meat, and this desire is accompanied by the unique satisfaction of eating meat.
This sense of satisfaction has been preserved because of thousands of years of human memory and cultural heritage. People have formed a conditioned reflex to eat meat, and eating meat = satisfaction. Even though material things are now extremely abundant and we can eat meat every day, we still enjoy the psychological satisfaction of eating meat. At the same time, because we eat "too well", obesity and "rich diseases" caused by excess dietary calories have reached the highest level in human history.
2. The profit chain of meat supply
But before humans discovered the problem with meat, eggs and milk, there was already a group of savvy humans who were constantly increasing the amount of meat they consumed. They saw the huge chain of interests behind the meat supply, and through various marketing methods and food processing, they made humans more immersed in their desire for meat.
The development of modern technology has not only made food abundant and cheap, but also continuously stimulated people's desires by isolating specific chemicals in food that can cause pleasure reactions and artificially concentrating them to create addictive processed foods.
The meat that humans once consumed in the form of game meat usually contained about 15% of calories in fat. Today’s meat is a completely different product, with fat content up to 50%, which people are more likely to react to with pleasure, and this pleasure is the trap that makes you addicted to meat.
Making us addicted is a very profitable business not only for the food industry but also for the medical industry, disease is a multi-billion dollar business and healthy people leave the medical industry with no money to make.
— The hidden health problems behind meat —
Between 1983 and 1989, top scientific researchers from China and the United States, including Professor Campbell of the United States, Professor Richard Peto of Oxford University of the United Kingdom, Li Junyao and Liu Boqi of the Institute of Oncology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and Professor Chen Junshi, now an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, jointly conducted a study on epidemic diseases and found that:
People who eat the most animal foods have the most chronic diseases. Animal products are very calorically dense, not to mention that the higher the intake of animal protein, the higher the incidence of cardiovascular death, diabetes and certain cancers. Even relatively small amounts of animal protein can have adverse consequences. Those who eat a plant-based diet are the healthiest and most likely to avoid chronic diseases.
This research was extremely broad, involving 650,000 staff members and covering 96% of China's total population at the time. The research results won the first prize for scientific and technological progress from the Ministry of Health and were praised by the New York Times as the pinnacle of epidemiological research.
The world believes that the most nutritious and high-quality foods are milk, eggs and meat! In experimental results, they are the strongest and most efficient health killers in history! The book "Life-saving Diet: China Health Survey Report" concentrates on the evidence that "all-vegetarian diet" can prevent or treat most diseases, and humans need to completely avoid meat, eggs and dairy products.
— Why is it so difficult to be vegan? —
Even though scientists have uncovered the root causes of our love for meat and even revealed the destructiveness of meat-eating to health, few people can wake up from the "meat" trap. We have all heard the story of the "boiling frog in warm water," which says that if a frog is placed in a pot of water, it will usually just sit there. If the pot is heated very slowly, the frog may never notice that the water temperature is rising. It will "adapt" to the increasing heat and may not realize that danger is coming. Even if there are no obstacles to escape, it may still be boiled to death sitting in the pot. Its sensory abilities may not be able to adequately warn it - it needs to take action to save its life.
With the satisfaction of eating meat brought by the scarcity of meat for thousands of years and the huge chain behind meat, almost no one can escape it. Our taste system has adapted to modern eating habits, like a frog sitting in dangerous hot water. Most people have gradually become numb due to the limitations of consciousness, which lays the foundation for a destructive trap. In such a "pleasure trap", a diet that promotes health is relatively unattractive.
Scientific evidence shows that resensitization of taste nerves takes 30 to 90 days. This means that most people who try a vegetarian diet will feel a decrease in pleasure in the initial stage of the change, so it is easy to return to the original diet. They are more convinced that the pleasure brought by meat is irreplaceable by vegetarianism.
However, their idea is wrong. The reality is that, after careful design, plants can also create subtle flavors that mimic meat, and the popularity of artificial meat in developed countries in Europe and the United States has proven this to us.
As early as 2013, the first piece of artificial meat was grown in a laboratory in the Netherlands. Recently, artificial meat companies have gone public, and artificial meat concept stocks have collectively soared. On the day of Beyond Meat's listing, its share price soared 163% to $65.75 per share, with a market value of $3.83 billion.
— Why is artificial meat so popular? —
In developed countries in Europe and America, people prefer high-calorie staple foods such as steaks, hamburgers, and chicken legs. The two major fast food chains, KFC and McDonald's, consume countless amounts of meat raw materials every year. In the United States alone, McDonald's consumes more than 1 billion pounds of beef every year, equivalent to 5.5 million cows.
By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion, and with it comes a substantial increase in demand for meat. How can we continue to satisfy human desire for meat when resources such as land, water, food, and energy are already in short supply? Obviously, human appetite for meat is contrary to future sustainable development.
Today, governments around the world are beginning to pay attention to artificial food, hoping to solve sustainable development issues through technology. The Singapore government announced earlier that it would invest heavily in the research and development of biotechnology such as artificial meat to build an Asian research and development center for future food. "From a national perspective, this is a major issue concerning national health and sustainable development."
If you think that future problems are far away from us, then the current health problems are imminent. The development of industrialization has reduced the speed of a chicken leaving the cage to 28 days. How did this speed come about? Everyone knows that it is growth hormone. This has led to many health problems, such as precocious puberty in children. At the same time, antibiotics and pesticide residues in meat are also threatening people's health. Artificial meat does not contain hormones and antibiotics, and is healthier and safer.
In August this year, KFC launched plant-based fried chicken in collaboration with Beyond Meat in a store in Atlanta, USA, and it was sold out within a few hours of the same day.
Recently, due to African swine fever, pork prices have continued to soar. For consumers, this is a reality that is difficult to accept but has to be accepted. But this is just the beginning. With the increase of environmental pressure and shortage of resources in the future, the price of meat products will continue to rise. As the scientific research technology matures and the scale of production of artificial meat is achieved, the cost will continue to decrease in the future, becoming an important breakthrough in solving the contradiction between meat demand and sustainable development.
— China also has its own artificial meat —
Although artificial meat is a new concept, one type of artificial meat product has existed in China for hundreds of years.
There are two main types of artificial meat: one is plant meat, which is made from plant protein. The other is test tube meat, also known as clean meat, which is made by extracting animal cells and growing them in culture medium.
Artificial meat made from plant protein is commonly known as "vegetarian meat" in China, but why has "vegetarian meat" not been able to break into the market in the past 3 years as foreign artificial meat has after hundreds of years of development? Because the main consumers of vegetarian meat in China are vegetarians, and most of them are religious people. It has not been promoted to the mainstream group, so the development is relatively slow.
Artificial meat made from plant materials such as gluten, soy protein and konjac has existed in China for hundreds of years.
With the popularity of artificial meat abroad, the market for artificial meat in China is also heating up. Shenzhen-based artificial meat company Starfield is the first company to invest in artificial meat in the domestic market. The two young founders, Kiki and Cross, who were born in the 1990s, are both vegetarians. As early as a year ago, they opened a vegetarian restaurant in Shenzhen called "Moss Planet". With their understanding and accurate grasp of the needs of young consumer groups, they became the No. 1 vegetarian restaurant in Shenzhen in less than a month.
Last year, they began visiting the supply chain and communicating with doctoral students and scientists from universities to learn about the research and development technology and production process of plant-based meat, and gradually decided to create a local Chinese plant-based meat brand.
With the original intention of creating a sustainable future and allowing people to eat healthier and more nutritious food, in August this year, they reached a strategic cooperation with Hongchang, a leading domestic vegetarian catering supplier, and hired Dr. Li Jian, the leader of the only scientific research team in China that focuses on analyzing plant meat ingredients and flavor, as Xingqiling's scientific research consultant. They hope that through the combination of production power and scientific research technology, they can give artificial meat products new vitality with taste and flavor.
Li Jian's team, who is working with Starfield, has been conducting plant-based meat ingredient analysis and flavor research for more than two years. His mentor is Sun Baoguo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an expert in spices and food additives. The flavor with relatively mature technology at present is "beef flavor". Dr. Li Jian's team analyzes the flavor of beef and looks for ingredients with the same flavor factors from plants to replace it. This is a terminal solution that will gradually emit the aroma of "beef" during the cooking process.
At present, the artificial meat jointly developed and produced by Starfield Xingqiling and Dr. Li Jian’s team has been released.
The two founders of Starfield said that good products must be tested by the market. "If artificial meat is more expensive than real meat and doesn't taste good, who would buy artificial meat?" Therefore, Starfield also took this as a warning and continued to improve the technology of plant meat. After many iterations of the internal test version, they finally took the step of bringing it to market.
As the global demand for healthy and sustainable diets continues to heat up, Hongchang, the shining star of China's plant-based meat industry, has always been committed to bringing delicious and healthy plant-based meat products to the world. In March this year, Hongchang made a gorgeous debut at the Japan Food Show, not only displaying a variety of eye-catching innovative plant-based meat products, but also attracted countless attention, laying a solid foundation for entering the Japanese market. Let us look forward to the green storm that Hongchang plant-based meat will set off in Japan!
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From February 28 to March 1, 2024, Shanghai, the China Food Exhibition brings together the latest research and development results of major manufacturers, from semi-finished dishes to frozen foods to plant-based meats, each product represents the future of the market. Hongchang booth number: 7-E40, review of the event site, let's discuss in depth the development trends and prospects of this industry!
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