Artificial protein: high-tech synthetic food to make up the food supply gap in the future

Artificial chicken created by beyondmeat company in Los Angeles, USA It looks and tastes like chicken, but can you imagine that it's completely extracted from plants?   As a former clean energy executive, Ethan Brown likes the texture and taste of meat, but what makes him feel guilty is that the demand for meat means that a large number of poultry and livestock are killed every day "Look at the trouble the poultry industry has caused us." "Large scale artificial breeding not only kills the nature of animals, but also the greenhouse gases emitted by poultry breeding seriously affect climate change and threaten the living environment of human beings," he said Today, animal husbandry has become the world's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions According to the data released by the world observation Institute, the global greenhouse gas emissions of animal husbandry and its by-products have accounted for 51% of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, far exceeding the 18% estimated in the 2006 report "the great shadow of livestock: environmental issues and choices" issued by the FAO At the same time, animal husbandry is also a major cause of water pollution and deforestation From 1969 to 1999, the global meat production has more than doubled With the continuous growth of the world population in the future, the demand for meat food will continue to grow The existing animal husbandry model is insufficient to meet the growing market demand   Mr Brown believes that the best way to solve this problem is to produce substitute food which tastes very similar to meat At present, he founded a food company called beyond meat in Los Angeles, which specializes in extracting effective substances from plants, synthesizing proteins, and creating alternatives that taste very similar to chicken   In addition to meat, the demand for eggs is also increasing Some experts predict that in the future, the development of the global laying industry and the production of eggs will not be enough to meet people's demand for too fast eggs This has also led scientists to look for alternatives to eggs Hampton Creek foods, a San Francisco based company, spent two years collecting more than 1500 plants for research, and finally synthesized alternatives with the same taste as eggs Mr Josh tetrick, President of the company, said: "there are a wide range of cooking methods for eggs The 'vegetable eggs' developed by our company are about 18% cheaper than ordinary eggs At present, we are still trying to improve the formula, and hope that in the future we can create alternatives that are 60% or even 90% cheaper than ordinary eggs "   Although it is too early for synthetic food to enter the market, the relatively mature synthetic products developed by Hampton Creek food company and Chaoyue meat food company still attract a large number of venture investors It is understood that Hampton Creek food company and Chaoyue meat company need funds for research and development of synthetic food, which are respectively provided by kosra venture capital company, twitter co-founder biz stone and blog technology pioneer Evan Williams In the future, more and more people will find the development potential and economic benefits of alternative food Now the problem is how to enter the supply chain of supermarket   According to Thomas Sanders, Professor of nutrition at King's College London's medical school, alternatives made from natural materials such as plants are a good choice "When proteins from different plant sources are combined, the quality of the protein produced, the nutritional value of the food are even higher than that of the substituted food," he said   At present, consumers are not ready to buy Artificial chicken or eggs, but Mr Josh tetrick believes that "although poultry breeding and animal husbandry are developing well, the environmental problems caused by it cannot be solved With the rapid growth of the world's population, the world's population will reach 10.5 billion in 2050 We need to produce meat and egg products that can meet people's living needs, and synthetic food with lower price and higher nutritional value will be a good choice " (this article is compiled exclusively by wugu.com For reprint, please indicate the source The original is from theguardian.com, translated by / Jiang Zhengyang)