Richard Martin

Over the past few days, I have stockpiled a hunk of <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a27318918/impossible-burger-nutrition-information/" id="ebc8400c-6dab-30dd-ac33-ec46e63be9d8"> Impossible Foods ground beef </a> the size of a mailbox, six packages of Beyond Meat burger patties, several towers of Beyond Sausage in various flavors, and four pouches of Good Catch tuna.

I wasnt sure if she had peered into the freezer yet, but there shed find stacks of Beyond Sausage breakfast patties lurking in a shady-looking unmarked plastic bag.

Im a lifelong <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a27405997/carnviore-diet-plan/" id="5f11a417-01c2-384b-ad8b-784da890a4d6"> meat eater </a> who dabbles in vegetarianism, tries not to screw up the environment, and is naturally curious about all these new plant-based packaged protein products aimed at conscientious carnivores.

My wife, however, is skeptical. A good grass-fed steak from our local butcher doesnt need flashy packaging or buzzwords to sell itself, she argues. My daughter, seven, and son, five, are even more leery. Their usual diet consists of hot dogs, burgers (the meat kind), and buttered pasta.

Ive taken all their points into consideration, but arent things different now? Impossible Burgers are meaty patties that bleed! Beyond Sausages are hearty enough to grill! Plus, theres the whole issue of Big Beef, Big Chicken, and Big Pork gobbling up land, energy, and cheap labor to raise and process traditional meat.

With plant-based proteins now infiltrating everything from Whole Foods to White Castle, why shouldnt we at least indulge our curiosity?

Here's What Happens When You Eat Fake Proteins

<h1> Experiment #1: Impossible Beef and Beyond Burgers </h1>

The first thing I noticed was how, even in prep work, Impossible Foods beef resembled the real thing. To mimic the look and flavor of animal blood, Impossible uses soy leghemoglobin, a substance so viscous that it requires a thorough hand scrubbing to keep me from appearing like a horror-movie victim.

I cooked the patties as I would any other: hot cast-iron pan, a pour of olive oil, a few minutes on each side. I couldnt believe the beef-like char. I slid the juicy patties onto rolls and served them. And then something amazing happened. My kids gobbled down their burgers.

Encouraged, I dressed my own burger with cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a mixture of mayo, ketchup, and relish. Impossible didnt rival my all-time favorites, but it instantly replaced all my bad memories of veggie burgers.

Now, Beyond Burgers are a different story. You can find these patties at Target for about six dollars for a two-pack.

Theyre pea-protein-based, not soy-based, and dont contain soy leghemoglobin. Beyond does mimic the taste, texture, and juiciness of a beef burger effectively, but I found that it had an aftertaste that killed off the good vibes you get from saving a few cows.

<h1> Experiment #2: Beyond Sausages </h1>

For as much attention as soy-based burger patties have received, Im surprised more people havent caught on to the world of pseudo sausage.

Beyonds bratwurst and hot Italian sausage have been on the market less than two years, and Im now sold on the fact that their flavor, texture, and versatility outperform those of any of the alt-burgers.

Ive grilled Beyond hot sausage and eaten the snappy links with peppers and onions on Italian bread. Ive cooked it, chopped it into quarter-sized bites, and mixed it with cavatelli, brown butter, and sage. Amazing.

And then theres Beyonds new breakfast sausage patty, which will soon be in your freezer aisle. Granted, much of the flavor of any sausage comes from the spices, but theres also something satisfying about the texture.

The brats have a pop similar to those made with animal casings, even though Beyonds offerings are made with algae. The breakfast sausage has that fork-cutting meatiness found in ground pork, which the company credits to a mixture of peas, fava beans, and rice.

Close up of fresh flame grilled burgers with sausages displayed in a row at food market

I told none of this to my wife and kids, however, who went on to sample this faux sausage with pancakes, eggs, and French toast. I even watched them gleefully dip their patties into maple syrup.

Divulging the truth to them would only spoil the fun.

<h1> Experiment #3: Good Catch Tuna </h1>

At this point, a few weeks in, I had accepted plant-based burgers and sausage into my diet. My wife, perhaps buoyed by the dwindling supply of fauxtein in the fridge or maybe surprisingly delighted by the fake sausage after I told her what it was, seemed to be more open-minded.

My children no longer thought Daddy was really weird (at least not within the parameters of this research). Now it was time for me to go deep. I was ready to try Good Catchs approximation of albacore tuna. A good tuna melt is one of my top comfort foods, so I was eager to see if Good Catchs six-legume blend could satisfy.

I mixed the faux tuna with my usual recipe of mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, capers, and celery. I tasted it for seasoning. Not bad. Then I loaded two scoops onto wheat toast followed by slices of sharp cheddar. Under the broiler, the melting cheese blanketed the tuna and bubbled.

The results: Though it had a slightly mushier, looser consistency than real tuna, it tasted cleaner and less fishy. Even under the heat of the broiler, the seafood held up.

This particular experiment had a sample size of one. Try as I might, I couldnt convince my family to partake in a Good Catch tuna melt.

I also couldnt sell them on a nutrition angle, because I wasnt even sure if any of this plant-based protein was, in fact, actually good for us.

<h1> Analysis: Is Fake Meat Even Healthy? </h1>

Ryan D. Andrews, R.D., a Connecticut plant-based-nutrition expert and author of A Guide to Plant Based Eating, is reluctant to champion meat alternatives.

These kinds of meat analogs are recent inventions, he says. We dont know the long-term health repercussions of regularly consuming them.

The category of fauxteins is still too new to have a body of dietary intervention research reflecting a positive or negative effect on health.

The average American is eating about seven ounces of meat per day. If this American were to do a straight swap and start eating seven ounces of meat analogs per day, with everything else in the diet being held constant, its hard to say for sure if this would offer much of a health benefit, Andrews says.

Father pouring milk into cereal for son at breakfast

Others in the nutrition world see an expanded definition of protein as beneficial. Ten years ago, if someone wanted to be vegan, they didnt have a lot of choices, says Abby Langer, a Toronto-based dietitian.

They had tofu, maybe they had tempeh. Its allowing people to eat more plant-based diets than ever before by giving people a choice and increasing access. Thats a good thing.

<h1> Conclusion: More Research Is Needed </h1>

Im not really into fast food, but I tried White Castles Impossible Sliders and theyre actually better with fake meatless greasy and a bit cleaner tasting.

Even though meatless patties are also selling well at Burger King and Red Robin, and other national chains may follow suit, I believe that the success of fauxteins resides within the world of home cooking.

For the first time in what seems like a long time, people like me are not only curious about eating more plants, theyre excited. What I didnt expect from all this experimental meat was that Id actually relish the experimentation.

Dont tell my wife, but there are a few more plant-based proteins on the way to our home. I just have to find some more room in the fridge.

How much longer do we have to keep all this fake meat in the fridge? my wife yells from the kitchen.

﻿I Ate Fake Protein for Four Weeks Straight and Here's What Happened﻿﻿﻿

With a bit of showmanship, Peggs throws open the door to one of the containers and a violet glow envelops the crowd. Inside, tightly packed vertical rows of red leaf lettuce, basil, and mint grow hydroponically through a combination of artificial light and a nutrient-rich solution. Musk and Peggs say they can cultivate three acres of plants in one container using a technique that could be adopted by any city in the world.

At the heart of the vertical-farming trend championed by Musk and Peggs is the idea that although you can find lettuce at your grocery store in Boston in January, thanks to a system that allows farms in states like California and Arizona to ship fresh greens across the country at a reasonable cost, there are better alternatives.

Growing lettuce outdoors on a large-scale farm uses a lot of water. Plus, its estimated that during the up-to-five-day domestic trip from these farms to the grocer, the greens lose much of their nutritional value.

About 35 miles north of Brooklyn, a back-to-the-future approach to farming is growing. A few days later, I join Jack Algiere, the farm director of <a href="https://www.stonebarnscenter.org/" id="cdb305ab-36bc-3084-a67d-5d6063e7170c"> Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture </a> in Pocantico Hills, New York, and we walk along a hillside path with cows and lambs grazing on one side, goats frolicking on the other.

Dressed in a flannel shirt and a sturdy coat, Algiere enters a half-acre greenhouse. Lettuce leaves the size of a baby elephants ears luxuriate in the warm air. Purple and yellow stalks of chard erupt from the earth, which is dark brown and lush.

Algiere treats this food with the same care and attention as Dan Barber, a top chef. Barber runs <a href="https://www.bluehillfarm.com/dine/stone-barns" id="f7bbefe8-351d-3a7e-a2a0-6e0953744bf1"> Blue Hill at Stone Barns </a> , a farm-driven restaurant that consistently ranks as one of the best restaurants in the world.

You would think the viewpoints of Musk and Barber, two of the most influential voices in farming, would be closely aligned, but their debate about how to grow lettuce is getting heated and dirty.

Barber: [Kimbals] really smart, but the only reason he wants everyone to eat salad in the winter is because its the only thing he can grow in a vertical farm. Hed be telling you hed want everyone to eat rutabaga if he could grow rutabaga. I love the guy, but lets be honest: You cant grow anything.

Musk: I dont think [Dan] has a fundamental disagreement with what Im doing. He sees the momentum moving towards indoor farming, and he doesnt like that future.

Whats at stake is billions of dollars and the future of food on the planet. Over the past 50 years, large farms growing massive amounts of one crop (known as monoculture) have gobbled up land. While industrial farming has increased crop yields, its done so at the expense of consumer choice.

In a span of 80 years, the variety of the worlds seeds dwindled by 93 percent, according to the <a href="https://rafiusa.org/" id="6864cae0-ed4d-3e9f-aca1-7b856e9b7a12"> Rural Advancement Foundation International </a> : In 1903, 497 types of lettuce existed, but by 1983, there were just 36.

Industrial farming is so chemically reliant and ultimately bad for the soil (not to mention bad for the diets of those who live on its produce) that the United Nations 2013 trade and development conference urged a global return to sustainable farming practices.

Nowhere are the consequences of industrial farming more evident than at your supermarket, where identical-looking potatoes, carrots, and greens line the produce shelves. The presentation looks attractive, but that sameness is a result of destructive land-management practices-practices that lead to less-nutritious produce.

And then theres <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/health/g19546114/9-foods-most-likely-make-you-sick/" id="c8b321e4-1220-32cf-ae23-bed9b060e1ad"> foodborne illness </a> . Remember the Great 2018 Romaine Lettuce Scare? Investigators traced that outbreak back to a large-scale farm in Santa Maria, California.

Its not like this is the question we should be thinking about five generations from now, Barber says. This stuff takes a long time, but time is running out.

<h1> The Musks Shall Inherit the Earth </h1>

Square Roots may be the least splashy of all of Kimbal Musks endeavors. The South African native became involved in the food world after making millions building and selling start-ups, both on his own and with his brother. He did a stint in culinary school in New York City, then settled in Boulder, Colorado.

Lost in the shadows of the Musk sibling mythology is that Kimbal is actually a legitimate farm-to-table pioneer. He opened his first restaurant, the Kitchen, in 2004, sourcing ingredients from Colorados rich agriculture and livestock communities.

Musk launched Square Roots with Peggs in 2016 with one concept: Can we take a young person with no experience and bring them in and teach them how to farm in a box in double-quick time and get them to grow food that is tasty, that people want to eat?

The initial results were encouraging, although Square Roots cycled through distribution concepts before arriving at its current direct-to-retail model. You can now find Square Roots greens and herbs at specialty grocers around New York City.

Later this year, the company plans to operate in other U.S. cities and then scale from there. In each market, the produce will travel from the shipping containers to nearby store shelves, a solution that is hyperlocal and, now, highly traceable.

During the romaine-lettuce scare of late 2018, when an E. coli outbreak in California led to a coast-to-coast recall, Peggs and Musk realized that the data they compile for Square Roots would allow them to trace everything they grow back to the very shipping container that produced it. Now theres a Transparency section on the companys website where consumers can enter the lot number from their package of Square Roots herbs.

There are energy concerns with this type of farming, as well as a sense that it isnt natural, but Musk is leaning into those issues. This is lab-grown food, and his team is sciencing the shit out of it. Strawberries, eggplants, beets, radishes, carrots, and more will come to market in five years.

Right now were super-premium and people love it, Musk says. But over time we really want it to be about real food for everyone. We can get the price down and deliver delicious product 365 days a year.

<h1> The Real Dirt on Heritage Farming </h1>

Stone Barns Center runs apprenticeship and education programs aimed at training and supporting small farmers. Small-scale farming is knowledge-intensive and complicated, Algiere acknowledges, but its the right thing to do for ourselves and the planet.

Watch the news and its depressing for farmers, but there was a glimmer of good news in the USDAs 2017 Agriculture Census. At the same time that the overall number of farms in the United States decreased by 5 percent to only 2 million, farms with annual revenues between $100,000 and $250,000 saw the largest increase in sales between 2016 and 2017.

This is so important, says Algiere, launching into a soliloquy about the rising interest of young, first-time farmers and the surprising upswing in the number of small U.S. farms. He grabs a rake and continues his lecture on how small farms on the perimeter of major urban centers can not only thrive but can also conserve the land.

Algiere walks out into a plot of carrots and runs the rake over the greens protruding from the soil, explaining that most of the equipment available to farmers is of the giant John Deere tractor variety, because industrial farming has dominated society since the mid- to late 20th century.

The problem is that there hasnt been a set of tools for small-scale, diversified farms since 1940, he says. Thats why among the many educational endeavors that Stone Barns Center supports is Slow Tools, a collective of farmers, designers, and engineers (with an annual conference held on the property) aimed at manufacturing equipment that can help small farmers <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/style/g19545797/how-to-build-a-vegetable-garden/" id="8372a4f2-b46d-34aa-aae1-ffc01f9b63e0"> grow vegetables </a> and work their five-ish acres more efficiently.

Attendees include retired engineers whove developed a desire to farm, prototypical millennials seeking a return to the land, and even city dwellers who got their first taste of farming by working at one of the vertical hydroponic farms.

Barber so believes in Algieres work, as well as the entire regenerative-farming and land-management movement, that he cofounded Row 7 Seeds last year. Barber asserts that most of the seed business is now owned by chemical companies that have little interest in small, regenerative farms.

They dont make money on the seeds; they make money on the intervention of chemicals, he says. Thats why the seed company became so important to me. It really does lay the foundation for everything that follows, including flavor, up to when it hits your mouth. That can be determined on a genetic level.

Back in the greenhouse, Algiere puts down the rake, heads outside, and walks to a barn filled with hundreds of chickens. They swarm toward him and produce a cacophony of clucks that make it impossible to hold a conversation.

He moves toward the pigs and extends his hand toward a comically large sow that comes to greet him. My animal operations feed the compost and pasture operation here, he says. My compost system feeds the crops and orchards, and any leftover feeds the pigs. As hogs wrestle playfully, he whispers about how amazing the bacon coming from these animals will taste.

Eat the pork from Stone Barns Center and you will immediately understand what Algiere means. Try its carrots and youll come to believe what Barber does. The flavor of these foods-started from diverse seeds (both heirloom and experimental hybrids), coddled by premium soil, cultivated with gentler farming methods-rewards the eater in a way that your typical supermarket versions cannot.

Is it hard work? Algieres calloused hands prove that, yes, it is. But its not anything we havent done before.

<h1> The Fight for Farmings Futures </h1>

Chris Newman, who cofounded Sylvanaqua Farms in rural Virginia with his wife in 2013, calls himself a permaculturist and proclaims his reverence for the land-but also for technology. There is no single right way to produce food, he says in an email interview.

His own farming practices aim to be regenerative, like Algieres, and hes adamant that these types of farms can produce food while helping to restore the environment. Yet ultimately they wont be able to keep up with demand.

Sooner or later, people on both sides of the debate will have to understand that sustainable food production lies in the intersection of nature and technology, not in their mutual exclusion.

Call them rigid in their convictions, but Musk, Peggs, Barber, and Algiere are at least stoking the debate about how to feed the planet healthy food. And theyre drawing prominent investors into the search for a resolution.

Investors like Tom Colicchio, a cohost of Top Chef and an early backer of Bowery Farming, a company with two hydroponic farms. I like what [Barber] has to say, and I also believe that through the right kind of farming and regenerative practices, we can build soil, we can grow, he says. That doesnt help if theres flooding or drought with climate change. Im looking at 20 or 30 years down the road, and were going to have to rely on indoor farming.

But then theres the issue of energy use. Henry Gordon-Smith, a leading consultant on urban agriculture, advises multinational corporations and individuals wanting to start their own vertical, rooftop, or greenhouse farms.

Seated in his Brooklyn office, he recounts a study he conducted for an international beverage company to determine the carbon footprint of five crops grown in three settings: a vertical farm and a greenhouse, both in New Jersey, and a soil-based farm in California.

The results were mixed, depending on the crop, but a key takeaway was that the vertical farms carbon footprint was extraordinarily higher, due to the energy used. He adds that when you account for food waste, water use, and social impact, the playing field levels a bit, but the bottom line, he says, is theres no silver bullet. Thats not the catchy sound bite that people are looking for, but thats the fact.

Yet the cash continues to pour into vertical farming. Venture capitalists have pledged about $1 billion over the past two years to fund start-ups like Plenty, AeroFarms, and Bowery Farming. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are in the game.

Market research projects the global vertical-farming market will hit $10 billion by 2025. Operations like AeroFarms 70,000-square-foot facility in Newark, New Jersey, and the 100,000-square-foot farm that Plenty built outside Seattle will soon become commonplace, proponents suggest.

Matt Barnard-the CEO of Plenty, which has amassed more than $200 million from investors like Amazons Jeff Bezos and SoftBank, the majority shareholder in Uber-explains that hes going big because of the scale of the problem.

I was brought in by one thing and now Im here for many-for health, nutrition, stresses on the land system, Barnard says. That mission, however, may depend on trusting in not one solution but a combination of many.

For the moment, the vegetables available at your local farmers market or upscale grocery store reflect this dichotomy. You can easily find a plastic tub of lettuce from a hydroponic farm and, depending on the season, you may also find a sweeter, smaller, more efficient variety of honeynut squash developed in part by Barber and Row 7 Seeds.

Hydroponically grown greens and soil-grown, small-farm-produced squash living side by side in harmony: Its a utopian vision already playing out in front of your shopping cart. The true question is, will you buy either? The answer, if youre really concerned about your health and the health of the planet, is that youll buy both.

On a cold, rainy night in Brooklyn , a crowd gathers inside the building that houses <a href="https://squarerootsgrow.com/" id="500fc079-fd5a-3182-a910-40b9be16dc0e"> Square Roots </a> , a company cofounded by CEO Tobias Peggs, a tech entrepreneur, and Kimbal Musk, who sits on the boards of Tesla and SpaceX (both started by his older brother, Elon) as well as Chipotle. Located on a dreary street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the building is, technically, a farm. Its parking lot h...

The Crazy Food Fight Over The Future of Vegetables

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Richard Martin

Articles written by the author

﻿I Ate Fake Protein for Four Weeks Straight and Here's What Happened﻿﻿﻿

The Crazy Food Fight Over The Future of Vegetables

I Ate Fake Protein for Four Weeks Straight and Here's What Happened