Fake Meat | God's World News

Fake Meat

04/25/2018
  • 1 What Meat
    What can be called meat and what can’t?
  • 2 What Meat
    Chicken Fried Steak Seitan is crunchy, spicy, tender, and made of a meat substitute from wheat gluten. (AP)
  • 3 What Meat
    You can definitely call that ribeye meat, but should they be allowed to call that mushroom thing on the right a burger? (AP)
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Animals are meat; plants are not. Simple, right? Maybe not. In the food industry, things have gotten a bit more complicated. Scientists in the lab are cooking up fake meat products from bogus bacon to tofu turkey. The trend has started a war of words: Can plant-based foods legally be called “meat”?

Recently, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The cattlemen want an official definition for the terms “beef” and “meat.” They view “improper labeling of these products as misleading,” according to Lia Biondo, an association spokesperson. The Cattlemen’s group believes products labeled “beef” should come from cows. Veggie burgers just don’t cut it.

Ethan Brown is founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, a plant-based protein producer. Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger is so “meat-like,” it even made its way into the meat aisle of grocery stores. Brown doesn’t see the Cattlemen’s petition necessarily as negative. He thinks it will start people talking about “what really is meat” and whether “the origin of meat really matters to the consumer.”

Does calling non-meat “meat” matter? Perhaps not, but it’s worth considering that words matter to God. The Bible is full of stories in which names are important: Jacob, Esau, Sarah, Immanuel. God calls Himself the Word made flesh (John 1:14, literally “made meat”) and communicates via the written word.

The Good Food Institute breaks meat substitutes into two categories: clean meat and plant-based meat. Clean meat refers to animal flesh grown in a lab from animal stem cells. (Whaaaatttt?!) So far, you can’t buy clean meat in U.S. stores. (Whew.) Plant-based meat is anything that mimics traditional meat but is made using mainly plant ingredients. Those products are everywhere. And people are gobbling up faux chicken nuggets, mock seafood, meatless meatballs, by the bucketful.

Vegetarians aren’t the only ones eating veggie-based foods. Data from HealthFocus International show that 60% of U.S. consumers claim to be reducing their consumption of meat-based products. That worries ranchers.

This isn’t the first food-naming fight. Dairy farmers still quarrel over terms like “milk” and “almond milk.” Now, there’s a similar conflict with the cattlemen. Allied Market Research says piles of “fake meat” products could start showing up at the supermarket in the next few years. Jessica Almy, policy director at the Good Food Institute, agrees. She says, “This is just the beginning of a very, very big trend in the food industry.”

Is plant-based food a fad . . . or is it the food industry’s “next big thing”? Sooner or later, U.S. agencies are going to have to settle the matter. So that burger sizzling on the grill may actually be a vegetable.