Meat consumption worldwide
has doubled in the last 20 years, and it is expected to double again by 2050.
This is happening in large part because economies are growing and people can
afford more meat. That's all good news. But raising meat takes a great deal of
land and water and has a substantial environmental impact. Put simply, there’s
no way to produce enough meat for 9 billion people. Yet we can't ask everyone
to become vegetarians. We need more options for producing meat without
depleting our resources.
The farm-to-table process
hasn't changed much over the last 100 years. Innovation in this sector has
tremendous market potential. Food scientists are creating healthful plant-based
alternatives that taste just like eggs, chicken, and other sources of protein.
Companies like Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek Foods are experimenting
with new ways to use heat and pressure to turn plants into foods that look and
taste just like meat and eggs.
Beyond Eggs, Hampton Creek
Foods' egg substitute, doesn't contain the high cholesterol of real eggs.
Companies like these are at the cutting edge of plant protein research and
development, with a goal of driving innovation and progress on meat-free plates
around the world. Even spices are getting re-made: a company called Nu-Tek Food Science has found a
way to make potassium chloride taste just like salt, with only a fraction of
the sodium.
But why should people
consider replacing meat in their diets ? The answer lies along three principal
motivators: health, because we know high consumption of red meat correlates
with higher chances of certain cancers; and the environment, because we know
that conventional meat production is one of the biggest drivers of climate
change, as well as water and pollution; and ethics, since the animal factories
that produce most of our meat and milk are brutal places where animals suffer
needlessly.
On the other hand the future
of food as we view it today as consumers, and through the eyes and interests of
the big corporations, is somewhat different to the ne proposed above. The trend
of the last two decades or so for genetic engineering of food crops is as
controversial today as ever, as many of the large agro corporations that use
this technology position themselves as the answer to the world food crisis and
further consolidate the seed supply. On that front, in 2004 a focused
documentary film was released, under the same direct title "The Future of
Food". The Future of Food distills the complex technology and consumer
issues surrounding major changes in the food system today - genetically
engineered foods, patenting, and the corporatization of food - into terms the average
person can understand. It empowers consumers to realize the consequences of
their food choices on our future.
The Future of Food has been a key tool in the American and international anti-GMO grassroots activist movements and played widely in the environmental and activist circuits since its release in 2004. The Future of Food continues to be a key tool used by activists and educators who call for increased attention to this issue.
GMO OMG is the next
documentary you want to put on your to-watch list. Coming out on September
13th, the film by Jeremy Seifert explores a topic that ranks up there as one of
the biggest of our lifetime, along with plastic pollution and, you know, global
warming. Genetically Modified Organisms and omg! what does it mean for our
food, our health, and our economy. Specifically, it "explores the
systematic corporate takeover and potential loss of humanity’s most precious
and ancient inheritance: seeds." [2]
In "Food, Inc.", the 2008
documentary film, filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food
industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from
the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies,
USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of
corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of
the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have
bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean
seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli
; the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans
annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children,
and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
As a shocking addition,
"Our
Daily Bread" the earlier (2005) documentary film by Nikolaus
Geyrhalter, was hailed as a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn’t always
easy to digest ; and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end
film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas. Welcome to
the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of
conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the
places where food is produced in Europe :
monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial
environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops
and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which
provides our society’s standard of living. Strong filmmaking. So masterfully
shot, universal, shocking, eerie, profound, no narration, just stark reality.
On another front, forty years
ago, advances in fertilizers and pesticides boosted crop yield and fed a
growing planet. Today, demand for food fueled by rises in worldwide consumption
of meat and protein is again outpacing farmers ability to keep up. It's time
for the next Green Revolution. Wired magazine has compiled and offers for study
a series of illustrations (by Stephen Doyle and Zack Zavislak) that help illustrate
the point and convey the meaning for the need of change. To explore the Wired
Atlas, use the thumbnails to navigate from page to page. Click the main
image to zoom, and click again for the navigation box to scroll through the
spread.
A report released in
May 2013 by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reminds us that there
are more than 1,900 edible insect species on Earth, hundreds of which are
already part of the diet in many countries. In fact, some two billion people
eat a wide variety of insects regularly, both cooked and raw; only in Western
countries does the practice retain an "ick" factor among the masses.
Why eat something that we usually swat away or battle with insecticides? For
starters, many insects are packed with protein, fiber, good fats, and vital
minerals - as much or more than many other food sources. And raising and
harvesting insects requires much less land than raising cows, pigs, and sheep.
Insects convert food into protein much more efficiently than livestock do -
meaning they need less food to produce more product. They also emit
considerably fewer greenhouse gases than most livestock. [1]
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