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Can fake chicken feed the world?
A food extruder spitting out long, thick ribbons of fake chicken. It's made from a dry soy powder.
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Jeremy Hobson: There's a big meeting about meat going on in Chicago today. It's the international meat, poultry and seafood convention and the story so far is that consumers are buying more meat now that the recovery is underway.
But the return of carnivorousness is putting pressure on food and water supplies and that's leading some to the new and improved world of fake meat.
From the Marketplace Sustainability desk, Adriene Hill reports.
Adriene Hill: Chicken can be tasty.
Harold Huff: I love it.
Just ask Harold Huff, a researcher at the University of Missouri.
Huff: Flavor, feel, versatility. It's great in casseroles.
The problem is, to make that chicken casserole, well you've got to have a live chicken -- and that chicken needs water and grain to eat and a place to live. And it'll have to be killed.
Or, maybe you don't.
In a laboratory at the University of Missouri, a food extruder spits out long, thick ribbons of fake chicken. It's made from a dry soy powder.
Huff: From dry feed in to product out, once it's up running and stable can vary as little as 15 seconds.
A whole lot faster than growing a real chicken. Huff and Dr. Fu-Hung Hsieh have been working on making passable fake chicken for a decade and a half.
Huff: If it doesn't feel right when a person chews it, if it doesn't look right on the plate, people are turned off by that.
And so Huff and Hsieh had to figure out how to make their soy chicken not just taste like chicken but have the texture of real chicken and look like chicken, instead of a big gray blob. So they extruded and extruded and extruded, until they came up with a better analog chicken strip.
Now, more than 15 years later:
Ethan Brown: I just need another bowl of some sort?
Ethan Brown is cooking the mock chicken strips up with tomatoes, onions and spices to make fajitas. He and his company have partnered with the university to get Dr. Hsieh's chicken to market. Brown thinks the demand for better fake meat is there -- driven by health concerns, worries about how mass-farmed animals are treated, and the environment.
Brown: Climate change is a big issue. We had talked about, you know, the U.N. came out with a study saying 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock.
Greenhouse gases are responsible for rising global temperatures. Brown serves up his fake-chicken fajitas that taste a whole lot like real chicken fajitas. Appetizing? Your call. But it points to a future with a whole lot less clucking.
I'm Adriene Hill for Marketplace.
HOST: Want to see the fake chicken? We've got a video and blog post here.
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No is this different from the widely used Asian method of seitan as chicken. They have been poisoning my people for years with this, and advertise it as general tso chicken, an American dish deemed asian. They do it to save money not lives, but little do they know this is not good for people with cialic disease which is harmful on the intestines. Do your homework first, this is nothing new and another gluten soy dieted alternative to meat. not a derivative, not even close...their goal is to smother with sauces....the real challenge is just cooked unseasoned where it's not disguised....and they are far from it, shit I can make beef taste like chucked when seasoned correctly. I don't like this and no way a supporter of it.....try again.
A pasture raised chicken on a steady diet of non- irrigated grass is superior to soy product that relies on irrigated water and uses chemical fertilizers and pesticides that run off into fresh water sources. I want to know how the soy is farmed before I can know if soy chicken is better for the environment. I wrote an article on a chicken farm in California that has a low "blue" water footprint. You can read the article at www.eatlesswater.com.
As a vegan who mostly just focuses on eating vegetables - not to mention someone who has rescued chickens from abusive situations - I am really glad there are more and more faux meats out there for those who need them. I just use them sparingly. If it will help people transition to a more plant-based diet, then it is a good thing. Thanks to the other vegans who have posted and countered the false info about soy and such, that were in some of the comments. I have been veg for 30 years and wouldn't dream of turning back what was a revolution for my health: when I stopped eating animal products. Hopefully more will discover this too!
I love the meatless products at Heritage Healthfood. You can see a list of their products at www.heritagehealthfood.com
A great story on a fake chicken product. Although I eat plants that look like plants, fake meats do have a useful place in the market. Best of all, this story actually touches on some of the most important arguments against meat; a rarity for reporting on economic issues.
The soy-bashing comments above make some serious errors. While the majority of soy grown is GMO, the vast majority of it is used for livestock production. Of soy used in vegan alternatives to meat/dairy products, the overwhelming majority is non-GMO and often organic. Those consumers who wish to avoid meat and dairy are also consumers who generally wish to avoid GMOs. The phytoestrogens in soy have also been clinically proven to NOT elevate estrogen levels in people, and therefore, are not a health risk.
Is the U. N. 18 percent greenhouse gas emissions conclusion above another one-size-fits-all study about farming? It's unfair and careless, if it is. Just as there are all sorts of food products anymore, there are any number of ways of raising livestock and poultry...or, for that matter, raising soybeans. To leap to conclusions without factoring in this variety isn't very useful.
I've tried this stuff, it's fantastic. Hoping it becomes more widely available soon. The people on here claiming that more energy is used to grow and deliver soybeans than to raise, slaughter and deliver livestock must be paid industry hacks. Or fools.
For those people who don't want soy or don't eat eggs (which are in Quorn) there is always seitan. Wheat gluten as a meat alternative has existed for centuries, and unlike the extruded soy strips in this article, it can be made at home from flour in less time than it takes to make bread.
In response to the comments on this site.
Anita: Soy has been eaten for centuries. I am not advocating gmo or highly processed soy but soy itself is not intrinsically bad. Also, pastured meat is great, but there is no way to produce enough pastured meat to feed the world. With a sustainable food supply, most people on earth are going to need to eat very little meat.
Max: If you don't want to eat soy, that is fine, but don't do so thinking you are preventing allergies. There is no current research linking early exposure to peanuts with peanut allergies. In fact, increasing research suggests that one cause in the increase in peanut allergies is due to a lack of allergen exposure.
Tammy: I think they didn't mention vegans or vegetarians because they wanted to imply that these changes to our diet will eventually effect everyone, not just vegans and vegetarians. And based on the defensiveness of the comments, I think they struck a nerve for some meat eating readers.
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