Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat: Herbal Meat and the Struggle for the American Diet

On April 21, 1977, on National Food Day, the microbiologist Michael Jacobson and his group of provocateurs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CRSP) struck a blow: organizing a vegetarian dinner at the White House. Their goal was to draw attention to "the deterioration of the quality of the American diet and its effects on public health."

Six years earlier, Jacobson had started the center and had begun to fight against the lords of what he called the "Standard American Diet".

It was a period of global food shortage, rising food prices, growing concern for industrial agriculture and the deluge of highly processed food products that flooded the country over the decades which followed the Second World War. On National Food Day, Jacobson organized a "National Day of Action" featuring events, concerts, fasts, teaching sessions and the unveiling of "Terrible 10", a food list. ranging from Wonder Bread to Coca-Cola. bacon and beef – which "embody everything that is wrong with the American food system".

It was a strong and controversial political event at the time of the arrival of food in order to place our regime alongside Watergate, human rights and the women's movement, as a subject worthy of the attention of the nation. The country was fracturing politically and culturally and all of a sudden what we ate was part of that wider divide.

Dinner at the White House was Jacobson's pièce de résistance, lending credibility to the cause. The meat and dairy industries shouted in protest. Wray Finney, president of the National Cattlemen's Association, sent President Jimmy Carter – a Democrat – a "scathing" telegram, calling the meatless menu "weird." Keith Sebelius, a Kansas Republican in Congress, presented a resolution calling the dinner a "discriminatory endorsement of … food cravings" and urged Carter to reconsider his decision.

The president and the first lady finally jumped the event. But some 40 people, including the secretary of agriculture, some members of Congress and White House staff, nibbled on broccoli and coconut dishes, tasted black bean soup, sipped an apple juice and discussed nutrition in the Roosevelt. Room. And if the menu itself was not detailed enough, the food was prepared by Sikhs from Golden Temple Conscious Cookery.

Jacobson then became the most prominent food activist in the country, from trans fatty acids to the soda industry – he once sent 170 voracious to federal regulators to protest ads for sweet snacks intended for children – and got the title, among his critics, from "the ayatollah of food".

Forty years later, Jacobson has retired and vegetarianism has still not been adopted. The percentage of Americans who identify as vegetarians, about 5 or 6%, has remained static over the past 20 years. It is not a surprise. Meat dominated the American diet from the start. In his travel diary of 1832, American domestic moresEnglish novelist Fanny Trollope (Anthony's mother) said: "They consume an extraordinary amount of bacon. Ham and steaks [sic] appear morning, noon and evening.

Yet we continue to fight for meat – how much we eat; what it does for our health and for the health of the planet; and, lately, whether it is "burgers" made of vegetable proteins that have the taste, taste, and real appearance, should be welcomed as dietary saviors or as part of another liberal plot aimed at deprive Americans of their Big Macs.

The burgers, from Silicon Valley-backed Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat startups, are appearing on the menu, ranging from fine New York bistros to Burger King. The companies quickly secured funding from technology titans (Evan Williams, co-founders of Twitter, and Biz Stone for Beyond Meat, Bill Gates for Impossible and Beyond) and a list of venture capital firms. elite.

And no wonder. It was a food game that made sense in the valley: an unprecedented product made with the latest technology and likely to disrupt meat production, one of the biggest environmental threats in the world.

Unlike most investments in traditional agriculture, this one has had considerable potential. Beyond Meat's May IPO was by far the most successful of the year; its stock increased by nearly 600% at the end of August; Impossible has attracted brand investors such as Jay-Z and Serena Williams, and is gearing up for its own public offering. Both companies have products in grocery stores across the country and retail sales are up. Even big meat companies are jumping into ashes, lest they be overwhelmed in the new gold rush of proteins; Tyson was one of the first to support Beyond Meat before launching his own line of herbal products; and Smithfield Foods, the world's largest producer of pork, launches a range of soy products.

But if these new veggie burgers seem doomed to the failure of our long meat feast, it should be noted that while the Silicon Valley billions may have disrupted the most iconic sandwich in the United States, they have not disrupted the war of cultures for what it means to eat like a "real American"

This became evident after the Liberals in Congress introduced the Green New Deal following the 2018 elections. The resolution, designed to combat climate change and economic development Inequality, says nothing about the environmental risks of beef production. In fact, despite the late night TV commentary from the Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the fact that no one should "eat a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner," the Green New Deal says nothing about eating meat or vegetarianism. other type of diet.

It does not matter. Right-wing culture warriors picked up the club and began to swing, and the burgers of the plants were guilty by association.

In February, Rob Bishop, a US government representative, ate a hamburger at a press conference, claiming that such an act would be "illegal" if the Green New Deal became law. At a protest in Michigan in March, President Trump said that there would be more cows if the Green New Deal was adopted. A few days earlier, Trump's former advisor, Sebastian Gorka, had compared critics of meat consumption to Stalinism.

During the summer, the Center for Consumer Freedom published one-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and in the New York Post, blaming the meat for being meat-based and to be transformed into additives. And Rick Wiles, the creator of a Christian media outlet called TruNews that promotes conspiracy theories, described herbal meat as a conspiracy of "Luciferians" to "create a race of soulless creatures."

Now, the plant burgers take it from both sides, while a liberal crowd of voices attack their long list of ingredients and their use of genetically modified soybeans, and argue that fake meat is worse for men and the planet that beef is raised sustainably. .

At CNN's public session on climate change, which took place earlier this month with the Democratic presidential candidate, the Massachusetts Senator, Elizabeth Warren, said the fossil fuel industry was pleased to see the country arguing over cheeseburgers and light bulbs. about the ecological malignancy of the industry.

This is a controversial moment, although somewhat absurd. Reducing meat production, and therefore consumption, is a crucial element of the overall strategy to combat climate change. And for the first time, we have a burger substitute good enough that many people are eager to try it. If Americans eat less meat, this could be an important first step.

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But the cultural war counts. Vegetarianism, and even the idea of ​​eating less meat continues to wither in part because she was effectively bound by her detractors to the culture of faded liberals. The perception persists of a weak, bland and singularly unsatisfactory diet – rabbit food. It is no coincidence that "soy boy" is the extreme right of the far right who considers men as lacking appropriate masculinity.

In August, Fox News host Lawrence Jones and Dan Bongino made fun of a new UN report on climate change and land use that called for a reduction in meat consumption. "I do not care because I want my meat and I think it's been placed here so we can eat it," Jones told the viewers.

Plant meat currently accounts for only 2% of retail meat sales; it also costs a lot more than ground beef. Despite what appears to be a daily media coverage of every new milestone in the plant, McDonald's, Panera and other key players in the fast-casual and casual-casual sector have so far adopted a wait-and-see approach . Meanwhile, Americans are digging more and more fracture lines, taking advantage of everything from Trump to immigration through Megan Rapinoe and straws.

In these circumstances, the 40-year-old fight for meat clearly poses problems for making herbal meat "the future of protein", as promised Beyond Meat. Do not forget that two decades after the establishment of national standards for organic farming, organic foods – also referred to as "elitist" pillories and too expensive – account for less than 6% of total sales. of food in the United States.

The cultural gap around food actually began a decade before Michael Jacobson's culinary insurgency in the White House, as an offshoot of the new environmental movement that took shape in the 1960s. Concerns over additives – Preservatives, artificial colors and flavors – as well as chemicals used in food manufacturing have led to claims that the US diet "poisoned" people. The term "plastic food" became part of the lexicon of activists and there was a quick "counter-cooking" that gave us organic gardens, cooperatives and lots of homemade granola and yogurt.

In 1971 (the same year, Jacobson started her center), Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse – in Berkeley, of course – by launching a movement around local, seasonal and sustainable food, which still resonates today. Waters inspired her menu of simple terroir cuisine that she had fallen in love with while living in France. But in less than ten years, Chez Panisse went from an advanced counterculture post to a food mecca, with Waters as the great lady of virtuous food.

Enough or not, which made Jacobson and heroes heroes of Waters, made it the epitome of elitism and the overtaking of others by the state. After all, the American food system has been touted as the envy of the world. Our supermarkets, with their endless aisles and overflowing shelves, have been touted as proof of capitalism's superiority over communism during the Cold War. Productivity fueled by the revered American farmer's chemicals was opposed to the threat of Soviet collectivized agriculture.

During the prosperous post-war period, Americans adopted all sorts of transformed wonders – television dinners, frozen pizzas, cake mixes into pieces – without much regard for how these products were made. or their nutritional deficiencies. These shortcuts not only made it easier for the family to feed the housewives, but they marked modernity, progress.

Then, all of a sudden, it seemed that Jacobson, Waters and their supporters were saying that there was a "good" way of eating and a "bad" way, and that it was impossible to trust the system American food. Over time, the side of the division in which you evolved has gone from a personal health and social issue to a matter of moral justice.

In 1977, when the first version of what would become the first federal diet guidelines was published, "processed foods" became a dirty word – even as most Americans' diets were more dominated. In 1986, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich observed that two cultures were appearing in America: "Natural fibers as opposed to synthetic blends; wooden cabinets made by hand in relation to the maple manufactured in series; David's Cookies vs. Mr. Donut. Shortly after, Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to start making incursions against brie-eating elitists who drank coffee with milk.

At the dawn of the 21st century, an "epidemic" of obesity and growing concern over climate change and animal welfare has renewed and intensified the discussion of our food choices. . In 2006, Michael Pollan published The dilemma of Omnivore, and the landscape has changed profoundly. What began as a series of police stories about the origin of our food crystallized the moral, environmental and public health issues around which a reinvigorated food movement was gathering. Pollan has supplanted Waters and Jacobson as the nation's food consciousness, and he too has become a political turning point.

The right-wing media machine retorted about the government and the rich Liberals telling the nation what to eat – "Mr. Pollan, it's not your business, "said Limbaugh in 2009." It's not at all [President] Everyone eats, that 's the case of Obama. Meanwhile, the fast-food chains were preparing huge burgers filled with salt and fat that seemed to make fun of the greedy mouthpieces: The Baconator. The Thickburger monster. The triple whopper. The double down. The message was clear: It's America. We will eat what we want.

And what the Americans wanted to eat, at the time and now, was meat. Last year, we ate an average of 219 pounds of beef, pork, poultry, veal and lamb per person, four times the world average. Most of us eat meat every day.

Science is not yet established, but research suggests that this series of carnivores is embedded in us as humans (bigger brains, a leap in evolution); it is also an integral part of our American culture, a touchstone of the country's aspirations of plenty. Meat, associated with wealth and power for thousands of years – we "strengthen" but "stay veg-out" – was abundant and relatively cheap here. Thus, when poor immigrants landed on these shores, they could aspire to eat the meat that had always been beyond their means.

For decades, the main argument in favor of reduced meat consumption was personal health, the fact that it was proved that a diet too rich in meat increased the risk of diseases such as heart disease and cancer. We eat less beef today than in the 1970s, partly because of health problems, but we replaced it with a lot more chicken than vegetables.

But now, the fight for meat is being played in the existential context of a warming planet. Despite the persistence of skeptics and deniers, nearly 70% of Americans are worried about climate change, up from 50% five years ago. Agriculture in general and beef production in particular play an important role in exacerbating climate change. Agriculture accounted for 9% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in 2017. And beef production, from carbon emissions to deforestation, has a greater environmental impact than any other food .

More and more people say they are trying to add meatless meals to their weekly routine (it's hard to know if they actually do). And for the first time, they have an increasing number of decent (and, above all, practical) options. Historically, the different meat substitutes were reliably meh – tempeh; seitan; veggie and granular veggie burgers. Nobody really wanted them. Now, in addition to herbal burgers, there are vegetarian meal kits and a number of fast fashionable places, run by Sweetgreen, that have helped to prepare healthier meals, including the salad – salad, the symbol of all that is missing about a vegetarian diet – cool.

I tried the Impossible Burger at a cheese cheese factory in Washington, comparing it side by side with the restaurant's Old Fashioned Burger. Both came on a grilled brioche roll with standard lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion. The Impossible Burger was served with a "special sauce" (Thousand Islands vinaigrette), which I put on the side and put on each burger. Both hamburgers looked and felt, even felt more or less the same. Pinch a piece of "meat" each for a taste test, however, I could easily tell the difference. The Impossible galette lacked the rich fat of beef. But under the pile of condiments, the distinction was much less apparent.

To be honest, neither hamburger was great and I guess the impossible would not be good against the one made with the old grass-fed chuck I found at my butcher's. However, it is difficult to exaggerate how unique this product is in the history of meat substitutes.

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There are reasons beyond taste to think that new plant burgers could avoid the worst of cultural conflicts over food. On the one hand, they are media and market favorites, at least for the moment. Barclays predicts that the alternative meat market could reach $ 140 billion over the next decade. Hell, Glenn Beck was hit after confusing an Impossible Burger with a real one.

But the main reason they could survive the war of cultures is that the public narrative of these hamburgers is one of innovation and personal choice, the wisdom of the market – values ​​that we have long been told are all American. This earned them the praise of the conservative federalist society; and Sonny Perdue, Secretary of Agriculture, who challenges the idea that beef production contributes to climate change, but praises Impossible Foods for its "innovation," stating that it was incumbent on consumers to decide.

Even writer Bill McKibben, a Liberal spokesman influential on environmental issues, said by e-mail that he doubted that the culture war would have much impact, as "hamburgers at Plants are not … a way to stop people from eating meat – choices, and Americans like the choices! Plus, they taste great and Americans like things that are going well!

This market-bound halo could, in theory, inoculate meat meat against the dreams of nanny fever that helped to condemn the government's recent efforts to promote a healthier and more sustainable diet: Michelle's Organic Garden Obama at the White House The election of Donald Trump, Ann Coulter tweeted: "I respectfully suggest a new name for the Michelle's White House vegetable garden:" Putting green ".); President Barack Obama's stricter nutritional standards for school meals; and the ban made to parents to bring sweets to schools to celebrate the birthdays of students (see, Palin, Sarah).

Rachel Konrad, head of communications at Impossible Foods, said the company was not worried about a possible cultural war affecting its products. She e-mailed me that her hamburger "is certainly not the exclusive preference of coastal elites or people of red or blue color. States "and that there is" no political bias among our customers. "She emphasizes the aforementioned praises of Glenn Beck and insists that" meat eaters in America and around the world care about animal welfare, public health and the environment. "

Then she added, without being prompted: "We are particularly targeting meat consumers, because our mission is to replace the use of animals as a food technology by offering better performance than animals by offering pleasure, nutrition and value to meat lovers.

Whether or not the impossible has a cultural war problem at the moment, such statements are likely to invite it. It's odd, given the political climate, why the advocates of herbal meat speak so clearly about their mission, which is to completely eliminate meat. (Can not even put a date on it, promising to do it here by 2035.)

Leaving aside the very real question of whether it is even possible or desirable, why choose a fight when you do not need it? Despite the partisan storm surrounding the Green Green New Deal and all the rest, the new hamburgers are getting a pass from some of the larger neighborhoods simply because they are considered innovative, as a matter of personal choice rather than as a mandate of the enemy. Why not just run with her? Nowadays, you rarely lose to America when you tie your wagon to "freedom", even if you have ulterior motives.

Because when you start talking about taking things off to people – especially something that is as culturally important and loved as meat – they tend to be emotional. And this emotion is fueled by political partisanship. This is not a conjecture; there is evidence of a political gap between carnivores and vegetarians.

A study published in the journal Appetite in 2018, political conservatives are more likely to abandon the vegetarian diet, not only because they care less about animal welfare or environmental concerns, but also because they are feel "socially unsupported in their businesses". In other words, nowadays, in the work world of many conservatives, cutting meat in one's diet is considered aberrant and therefore likely to be attacked earlier this year.

Research by Jayson Lusk, an economist at Purdue University who studies what we eat and why we eat it, shows that there is also a gap in demand for beef between conservatives and liberals, and that it is getting worse. He fears that the increased politicization of beef will lead to more polarized positions, rather than nuanced solutions to the climate and health problems associated with the production and consumption of beef.

"Most reasonable people would say that they want to minimize the impacts of meat on the environment and health," he said. "But how do you do that? As the debate becomes polarized, it lacks nuance. One of the parties advocates draconian policies "- like the complete elimination of meat" – and the other party says: "I will eat all the meat I want", just stick it to their opponents. If we enter our camps, we will not think in a nuanced way about these complex problems. "

Arby's example shows what plant-based forces are facing. Ten years ago, the roast beef chain went around the drain. But he then doubled, with calculated humor, his main product bearing the slogan "We have meat" and products like Meat Mountain, a $ 10 sandwich with two chicken fillets, roast turkey, ham, corned beef, breast smoke, steak, roast beef and bacon with pepper. In 2015, the company launched a "vegetarian helpline" to "help" our non-carnivorous nested friends. "This strategy has proven to be winning. In a fast food market with labor costs, an age-old taste change and increasing competition, Arby's is gaining strength.

Then in July, in the midst of all the rumors about the future of meat, Arby's announced the "marrot," a turkey-based carrot, in what can only be described as a major giant orange at all the hype herbal Meat. You could almost hear millions of our fellow citizens shouting about "owning libs".

Getting people to give up the foods that they like is extremely difficult. That's why the diet industry is a $ 66 billion sisyphus mess. Such a change is not, as suggested by Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, in an essay on Medium, which looks like the transition from horses to cars, bumpy but inevitable. What we choose to eat is the most intimate and subjective decision we make. Foods that are normal in our lives are deeply related to tradition and nostalgia, celebration and comfort – to our feeling of who we are and where we are in the world. And if the effort to convince people to change their diet is reduced to "coastal elites want to deprive you of your freedom to eat a Big Mac", that's a problem.

Jacobson has spent 45 years on the front lines of this national food battle. He was very successful, but when he takes stock of how far Americans have come, he sees a mix of things.

"In the seventies, vegetarianism was considered a little fishy," he says (he is not a vegetarian, but has not eaten red meat since about 1976). "It's now a dominant idea, with all the actors and celebrities praising it. The overall numbers are still low, but we have to look at what happened to meat consumption: beef is down; chicken and turkey have replaced it. The pork remained fairly constant. La consommation de lait est en baisse. Mais la consommation de fruits et de légumes n’a pas changé depuis probablement 30 ans, en dépit de tout ce qu’il faut savoir sur les produits locaux, les marchés de producteurs et les supermarchés avec de grands étalages de produits lorsque vous franchissez la porte. "

"Les gens semblent être réticents à avoir une alimentation plus saine", déclare Jacobson.

But les hamburgers d'Impossible et Beyond, et de ce qui va suivre, ont le potentiel de provoquer un changement important dans le régime alimentaire américain d'une manière que rien avant eux ne pourrait. La guerre de la culture, cependant, a le pouvoir de façonner la façon dont les gens pensent aux choix qu’ils ont, notamment s’ils veulent commander un hamburger végétarien ou la vraie chose.

Jacobson est optimiste quant à la nouvelle protéine à base de plante, mais constitue un pas en avant vers un régime alimentaire plus sain et plus durable – et non comme le glas de la viande. «Nous avons cet énorme pipeline de personnes, et quelqu'un qui a 20 ans et qui aime les cheeseburgers va les manger encore 50 ans», dit-il. «Ils ne vont pas les abandonner. Mais d'autres le feront. Et dans l’ensemble, nous mangeons moins de viande rouge. C'est une bonne chose."

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Brent Cunningham est rédacteur en chef de Food & Environment Reporting Network, une organisation de journalisme d'investigation à but non lucratif.

Magoz est un artiste basé à Malmö, en Suède. Ses travaux portent sur la communication visuelle, la résolution de problèmes et le minimalisme.