Are we ‘Beyond Meat’?

With the world’s population increasing, we’re increasingly seeing pollution and the mass consumption of land jeopardising the earth’s future for generations to come. Can we help? Slowly, people are realising the importance in nurturing the earth and what can be done to positively progress.

Start-up ‘envirotech’ companies are using their knowledge of global warming to make a positive imprint on the earth.  Many have gained the interest of some of the richest people in the world, allowing them to push their business further and create more awareness. Read on as we look at whether meat-free life could solve some of our problems.

The global demand for meat

A quarter of the world’s emissions are a by-product of the global food industry, part of that being meat production. With livestock being responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases and playing a large part in water usage and polluting, the increase in meat consumption can only mean a negative impact to global warming as we know it.

Backed by Bill Gates, Beyond Meat is a Californian-based company that have set out to change global warming one burger at a time. Rather than sourcing burgers from animal meat, Beyond Meat use plant based ingredients to produce a product that no only looks and feels like an animal burger, but also tastes and smells like one too.

Beyond Meat aiming high

Along with their burgers being set out to improve human health through refining and controlling ingredients and additives, Beyond Meat are attempting to positively impact climate change and address global resource constraints.

They believe that by producing plant based burgers, it will increase the awareness about global climate change, pushing others in the food sector to develop solutions to reduce the masses of pollutants created. This includes volatile organic compounds, which are ending up in our soil – as explored in the article ‘Volatile Organic Compound Screening in Soil Using SPME-GC/MS’.

Targeting animal welfare

Beyond Meat also ensure that through production of their products, they are implementing effective ways to utilise the world’s limited supply of natural resources on top of reducing the amount of waste, with the hope that others will follow in their footsteps across all industries. Their efforts in raising awareness of the need to decrease the dependency on animal protein also strives for the improvement on animal welfare, with the hope that the use of battery farms and inhumane animal living conditions will be stopped.

In 2017, the UK saw a 987% increase in the demand for meat free food options, which suggests that the population are recognising not only the health benefits of meat alternatives but also the positive impact it has globally. Could you trade favourite beef patty for a plant based equivalent?