The current, Monday, June 14 edition of Time Magazine, has an article on page 97 by John Cloud titled, "Creating Chicken Without the Egg." The online version of the same article is titled, "Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat."
Here's how it opens:
"The desire to eat meat has posed an ethical question ever since humans achieved reliable crop production: Do we really need to kill animals to live? Today, the hunger for meat is also contributing to the climate-change catastrophe. The gases from all those chickens and pigs and cows, and from the manure lagoons that big farms create, are playing a part in global warming. So the idea of fake meat has never been more alluring. What if you could cut into a juicy chicken breast that wasn't chicken at all but rather some indistinguishable imitation made harmlessly from plant life?"
I will share a paragraph I love, as it is such a wake-up call as to what meat eating actually is:
"What has confounded fake-meat producers for years is the texture problem. Before an animal is killed, its flesh essentially marinates, for all the years that the animal lives, in the rich biological stew that we call blood: a fecund bath of oxygen, hormones, sugars and plasma. Vegan foods like tofu, tempeh (fermented soy) and seitan (wheat gluten) don't have the benefit of sloshing around in something so complex as blood before they go onto your plate. So how do you create fleshy, muscley texture without blood?"
The article describes the new non-bloody process. Cloud tells us that while he didn't like the seasonings in the recipes he was offered, he was impressed by the product itself. He writes:
"But the way the meat broke across my teeth felt exactly how boneless chicken breast does. It was slightly fibrous but not fatty. The soy wasn't mashed together as in a veggie burger; rather, it was more idiosyncratic, uneven, al dente — in other words, meatlike."
The ending to the article is just lovely:
"Maybe one day you'll order a chicken fajita at Chili's that is made with soy. You almost certainly won't notice the difference, but the planet will."
You'll find the article on line at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993883-1,00.html
There is a video, "Turning Powder into Poultry," linked to that page. The fun two minute video shows the reporter's trip to the plant. I particularly like seeing all the delectable looking stir-fried fake chicken, and then seeing the not so delectable looking plateful of real raw uncooked chicken limbs -- a nice reminder of what is being avoided with the new product.
Please check out the story, and go to the links just under the photo to share it with your Facebook friends or email it to others. Leave a comment on the page if you like. And please, importantly, take this opportunity to bring this discussion to the letters page, by sending an appreciative letter to the editor in favor of plant based diets.
Time Magazine takes letters at letters@time.com
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts only if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to learn about Karen Dawn's book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals," which was chosen last year by the Washington Post as one of the "Best Books of The Year!"
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Date: Tue Jun 8 17:22:29 2010
