The Hidden Reasoning Behind Marketing Meat Alternatives That Goes Unmentioned.

Is it really about going vegan/vegetarian? Is it really about the environment?

Beyond and Impossible are two of the major organisations that have come up with plant-based meat substitutes. There even is an altruistic marketing front about consuming plant-based meat substitutes, too.

The Impossible website states that:

Luckily, we live in a time when animals are not the only way to make meat: choosing Impossible Beef over the animal version uses approximately 96% less land and 92% less water, while generating 91% less greenhouse gases.

While Beyond’s impact statement describes something similar:

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, reviewed by a panel of third-party specialists, was conducted by an international expert in food system sustainability and compared the environmental impact of Beyond Burger® 3.0. with an 80/20 ¼ lb. beef patty produced in the United States. The result? Producing a Beyond Burger® uses significantly less water, land and (non-renewable) energy – and it generates 10x less Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGE) than a beef patty.

Theses statements appeal to the humanity within us. The call for action to us is to consume these plant-based meat substitutes and save the environment while doing so.

We can come to a perfunctory conclusion that these plant-based substitutes are better for the environment based on the above statements.

However, other reports will disagree on that, especially the one prepared by Navdanya International:

However, fake food has a larger carbon footprint than less-processed plant proteins. Plant-based substitutes are up to seven times more GHG-intensive than whole pulses. Cell-based meat also emits more GHG than animal products, like pork or poultry.

Recent research even suggests that over the long term, the environmental impact of lab-grown meat could be higher than that of livestock.

Moreover, fake food is advertised as “eco-friendly”, and yet it is made with proteins from pea, soy, or corn which are being grown on a large, industrial scale, relying on tillage, monocultures, toxic pesticides and often, GMOs.

The Impossible Burger is made with GMO Roundup-sprayed soya, leading to massive ecological devastation. Total levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11.3ppb, making its consumption highly dangerous as only 0.1ppb of glyphosate can destroy gut bacteria, damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, cause reproductive abnormalities, or even tumors, as glyphosate is also a “probable human carcinogen.” More broadly, the reliance on pesticides is directly linked with long-term chronic health problems, for consumers and farmers.

Other companies like Beyond Meat, who market their products as “cleaner” since they are free from genetically modified ingredients, still admit to not being organic, and still rely heavily on monocultures and pesticides.

Ironically, these plant-based meat alternatives, which claim to save animals, water and the environment, are instead directly contributing to the food system that is threatening global biodiversity, destroying wildlife, altering the soils and polluting groundwater supplies. Moreover, the fake food companies’ supply chains require excessive fossil fuel transport, like most industrial food.

Global CO2 emissions are still dominated by the transport and energy generation industries, which are heavily dependent on the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

So while the aim of Impossible and Beyond is, ostensibly, to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we do have to wonder if something else is afoot behind the scenes.

After all, Bill Gates himself now owns of 275,000 acres of farmland across 18 states in the USA. And Bill Gates is also an investor in Impossible Foods. And Bill Gates himself states that rich nations should switch to synthetic meats.

Is there not a fishy trend going on there?

If I were investing that much in a synthetic meat substitute, and call for people to switch to it, and then buy up the farmland that can help produce the raw materials for the synthetic meat, is my primary motivation really about saving the environment, or is it more about me wanting to get a good (or even outsized) return on my investment?

It’s a smart move, though. If I can use consumer psychology tactics to appeal to my audience’s emotions with all those emotionally charged content about the doom and gloom that climate change can bring about, people who have a soft spot for “saving the environment” will choose to switch over to a product that I’m backing.

The more consumers buy that product, the better returns on my investment I’ll be getting.

It’s not so much about saving the environment as it is about lining my pockets now, is it? That’s the hidden meaning behind Bill Gates’ drive. He has to target the populations in the rich nations who have the disposable income to purchase such products, simply because the poorer nations can’t really afford to pay the profit margins on those meat alternatives.

Let’s not think that we are saving the environment significantly more as a result of switching to synthetic meats. We aren’t.

The energy consumption by the transportation sector (cars, buses, airplanes), industries (especially manufacturing) and electricity generation from fossil fuels (especially when we need our air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter) are still bigger players in the emissions arena.

Not to mention the fact that many of us want to keep up to date with the latest electronic gadgets out there — the manufacturing of those products is also energy intensive!

That’s what we do have to bear in mind when we’re discussing anything environment related. Nobody’s going to raise (and attempt to implement) a new agenda about the environment when there is no money to be made.

After all, if our toilet waste were that valuable, we wouldn’t have to pay the municipal sewerage fees for waste processing and disposal, would we?

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