Three effective, affecting minutes. Which may get you craving chicken . . .
. . . and thus leads to this interesting 2012 video from Mark Bittman of the New York Times — “Finally Fake Chicken Worth Eating.”
“Would I rather eat cruelly raised, polluting, unhealthful chicken,” Bittman asks, “or a plant product that’s nutritionally similar or superior, good enough to fool me and requires no antibiotics, cutting off of heads or other nasty things?”
His video was about Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown’s company (here’s Ethan’s story), which in 2013 nabbed Bill Gates as an investor when he “couldn’t tell the difference” between their product and real chicken.
Chicks turn grain into bone, gristle, feathers, and beeks, so I can see why it’s more efficient not to have to grow the grain to grow those inedible parts . . . or the grain required to power what little movement chickens are permitted . . . or the grain required to produce the KFC chicken the workers eat who have to run around chasing the chickens with a hatchet. (No?) And then there’s all the chicken waste you don’t have to deal with when you extrude chicken directly from soy and peas and the other stuff in the Bittman video. So — never in my life having touched a feathered chicken, live or otherwise — this whole new system makes some sense to me. And, apparently, to Bill Gates.
I’m not ready to eat bugs yet, so have not put myself on the waiting list for next July’s harvest (more on this and the rremarkable Hult Prize soon). But fake chicken? My first order arrived today and was not half bad.
(Here are PETA’s favorite veggie substitutes. Share yours?)
