Recent years have seen an increase in discussion around the impact of our dietary choices not only on personal health, but on global issues such as food security and climate change. Much focus has been placed on eating a plant-based diet and eschewing animal-sourced foods, with vegetarian and vegan options becoming far more abundant across grocery stores and in restaurants. But as we look to the future, what other sources and types of food could help foster health for both people and the planet?
This volume provides historical, material, aesthetic, and philosophical explorations of plant-based and in vitro food products, including multi-disciplinary approaches from industry, academia, and food advocates.
In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger. Since then, the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread like wildfire through the media. Meanwhile, cultured meat researchers race against population growth and climate change in an effort to make sustainable protein. Meat Planet explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called “cultured meat”—and asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food. Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political, and it demands that we examine questions of justice and desirable modes of living in a shared and finite world. Benjamin Wurgaft tells a story that could utterly transform the way we think of animals, the way we relate to farmland, the way we use water, and the way we think about population and our fragile ecosystem’s capacity to sustain life. He argues that even if cultured meat does not “succeed,” it functions—much like science fiction—as a crucial mirror that we can hold up to our contemporary fleshy dysfunctions.
The world's most comprehensive, well documented and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive index. 435 color photographs and illustrations. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books.
Consumer interest in plant-based diets has been rapidly increasing in the past decade. Non-dairy and non-meat alternatives have gone mainstream. New products are appearing in the marketplace continually. The marketplace has been driven recently by millennials and flexitarians. Food companies have focused on providing nutritious food products that satisfy the demand for alternative items that look and taste like their animal counterparts. The marketplace wants products that improve human and planetary health worldwide. Questions have arisen as to how nutritionally sound and healthy are these products. How sustainable are these plant-based diets? How significantly do they alter traditional dietary patterns? What impact do they have on food security? Do these plant-based meat and dairy alternatives help lessen environmental degradation? Are the new products considered ultra-processed foods? What are the barriers and motivations that drive people to switch to a plant-based diet? Will plant-based diets help in the goal to greatly diminish malnutrition and over-nutrition (leading to obesity) around the world? These questions challenge scientists to provide meaningful answers through their ongoing research. Some of these issues are discussed in this reprint, based upon the latest research.
Future Foods: Global Trends, Opportunities, and Sustainability Challenges highlights trends and sustainability challenges along the entire agri-food supply chain. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book addresses innovations, technological developments, state-of-the-art based research, value chain analysis, and a summary of future sustainability challenges. The book is written for food scientists, researchers, engineers, producers, and policy makers and will be a welcomed reference. Provides practical solutions for overcoming recurring sustainability challenges along the entire agri-food supply chain Highlights potential industrial opportunities and supports circular economy concepts Proposes novel concepts to address various sustainability challenges that can affect and have an impact on the future generations
The plant-based food industry has flourished in recent years, with a steady stream of exciting product launches reaching the worldwide market. Consumers have become interested in a plant-based diet that includes grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables. There are a number of factors involved in this trend, including consumer opposition to harming animals, health problems such as lactose intolerance, desire for a healthier lifestyle and environmental awareness. Several books related to plant-based diets and cookbooks have been published for vegans and vegetarians, however there is no research work related to plant-based production, technology, ingredients and their qualitative and nutritional properties based on the results of scientific studies. Future Food: Plant-Based Products is the first book where the comparison of plant-based products with other alternatives are explored in detail. Novel plant-based product formulations, production and results of recent studies are examined in detail in this book. Plant-based products are mainly alternatives to dairy and meat products, and this text includes comprehensive chapters on meat substitutes and plant-based non-dairy products. In the opening chapter the main ingredients and raw materials used to produce a variety of plant-based products are covered along with their qualitative and nutritional properties. Further chapters focus on the health effects of plant-based products and microbiological and safety issues. For researchers seeking a full, up-to-date overview of plant-based product alternatives and their production, health affects and safety aspects, this book meets your needs.
This volume provides historical, material, aesthetic, and philosophical explorations of plant-based and in vitro food products, including multi-disciplinary approaches from industry, academia, and food advocates.
Given the central role of the food and agriculture system in driving so many of the connected ecological, social and economic threats and challenges we currently face, Rethinking Food and Agriculture reviews, reassesses and reimagines the current food and agriculture system and the narrow paradigm in which it operates. Rethinking Food and Agriculture explores and uncovers some of the key historical, ethical, economic, social, cultural, political, and structural drivers and root causes of unsustainability, degradation of the agricultural environment, destruction of nature, short-comings in science and knowledge systems, inequality, hunger and food insecurity, and disharmony. It reviews efforts towards ‘sustainable development’, and reassesses whether these efforts have been implemented with adequate responsibility, acceptable societal and environmental costs and optimal engagement to secure sustainability, equity and justice. The book highlights the many ways that farmers and their communities, civil society groups, social movements, development experts, scientists and others have been raising awareness of these issues, implementing solutions and forging ‘new ways forward’, for example towards paradigms of agriculture, natural resource management and human nutrition which are more sustainable and just. Rethinking Food and Agriculture proposes ways to move beyond the current limited view of agro-ecological sustainability towards overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on the principle of ‘inclusive responsibility’. Inclusive responsibility encourages ecosystem sustainability based on agro-ecological and planetary limits to sustainable resource use for production and livelihoods. Inclusive responsibility also places importance on quality of life, pluralism, equity and justice for all and emphasises the health, well-being, sovereignty, dignity and rights of producers, consumers and other stakeholders, as well as of nonhuman animals and the natural world. Explores some of the key drivers and root causes of unsustainability , degradation of the agricultural environment and destruction of nature Highlights the many ways that different stakeholders have been forging 'new ways forward' towards alternative paradigms of agriculture, human nutrition and political economy, which are more sustainable and just Proposes ways to move beyong the current unsustainable exploitation of natural resources towards agroecological sustainability and overall sustainability of the food and agriculture system based on 'inclusive responsibility'
Meat: A Benign Extravagance is a groundbreaking exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical and health issues surrounding the human consumption of animals. Garnering huge praise in the UK, this is a book that answers the question: should we be farming animals, or not? Not a simple answer, but one that takes all views on meat eating into account. It lays out in detail the reasons why we must indeed decrease the amount of meat we eat, both for the planet and for ourselves, and yet explores how different forms of agriculture--including livestock--shape our landscape and culture. At the heart of this book, Simon Fairlie argues that society needs to re-orient itself back to the land, both physically and spiritually, and explains why an agriculture that can most readily achieve this is one that includes a measure of livestock farming. It is a well-researched look at agricultural and environmental theory from a fabulous writer and a farmer, and is sure to take off where other books on vegetarianism and veganism have fallen short in their global scope.
