Technically Food , livre ebook

Copyright 2021 Larissa Zimberoff
Cover 2021 Abrams
Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932351
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4709-0
eISBN: 978-1-68335-991-3
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Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Algae The Future Food That s Always in the Future
Chapter 2: Fungi A Steak Substitute . . . and Flavor Enhancer?
Chapter 3: Pea Protein Finally, Something That Could Topple Big Soy
Chapter 4: Milk and Eggs If No Animals Were Involved, Is It Vegan?
Chapter 5: Upcycling Rescuing Edible Stuff to Make . . . More Edible Stuff?
Chapter 6: Plant-Based Burgers Can Plants Replace Red Meat?
Chapter 7: Vertical Farms Can Premium Greens Picked by Robots Feed the World?
Chapter 8: Cell-Based Meat Will Animal Analogues Make It Beyond an Elite Niche?
Chapter 9: Are We Buying What They re Selling?
Chapter 10: What Are We Eating in Twenty Years?
Note on Sources
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Introduction
Why Me?
I first started thinking about the macronutrient content in food when I was twelve, after I peed in my pants in school. I was thirsty all the time, too, but I didn t make the connection. Mom took me to the doctor for an earache and casually mentioned my recent spate of mishaps. A urine test revealed that I had type 1 diabetes. That same day, I was checked into a hospital, and a nameless diabetes educator taught me how to calculate the grams of carbohydrates in a meal. (It s as hard as it sounds.)
The result of these mental gymnastics determined how many units of mealtime insulin to inject with a needle. (It s as bad as it sounds.) When I got it wrong, the physical repercussions ranged from being coated in sweat to feeling like I was moving through quicksand. Simple pleasures, like cupcakes at birthday parties, potato pancakes at Hanukkah, and Grandma s famous challah French toast on weekends became fraught calculations.
In my world, then, food is only as good as its primary building blocks, which are carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber. When I eat an apple, what I m really eating are the macronutrients it s composed of. I choose green apples because they are typically less sweet than red apples. Less sweet relays to my brain: fewer carbs.
As the understanding of my condition improved, the constant oversight lifted. Exercise was as necessary as learning to like coffee black and chocolate dark-key skills for my people. My knowledge gives me an edge: I understand food on a molecular level. I think of this as my superpower, and also the difference, for me, between life and death. I see through food.
Like a Russian doll, my approach to sustenance is a nesting stack of questions: What time of day is it? How much will eating affect my blood sugar? Am I going for a walk after I eat? How much of what I m about to eat is processed or packaged? I read a lot of labels.
When I spot a new food in the store, I look at the nutrition facts panel before I pour it into a bowl. This label is one of the most reproduced graphics in the world, yet very few people pay as much attention to it as I do. Only 31.4 percent of shoppers looked at the label frequently, says a 2018 study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics of nearly two thousand young adults. While a label can hide as much as it reveals, it s still our most valuable resource when choosing what to put in our mouths.
In my thirties, I realized that most of the world couldn t be bothered to see food the way I did. When I began covering the food-tech industry, I felt that this was my special contribution as a writer. Built upon this framework-that food is only as good as its components-is my decade-plus background working in high tech, an experience that fast-tracked me through the startup world. The frenzy in food investments I see now feels eerily similar to the first wave of the Internet.
Covering the world of food tech startups means I m surrounded by (mostly) young entrepreneurs who are certain they can make the world a better place. Their confidence is validated by the millions of dollars they raise-a sign that they re either brilliant or on to something big. I want a triple bottom line: good for me, good for the environment, and good for business. This book began when I asked myself: What do we gain and what do we lose by embracing a future of lab-made food?
The current wave of food companies claim to be mission driven. They want to better our world with futuristic processes. They hope to reverse climate change. They want to end animal suffering and the attendant damage to the planet from industrial agriculture. But they still want to make money. Capitalism is pulling the levers. Now, companies like Tyson, Nestl , and General Mills (just a few of the legacy brands that I sometimes shorthand to Big Food ) are feeling the pinch from declining profits-their dated portfolio of products is no longer winning new generations of consumers-but they re not going to allow themselves to be left behind. I want to believe everything that New Food (my name for the startups in my book) assures me, but are they following the same path as Big Food? These are the very same companies that have fed Americans for decades, raked in profits, and given us in return higher rates of obesity and disease.
The tension of my health being tied to capitalistic companies that want to make a profit is growing. It affects people like me with diabetes, my sister-in-law who has celiac disease, my best friend s three-year-old who loves sweet foods, food-insecure communities, elderly populations, and unhoused people. Food affects everyone. Now that the world population is in the billions, and our natural resources are showing signs of breakdown, we want to know: Can we be healthy, respect food traditions, and save the environment all at the same time? It s not too much to expect.
Why Now?
Famous for getting seat belts into cars, longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader is also known for cleaning up baby food in the seventies. Nader s problem was that manufacturers were putting additives-modified food starch and MSG (monosodium glutamate)-into infant formula. Companies weren t doing this for babies health, which could potentially be harmed with high levels of glutamate (the primary amino acid in MSG); they added it so that it would taste better to mothers, prolong its shelflife, and improve solubility, which makes it easier to mix. At issue for Nader was that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wasn t proactive, it was reactive. The burden of discovering problems in our food supply, he said, was left to researchers outside the industry. One of the enduring characteristics of the food industry is its penchant to sell now and have someone else test later, said Nader.
It s been fifty years since that regulatory fight. Eventually, the FDA banned MSG from baby food, but to hedge its bets and keep companies happy, it declared it fit for human consumption but not necessarily by infants. The other moral of the story is that this is happening with the New Food companies. The FDA still works reactively, and food companies are still getting away without proactive confirmations of food safety.
Recently, a new category of toddler milk launched in reaction to a slump in sales of baby formula. The new milk has a long list of ingredients including frowned upon substances such as corn syrup, palm oil, and polydextrose-a form of fiber used to improve mouthfeel. And baby food is just one small category of processed foods. Harmful gunk is everywhere: synthetic food colorings, saccharin, pyridine, and many more. All are still in use today, despite the fact that the FDA has all of them on a list for removal because they re carcinogenic. You might wonder why they re still in use. It s because the FDA gives companies years to reformulate and get rid of banned ingredients. In the meantime, there is no product recall and you can readily find the toddler milk on Amazon.
We expect that the foods we eat are the safest they have ever been. In many ways, they are. I won t deny that our regulatory system basically works, but our global health is failing, and that s largely because of the prevalence of the American diet. It s time for us to scrutinize our old habits as we consider shifting to these New Foods: milk that doesn t come from the udder of a cow, eggs that aren t laid by chickens, and shrimps that don t swim in the sea. Tomorrow s foods depend on highly trained scientists, many of whom have crossed over from the field of medicine. Tissue and cellular biologists, analytical chemists, food scientists, and engineers are collaborating on how to create food that they claim will benefit the world. But to feed billions, we need a supply chain that scales. To make food from literally almost nothing-yeast, bacteria, single-cell organisms, carbon emissions-we need industrial systems, which depend upon crops like sugar and corn (the same ones that are in use today), and we need chemical nutrients like insulin, growth hormones, and amino acids. If our health is failing us on the current industrial methods, shouldn t we be looking for ways that don t perpetuate that same framework?
As food moved from farm to factory over the course of the twentieth century, the conventional