tuck in
I still believe that the best advice for healthy eating is Michael Pollan’s simple mantra: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” No gimmicks, sensible and, with a little willpower and forethought, potentially achievable.
Notwithstanding, fake-meat was hailed as the future of food only a few short years ago and the pioneer of plant-based burger alternatives, Beyond Meat, was greeted with a publically quoted value of $10bn. Having now plummeted by over 95%, and with competitor Meatless Farm biting the dust, the fad appears to have all but peaked. Pret A Manger has closed half its vegetarian and vegan-only stores and sales of vegan products are down in supermarkets the world over.
Still, humanity needs to reduce its meat intake, both on health grounds and because of livestock farming’s disastrous ecological effects. The fake-meat industry’s stuttering decline is more likely due to their alternatives, along with extreme veganism, falling out of fashion rather than with vegetarianism itself. ‘Faux meat’ is often expensive, overly processed and devoid of any tangible nutritional value. Tasty ingredients invariably include extruded pea and rice protein, sunflower lecithin and methyl cellulose. Some use heme, a soy protein synthesized from genetically modified yeast, designed to make burgers ‘bleed’. Nice.
When all else fails, however, we can all hit the doctor’s surgery for a personal shot of the miracle drug Wegovy. With a market cap peak of $428bn (larger than the next ten largest Danish companies combined and greater than the country’s annual GDP!), the drug appears to guarantee weight loss and cut obesity by suppressing appetite. Made from semaglutide, an enzyme that mimics a venom found in the mouth of the Gila monster lizard, which needs to eat only four times a year, the company simply can’t make enough of the stuff.
Me? I think I’ll stick to a little of whatever I fancy and everything in moderation, including moderation.
