WEBVTT - The Fake-Meat Frontier 0:00:15.316 --> 0:00:23.276 Pushkin. Dan Pashman, host of the Sportful podcast, Jacob Goldstein, 0:00:23.356 --> 0:00:25.636 host of the podcast What's Your Problem. I am here 0:00:26.116 --> 0:00:29.276 in your kitchen in the Sportful test kitchen. Welcome. So 0:00:29.396 --> 0:00:31.756 we're old friends. We've collaborated back when you were a 0:00:31.796 --> 0:00:35.716 planet money and you're more like business tech economics reporter 0:00:35.876 --> 0:00:39.356 guy and I'm more nerdy food guy. Yes, and we 0:00:39.556 --> 0:00:44.156 found a story that is the crossover podcast event of 0:00:44.276 --> 0:00:46.996 twenty twenty three, right, and the story is this, so 0:00:47.116 --> 0:00:51.956 we'll go with that short. Come on, yeah, this is 0:00:51.996 --> 0:00:54.396 the Sportful. It's not for food ease, it's for eaters. 0:00:54.436 --> 0:00:56.876 I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsessed 0:00:56.876 --> 0:00:58.996 about food to learn more about people. And I'm coming 0:00:58.996 --> 0:01:01.396 to you from my kitchen with my friend Jacob Goldstein, 0:01:01.476 --> 0:01:03.516 host of the podcast What's Your Problem? The show where 0:01:03.636 --> 0:01:07.156 entrepreneurs and engineers talk about how they're gonna say change 0:01:07.196 --> 0:01:09.756 the world. The show where entrepreneurs talking about how they're 0:01:09.756 --> 0:01:11.356 gonna change the word about say solve if your problems, 0:01:11.396 --> 0:01:13.796 you gotta work. I'm memorizing your own tagline, kind of 0:01:13.796 --> 0:01:15.916 anti tagline. At this point, like people know what the 0:01:15.956 --> 0:01:22.876 show is. They pushed play yes, Yes, Today, Jacob, we're 0:01:22.876 --> 0:01:26.316 gonna talk about the past, present, and future of alternatives 0:01:26.516 --> 0:01:29.236 to meet Meat from animals is clearly a problem in 0:01:29.236 --> 0:01:31.356 the world right now right. It's a huge driver of 0:01:31.396 --> 0:01:34.916 climate change, a huge driver of land loss, of biodiversity decline. 0:01:34.956 --> 0:01:37.276 And so this is a real high stakes problem in 0:01:37.316 --> 0:01:40.556 the world, and people are spending billions of dollars to 0:01:40.556 --> 0:01:43.836 try and come up with new technologies to give us 0:01:43.916 --> 0:01:46.756 meat without animals. And I know a lot has been 0:01:46.796 --> 0:01:49.156 said about this, but I really feel like we have interesting, new, 0:01:49.276 --> 0:01:51.836 big stuff to say here. That's right, things have changed 0:01:51.876 --> 0:01:53.396 in the past year. Some of the things that looked 0:01:53.556 --> 0:01:56.596 very promising are struggling. Some of the things that felt 0:01:56.636 --> 0:01:59.516 like pipe dreams are becoming more real. So we're gonna 0:01:59.516 --> 0:02:03.916 get into all of that. The moment that sort of 0:02:03.916 --> 0:02:07.236 sets the stage for our story. Really, hippie is essentially right, 0:02:07.276 --> 0:02:10.276 Hippie vegetarian is right. And there is this chef who 0:02:10.396 --> 0:02:13.356 is who is kind of hippie adjacent. His name's Paul Winner, 0:02:13.676 --> 0:02:17.836 and in the seventies, he has this restaurant in Portland, Oregon. 0:02:17.916 --> 0:02:21.116 It's called the Garden House, and he wants to figure 0:02:21.156 --> 0:02:24.076 out what to do with his leftover food at the 0:02:24.156 --> 0:02:26.676 end of the day, and you know, he's got rice 0:02:26.756 --> 0:02:29.556 peel off. He's got to sort of random veggies, and 0:02:29.636 --> 0:02:31.356 he tries a few things, and he comes up with 0:02:31.396 --> 0:02:34.516 basically making it into a patty and cooking it and 0:02:34.556 --> 0:02:37.516 putting it between two buns, and he calls it the 0:02:37.556 --> 0:02:40.076 garden Burger. This garden burger that he invents in his 0:02:40.156 --> 0:02:42.796 restaurant becomes the garden burger. That was the go to 0:02:42.916 --> 0:02:45.756 veggie burger in the eighties and definitely in the nineties. 0:02:45.916 --> 0:02:48.236 But it wasn't a high end thing. It was almost 0:02:48.236 --> 0:02:50.276 the kind of thing where like when a bowling alley 0:02:50.436 --> 0:02:53.396 wanted to offer something vegetarian, they would have the garden Burger, 0:02:53.996 --> 0:02:56.876 or a chain restaurant or like a one level above 0:02:56.916 --> 0:02:59.476 a diner type place. Yeah, and you could also buy 0:02:59.556 --> 0:03:03.196 to the store. And you can't get the garden burger anymore. 0:03:03.236 --> 0:03:05.996 That just last year. Actually it got phased out. But 0:03:06.076 --> 0:03:07.996 I think you got sort of the closest thing, right. 0:03:07.996 --> 0:03:09.836 That's right. Let me step over here to my freezer 0:03:12.076 --> 0:03:21.476 and I have Morning Star Farms garden veggie burgers frozen. 0:03:21.916 --> 0:03:23.956 What's cooking up while we're talking about it. Yeah, let's 0:03:23.956 --> 0:03:28.516 do it. So let's just say before we even put 0:03:28.516 --> 0:03:32.356 it in, the veggie burger starts out brown. It looks 0:03:32.356 --> 0:03:33.796 to me, actually, it looks kind of like a like 0:03:33.836 --> 0:03:37.676 a hash brown. It's gotta that's got a brownish, almost 0:03:37.676 --> 0:03:42.116 like Cure Aid potato type vibe. Unlike meat, right, Like, 0:03:42.236 --> 0:03:44.716 it's not. It's not really supposed to be like meat. Right. 0:03:44.716 --> 0:03:46.996 It's supposed to be a thing you can eat between 0:03:46.996 --> 0:03:50.156 a bun when your friends are eating meat. So, so 0:03:50.316 --> 0:03:52.116 now we're gonna put the veggie burger into the pan. 0:03:52.236 --> 0:03:57.636 Let's see what kind of sound it makes. Oh, there's 0:03:57.676 --> 0:04:02.556 a little bit of sizzle, but not much. Yeah, I 0:04:02.956 --> 0:04:05.196 think I think the sizzle is just like because it's 0:04:05.236 --> 0:04:10.556 maybe a little icy from the freezer. So what happens 0:04:10.596 --> 0:04:13.196 to Paul Winner and his restaurant in Portland in the eighties. 0:04:13.196 --> 0:04:16.756 He winds up closing the restaurant, but the gardenburger turns 0:04:16.796 --> 0:04:19.396 into this product. He turns the gardenburger into this thing 0:04:19.436 --> 0:04:22.636 you can buy at the grocery store that restaurants buy 0:04:22.636 --> 0:04:25.796 to have a sort of token option for vegetarians. You know, 0:04:25.916 --> 0:04:28.956 it fills a need in the nineties if you want 0:04:28.996 --> 0:04:31.796 to get something for vegetarians at the barbecue. You pick 0:04:31.916 --> 0:04:35.156 up a pack of Gardenburgers. It's the go to veggie 0:04:35.196 --> 0:04:37.956 burger of the era. Right, It's functional. That's a great 0:04:37.996 --> 0:04:40.356 word for it. And that's why Gardenburger gets so big. 0:04:40.356 --> 0:04:44.516 It's doing a job in society. And this company blew up. 0:04:44.556 --> 0:04:47.076 It did great in the nineties. The Gardenburgers a big deal. 0:04:47.076 --> 0:04:49.316 The company actually has an IPO, it goes public, they 0:04:49.316 --> 0:04:52.916 sell stock. This chef who ran a vegetarian restaurant in 0:04:52.956 --> 0:04:56.036 Portland is like a multi millionaire from it. And maybe 0:04:56.156 --> 0:05:01.396 peak Gardenburger comes in the late nineties. It's huge. The 0:05:01.476 --> 0:05:07.676 stock is doing well. They advertise on the Seinfeld Finale Wow, 0:05:07.716 --> 0:05:09.756 which is like, you don't get more nineties than that. 0:05:09.756 --> 0:05:12.596 That's like Super Bowl ad level. Yeah, oh no, I 0:05:13.116 --> 0:05:19.396 want something and yo, Gardenburger the burger and the squeals 0:05:19.476 --> 0:05:22.156 would be like, so they were big time and Samuel L. 0:05:22.236 --> 0:05:27.716 Jackson generating their kind of strange Seinfeld ad. Yeah. So 0:05:27.756 --> 0:05:31.276 the instructions say that we should heat burgers over medium 0:05:31.276 --> 0:05:34.236 for seven to eight minutes, turning burgers over frequently throughout 0:05:34.316 --> 0:05:36.316 heating time. So I got my spachelor ready, I'm going 0:05:36.356 --> 0:05:38.796 to turn the burgers periodically, and while we hang out 0:05:38.796 --> 0:05:40.956 here and cook, Jacob, why don't you continue your story? 0:05:42.236 --> 0:05:46.116 So now it's the two thousands, and the Gardenburger isn't 0:05:46.116 --> 0:05:51.476 the only mediocre veggie burger game in town anymore. There's 0:05:51.596 --> 0:05:54.396 enough competition that you can't just get by on being 0:05:54.436 --> 0:05:58.076 the one anymore. And Gardenburger eventually goes bankrupt in two 0:05:58.116 --> 0:06:00.916 thousand and five, and if I remember correctly, Kelloggs purchased 0:06:00.916 --> 0:06:03.596 garden Burger and they kept selling these patties forty years, 0:06:03.636 --> 0:06:07.316 like they just discontinued them last year. But Kelloggs also 0:06:07.356 --> 0:06:09.636 owns morning Star, which is the company that makes this 0:06:09.756 --> 0:06:12.716 Garden Burger adjacent patty that we have in the skillet 0:06:12.796 --> 0:06:15.036 right now. And it looks like it's done, actually should 0:06:15.076 --> 0:06:17.596 we Yeah? Yeah, we have ketchup, we have mustard, and 0:06:17.596 --> 0:06:21.876 then I have my burger sauce, which is basically shake 0:06:21.916 --> 0:06:24.316 shack sauce. I'm in your hands, all right, let's do 0:06:24.396 --> 0:06:28.396 the shack sauce. Then no, they don't. They don't give 0:06:28.436 --> 0:06:29.836 out the recipe for the shack sauce. But I don't 0:06:29.836 --> 0:06:31.476 know if you know the recipe developed with Kenjie Lobo 0:06:31.556 --> 0:06:44.756 salt you will not take for hamburg No, and just 0:06:44.836 --> 0:06:49.836 kind of likes that. Being said, eating this does take 0:06:49.916 --> 0:06:52.356 me back. It's had a little more of a more 0:06:52.396 --> 0:06:55.156 of a pepper taste than I remember, but just that 0:06:55.276 --> 0:06:58.036 sort of that texture, that kind of crispy edges and 0:06:58.116 --> 0:07:03.636 mushy interior. It still scratches a nostalgia itch for me. 0:07:03.676 --> 0:07:06.076 I gotta say not for me. I'd rather like eat 0:07:06.116 --> 0:07:21.236 Cheetos or something if I want nostalgia food. Garden Burger 0:07:21.276 --> 0:07:24.876 and the similar burgers. They are veggie Burger one point zero, 0:07:24.956 --> 0:07:28.876 the sort of basic puck you can eat like a 0:07:28.876 --> 0:07:31.076 burger if you don't eat meat. And so around twenty 0:07:31.276 --> 0:07:35.596 ten we get the start of this really different new 0:07:35.636 --> 0:07:42.156 era in veggie burgers. You know, the old one was hippies, vegetarians, natural. 0:07:42.596 --> 0:07:48.036 The new one is Silicon Valley high tech like engineered 0:07:48.076 --> 0:07:51.396 in a lab. And there are two companies in particular 0:07:51.476 --> 0:07:53.516 that get founded in Silicon Valley. You know what they are. 0:07:53.516 --> 0:07:56.436 Say the names I'm gonna go with Beyond Meat and 0:07:56.636 --> 0:07:59.676 Impossible Foods very good. And I have to say I 0:07:59.756 --> 0:08:01.916 have been a big customer of these companies. My wife 0:08:01.916 --> 0:08:04.796 doesn't eat meat, my daughter doesn't eat meat, and our 0:08:04.876 --> 0:08:07.996 definite preference in our house is for Impossible, And I 0:08:08.036 --> 0:08:10.556 can say I haven't tried both. I agree that I 0:08:10.676 --> 0:08:13.836 like the impossible better. So partly because of that, I 0:08:13.996 --> 0:08:18.596 talked with Pat Brown, the founder of Impossible. He does 0:08:18.676 --> 0:08:21.236 not come from a food background. He was not a chef. 0:08:21.516 --> 0:08:25.076 He was a Stanford biochemist who spend his career studying 0:08:25.076 --> 0:08:28.876 the genome. And then one day, as one does, Pat 0:08:28.916 --> 0:08:31.476 Brown thinks to himself, let me think about what are 0:08:31.516 --> 0:08:35.036 the biggest problems in the world that I might work on, 0:08:35.756 --> 0:08:38.676 And he decides not to start a podcast, but rather 0:08:39.396 --> 0:08:41.556 it decides that the biggest problems in the world are 0:08:41.756 --> 0:08:47.116 climate change and the decline in biodiversity, and he decides 0:08:47.316 --> 0:08:50.516 that the way to fight those for him personally, is 0:08:50.556 --> 0:08:54.036 to start a company that can make fake meat that's 0:08:54.076 --> 0:08:57.956 as good as real meat without using animals. And so 0:08:58.036 --> 0:09:00.956 his goal in starting this company and starting Impossible is 0:09:01.316 --> 0:09:06.676 to entirely replace real meat with fake meat. This industry 0:09:06.836 --> 0:09:09.796 is supported by people who love meat, okay, and for 0:09:09.916 --> 0:09:12.916 us to compete them out of existence, we have to 0:09:13.036 --> 0:09:15.516 give them exactly what they want and do it better 0:09:15.516 --> 0:09:18.396 than the animal I love vegetarians and vegans as much 0:09:18.436 --> 0:09:21.076 as the next guy. But we don't accomplish anything by 0:09:21.156 --> 0:09:24.916 making better meat for vegans, and that's a completely different 0:09:25.396 --> 0:09:31.156 project and it requires technology and science. Right, So he's 0:09:31.236 --> 0:09:37.236 thinking about meat as a scientist, and in particular, he 0:09:37.276 --> 0:09:39.436 thinks about all the amazing things that happen when you 0:09:39.516 --> 0:09:44.436 cook meat. One of the striking characteristics of meat in 0:09:44.476 --> 0:09:47.956 general is that it behaves like an active chemical system. 0:09:47.996 --> 0:09:52.076 It starts out with one flavor profile, which is relatively 0:09:52.236 --> 0:09:55.636 not very strong, mostly bloody kind of and when you 0:09:55.716 --> 0:09:59.276 cook it, in a matter of minutes, it completely transforms, 0:09:59.316 --> 0:10:03.676 and in the process it produces this explosion of aromas 0:10:03.676 --> 0:10:06.156 that weren't there at the beginning. That's why a barbecue 0:10:06.196 --> 0:10:10.836 smells so good, exactly exactly, and you will notice that 0:10:10.876 --> 0:10:12.956 you don't you don't get any similar behavior if you 0:10:13.236 --> 0:10:17.596 barbecue broccoli. You also don't get similar behavior when you 0:10:17.636 --> 0:10:20.556 cook a garden burger, right right, It doesn't transform. It 0:10:20.556 --> 0:10:22.916 looks at the end basically like it looks at the beginning. 0:10:23.476 --> 0:10:26.996 And so Pat Brown knows that he needs to capture 0:10:27.036 --> 0:10:30.876 that magic transformation that happens when you cook meat. And Patchman, 0:10:30.956 --> 0:10:33.156 I know you bought a couple of impossible burgers also 0:10:33.156 --> 0:10:35.036 for us. Maybe we should start cooking those here. Yeah, 0:10:35.116 --> 0:10:38.516 let's do it, right, you want to crack these open, Jacob, Yeah, 0:10:44.436 --> 0:10:49.156 we've got two impossible burgers here. And just to compare 0:10:49.196 --> 0:10:52.156 them to the garden burger, right, like the garden burger 0:10:52.196 --> 0:10:56.116 look brown like a piece of bread. These look red 0:10:56.156 --> 0:10:59.356 with little flecks of white, like ground beef. And it 0:10:59.436 --> 0:11:00.796 was also interesting to me, you know, these are all 0:11:00.796 --> 0:11:03.276 the little details the garden veggie burger. You keep it 0:11:03.276 --> 0:11:05.996 in the freezer. The instructions say keep frozen until cooking. 0:11:06.076 --> 0:11:09.436 The Impossible Burger label says, treat this just like meat. 0:11:09.556 --> 0:11:12.836 If you're gonna cook it, defrost at first. In practice, 0:11:12.876 --> 0:11:15.196 if the end result is good. In theory, it shouldn't 0:11:15.236 --> 0:11:18.276 really make a difference how it starts. But it made 0:11:18.276 --> 0:11:22.636 me feel like, oh, treat it like meat. It made 0:11:22.636 --> 0:11:30.756 it feel that much more like meat to me. That's 0:11:30.756 --> 0:11:38.636 a real sizzle. And you can see that the bottom 0:11:38.716 --> 0:11:40.836 of the burger, the part touching the pan is browning 0:11:41.156 --> 0:11:45.156 and change in color as it would for any normal burger. Right, 0:11:45.156 --> 0:11:50.276 so so it goes in red burger color. And yeah, 0:11:50.316 --> 0:11:54.596 it looks not exactly like a burger, but a lot 0:11:54.636 --> 0:11:59.876 like a burger. So, just to go back to the 0:11:59.916 --> 0:12:02.396 story of Pat Brown, he wants to capture that that 0:12:02.476 --> 0:12:06.116 incredible smell and color and texture change that you get 0:12:06.156 --> 0:12:08.476 when you cook meat. And he thinks about this molecule 0:12:08.516 --> 0:12:12.716 called right. Hem is a naturally occurring molecule. There's a 0:12:12.756 --> 0:12:14.996 ton of it in meat. We also have it. Right, 0:12:14.996 --> 0:12:17.156 You may have heard of hemoglobin in our blood. That's 0:12:17.196 --> 0:12:21.316 hematologist is a blood doctor, very good, and hem is 0:12:21.356 --> 0:12:23.516 in all animals. It's a big part of what makes 0:12:23.596 --> 0:12:26.716 meat taste like meat. So Pat Brown's going to find 0:12:26.756 --> 0:12:30.436 a way to get hem into his burgers without animals. 0:12:30.556 --> 0:12:35.036 There's a version of hem in soy, right, soy leg hemoglobin. 0:12:35.316 --> 0:12:38.996 It's a version of hem that occurs naturally in the 0:12:39.076 --> 0:12:43.276 roots of soybeans. It's very molecularly similar to the way 0:12:43.836 --> 0:12:48.876 heme occurs in meat. They decide to genetically engineer yeat 0:12:48.956 --> 0:12:53.876 cells to produce soy leg hemoglobin. So this genetically engineered 0:12:53.996 --> 0:12:59.276 version of soy leg hemoglobin works and it becomes essentially 0:12:59.276 --> 0:13:04.676 the secret sauce in impossible meat. Should I prep these up? Yeah, 0:13:05.236 --> 0:13:11.556 let's each buns, so you cut it in half. For 0:13:11.596 --> 0:13:13.956 us to split and it is what you call this 0:13:14.036 --> 0:13:16.516 medium rare medium is a little line of pink in 0:13:16.596 --> 0:13:22.676 the middle. That's right, Okay, let's see it. The fact 0:13:22.756 --> 0:13:24.916 that this thing reacts like meat from the second you 0:13:24.956 --> 0:13:27.236 take it out of the fridge, and that you can 0:13:27.276 --> 0:13:30.796 cook it medium rare, and that it's even reminiscent of 0:13:30.836 --> 0:13:36.356 a burger is pretty amazing. That being said, you still 0:13:36.356 --> 0:13:38.476 wouldn't fool me in a taste test. And can you, 0:13:39.636 --> 0:13:43.716 as a professional describer of food, like talk about why 0:13:43.756 --> 0:13:45.996 you still like the burger better. So the things that 0:13:46.036 --> 0:13:47.916 this does have. It has a little bit of a 0:13:47.956 --> 0:13:50.596 crispy edge like you get in a good burger. It 0:13:50.636 --> 0:13:53.396 has it has the texture down very well. It has 0:13:53.436 --> 0:13:55.556 a meatingness, but it's still a tenderness like you would 0:13:55.556 --> 0:14:00.236 get with a good burger. It's still missing that hardcore 0:14:00.396 --> 0:14:03.556 beef note. It's it's it's like a band without a 0:14:03.596 --> 0:14:06.956 bass player. I like it, so not bad, but the 0:14:06.996 --> 0:14:09.076 bet you kind of miss something. You miss something that's 0:14:09.836 --> 0:14:13.116 there's like a deep guttural that isn't quite there. So 0:14:13.556 --> 0:14:15.796 let's go back to the story sort of on that note. 0:14:16.076 --> 0:14:18.996 So Pat Brown is making the impossible burger that people 0:14:18.996 --> 0:14:21.476 at Beyond are making the Beyond Burger, and they come 0:14:21.476 --> 0:14:24.276 out in the teens, in the two thousand teens, and 0:14:24.276 --> 0:14:27.276 then their big moment, the real sort of rocket ship 0:14:27.596 --> 0:14:30.196 blast off, turns out to be the pandemic. It turns 0:14:30.196 --> 0:14:32.996 out to be twenty twenty. I talked about this with 0:14:33.076 --> 0:14:35.836 Laura Riley, she covers the business of food for the 0:14:35.836 --> 0:14:38.356 Washington Post. A lot of us, you know, let's say 0:14:38.436 --> 0:14:40.516 March of twenty twenty through the end of that year, 0:14:40.956 --> 0:14:42.756 a lot of us had a lot of time on 0:14:42.796 --> 0:14:46.356 our hands. We were panic eating frequently, and we were 0:14:46.356 --> 0:14:48.196 looking for new things to do, so a lot of 0:14:48.236 --> 0:14:52.276 us at least dabbled in the whole kind of alt 0:14:52.356 --> 0:14:56.396 meat space. Also, the Impossible Whopper. The Impossible Burger comes 0:14:56.396 --> 0:15:00.236 out at Burger King just before the pandemic in twenty nineteen, 0:15:00.276 --> 0:15:02.596 and during the pandemic that wound up being big for 0:15:02.676 --> 0:15:04.756 my family. Obviously we weren't going out to restaurants, but 0:15:04.876 --> 0:15:08.396 drive throughs were still open. Not everybody in my family 0:15:08.396 --> 0:15:11.556 each meet, and I have to say that is my 0:15:11.676 --> 0:15:15.156 favorite version of the Impossible Burger is the Impossible Whopper. 0:15:15.316 --> 0:15:18.356 It was pretty successful. I mean, it wasn't a smash. 0:15:18.396 --> 0:15:21.596 But what every fast food restaurant wants to do, and 0:15:21.636 --> 0:15:24.436 they've tried all different things over the year's salads, etc. 0:15:24.956 --> 0:15:27.556 They want to remove veto power. So you have a 0:15:27.596 --> 0:15:31.436 family of four and mom says, I don't feel like 0:15:31.476 --> 0:15:34.556 a burger. So you know, that's what you're always trying 0:15:34.596 --> 0:15:36.556 to do. You want to have enough menu items that 0:15:36.596 --> 0:15:39.556 you can appeal, you can find something for that person 0:15:39.596 --> 0:15:41.956 who would veto it. You know what's interesting about that 0:15:42.036 --> 0:15:45.076 is that's actually the same motivation as the garden burger. 0:15:45.316 --> 0:15:47.236 We have one person who we can't please with the 0:15:47.276 --> 0:15:49.036 regular menu, so we're going to have this thing in 0:15:49.036 --> 0:15:52.636 the freezer. And it is also not the dream of 0:15:52.916 --> 0:15:56.996 Pat Brownet impossible foods, not the dream of beyond right again, 0:15:57.156 --> 0:16:00.356 not quite there yet, but it's good enough right that 0:16:00.436 --> 0:16:03.836 in twenty twenty it's new. That is like the big 0:16:03.916 --> 0:16:06.996 boom for fake meat both you know, the impossible whopper 0:16:07.036 --> 0:16:10.836 people are buying at grocery store. Everything's great. It feels 0:16:10.876 --> 0:16:13.716 like we're in this new era of fake meat until 0:16:13.716 --> 0:16:16.396 we get to twenty twenty two, which is when everything changes. 0:16:16.596 --> 0:16:20.236 This last year is when really the kind of air 0:16:20.356 --> 0:16:23.916 starts coming out of the fake meat bubble, and you 0:16:23.996 --> 0:16:26.716 see this in a lot of different ways. One place 0:16:26.756 --> 0:16:31.116 you see it is the most important fast food restaurant, McDonald's, 0:16:31.236 --> 0:16:33.516 which in early twenty twenty two comes out with its 0:16:33.676 --> 0:16:37.956 mcplant burger, which is a collaboration with Beyond. They were 0:16:38.036 --> 0:16:40.916 massively late to the game, and they debuted it in 0:16:40.956 --> 0:16:45.036 the San Francisco Bay area, the Mcplant, and also in 0:16:45.796 --> 0:16:48.116 Dallas Fort Worth. So they roll out the mcplant in 0:16:48.196 --> 0:16:53.556 early twenty twenty two, and what happens. It bombs and 0:16:53.596 --> 0:16:57.236 they basically they cancel the mcplant. So okay, So the 0:16:57.276 --> 0:17:00.276 failure of the mcplant, that's like piece of bad news 0:17:00.316 --> 0:17:03.156 number one in twenty twenty two for this new era 0:17:03.196 --> 0:17:05.796 of fake meat. But there's more bad news. One thing 0:17:05.836 --> 0:17:09.476 that happens is just the growth really stop. Right. This 0:17:09.516 --> 0:17:11.596 sector had been growing, growing, growing at the beginning of 0:17:11.596 --> 0:17:15.676 the pandemic, and now it's not growing anymore. Essentially, one 0:17:16.436 --> 0:17:20.436 theory of why that happened is that people tried it. 0:17:20.436 --> 0:17:23.196 It was a novelty and like kind of like you, 0:17:23.316 --> 0:17:24.996 It sounds like they were like, yeah, it's pretty good, 0:17:25.036 --> 0:17:27.236 I would eat it, but I don't like it enough 0:17:27.356 --> 0:17:30.476 to keep buying it. But I actually think the most 0:17:30.596 --> 0:17:36.156 important thing that hurt fake meat last year was inflation. 0:17:36.676 --> 0:17:42.156 Food inflation was particularly high, and fake meat crucially being 0:17:42.236 --> 0:17:44.436 problem they haven't solved yet. Not only is it not 0:17:44.516 --> 0:17:47.636 quite as good as real meat, it's way more expensive, 0:17:47.916 --> 0:17:51.716 and people are feeling acutely higher prices at the grocery store. 0:17:51.956 --> 0:17:53.596 It's like, no, I'm not going to pay more for 0:17:53.636 --> 0:17:56.116 this thing that's not quite as good. Laura Riley the 0:17:56.156 --> 0:17:59.356 Washington Post reporter. She says, we do need another sort 0:17:59.396 --> 0:18:01.836 of technological leap forward, and the same way that there 0:18:01.876 --> 0:18:04.756 was a leap from the garden burger to the impossible burger, 0:18:04.836 --> 0:18:06.876 we need the next one of those. We need the 0:18:06.916 --> 0:18:10.796 next technological leap. What it's been launched so far is 0:18:10.876 --> 0:18:14.516 mostly patties or nuggets. What we need next in order 0:18:14.556 --> 0:18:16.956 to kind of grow the category is we need things 0:18:16.996 --> 0:18:19.996 that are really thought of more as ingredients, you know 0:18:19.996 --> 0:18:22.676 what I mean? Like that I'm making I'm having friends 0:18:22.676 --> 0:18:25.436 over tonight and two of them are vegged. So I'm 0:18:25.436 --> 0:18:28.396 going to make a stir fry with this plant based 0:18:28.436 --> 0:18:33.436 sliced chicken. The bowlless, skinless chicken breast is beloved by 0:18:33.516 --> 0:18:36.756 home cooks. We need to get to whole pieces of meat. Yeah, exactly, 0:18:36.796 --> 0:18:41.116 we need meat. We're coming up, Jacob. We're gonna hear 0:18:41.156 --> 0:18:44.116 about people growing meat right now, and we'll hear from 0:18:44.156 --> 0:18:46.316 my friend Sean Rama's farm who went out to California 0:18:46.356 --> 0:18:55.236 and tasted lab grown meat. Culture. You love to go 0:18:55.236 --> 0:19:10.356 to California. He's still got that edge, the no kid's edge. 0:19:10.636 --> 0:19:21.996 And now a delicious word from our sponsors. Welcome back 0:19:21.996 --> 0:19:23.956 to the sport Full. I'm Dan Pashman, and if you 0:19:23.956 --> 0:19:25.796 missed last week's show, you missed a big one. I 0:19:25.836 --> 0:19:28.556 announce that I've teamed up with Spollini once again and 0:19:28.636 --> 0:19:31.036 we have produced two new pasta shapes that are on 0:19:31.116 --> 0:19:34.116 sale right now. For these two shapes, I went deep 0:19:34.156 --> 0:19:37.156 into the pasta shape archives looking for obscure shapes that 0:19:37.196 --> 0:19:39.556 I wanted to share with the world. But before I 0:19:39.556 --> 0:19:40.996 could do that, I had to convince some of my 0:19:41.076 --> 0:19:44.796 toughest critics my family. All right, first ever tasted this 0:19:44.916 --> 0:19:50.396 new pasta shape, Quatratini. It's perfect in all three categories, 0:19:50.476 --> 0:19:55.396 like no offense to Cascatelly. I love it. I had 0:19:55.436 --> 0:19:59.196 a hope it didn't take away from Cascatelli sales, because 0:19:59.276 --> 0:20:01.236 I mean, do you think it has. It has all 0:20:01.236 --> 0:20:06.436 three right precability, sausability to think ability. There's think that's 0:20:06.476 --> 0:20:08.556 room in the world's fro more than one great pasta shape. 0:20:08.716 --> 0:20:10.956 Listen to last week's episode. Here the story of these 0:20:10.996 --> 0:20:14.316 shapes and buy them now only through Sfolini's website. That's 0:20:14.356 --> 0:20:15.876 also where you'll see a link to buy these new 0:20:16.036 --> 0:20:20.196 casketelly clutch purses limited edition by a designer named Julie Malow. 0:20:20.396 --> 0:20:23.116 They're really cool and they're just for Valentine's Day. There's 0:20:23.156 --> 0:20:24.716 only a couple of hundred of them. You can get 0:20:24.756 --> 0:20:28.996 all these things at s Folini dot com. That's sfogli 0:20:29.276 --> 0:20:33.596 Ni dot com. All right, I'm back in my kitchen 0:20:33.636 --> 0:20:36.596 with my friend and collaborator for this episode, Jacob Goldstein, 0:20:36.716 --> 0:20:39.356 host of the podcast What's Your Problem, and we're talking 0:20:39.396 --> 0:20:42.996 about the past, present, and future of alternatives. To meet 0:20:43.556 --> 0:20:45.716 now for the next and final stop on our journey, Jacob, 0:20:45.756 --> 0:20:48.276 I've been looking into cultured meat. Okay. This is where 0:20:48.316 --> 0:20:51.676 you take cells from a real animal, you take them 0:20:51.676 --> 0:20:54.956 into a lab, and you grow meat using those cells. 0:20:55.276 --> 0:20:57.836 So in theory, if it works, it will be real meat, 0:20:57.876 --> 0:20:59.916 but you won't have raised or killed an animal to 0:20:59.956 --> 0:21:03.436 get it. Now, The underlying technology here is not so new, okay. 0:21:03.476 --> 0:21:06.356 The idea of growing cells in a lab has been 0:21:06.396 --> 0:21:08.116 around for many decades. I mean, this is how they 0:21:08.116 --> 0:21:11.676 made the polio vaccine. What's new is using this technology 0:21:11.716 --> 0:21:15.596 to create something you might eat. Okay. Now, the first 0:21:15.596 --> 0:21:17.876 success with this was when a Dutch professor made a 0:21:17.956 --> 0:21:20.916 lab grown burger. That was in twenty thirteen, ten years ago, okay, 0:21:21.236 --> 0:21:23.196 ten years out in this new kind of era. Now, 0:21:23.356 --> 0:21:25.516 just in the last few months, it's got a lot 0:21:25.556 --> 0:21:27.836 more real, especially here in the US, because in November, 0:21:27.876 --> 0:21:31.516 the FDA declared cultured chicken from one company, Upside Foods, 0:21:31.636 --> 0:21:35.756 to be safe for human consumption. That's a major milestone. Now, 0:21:35.756 --> 0:21:37.236 it's still not going to be in stores quite yet. 0:21:37.276 --> 0:21:39.796 It's got to get past the USDA, and even when 0:21:39.796 --> 0:21:42.196 that happens, it's going to be you know, expensive, and 0:21:42.236 --> 0:21:44.996 in just a few places. So it's still early days. 0:21:45.676 --> 0:21:48.876 But I mean, we talked about this in the Sportfull 0:21:48.876 --> 0:21:50.876 a few years ago, and my impression then was like, 0:21:50.916 --> 0:21:53.676 this is space age stuff. So the fact that it 0:21:53.716 --> 0:21:56.716 could be coming to any kind of stores soon seems 0:21:56.716 --> 0:21:58.636 like a major development to me. I mean, I know, 0:21:58.716 --> 0:22:01.196 sort of On the business tech side, there has been 0:22:01.236 --> 0:22:04.996 a ton of a venture capital investment into fake me 0:22:05.196 --> 0:22:07.916 not just beyond and impossible, but to these kind of 0:22:07.996 --> 0:22:11.716 next generation sell culture fake meat, although I would say Jacob, 0:22:11.756 --> 0:22:14.156 I would not call it fake meat. It might not 0:22:14.276 --> 0:22:17.436 be a whole animal, but I think it's meat. And 0:22:17.516 --> 0:22:20.236 one company working on making cultured chicken and beef is 0:22:20.236 --> 0:22:22.596 called eat Just. They aren't have a product in grocery 0:22:22.596 --> 0:22:24.596 stories you may have seen called just egg. It's a 0:22:24.636 --> 0:22:27.196 plant based egg, and now they're getting in to grow 0:22:27.196 --> 0:22:28.876 in their own meat. To be clear, this is not 0:22:28.916 --> 0:22:31.156 the company that got the FDA approval, but they are 0:22:31.236 --> 0:22:33.836 one of the big players in this space. Their headquarters 0:22:33.836 --> 0:22:36.516 are in Alameda, California, just across the bridge from San Francisco. 0:22:37.116 --> 0:22:39.076 I wasn't able to visit, but my old friend Sean 0:22:39.156 --> 0:22:41.996 Ramas Farm, host of the excellent Daily News podcast Today, 0:22:42.036 --> 0:22:44.996 explained he went there and saw it himself. Here's how 0:22:44.996 --> 0:22:48.276 he describes the setup at each just there's all these tubes. 0:22:48.636 --> 0:22:53.076 There's very serious scientists hard at work. There's like big 0:22:53.236 --> 0:22:56.756 chambers and fridges and steel this and that, and rows 0:22:56.836 --> 0:23:00.396 and rows of lab equipment. It looks like, you know, 0:23:00.436 --> 0:23:03.276 there's like a billion COVID tests going on at once, 0:23:03.316 --> 0:23:06.116 with like little droplets of this going into little droplets 0:23:06.116 --> 0:23:08.996 of that. I don't know that COVID test is the 0:23:09.156 --> 0:23:11.596