In a shiny stainless steel test kitchen nestled in Silicon Valley, a food scientist is preparing a hopefully sensational meatless burger. As the spatula glides in beneath the hot surface of the pink, fleshy patty fat sizzles around its seared edges. Once flipped, the delicious meaty aromas practically make the mouth water. Deep red juice bleeds from the raw side of the burger patty…
…Wait? What? It bleeds?…
Why is it necessary for a vegan protein burger to bleed, you might be asking yourself? Isn’t the whole point of going meat-free to want to get away from anything associated with eating a living creature?
Willing and eager vegetarians (including vegans) only make up a maximum of 20% of any given country’s population, with some nations still as low as 1.5%. Here, of course, India is the exception falling in closer to between 30 and 40% as, for them, it’s intricately linked to the Hindu faith. These majority of vegetarian and vegan individuals have chosen a path of meat-free food consumption for many good reasons. Some choose not to eat meat because they believe all animals are sentient and shouldn’t be sacrificed for our appetite. Some feel the process of animal farming has become fast, ruthless and cruel in its endeavour to feed the insatiable demand for meat. Others choose to cut out meat due to the environmental impact of agriculture and farming and the rapid rate at which it’s damaging and depleting earth’s resources. And yet others do so for the detrimental health effects on the body incurred by consuming an acidifying animal protein based diet. In India, it’s largely a religious pursuit. They are all powerful, valid reasons. But most vegans or vegetarians in my circle have said that arriving at the desire to follow a plant-based lifestyle was a compulsion that came from within. It just suddenly made sense one day to do so, for whatever reasons were compelling enough to their moral compass. So, for many of them, a bleeding patty might actually be too close for comfort.
But with meat eaters still making up the lion’s share of food consumers, you can practically hear the planet groaning under the weight of our societies carnivorous appetite. Which begs the question – what if there simply isn’t enough time for all the earth’s beef consumers to willingly arrive at the point where they choose a meat-free diet for all or any of the above-mentioned reasons?