Review of MEAT by Bruce Friedrich

Bruce Friedrich’s new book, MEAT, is a deeply thoughtful, pragmatic, and hope-inspiring story about alternative proteins. In his role as the Founder and President of the Good Food Institute, Bruce is uniquely positioned to give an insider’s account of how far plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cultivated meat have come, and where they are likely to go from here.

The book’s publication comes at what seems to be a critical junction for alternative proteins. Several years of exponential growth in sales of plant-based meat and investment in cultivated meat have given way to a period of uncertainty for both. MEAT is a timely and compelling reminder that the fundamental reasons why these innovations are needed are as relevant today as they have ever been. More than that, it is a case for optimism.

In the first section, Friedrich makes an extremely thorough and well-evidenced case for meat alternatives in terms of global food security, climate change, antibiotic resistance, and pandemic prevention. As a vegan who is totally on board with the moral case for alternative proteins, I found myself waiting for the chapter containing grizzly descriptions of factory farming, but it never came. 

The book is the opposite of sanctimonious. Personally, I don’t mind a bit of sanctimony on this topic, but Friedrich (probably wisely) opts instead to detail the scientific case for alternative proteins, with which few can argue. You don’t need to be an animal person to come along on the journey here – just somebody who would rather not see half the world starving while the other half contracts preventable diseases in the midst of ecological collapse.

Indeed, many animal people might not be happy with one of the key arguments in the second section: it is very, very difficult to get people to stop eating meat. The global hunger, climate, and public health arguments in the first section have thus far failed to produce a significant increase in vegetarianism or veganism. From the evidence that I’ve seen, the animal case tends to be the most compelling – but even then, a recent meta-analysis concluded that we lack any interventions which consistently lead to a significant long-term reduction in meat consumption. As Friedrich argues, this is mainly because food choices are primarily driven by taste and price, not ethics. This bad news is important context for some much-needed hopium on the topics of plant-based and cultivated meat.

On plant-based meat, Friedrich makes a compelling case for “blended” products which contain plant-based and conventional meat. Such products are not aimed at vegans like myself, but could indeed be an effective tool for reducing the problems with conventional meat production by getting plant-based products much closer to taste parity with a fraction of the animal inputs.

On cultivated meat, Friedrich argues convincingly that there are no inherent scientific barriers to reaching cost competitiveness with conventional meat. Given that the cutting edge of cultivated meat technology often consists of closely-guarded secrets within private companies, the head of an industry-adjacent non-profit like the Good Food Institute might be one of the best-positioned people to judge the likely cost trajectory based on the totality of the science across these companies. Indeed, many of the barriers thought to make price parity for cultivated meat impossible have already been proven wrong, with products already reaching lower unit costs than some critics expected. 

The third section of the book looks at how innovation has played out in other industries, defying analysts’ pessimistic predictions about products including artificial ice (freezers) and artificial horses (cars). Friedrich makes the case for government involvement in pushing alternative proteins forward, just as they have pushed forward renewable energy. 

After years of significant investment, China now dominates the world in energy production – and Israel and Singapore are lining up to dominate the world in protein production. A scarcity of agricultural land and overreliance on food imports has accelerated investment in alternative proteins in these countries, and they now have the highest number of alternative protein companies per capita in the world. Israel and Singapore understand that food security means national security, and in an increasingly uncertain world, we should not be surprised to see other countries following suit.

I highly recommend reading MEAT to anybody who is interested in learning more about a long lever for solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. Even those who are already familiar with alternative proteins will learn something from this well-researched and comprehensive book.