In 1968, the editor of a food industry magazine envisioned a virtually meatless future — starting in 1972. His prediction appeared in the Minneapolis Star, under the banner of “Women’s News” and adjacent to ads on hair removal, a nail-hardening product and an “Exquisite Form panty girdle”:

Meat on Table Will Not
Be Meat at All in About
Five Years, Editor Says

The meat on the family table will not always be meat, and the American housewife will think nothing of this, says the editor of Food Products Development magazine.

Richard McCormick, whose magazine reports new developments in food research, explained in an interview that many “meats” sold on the market in about five years will not be real meat, but synthetic protein products made from vegetable sources like soybeans.

	Meat was quite popular back in 1968. These cattle were being fed as part of a research project at International Milling’s Supersweet Feeds Division farm in Courtland, Minn. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

McCormick, who was in the Twin Cities over the weekend to speak at the Minnesota Hotel and Motor Hotel Association’s 50th annual convention, said food scientists are now able to isolate many of the elements that contribute to the taste, smell and texture of foods.

By putting this knowledge to work, they will eventually be able to produce vegetable-protein meats that will be nutritionally superior to those that come from cattle, hog or chicken, McCormick said.

“Of course we still like our beefsteak, and I imagine we would always want animal cuts for things like that, or a special occasion,” said McCormick. “But hamburger, for example, can be produced far more efficiently by synthetic methods.”

The vegetable-protein meats, said McCormick, would keep much longer than animal-cut meats. One food company, he said, is now working on a bacon made from soybeans which could be kept at room temperature. It will, he said, contain the same nutrients as bacon, but will be even more valuable nutritionally because it will have less fatty content.

McCormick said he believed the synthetic foods would win acceptance easily once the American consumer, who is very concerned with nutrition and health, realizes their nutritional benefits.

He estimated that such foods would be widely offered on the market in another five years. Synthetics, he said, already are being incorporated into a number of foods.

Research scientists, McCormick said, also are working with more efficient, less costly methods of producing dehydrated foods. The research, he said, is aimed at transforming many perishable foods into forms that will keep longer and under many different conditions.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Gadgets, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.