“超越肉类”和“不可思议的食物”公司 (Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods) 是地球卫士奖科学与创新类别联合获奖者。
自史前时代以来，人类就将动物作为一种基本的技术，它们能够将植物生物质转化为高价值、营养丰富的食物，包括肉类和乳制品。这些食物仍然是重要的营养来源，也是全世界数十亿人日常生活中最重要的快乐来源之一。
然而，将动物视为生产食品的某项技术，如今却使我们陷入了灾难的边缘。根据公司创始人的说法，动物农业对我们环境的破坏性影响远远超过地球上任何其他技术。
公司表示：“动物农业的温室气体足迹可以与每辆汽车、卡车、公共汽车、船舶、飞机和火箭船碳足迹总量相匹配。如果不能大规模减少动物农业的应用，就无法实现《巴黎协定》设立的气候目标。”
问题的严重性促使两位企业家采取行动。 伊森·布朗（Ethan Brown）于2009年创立了“超越肉类”公司，帕特里克·奥莱利·布朗（Patrick O'Reilly Brown）于2011年创立了“不可思议的食物”公司。他们都认为植物性肉类是未来的趋势。
创始人说，全球社区可以通过把通常摆放在餐盘中央的肉类转变成植物性肉类，来消除人们对食物系统中动物的需求。它们致力于减少人类对动物性食物的依赖的开创性工作，使让伊森·布朗和帕特里克·奥莱利·布朗荣获地球卫士奖科学和创新类别奖项。
伊森·布朗（Ethan Brown） “超越肉类”公司创始人兼CEO
在还是一个孩子的时候，伊桑·布朗就对这个问题表现出浓厚的兴趣：各个生物之间是否存在明显的差异，让我们决定哪些动物可以吃，哪些动物不能吃？当时迟迟找不到答案。
在他整个大学生涯，以及之后进入清洁能源部门工作 ，都在思考这一命题。当时，两难的问题叠加在一起：什么是解决温室气体排放的最有效方法——牲畜不是最主要的贡献者吗？大约80％的农业用地用于制作牲畜饲料或用于放牧—— 是否有更好的方法来生产蛋白质？是否某种类型的动物蛋白质，或者一定剂量的动物蛋白会对我们的健康有害？
“我不断思考以下4大问题：人类健康、气候变化、自然资源以及将动物视为肉类资源，对动物自身福利产生的影响。令我着迷的是，你可以通过简单地将肉类蛋白质来源从动物改为植物来一举解决所有这些问题。如果我们将我们的注意力转移到关注肉类的构成上 ，而不是其动物来源上，我们就会大有可为。”布朗说。
肉类是如此低效......
与顶级科学家合作，他们的团队将剔除肉类的核心成分，然后使用从植物中提取的豌豆、甜菜根、椰子油和马铃薯淀粉等成分。
“肉类由氨基酸、脂类、矿物质和水组成。动物利用它们的消化系统和肌肉系统将植被和水转化为肉。我们直接去工厂，绕过动物，通过其他材料制造肉类。我们每年都变得更好一点，并且正不懈努力，努力将植物性肉类打造地完美且难以区分。”布朗说。
“玉米、大豆和小麦在美国的农业中占主导地位。我们可以拿同一片土地直接从植物中种植蛋白质，这样我们可以更有效地利用土地，削减所需的自然资源。“
“很明显，我们今天生产肉类的方式是不可持续的。我们正在过度攫取自然资源。”布朗说。
根据密歇根大学进行的一项研究，由“超越肉类”公司生产的四分之一磅的汉堡，相较牛肉汉堡，所需用水减少99％、用地减少93％、温室气体排放减少90%、能源减少46%。
“我们相信，通过将目前专门用于动物饲料的种植面积转换为可直接用于可供人类消费的植物肉类形式的蛋白质作物，我们可以美国国内及其他国家的乡村实现效率的改变，急需的创新和可持续的经济增长。
帕特里克·奥莱利·布朗（Patrick O'Reilly Brown）“不可思议的食物”公司创始人兼CEO
作为2009年斯坦福大学国家医学院院士和生物化学教授，布朗专门请假进行学术研究。他想评估哪些全球问题最紧迫，哪些可以得到解决。
用动物作为食物占人类土地足迹的绝大部分。世界上所有的建筑物、道路和铺砌的表面占地球陆地面积的比例不到1％，而地球陆地面积的45％以上用作放牧或种植牲畜饲料作物的土地。
布朗说，除非我们迅速采取行动减少或消除动物作为食品系统技术的使用，否则我们正在走向生态灾难。 “不可思议的食物”公司有一个雄心勃勃的目标：减少人类对全球环境的破坏性影响，取代动物作为食品生产技术的使用，并在2035年以后不再将动物作为食品生产技术。
“到目前为止，对我来说最紧迫的问题是使用动物作为食品生产技术—— 地球上最具破坏性的技术，”他说。布朗对于破坏现状并不陌生，他已经通过建立公共科学图书馆（PLOS）改变了科学出版系统。
让肉更好
“如果我学到了一件事，那就是全球出现的大问题从来不是别人的责任。想通过恳求消费者吃豆类和豆腐代替肉和鱼，这一问题是无法得到解决的。而仅仅找到一种更好的制作肉类的方法也是远远不够的；为了成功，我们需要制造世界上最好的肉类。“
该团队有一个重要发现：“神奇成分”血红素 - 一种含铁分子，存在于每种动物和植物的每个细胞中。它负责肉的独特风味和香气。
布朗和他的团队发现，通过在酵母细胞中添加植物基因，它们可以产生无限量的血红素，只有一小部分对环境产生影响。“不可思议的食物”公司生产的汉堡相较普通的牛肉汉堡，少用75％的水、95％的土地、少排放约87％的温室气体。
“基于我们所学到的一切，毫无疑问，将动物作为食品生产技术的使用很快就会过时。直接从植物中制作肉类不仅对环境的破坏性小得多，而且可以使肉类更加美味、健康、多样化、价格合理。制作世界上最好的肉类，让消费者推动变革。”
The magnitude of our food system problem has prompted two entrepreneurs to take action. Ethan Brown founded Beyond Meat in 2009 and Patrick O’Reilly Brown founded Impossible Foods in 2011. Both believe that plant-based meat is the future.
According to Brown and O. Brown, the greenhouse gas footprint of animal agriculture rivals that that of every car, truck, bus, ship, airplane, and rocket ship combined. Beef, the most commonly consumed meat requires “20 times more land and [emits] 20 times more GHGs per gram of edible protein than common plant proteins, such as beans, peas and lentils.” There is no pathway to achieve The Paris Climate Agreement’s objectives without a massive decrease in the scale of animal agriculture.
Brown and O. Brown argue that the global community can eliminate the need for animals in the food system by shifting the protein at the centre of the plate to plant-based meat. For their pioneering work towards reducing our dependence on animal-based foods, they have been selected 2018 Champions of the Earth in the category of science and innovation.
Ethan Brown, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Beyond Meat
As a child, Ethan Brown became interested in the question: what are the meaningful biological differences that justify which animals we eat, and which we don’t? The dilemma stuck.
It gnawed at him through university and into his work in the clean energy sector. By then, this dilemma had been joined by questions: what’s the most effective way to tackle greenhouse gas emissions – and are livestock major contributors? Roughly 80 per cent of agricultural land is used to make livestock feed or for grazing– is there a better way to produce protein? Are certain amounts and types of animal protein harmful for our health?
“These four things kept coming back to me: human health, climate change, natural resource, and animal welfare implications of using animals for meat. And what fascinated me is that you can simultaneously tackle all these concerns by simply changing the protein source for meat from animals to plants. If we shift our thinking to focus on the composition of meat versus its animal origin, we have a huge canvas to work from,” said Brown.
Unsustainable production
Working with top scientists, their teams strip down the core components of meat and extract them from plants instead, using ingredients like peas, beetroot, coconut oil and potato starch.
“Meat is composed of amino acids, lipids, minerals and water. Animals use their digestive and muscular systems to convert vegetation and water into meat,” said Brown. “We’re going straight to the plant, bypassing the animal and building meat directly. We get better every year and are on a relentless march toward that perfect and indistinguishable build of meat from plants.”
In 2018, Beyond Meat commissioned The Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan to conduct an environmental assessment study of its plant-based burger patty. The study revealed that a quarter-pound Beyond Burger requires 99 per cent less water, 93 per cent less land and generates 90 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, using 46 per cent less energy to produce in the U.S. than its beef equivalent.
“What’s clear is that the way we produce meat today is not sustainable. We are pushing limits on both natural resources and atmosphere,” said Brown. “We believe that by transitioning acreage currently dedicated to animal feed into protein crops that can be used directly for human consumption in the form of meat from plants, we can bring a step-change in efficiency, much needed innovation, and sustainable economic growth to rural economies here in the US and abroad.”
Dr. Patrick O. Brown, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Impossible Foods
A Member of the National Academy of Medicine and Professor of biochemistry at Stanford University , O. Brown took a sabbatical in 2009. He wanted to assess which global problems are the most urgent and which he could help solve.
Using animals for food makes up the vast majority of the land footprint of humanity. All the buildings, roads and paved surfaces in the world occupy less than one per cent of Earth’s land surface, while more than 45 per cent of the land surface of Earth is used as land for grazing or growing feed crops for livestock.
Unless we act quickly to reduce or eliminate the use of animals as technology in the food system, O. Brown reasoned, we are racing toward ecological disaster. Impossible Foods has an ambitious goal: to reduce humanity’s destructive impact on the global environment, replacing the use of animals as a food production technology and eliminate animals as a food-production technology by 2035.
“By far the most urgent problem to me was the use of animals as a food production technology – the most destructive technology on earth,” he said. O. Brown is no stranger to disrupting the status quo, already having transformed the scientific publishing system by founding the Public Library of Science (PLOS).
Making Meat Better
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that big global problems are not someone else’s responsibility. This problem wasn’t going to be solved by pleading with consumers to eat beans and tofu instead of meat and fish. And it wouldn’t be enough just to find a better way to make meat; to succeed we would need to make the best meat in the world.”
The team made an important discovery: the “magic ingredient” heme - an iron-containing molecule that occurs naturally in every cell of every animal and plant. It is responsible for the unique flavours and aromas of meat.
O. Brown and his team found that by adding a plant gene to yeast cells, they could produce heme in unlimited quantities, with a tiny fraction of the environmental impact. The Impossible Burger requires approximately 75 per cent less water and 95 per cent less land, generating about 87 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions than beef burgers.
“Based on all we’ve learned, there's no question that the use of animals as a food-production technology will soon be obsolete. Making meat directly from plants is not only far less destructive to the environment, but it will enable meat to be more delicious, healthy, diverse, and affordable,” said O. Brown. “Create the best meat in the world, let consumer choice drive the change and the use of animals as food technology will soon be a fading memory,” he added.
Editor’s Note:
The title of this story has been changed and some of the data has been updated.
