Meat Wave: Skeuomorphism
It’s official: July 2021 was the single hottest month in recorded history.
From the perspective of planetary survival, our most urgent task is to drastically slow climate change, and our rapidly dwindling biodiversity. Fundamentally, we are tasked with using science and technology to produce enough food to feed and maintain the health of a growing human population, and in doing so must eliminate our dependence on animal agriculture — by multiple measures the most destructive industrialized technology in history, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, land and water use.
In recent years we’ve seen a massive wave of new plant-based food companies, focused on creating more environmentally-friendly alternatives to animal products through science and technology. Catalyzed by the dual incentives of species survival and consumer demand, we’re seeing breakthroughs in nearly every food sector — staples like meats and milks and yogurts and cheeses, made from things like oats and nuts and peas and yeast. And yet while we’re clearly moving towards a golden age of food innovation and creativity, we’re still largely in the first stage of this evolution; the bulk of our scientific and creative energy is currently focused on turning plants into foods that look and taste like familiar animal products. We are firmly in the age of culinary skeuomorphism.
