Plantbased

Part of Back to the Future, from The Highlight, Vox’s home for ambitious stories that explain our world. This much is true: Production and consumption of meat is an environmental and ethical catastrophe. And we keep eating more of it, with enormous consequences. There’s climate change and the environment: Almost 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions can be traced back to livestock, while in the US alone, air pollution from meat production…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The messy morality of letting AI make life-and-death decisions In a workshop in the Netherlands, Philip Nitschke is overseeing testing on his new assisted suicide machine. Sealed inside the coffin-sized pod, a person who has chosen to die must answer three questions: Who are you? Where are you? And do you know what will happen when you press that button? The machine…

It's no secret that herbicides can be harmful to the environment, plus they're costly, and weeds may develop a resistance to them. New research now suggests that farmers could get the same weed-killing results from a hot biodegradable foam.In the past, scientists have tried killing weeds by scalding them with steam and/or hot water. This approach has only met with limited success, however, due to the fact that the heat simply escaped into the atmosphere before much of it was transferred into the weeds. What was needed was…

Plant-based meat is believed to have a smaller climate impact than conventional meat.Although plant-based “beef” may reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it also threatens 1.5 million agricultural jobs. The use of plant-based beef substitutes has the potential to lower carbon dioxide emissions, but recent economic developments indicate that this trend might disrupt the agricultural workforce and jeopardize more than 1.5 million jobs in the sector.According to new research from Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain The UK's craving for meat is not affected by campaigns for plant-based alternatives, according to new research by the University of Surrey. The study looked…

40% of conventional meat products were classified as “less healthy” compared to just 14% of plant-based alternatives according to recent research.New benefits of plant-based meats discovered.According to the authors of a new study, plant-based dietary substitutes for animal products are healthier for both the environment and people than the animal products they are meant to replace.According to a recent paper published in Future Foods, these foods are a much more effective way of reducing demand for meat and dairy than…

The vegan food market was pegged as a $27 billion industry last year, a figure that’s expected to more than double within a decade. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major food and beverage incumbents such as Nestlé, which launched a plant-based dairy line under the Wunda brand last year, while rival Unilever has been doubling down on its vegan offerings. But any company looking to develop successful plant-based food alternatives often face challenges when trying to replicate certain goods…

It’s hard to stand out in the world of plant-based meats, but Juicy Marbles is trying to do so by attempting to replicate not just a steak but also one of the higher-end cuts: the filet mignon. When the company reached out to The Verge asking if we wanted to try its steaks, its promises of a tender filet that’s marbled and cooks like a real steak caught my attention, as someone who swore off eating meat for two years (but who still gets a little jealous of the delicious-looking things my wife eats). The price also…

There are lightweight electric bikes and then there are really lightweight e-bikes. But the new Hummingbird Flax folding e-bike is even lighter than those. At just 22 lb. (10 kg), this plant-based e-bike isn’t just friendly to your back – it’s apparently vegan-friendly as well. A plant-based e-bike? The company says that the Hummingbird Flax is the lightest folding electric bike in the world. That prize is thanks largely to its novel frame design. Constructed of flax fiber, the e-bike uses a sustainable…

Another way to figure out the impact plant-based meats are having is to look at how price changes impact the demand for various kinds of meat. A study of retail data from a couple of years ago showed that when the price of plant-based meats went down, demand for them went up, but when the price of animal meats fluctuated, demand for those products didn’t fluctuate as widely. The study also found that rather than displacing red meat, plant-based meats tended to be bought alongside beef and pork and usually seemed to be a…