Get Over Your All-Natural Self

Stop freaking out about technology in your food. We'll need it to save the climate.

You’re probably reading this on a wireless device that gives you instant access to all the world’s knowledge, plus a phone you can use to call anyone on Earth, an awesome video camera, a flashlight, and by the way it will help you find it if you lose it. You’re also probably at least a little bit freaked out by the concept of technology in your food.

My latest column is about why you should get over it.

I get why Jimmy Fallon was grossed out by the idea of growing meat from animal cells, and even why the nutrition guru Marian Nestle said on Climavores that she’s irrationally biased against meat engineered from plants, But how natural is the meat you currently eat from slaughtered animals that were bred to grow absurdly fast and then crammed into absurdly crowded feedlots where they were pumped full of antibiotics while they ate ungodly amounts of GMO grain? My column is about how we’re going to need plant-based meat, cultivated meat, and all kinds of futuristic genetic engineering to grow enough food to feed humanity without frying the planet.

Anyway, happy Veganuary! The food and climate stuff I write about would be simple if everyone just went vegan, but it turns out to be hard to change hearts and minds, so we’re going to have to change our food. I tell the story about how the ASPCA was founded in the 19th century to protect urban carriage horses - it clamored for shorter working hours and more watering stations - before Henry Ford, who didn’t care how horses were treated, solved all their problems (and cleaned up the manure-choked streets) by inventing a horse-free form of transportation that consumers liked better. I got to spend some time last month with some of the Henry Fords of the food-tech industry, and I have a lot more confidence in their ingenuity than our morality.

Another fun thing about the column is I got to quote my Climavores co-host, Tamar Haspel. Have you subscribed? It’s fun, I promise. Here’s our latest mailbag episode—about grass-fed beef, plastic straws, local food, all kinds of cool stuff.