IF IT TASTES LIKE MEAT, IT'S MEAT:

Meat production chews up land and spews out methane by the kiloton, accounting for about two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. A University of Oxford study recently found that, to keep global warming below 2 degrees this century, we need to be eating 75 percent less beef and 90 percent less pork globally. "Without concentrated change, we really risk exceeding key environmental limits," Marco Springmann, one of the Oxford researchers, warns me. [...]

Still, even the most uncanny substitutes for meat face an uphill slog if they're going to replace 75 to 90 percent of beef and pork. The first taste of an Impossible Burger--a moment when low expectations work a powerful magic in the product's favor--is one thing. But how do you keep meat-eaters asking for more after their sixth, and their 26th?

Fortunately, the science here is firing on all pistons. Impossible Foods owes much of its appeal to a bioengineering process that cranks out big, blood-red tanks of "heme," a crucial molecule that gives veggie meat "that slightly metallic bloody flavor," as David Lipman, chief science officer of Impossible Foods, tells me. Meanwhile, "cultured meat," created by growing actual animal cells in a vat, is moving toward viability. In New York, the nerds at Ocean Hugger Foods have engineered a process to transform tomatoes into mock tuna. And over in the Netherlands, a company called The Vegetarian Butcher is developing a Nespresso-style device: You pour in a bag of vegetable protein and out pops fabricated meat. The company aims to release it in two years.

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