Posted yesterday at 4:00 p.m.
If meat is part of our culinary heritage, its hegemony is coming to an end, believes Sylvain Charlebois. In his most recent essay, the agri-food expert draws the contours of the future of our diet, which will be rich in vegetable proteins… and perhaps even crickets!
Ground beef or Beyond Meat? No need to choose sides. Since it is not in a protein trench warfare that the senior director of the Laboratory of Analytical Sciences in Agrifood at Dalhousie University invites us with The Protein Revolution – Saving the planet one meal at a time. As if to avoid being reproached for any bias, he specifies from the outset that he is an omnivore who, “if he is a lover of meat, eggs and good cheese”, also savors “willingly, on occasion , a good vegetarian meal”.
In fact, he’s no different than many consumers, not yet ready to skip the butcher’s counter at the grocery store, but concerned about the impact of their food choices on their health, wallet, environment and animal welfare. But how many are ready to make the leap to a vegetarian diet? According to a Dalhousie University survey conducted in 2021, “91% of Canadians consume meat, and more than 60% of them eat it at least four times a week”. We are far from the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which, in its most recent report, suggested that Canadians limit themselves to one meat-based meal per week.
The revolution is underway, but it is still mild in the kitchens. For how much longer ? Beef volume sales at grocery stores have fallen more than 6% since the middle of 2021, the author points out. The global vegetable protein market could double by 2026, according to a report by the Market Data Forecast group.
For Sylvain Charlebois, there is no doubt that a transition to vegetable proteins is beginning, not without clashing with the meat industry, which has significant economic and political weight, and meat producers who are attached to their products and are pillars of the rural economy.
“What are we going to do with our producers and all this cultivable land, which will not all be devoted to other vegetable crops? asks Sylvain Charlebois.
This essay names a few issues raised by the transformation of our plate, but to go deeper into the subject, we will have to look elsewhere. Rather, the author takes a look at the evolution of our eating habits, through numerous data and brief reviews of the various crises that have shaken this sector (mad cow disease, listeriosis at Maple Leaf and E.coli at XL Foods).
The book also invites us to start thinking about the impact of our choices and offers an overview of what we will consume in the coming years. Vegetable proteins, yes, but laboratory meat is also at our doorstep. Cellular agriculture will be the next revolution in our diet, predicts Sylvain Charlebois. In Singapore, it is already possible to eat chicken meat created in the laboratory from stem cells. The future is not so far away.
Extract
Of course, many farmers resist and consider that the incomprehension of city dwellers towards agriculture leads to derision. The omnivores among us also resist and claim that some detractors are exaggerating. Maybe, but the tsunami of plant proteins indicates that our collective relationship with animals is changing. Either way, by recognizing the heterogeneity of the protein market, we will allow the industry to innovate and offer something different.
Who is Sylvain Charlebois?
Sylvain Charlebois is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He also directs the Agri-Food Analytical Sciences Laboratory at Dalhousie University. He is also the author of putin nationpublished in 2021, and regularly writes columns in The Press.
The Protein Revolution – Saving the planet one meal at a time
Sylvain Charlebois
Editions de l’Homme
208 pages