The chicken-less egg & Bill Gates

The L.A. Times recently asked – and answered: “What happens when Bill Gates attacks world hunger? Chicken-less eggs.” In the article, they describe how Gates (founder of Microsoft) is now turning his philanthropic attention to world hunger. And one of his approaches is to encourage meat substitutes, “Raising meat takes a great deal of land and water and has a substantial environmental impact,” writes Gates. “Put simply, there’s no way to produce enough meat for 9 billion people.” 

So, as one of his projects, he is supporting a company called Hampton Creek Foods, which “focuses on creating plant-based, soy and gluten-free alternatives to eggs.” Among their products are Beyond Eggs (to be used in cookies), Just Mayo (which uses pea protein), and Just Scramble (for scrambled eggs, not yet released). 

The Times does note that there are other egg substitutes on the market, “The company may have Bill Gates’ attention, but other egg replacements already exist on the market. Bob’s Red Mill makes an egg replacer powder from whole soy flour, wheat gluten, corn syrup solids and Algin, and Ener-G egg replacer is made with potato starch, tapioca flour, leavening, cellulose gum and modified cellulose.”

While there is no question that curing world hunger is more than admirable, and there are strong arguments for being conscious about our meat consumption, we have to wonder if pursuing food made in a laboratory is really the way to go. As Michel Pollan writes in Food Rules, “Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce” and this still seems to make a lot of sense.

Photo courtesy of Chefinyou.com.