Often you'll hear that as Europe goes, so goes America . . . a few years later.  Having just been there for three weeks, I was amazed at the preponderance of fake meat in the media and in the food sector.

In the Netherlands, where the government pays to dehydrate manure and ship it to South America, the antipathy toward animal agriculture grows every day.  In the U.S., the main backlash is due to animal welfare issues, spearheaded by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).  But in Europe, it's more a pollution issue than an animal rights issue.  The Dutch use factory farming way more aggressively than the U.S.

The arguments criticizing animal agriculture have merit IF we assume industrial production orthodoxy.  In addition to the vegetarian and vegan movements, the fake meat movement now offers a wonderful bridge:  you can have your cake and eat it too, or in this case, you can eat meat but nobody had to raise it, smell it, or kill it.

Now is the time to introduce you to one of my favorite sources for good material:  Diana Rodgers, Registered Dietician.  But she's no ordinary orthodox dietician.  She's an absolute heretic and that's why I like her stuff.  In a recent post about this issue, she offered this quotation:   I love this quote by Dana Perls, “Instead of investing in risky new food technologies that are potential problems masquerading as solutions, shouldn’t we be investing in proven, beneficial, regenerative agriculture and transparent, organic food that consumers are actually demanding?”

You will no doubt see me refer to Diana Rodgers from time to time.  She is putting together a documentary titled "Kale Vs. Cow."  It's not themed against fake meat, but it does present the case for how important real meat is in human nutrition and for the planet.  While I was in Europe, I learned about an outfit that took one cell from one chicken feather, put it in a vat of processed soybeans and other nutrients, and grew fake chicken meat.  It's all the rage.

All I have time for today on this issue is the following warning:  the folks pushing fake meat are of the same tribe, the same worldview, the same mechanistic paradigm toward life, the same textbooks, the same schools, the same degrees, the same credentials, the same underwriters as the ones who told us to use hydrogenated vegetable oil, anti-microbial soap, feed dead cows to cows, DDT, anti-breast feeding, genetically modified organisms, nano-particles in our blood vessels, and indiscriminate drug use.  Is it out of order to question?

Have you tried fake meat lately?