为什么植物性肉类风靡一时

为什么植物性肉类风靡一时

There's never been a better time to cut meat out of your life or at least limit it significantly.

要从你的生活中去除肉类，没有比现在更好的时候了，或者至少可以有效限制它。

There's a plethora of meat substitutes on the market, some more affordable than others, but all with a lower environmental impact than meat produced from cows and pigs. In the '90s, I was usually unable to find anything to eat at many restaurants aside from French fries or a salad. But the widespread acceptance and availability of tasty plant-based foods has been nothing short of a miracle.

市场上有大量的肉类替代品，有些比其他的更便宜，但都比牛和猪生产的肉对环境的影响更低。在90年代，我在很多餐厅除了炸薯条和沙拉外，通常找不到任何吃的东西。但是人们对美味的植物性食物的广泛接受和可获得性可以说是一个奇迹。

These tacos are made with jackfruit, one of a variety of base ingredients behind ever-more-popular plant-based meats. (Photo: shellygraphy/Shutterstock)

Meat consumption overall and per-capita is still rising as population increases, so actual reductions in meat-eating on a large scale have yet to happen. But more people seem concerned about eating less meat as the connections between industrial meat production and climate change have become more obvious. The long-term trend may be reduced meat eating — and the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated that trend. Nielsen reported that in the two-month period ending May 2, sales of alternative-meats in grocery stores increased by 264%.

随着人口的增长，肉类的总消费量和人均消费量仍在上升，因此，肉类消费的实际大幅减少还没有发生。但随着工业化肉类生产与气候变化之间的联系变得越来越明显，越来越多的人似乎担心少吃肉。长期趋势可能是减少吃肉，而冠状病毒大流行加速了这一趋势。尼尔森报告说，在截至5月2日的两个月里，杂货店里替代肉类的销售额增加了264%。

That's in part due to the disturbing stories of meatpacking facilities closed because they're located in coronavirus hotspots. Nearly 60% of the employees at one Tyson plant in Iowa, and almost 50% at another tested positive for the virus. A pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is in another virus hotspot — and 5% of the nation's pork moved through that particular plant. At least 20 meat-processing plant workers have died from coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The reason these numbers are so high is directly related to the work of slaughtering and processing animals, which makes physical distancing difficult for workers. Also, to keep industrial meat cheap, the working poor make up most of the employees of these plants, and they endure crowded living and transportation conditions — the perfect environment for coronavirus.

这部分是由于令人不安的故事，肉类加工厂关闭，因为他们位于冠状病毒热点地区。爱荷华州泰森食品公司一家工厂近60%的员工和另一家工厂近50%的员工被检测出埃博拉病毒呈阳性。南达科他州苏福尔斯的一家猪肉加工厂是另一个病毒高发区，全国5%的猪肉都是通过这家工厂运输的。据美国疾病控制与预防中心(CDC)称，至少有20名肉类加工厂工人死于冠状病毒。这些数字如此之高的原因与屠宰和加工动物的工作直接相关，这使得工作人员很难保持身体距离。此外，为了保持工业肉类价格低廉，这些工厂的大部分员工都是穷人，他们忍受着拥挤的生活和交通条件——这是应对冠状病毒的完美环境。

Changing habits

改变习惯

Expectations about how animas that provide meat and dairy products should live are changing, too. (Photo: koi88/Shutterstock)

But the rise in consumption of alt-meats might have less to do with climate-change guilt and more to do with all the tasty alternatives that people have been buying during the pandemic. There are veggie-based cold-cuts (hard to tell the difference when they're stacked on a sandwich), mycoprotein chicken nuggets, tofu hot dogs, red-meat substitutes like Impossible Burgers that "bleed" heme (though I liked these better as meatballs than a burger, personally). And of course there's a variety of dairy-free cheeses in all kinds of tasty formulations, far beyond those mock American cheese slices. My favorites are made by Treeline, especially the soft spreadable cheeses, which layer beautifully with fresh veggies, pickles, and onions for a killer sandwich.

但是，人们对另类肉类消费的增加可能与气候变化的罪责关系不大，更多的是与人们在流感大流行期间购买的所有美味替代品有关。有以素食为基础的冷盘(放在三明治上很难分辨)、菌蛋白鸡块、豆腐热狗，以及像“流血”血红素的不可能的汉堡这样的红肉替代品(尽管我个人更喜欢这些肉丸而不是汉堡)。当然，在各种美味的配方中也有各种各样的不含牛奶的奶酪，远远超过那些模仿的美国奶酪片。我最喜欢的是用Treeline做的，尤其是柔软的奶酪，它可以和新鲜蔬菜、泡菜和洋葱完美地搭配在一起，做成美味的三明治。

The growing popularity of plant-based foods is good news for the long-term. The coronavirus will have plenty of lasting negative impacts, but a very real, positive one could be a reduction in the greenhouse gases and the water pollution these operations produce. As Jonathan Safran Foer wrote in The New York Times, "Whether they become Whoppers or boutique grass-fed steaks, cows produce an enormous amount of greenhouse gas. If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world."

从长远来看，植物性食品越来越受欢迎是个好消息。冠状病毒会有很多持续的负面影响，但一个非常真实、积极的影响可能是减少温室气体和这些操作产生的水污染。正如乔纳森·萨夫兰·福尔在《纽约时报》上所写的那样，“无论牛变成了庞然大物还是食草的精品牛排，牛都会产生大量的温室气体。”如果奶牛是一个国家，它们将是世界上第三大温室气体排放国。”

It's interesting that as we've had more time to think about what we eat during our stay-at-home moment, vegetarian foods have gained popularity. That's good for our health, and the planet's. It's also good for the animals — not just the cows that are killed to make burgers, but wildlife as well. Ranchers notoriously shoot wolves, coyotes, and other predators when those animals do what comes naturally, which includes hunting cows if they're in their range, doubling the animal body count of that steak. And outside the United States, "Cattle ranching is the largest driver of deforestation in every Amazon country, accounting for 80% of current deforestation rates," according to Yale's Global Forest Atlas.

有趣的是，当我们有更多的时间来思考我们在家吃什么时，素食变得流行起来。这对我们的健康和地球的健康都有好处。这对动物也有好处——不仅仅是被杀来做汉堡的牛，还有野生动物。牧场主们以射杀狼、郊狼和其他食肉动物而臭名昭著，当这些动物做它们天生该做的事情时，包括在它们的活动范围内猎杀牛，这使得牛排的数量翻了一番。在美国之外，“畜牧业是所有亚马逊国家森林砍伐的最大驱动力，占当前森林砍伐率的80%，”耶鲁大学的全球森林地图集显示。

Only time will tell if this recent uptick in plant-based food buying continues, but here's hoping it does — especially for the world's children, who will inherit a planet transformed by human desire for a cheap burger.

只有时间才能告诉我们，最近植物性食品购买量的上升是否会继续下去，但我们希望它会继续下去——尤其是对世界上的儿童来说，他们将继承一个被人类对廉价汉堡的渴望改变了的星球。