Tales of Future Past v2

With dark looks glaring across the dull-red glow of the barbeque, we present that major food group of the future and crime against nature: Fake meat. No point in skipping the veggies -- it's all veggies.

The principle is very simple, you take soya beans or other plants and extract the protein from them, which you form into a viscous suspension. You then extrude it through exactly the same sort of spinnerettes that are used to make nylon and rayon so that you end up with a skein of synthetic protein fibres. Mix this with fats, flavours, colours, and vitamins, and then you wind it and bind it into slices, cubes, or granules.

The end result: Fake meat that was spun rather than bred. By changing the consistency, thickness, and other variables different meats can be mimicked. Synthetic lamb, veal, or turkey;  it looks like meat, chews like meat, and tastes like meat-flavoured papier mâchè. But that didn't stop any number of confident predictions that we'd all be eating soya steaks or sunflower chops and that beef, pork, and chicken would be a hyper-expensive curiosity.

But things didn't quite work out. With meat more plentiful than ever, thanks to improvements in agriculture, synthetic meat is now found in the nether regions of the health food section, where it is used as aversion therapy for people who want to be vegetarian, but who know in their hearts that meat is soooooo gooood!

And if you like this, try Meat-Vej; looks and tastes just like veggies, but is 100% meat!

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