It’s hard to believe it has been a year since we first wrote about plant-based and cell-cultivated meats at The Tenpenny Report. We investigated what Bill Gates was up to; (why is he always involved in food-related matters?) We also told the story of the Italian senate pushing back against lab-engineered meat. On this substack I wrote about eating bugs, part 1 here and part 2 here.
Of course, eating meat – or not – is linked to the climate change agenda. This is certainly the main driver for developing “alternative meat” because methane gas from farting cows is going to destroy the planet (eyes rolling).
What’s been going on in the last year? The Tenpenny Report deferred to guest author Jon Fleetwood for details on this issue. Be sure to read his substack here.
Last year, our article on the Impossible Burger mentioned startup companies like Upside Foods and Believer Meats, but Fleetwood found a stunning new development: the Pentagon is investing in lab-grown meat.
Launched in 2021, BioMADE is a U.S. research institute formed to find ways to mitigate the consequences of global climate change. Last year (2023), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) increased BioMADE’s research budget from $87.5 million to over $500 million.
This in not the first time the government has used millions of taxpayer dollars to fund the fake meat industry. Recall Barack Obama’s 2010 failed green energy projects like Solyndra, which cost taxpayers $570 million. OpentheBooks.com has a list of these failures and more if you are interested.
Now, the Biden Administration has set a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan in place that includes “green energy” provisions and “greener food growth.” What is BioMADE really up to?
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) says yes:
“U.S. cattle producers raise the highest-quality beef in the world, with the lowest carbon footprint—and American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultra-processed, lab-grown protein cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor. This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone who has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”
Is this another way to weaken our military, compounding the adverse effects of the COVID-19 jabs? As Fleetwood points out, BioMADE has ties to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the leading international globalist organization advancing the climate change narrative. The BioMADE chief strategy officer and board members are WEF contributors. Read Fleetwood’s full article on this here.
(Note: Fleetwood published a list of every company that had partnered with the WEF as of the January 2024 Davos meeting. Get that list here and save it for future reference.)
U.S. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) pointed out that even though BioMADE products are not yet approved for grocery store shelves, the DoD wants to use them for military rations. Our troops certainly deserve better than to be used to test fake food products.
Meat is a whole food. Dietician Samantha Cassetty says most consumers question the healthiness of fake meat alternatives. Many of the plant-based and cell-based meat alternatives are highly processed. For example, the Impossible Whopper has many highly processed ingredients, such as modified food starch, cultured dextrose, and soy protein isolates, and significantly more sodium than cattle-derived meat.
It seems that consumers are not buying the push for fake meat. In late June, McDonald’s decided not to launch its fake-meat McPlant burger after it did poorly in the San Francisco and Dallas test markets.
The DoD may have stepped in because much of the venture capital funding has dried up, meaning, investors doubt the future of this product. In March 2024, I virtually attended a conference held in San Francisco called Future-Food-Tech: The Future of Food. One of the panel discussions was on the future of synthetic meat. The panelists moaned about the lack of start-up and sustainable funding and how difficult it was to get consumers to adopt fake meats.
The list of problems was long, but food texture was at the top of the list. It seems the flavor of beef or chicken can rather easily be replicated in a lab, but mimicking the texture of a medium-rare vs. well-done steak or sauteed vs. grilled chicken breast has proven very challenging. Another problem is the inability to scale to meet mass production needs.
They are trying many different marketing techniques, including labeling the products non-GMO and gluten-free. The largest buzz is to name fake meat as a “fermented” product, generally thought of as a good in holistic circles and a way to ingest enzymes and probiotics; this word is being used to cover up the fact that this is fake food.
As Fleetwood pointed out in several health-related articles, meat is essential for brain health. According to Harvard-trained physician Dr. Georgia Ede, meat is indispensable for brain nourishment, pointing out that meat’s unique nutritional profile of essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients is critical for brain health. Ede says that meat is “the only food that contains every nutrient we need in its proper form,” and says meat is superior for managing blood sugar and insulin levels. Read the full article here.
Two recent studies support Ede’s claim. First, a study published in Current Developments in Nutrition found a link between creatine supplementation and improvement in Alzheimer’s disease. Meat, particularly beef, is the primary dietary source of creatine, which helps supply energy to muscle cells by increasing adenosine triphosphate (ATP) formation. Fleetwood’s full report here.
A second study showed that meat-free diets in children are linked to higher rates of obesity: “The prevalence of overweight and obese children who followed meat-free diet was significantly higher than that of other children.” Read another full article by Fleetwood here.
Fleetwood’s articles showing that non-meat eaters suffered more from COVID-19-related issues are most interesting. First, a study published last month in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care confirms that vegetarians had more adverse reactions following the COVID-19 vaccination, Covishield, than meat eaters. In all, 7 in 10 experienced adverse events, with a statistically significant association between diet and adverse events. Full report here.
COVID-vaccinated people also seem to have a higher prevalence of developing a meat allergy known as alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to an oligosaccharide present in beef, pork, lamb, and other mammalian meats. A recent study in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice shows that alpha-gal sensitization is higher in those individuals who are COVID-jabbed. While a direct causal link could not be confirmed, the findings are striking: “Of 267 enrollees, 43 (16%) were sensitized to alpha-gal.” Fleetwood explains that this means nearly 2 in 10 participants who received the COVID shot exhibited sensitization to alpha-gal.
Is this something to worry about? More and more fake meat companies are popping up with executives who have ties to the WEF. What does the DoD know that they increased the budget for fake meat research more than 5-fold? They’re engineering our fruits and vegetables, too, as noted in one of my recent substack articles.
Source: Update on Fake Meat – by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny