An Impossible Burger from Burger King

来自汉堡王的不可能的汉堡

UC San Diego alumna Liz Specht says in the near future an increasing percentage of our food will come from plants as meat alternatives overtake animal-based products on a number of levels, from nutrition to taste.

加州大学圣地亚哥分校的女校友Liz Specht说，在不久的将来，我们将会有越来越多的食物来自于植物，因为从营养到口味，肉类替代品在很多方面都将超过动物类产品。

Liz Specht, Ph.D.’ 14, biological sciences, is the associate director of science and technology at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports plant-based and cultivated alternatives to conventional meat products.

生物科学博士Liz Specht是Good Food Institute的科学技术副主任，这是一个支持以植物替代传统肉类产品的非营利性组织。

As a firm believer in the power of technology to enable society to meet growing food demands in a sustainable way, Specht analyzes areas of technological need within plant-based and cultivated meat innovation and forecasts future growth bottlenecks. She has a decade of academic research experience in synthetic biology, recombinant protein expression and development of genetic tools.

Specht坚信技术的力量能够使社会以可持续的方式满足不断增长的粮食需求，她分析了植物性肉类和人造肉创新中的技术需求领域，并预测了未来的增长瓶颈。她在合成生物学、重组蛋白表达和基因工具开发方面有十年的学术研究经验。

Q. Can you explain why the new wave of alternative and plant-based meats, such as the Impossible Burger, is such a phenomenon?

问：你能解释一下为什么新一波的替代肉类和植物性肉类会成为一种现象，比如“不可能的汉堡”?

A. The tidal wave of interest in plant-based meat over the last few years has arisen because these products are no longer catering simply to the vegetarian or vegan segments of the population. They appeal to the growing category of “flexitarian” consumers, those who don’t eschew meat altogether but who are seeking to reduce their meat consumption, who now comprise upwards of 50 percent of consumers, according to some studies. In order to appeal to these consumers, the products need to really deliver on that taste and texture of meat — and that’s exactly what these newer products do.

答：在过去几年里，人们对植物性肉类产生了浓厚的兴趣，因为这些产品不再只是简单地迎合素食者或纯素食者的需求。他们吸引了越来越多的“弹性素食”消费者，这些人并非完全不吃肉，但他们正在寻求减少肉类消费，根据一些研究，现在他们占到消费者的50%以上。为了吸引这些消费者，传递肉的味道和质地——这正是这些新产品所做的。

In parallel, consumers are increasingly aware of all of the negative impacts of conventional meat production, and younger generations of consumers are especially motivated to decrease their environmental footprint and to have concern for animals. Millennials and Gen Z consumers are far more likely than their parents to see their food choices as an expression of their values. These two synergistic trends — better-tasting products alongside more aware and altruistic consumers — are really driving the demand for alternative meats.

与此同时，消费者越来越意识到传统肉类在生产过程中产生的负面影响，年轻一代的消费者尤其有动力去关心动物，减少他们对环境的影响。千禧一代和Z一代的消费者比他们的父母更有可能将对食物的选择视为他们价值观的一种表达。这两种协同的趋势——口感更好的产品和更有意识、更无私的消费者——确实推动了对替代肉类的需求。

Q. What are the core issues here?

答：这里的核心问题是什么?

A. Meat is undeniably among the most resource-intensive foods by virtually any metric: land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions — you name it. It seems every few months, another huge report is released synthesizing the work of hundreds of environmental scientists around the world and they all come to the same conclusion: we all need to eat far less meat in order to have any chance of hitting our climate targets and preventing massive environmental collapse. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has been saying for over a decade that animal agriculture is one of the greatest contributions to every environmental issue, from local to global. Insatiable demand for meat is driving massive deforestation in places like the Amazon to clear land for pasture grazing and growing feed crops, and the extraordinary amounts of animal waste produced by concentrated animal feeding operations cause pollution of our waterways, oceans, and air.

答：不可否认，从土地利用、水利用、温室气体排放等指标来看，肉类都是资源消耗最大的食品之一。似乎每隔几个月,另一份大型报告综合了世界各地数百名环境科学家的工作，得出了同样的结论：为了达成我们的气候目标，防止大规模环境崩溃，我们需要少吃肉。十多年来，联合国粮农组织（The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization）一直说，从地方到全球，畜牧业是每一个环境问题的最大源头之一。对肉类贪得无厌的需求正在推动亚马逊等地大规模的森林被砍伐，以腾出土地来放牧和种植饲料作物，而集中的动物饲养产生的大量动物废物造成了我们的水道、海洋和空气的污染。

It’s not just sustainability, though. Meat production also poses a huge threat to public health. These industrial animal agriculture facilities (“factory farms,” which produce over 99 percent of all meat consumed in the U.S.) are breeding grounds for antibiotic resistance and zoonotic disease, which some analyses indicate are greater threats to the human race than climate change.

但这不只是可持续性的问题。肉类生产也对公众健康构成巨大威胁。这些工业化的畜牧业设施(“工厂化农场”，生产美国99%以上的肉类消费)是抗生素耐药性和人畜共患病的滋生地，一些分析表明，人畜共患病对人类的威胁比气候变化更大。

And finally, I’d be remiss not to mention animal welfare. Consumers are increasingly aware of and concerned about the treatment of animals raised for food, as evidenced by the growing support for laws that outlaw the most cruel practices and ensure more living space for farmed animals. However, a growing number of people feel these reforms don’t go far enough and that there is no truly humane way to farm animals for meat, eggs or dairy products.

最后，我不能不提动物福利。消费者越来越意识到并关心饲养动物的待遇问题，越来越多的人支持为禁止残忍行为立法，并为饲养动物提供更多的生存空间。然而，越来越多的人认为这些改革还远远不够，没有真正人道的方式来饲养动物来获取肉、蛋或奶制品。

Q. What would you say to someone who just loves to eat meat?

问：你会对一个喜欢吃肉的人说什么?

A. The goal of the plant-based and cultivated meat industry is to provide consumers with that exact experience that they crave and love, but to do so with plant-based ingredients or with animal cells. The greatest point of pride for the flagship plant-based meat brands is that as they continue to refine their formulation, their products become more and more indistinguishable from meat. In fact, Burger King has been running promotions with their new plant-based Impossible Whopper that challenge consumers to see if they can tell which is which between the Impossible burger and a beef burger! And the entire motivation for pursuing cultivated meat is to literally make real animal meat by farming animal cells, without involving a whole animal, so that the consumer experience is precisely what meat lovers want.

答：以植物为基础和人工培育的肉类行业的目标是为消费者提供他们渴望和喜爱的确切体验，但要用植物成分或动物细胞来做到这一点。对这些以植物性肉类品牌旗舰店来说，最大的自豪之处在于，随着它们不断改进配方，它们的产品越来越难与肉类产品区分开来。事实上，汉堡王一直在用他们新的基于植物的“不可能的弥天大谎”进行促销，挑战消费者，看他们能否分辨不可能的汉堡和牛肉汉堡之间的区别!而追求人造肉的全部动机就是通过动物的细胞来制造真正的动物肉，但不涉及整个动物本身，所以消费者的体验正是肉类爱好者想要的。

Q. What will be our relationship with meat in the next 20 years?

问：在未来20年里，我们与肉类的关系将会怎样?

A. Globally, demand for meat will continue to grow as consumers in emerging economies move into higher socioeconomic status: that trend has been happening for decades and is unlikely to change. But over the next 20 years, an increasing fraction of that meat will be made from plants or farmed from animal cells, rather than from animal agriculture.

答：从全球来看，随着新兴经济体的消费者进入更高的社会经济地位，对肉类的需求将继续增长:这种趋势已经持续了几十年，不太可能改变。但在未来20年里，越来越多的肉类将来自植物或动物细胞，而不是畜牧业。

Q. Describe the science behind alternative meats?

问：描述一下替代肉类背后的科学?

A. There are two main categories of alternative meat products: plant-based meat and cultivated meat. Plant-based meat uses plant-derived ingredients (or, in some cases, ingredients derived from fungi) to provide all of the basic building blocks of meat: proteins, fats, vitamins, etc. The result is a product with the same texture and flavor and a comparable or superior nutritional profile but a far lower environmental footprint. In some cases, these products also incorporate ingredients made through fermentation that add substantially to the flavor profile, such as the leghemoglobin protein used in the Impossible burger that provides the same meaty flavor as do related heme proteins (hemoglobin and myoglobin) found in animal meat.

答：替代肉类产品主要有两大类：植物性肉类和饲养性肉类。以植物为基础的肉类使用来自植物的成分(或者，在某些情况下，来自真菌的成分)来组成肉类的所有基本构件：蛋白质、脂肪、维生素等。其结果是，产品具有相同的口感和风味，营养成分相当或更好，但对环境的影响要小得多。在某些情况下，这些产品还含有发酵后的成分，这大大增加了汉堡的风味，比如在不可能的汉堡中使用的高铁红蛋白，它提供的肉味与动物肉中发现的相关血红蛋白(血红蛋白和肌红蛋白)相同。

Cultivated meat (which is also called cultured meat, cell-based meat, or clean meat) is made by cultivating animal cells directly, in the same way that we can grow other types of cells like yeast or bacteria for fermented foods or probiotic foods. Animal cell culture has been performed for decades predominantly by the biomedical industry to make therapeutics, but these same principles can be used to grow animal cells into muscle tissue — which is exactly what meat is. Unlike plant-based meat, cultivated meat is not yet available on the market: it’s still being developed by several dozen startup companies, and commercial launch is expected to happen in the next few years.

人造肉（也被称为培养肉，细胞肉，或清洁肉）是通过直接培养动物细胞来制造的，就像我们可以培养其他类型的细胞一样，比如酵母或发酵食品或益生菌食品中的细菌。几十年来，动物细胞培养一直被生物医学行业用于疾病治疗，但同样的原理也可将动物细胞培养成肌肉组织，而肌肉组织正是肉类的组成部分。与植物性肉类不同的是，人工培育的肉类目前还没有上市：它仍在由几十家初创公司开发，预计将在未来几年内投入商业运营。

Q. Describe your current position and a typical day.

问：描述你目前的职位和工作日安排。

A. It’s trite but true that one of my favorite parts of my job is truly that no day is a typical day — every day brings new challenges and opportunities for growth. I lead our Science & Technology Analysis Team, which churns out research in the form of white papers, peer reviewed papers and other publicly accessible resources that help guide researchers and innovators toward the most critical technical challenges facing the alternative protein sector. This requires a lot of deep thought and analytical strategy as well as managing other researchers, somewhat like the role of a research faculty member at a university. But my role also entails a lot of external-facing engagement with various scientific and business audiences and communities. I write opinion editorials for popular science magazines, speak at over three dozen conferences and workshops a year and meet with investors, entrepreneurs and researchers to encourage more R&D and innovation in the plant-based and cultivated meat sector.

答：我最喜欢我工作中的一点是，每天都有新的挑战和成长机会，虽是老生常谈，但却是事实。我领导我们的科学&技术分析团队（Science & Technology Analysis Team）以白皮书、同行评审论文和其他公共资源的形式进行研究，帮助指导研究人员和创新者应对替代型蛋白质领域面临的最关键的技术挑战。这需要大量的深入思考，策略分析，以及管理其他研究人员，有点像大学研究人员的角色。但我的角色也需要进行大量的外部接触，与各种科学和商业受众和社区。我为各大流行科学杂志撰写观点社论，每年在30多个会议和研讨会上发言，并与投资者、企业家和研究人员会面，以鼓励在植物性和人造肉领域进行更多的研发和创新。

Q. You’ve described biology as a toolkit for solving immediate real-world problems. Please explain.

问：你曾把生物学描述为解决现实世界即时问题的工具。请解释一下。

A. Biological systems have had billions of years to optimize, make mistakes and iterate through the process of evolution, unlocking astounding creativity. From a relatively limited set of elements and molecules, biological systems can create unlimited combinations of processes and structures. This is the ultimate Lego set, and one that we can use to our advantage to address every conceivable challenge — from health to food to the environment and beyond.

答：生物系统有数十亿年的时间来优化、试错，并在迭代进化的过程，释放出惊人的创造力。从一组相对有限的元素和分子，生物系统可以创造无限的组合过程和结构。这是最终的乐高积木，我们可以充分利用它来应对每一个可以想象到的挑战——从健康到食物再到环境等等。

Q. Can you talk about the value of basic research?

问：你能谈谈基础研究的价值吗?

A. Basic research forms the bedrock of the insights and discoveries that enable applied research. Without the fundamental breakthroughs and paradigm shift that can arise from basic research, our ability to develop new solutions to real-world problems would be severely handicapped. Although it may feel more urgent or essential to address tangible problems — especially when resources are scarce and we must make hard decisions about what research to fund — it’s critical to continue supporting basic research too. Otherwise, we are tying our hands for future innovation.

答：基础研究是使应用研究成为可能的洞察力和发现的基础。如果没有基础研究带来的根本性突破和范式转变，我们开发解决现实世界问题的新方案的能力将受到严重的阻碍。尽管解决切实的问题可能更紧迫或更必要——特别是在资源稀缺的情况下，而且我们必须对资助什么研究做出艰难的决定——但继续支持基础研究也是至关重要的。否则，未来的创新会因此束缚手脚。

Q. Out of curiosity where did you eat at UC San Diego and what were your favorite dishes here?

问：出于好奇，你在加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UC San Diego)吃了什么?你最喜欢这里的什么菜?

A. Good question — it has been a while! Like any grad student, I was watching my budget so I tried to bring my meals from home whenever possible. But when my lab work kept me on campus late in the evenings or stymied my cooking for the next day, I was a fan of the yellow curry at Hi Thai, which was located right next to my lab building.

答：问得好——已经有一段时间了！和其他研究生一样，我也在精打细算，所以只要有可能，我就尽量从家里带饭。但是，当我不得不在校园的实验室里工作到很晚，或者妨碍我为第二天做饭时，我很喜欢Hi Thai餐厅的黄咖喱，它就在我的实验室大楼旁边。

Q. What’s next for meat alternatives?

问：肉类替代品的下一步是什么?

A. So far, meat alternatives have mostly been focused on replicating the exact flavor and texture of conventional meats that consumers are familiar with. But the species of meat we currently eat (cows, chickens, pigs, etc.) weren’t selected for being the most delicious or nutritious: these species comprise the vast majority of our meat consumption simply because these species happened to be easy to domesticate. In the near future, we’ll begin to see meat alternatives that outperform their animal-based counterparts at multiple levels, from taste to nutrition. We have barely scratched the surface in terms of what’s possible for plant-based and cultivated meat. Once we decouple the means of meat production from the biological limitations of the animal itself, anything becomes possible.

答：到目前为止，肉类替代品大多专注于复制消费者熟悉的传统肉类的味道和质地。但是，我们目前食用的肉类(牛、鸡、猪等)并没有被选为最美味或最有营养的：这些物种构成了我们肉类消费的绝大部分，只是因为这些物种碰巧很容易驯化。在不久的将来，我们将开始看到从味道到营养等各个层面上，肉类替代品的表现都优于动物性替代品。在植物性肉类和人造肉的可能性方面，我们仅仅触及了皮毛。一旦我们将肉类生产方式从动物本身的生物学限制中分离出来，任何事情都有可能发生。