Credit: Hampton Creek
Meatless meat is already good and established, but now it turns out that researchers are creating eggless eggs.
With many chickens living miserable lives confined to dirty, crowded cages, scientists are hoping to find a way to imitate the nutritional value and taste that we get from eggs without having to harm the chickens anymore.
The challenge, of course, is trying to create a substitute for one of the most versatile foods in the world. Eggs are used in hundreds of different ways. The strain is overwhelming. Many farms kill economically useless male chicks at birth. Chickens, in their natural environment, would lay 10-15 eggs per year. On the farms, chickens are expected to lay 250-300 a year. It is that kind of strain that is causing a much-needed uproar.
Scientists are currently hard at work trying to make a plant-based egg. Eggs scramble, hard-boil, fry, and are used as a common baking ingredient in many foods. Imitating an egg is a huge challenge. Mung beans, legumes from Southeast Asia that give plant-based eggs the texture of chicken eggs have been the closest substitutes found so far.
But while this psuedo-egg is able to do some things similar to eggs, it can’t do everything. This is not yet a victory, but merely a milestone in the journey. With the knowledge of the conditions of chickens becoming more and more widely known, the search for a substitute is ramping up. Hopefully, as a result, chickens will get to live the life they were intended to live.
