Keen On America How Meat Can Save the Planet: The Vegan Case
Feb 3, 2026
Bruce Friedrich, vegan activist and founder of the Good Food Institute, argues for plant-based and cultivated meat as climate solutions. He discusses how new tech can mimic meat, cultivated meat production, precision fermentation for dairy, land freed for rewilding, and geopolitical and political angles around scaling alternatives.
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Shift The Product, Not People's Appetites
- Bruce Friedrich argues people love meat and won't simply stop eating it, so change must focus on substituting the product rather than asking for sacrifice.
- He compares a protein transition to electrifying energy and decarbonizing by changing production methods rather than reducing demand.
Fund Meat-Replication Science Aggressively
- Invest in science to make plant-based and cultivated meats that match taste and price of conventional meat.
- Scale those technologies so they become cheaper and displace inefficient industrial animal production.
Feeding Animals Is Calorie-Inefficient
- Friedrich highlights the enormous inefficiency of feeding crops to animals, citing chicken as roughly nine calories in for one calorie out.
- He uses that physics of feeding to explain how meat production inflates land use, cereal prices, and drives hunger.
