We’ll Always Eat Meat. But More of It Will Be ‘Meat’

More and more people are choosing to eat less and less meat. The trend is spawning a rapidly expanding industry for meat substitutes, both plant-based and a new high tech generation grown from animal cells in laboratories. From Bill Gates to Leonardo DiCaprio, investors are betting hundreds of millions of dollars that the appetite for meat alternatives will mushroom.Overall meat consumption continues to increase on a global scale, buoyed by rising affluence in developing economies such as China and Brazil. But while per capita consumption in the U.S., the world’s biggest beef consumer, is also growing, countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Sweden are cutting back on meat. What’s more, there’s a discernible shift in attitudes in wealthy nations, including the U.S. In a 2015 study, two-thirds of Americans said they had reduced their meat intake and a recent Gallup poll showed the number of U.S. vegans had risen by more than 3 million between 2012 and 2018 to about 3 percent of the population.