Plant-based proteins are hot new alternatives to meat.

An exploration of the Bay Area’s brave new world of fake meats.

This dedicated issue of our weekly Food + Home section began with a philosophical, even existential, question: What is meat? It’s a rather uneasy consideration, especially the more you think about it. What is meat, really? Does its provenance — a living animal — define meat and seafood? Or is meat simply the sum of its parts, a molecular end game of tissue and cells? Can meat be vegetarian? If something is chemically identical to meat, does that make it so?

These questions are worth asking, here and now because, thanks to a confluence of wealth, innovation and culinary knowledge, the Bay Area is uniquely positioned to be a major player in this global conversation.

The impetus is well-known: Animal production, especially on the factory farm levels, is an unsustainable proposition. The effect has been a gold rush, with startups and investors scrambling for position in the faux meat market. Theirs is not so much a proposition for the immediate future — most eaters, including your humbly omnivorous editor, are not likely to buy labgrown meat at Safeway anytime soon (see page 9 for more on the consumer question) — but rather, these companies are hoping to corner the market 5, 10 and 50 years down the line. Put in another way: It’s a protein arms race.

The first shots were fired in the fall with the arrival of the Impossible Burger. The so-called “veggie burger that bleeds” made national headlines, forcing itself into the mainstream, an object of curiosity and conversation. Expect its impact to continue; its 6-year-old parent company, Impossible Foods, has raised nearly $200 million and is currently building a huge East Oakland factory that will be capable of producing 1 million pounds of the plant-based burgers every month. Fake meat is coming, whether you want it or not.

Over the next 14 pages, we will take a deep dive into this relatively new world, with these questions as the common thread. We will meet the folks who are trying to forge new paths. We will explore the full scope of meat alternatives, from plants and fermentation to test tubes and flies. (Boca Burgers and seitan sandwiches, this is not.) We’ll even consider synthetic wine and simpler paths, like eating less meat. Most of all, we will ask more questions.

These are early days for this industry, so it’s worth noting that few of these products are even on the market yet. We’ve tasted some, and will be monitoring others in the alternative meat realm, as we continue to see what, ahem, grows.