Save planet by swapping beef for fungi in burgers

REPLACING a fifth of the beef people eat with fungi-based meat alternatives by 2050 could halve deforestation, a study suggests.

Meat from cattle contributes to climate change because carbon-storing forests are cut down for grazing land.

As well as replacing meat with more vegetables, alternatives include plant-based ones such as soybean burgers, cultured meat or animal cells grown in a petri dish, and protein from microbes such as fungi produced in a fermentation process using sugar.

Scientists say this microbial meat alternative is a proteinrich food that can taste like red meat and be as nutritious.

Projections by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Nature, show that substituting 20 per cent of ruminant meat consumption per person with microbial protein by 2050 stops the increase in pasture areas needed for livestock grazing.

Florian Humpenoder, study author, said: ‘People can continue eating burgers, it’s just that [they] will be produced in a different way.’