Science: Down with Meat

—The Department of Agriculture warned the U.S. people to prepare for big changes in their diet in 1945. Example: they will get a lot less meat, a lot more beans.

—Harvard doctors, after a two-month feeding test, announced that an active adult can get along perfectly well with no more than an ounce of meat a day.

Whatever it did to other people, this news last week did not depress U.S. biochemists. Their researches had discovered many substitutes for meat, some of them only a little less tasty than beefsteak and fully as rich in protein. (The Harvardmen found that only” a tenth of an individual’s minimum daily protein requirement need be animal protein, i.e., meat, eggs, milk.)

For almost two years a notably thorough analysis of possible meat substitutes has been conducted at Yale by Botanist Paul Rufus Burkholder. He and others have found a number which on almost every food count (protein, vitamins, calcium, carbohydrates) are as good as or better than beefsteak; even whole wheat compares well with meat. Some substitutes recommended by Professor Burkholder:

Soybeans. Rivaling meat in protein and other food elements, the edible varieties of soybeans can be served in a great variety of dishes, from milk shakes to steak (properly prepared, minced soybeans may sometimes be mistaken for meat loaf). Soybeans are only about a fourth as expensive as beefsteak.

Soybean sprouts. Grown indoors in a flower pot or jar, they can be raised the year round from dried field soybeans, sprout in five days or less, can be cooked as quickly as a pork chop, have several times as much vitamin B complex as the bean itself, rival tomatoes in vitamin C. A crisp, tasty dish, they have been a staple of the Chinese diet for centuries.

Cottonseed. The residue of cottonseed-oil making can now be processed to make it palatable, is exceptionally rich in protein and vitamin B2.

Peanuts. A highly concentrated food, they excel as a source of the vitamin nicotinic acid. The Department of Agriculture expects peanut cultivation to jump from 5,000,000 to nearly 6,500,000 acres next year.

Vegetable steaks. In the coming winter, predicts Burkholder, U.S. families will eat large quantities of meatless steaks, some of them combining soybeans, peanuts and cottonseed. Already on the market: “Soysage,” “Stakelets,” “Proteena,” “Victory Chops.”

Yeast. Besides the food yeasts developed by Anheuser-Busch (TIME, Aug. 9), there is an immense potential source of food in ordinary brewer’s mash: Burkholder believes it could be converted into 200 million Ib. of yeast a year, half of it protein and convertible into edible products.

Germs. An entirely new food source with which Burkholder has been experimenting is certain bacteria found in human intestines and microorganisms that grow on cheese. He discovered that these bacteria, cultivated in a solution of salts, glucose and other materials, produce considerable amounts of useful vitamins.