My wonderful wife Karli has been a vegetarian on and off over the years, and as such she was quite pleased to finally lay her hands on a container of Just Egg, a cholesterol-free mung-bean-based egg substitute manufactured by 2011 startup Eat Just. Just Egg also comes in a pre-cooked and folded format that can just be dropped into a toaster, but Karli has been holding out for the liquid version, which finally became available in Canada at the end of October 2021.
It's obviously a popular product, at least based on our ability to find anything other than an empty space in the dairy substitute sections of the local supermarkets for the last few months, but a spur-of-the-moment trip to a Walmart Superstore for cheddar bay biscuit mix (long story) also paid off with a single 12-ounce bottle of Just Egg, which had its first trial run this morning.
Speaking as someone who has not pursued a vegetarian lifestyle at any point in their life, I have to say that my sample bite of scrambled Just Egg was excellent. If anything, it might have tasted a little better than a chicken egg: Eat Just has obviously invested a lot of time and science in reverse engineering egg consistency and flavour, and the result is impressive. If we can find a reliable source, it could easily replace chicken eggs in our household, at least for breakfast - I'm not entirely convinced that mung-bean cake batter would produce the same results as an egg-based recipe, and the list of recipes on the Eat Just website is suspiciously lacking in baked goods.
Why do I bring this up on my science fiction blog? Because the astronauts of the future will very likely be vegetarians, if not for moral reasons then for practical ones, and as such developments like Just Egg will have a prominent place in their diet.
A plant-based diet is the ideal solution to space travel over long distances - and long timespans. Pending the development of warp drive or some other way of cheating Einstein,* successful space exploration beyond our solar system will require the creation of a miniature biosphere that will rely upon hydroponic systems that will not only produce oxygen, but also provide fresh food on an ongoing basis for the trip. Practical difficulties regarding low or zero gravity aside, it's hard to imagine that having a herd of cows** on a starship would be practical over the long run, whereas carefully managed crops would provide a sustainable food source on an ongoing basis for a multi-generational star ship.
The question is whether or not substitutes like Just Egg or Beyond Meat would survive past the first few generations of starfarers. After all, both of these products are bridge technologies intended to mimic an animal product that would be completely unknown to the children of the original crew except as stories, and pictures in the computer archive. Ultimately the whole terminology of scrambled eggs and hamburgers would become anachronistic in the same way that saying you're dialing a phone number or saving a file by clicking on a floppy disk icon are the last remnants of obsolete processes.
All that being said, it may well be the start of a kinder, gentler philosophy of life for those future astronauts when it actually is possible to make an omelette without breaking anything.
- Sid
* Star Trek cheats twice. Not only does Starfleet rely on
warp drive to outwit the speed of light, it also uses a variant of
transporter technology to replicate a full range of food using stored
templates. Presumably replicated steak and eggs for breakfast is
without guilt, but you have to wonder how the inhabitants of the
Federation feel about people who still consume food that comes directly
from the source, as it were. Hmmm...there was that less than successful
omelette party in Ryker's suite in that one episode...
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