A Steak Tax, Meat Robots, and Sugar That’s Twice as Sweet

A weekly roundup of everything bringing humans closer to a food-secure future

All Tomorrow’s Kitchens, a weekly series from Future Human, rounds up advances in food and agricultural science, tech, business, and culture bringing all humans closer to a food-secure future. Read last week’s story here.

Introducing the “steak tax”

To tackle the climate crisis, a supergroup of British health and climate experts have called for a tax on meat and dairy to be implemented by 2025. In a report published this week, the U.K. Health Alliance on Climate Change argued that it’s impossible to beat the climate crisis without mitigating the impact of emissions-heavy foods (which unfortunately happen to be tasty things like steak and cheese) and that overconsumption of these foods is unhealthy to boot. Enter the climate tax, which would encourage people to eat less of these foods and more plant-based products, reports The Guardian. It’s not a terrible idea: After all, if taxes decreased plastic bag use and soda-drinking, why wouldn’t it work for meat consumption?

The rise of the meat robots

I’ll never forget the panic that set in when, in the early days of the pandemic, experts…