All Tomorrow’s Kitchens

The Dawn of McPlant, Molecular Farming, and a Grow-Your-Own Human Steak Kit

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.

It’s the fast food of the future, and they called it the McPlant

This week’s biggest story about the future of food is that McDonald’s is developing a plant-based line of product called, to the internet’s glee, the McPlant. The fast-food behemoth will start testing its meat-free burger next year, and a plant-based chicken substitute could follow, CNBC reported Monday. There is some confusion about who’s actually supplying the burgers: McDonald’s international president Ian Borden said the McPlant was created “by McDonald’s and for McDonald’s,” but plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat says it co-created the patty.

Plant-based products at fast-food restaurants aren’t that new — Burger King has the Impossible Whopper, for example, and McDonald’s itself briefly tested the P.L.T. in Canada last year — but McDonald’s entry into…