Why Bill Gates Is Investing In Chicken-Less Eggs

June 13, 2013

The egg of the future may not involve a chicken at all. In fact, in the high-tech food lab at Hampton Creek Foods in San Francisco, the chicken-less egg substitute has already been hatched.

"We're trying to take the animal totally out of the equation," Josh Tetrick, founder and CEO of Hampton Creek Foods, told me.

Hampton Creek's egg substitute product is called Beyond Eggs. It's made from bits of ground-up peas, sorghum and a few other ingredients, and it's attracting the attention of high-tech investors including Bill Gates.

If you listen to my story on All Things Considered, you'll hear that it's pretty hard to distinguish between cookies made with Beyond Eggs and those made traditionally with real eggs. The company has also developed an eggless mayonnaise and salad dressing using its egg substitute.

And why does this matter? Well, investors like Gates are betting that our planet can't sustain the current rate of growth in animal-based foods for too much longer.

In 2000, the global demand for eggs was about 14 million tons, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. By 2030, that's expected to climb to 38

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/06/13/191029875/why-bill-gates-is-investing-in-chicken-less-eggs