Some of the most anticipated and iconic promises of the future have come up empty. There are no flying cars, interstellar teleporters, floating hoverboards, or fully functional, live-in robotic house cleaners. Not only have we not colonised Mars – we haven’t even set foot on it.

But if there is one bright spot, it’s that the future of food is on the verge of living up to its hype, and possibly even surpassing it. Plant-based products meant to resemble animal foods are becoming even more convincing and delicious. Though I personally like tofu and tempeh, no one would ever confuse those high-protein plant foods for meat. That’s why it was so impressive that when Whole Foods accidentally sold Beyond Meat’s plant-based “chick’n” as actual chicken in a salad a few years ago, no one seemed to notice. Last year, Impossible Foods debuted its veggie burger that bleeds – and they will be developing plant-based chicken, steak, seafood and dairy.

Can Impossible Foods and its plant burgers take on the meat industry? Read more

For me, the most exciting development so far is the prospect of replacing animal meat with affordable “clean meat” and other real animal products – which are being created through cell replication. Dutch scientist Mark Post and his team ushered in a new era with their televised taste testing of a petri-dish burger in 2013. The tasters agreed that the burger – which was basically all protein – could do with some fat. In addition to adding fat content, scientists are working on finding a viable growth medium that does not require the use of fetal bovine serum.

As some of these challenges are being tackled, we’re seeing significant progress. Clean beef, chicken, duck, egg whites, and dairy – products that do not require killing animals – are all in the works now. Memphis Meats’ taste-tested fried chicken was produced through cell replication in March, and Perfect Day is hoping to have their animal-free milk in shops by the end of this year.

Clean meat is produced in significantly more sanitary and controlled conditions than conventionally produced farm-grown meat, and its environmental impact is much lighter. Its taste and nutrient profile can be fine-tuned – and best of all, there is no killing involved. Plenty of vegans have no interest in eating clean meat, but this is perfectly fine since they aren’t its target audience. Instead, the product is intended for people who have trouble putting social norms and ethical and environmental concerns above taste and convenience. As clean meat grows more widespread, it will help lower the barriers to a vegan lifestyle – reducing the number of animals that are farmed, and hopefully one day supplanting factory farming completely.

There are concerns about clean meat however. Some people wonder whether meat eaters will even want to eat it. They might be so stuck in their ways that the thought of eating animal products produced by a radical new method will seem weird and disgusting to them. Some meat eaters I’ve spoken to are repulsed by the idea of eating “meat grown in a lab”, even after I remind them that all processed foods start in a lab before they are mass produced in a factory.

Yet there are also numerous others who actually can’t wait to try it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s younger, more adventurous people who are the first to try clean meat in significant numbers. Still, if it tastes the same as factory farmed meat, interest will spread – and it won’t be long before more people start to think that factory farming, environmental degradation, animal suffering, and slaughter are more off-putting than growing meat in controlled conditions.

Stop telling me not to eat meat: we should all be flexitarians | Toby Moses Read more

Another concern I’ve heard is that clean meat is not natural, and that that’s somehow intrinsically bad, or might be a sign that it’s risky to eat. “Natural” is difficult to define, but I have trouble seeing how factory farming could qualify. Maybe the thought is that farm animals themselves are natural, even if the methods of farming them are not. That’s questionable too, though, given how much we’ve modified domesticated animals through selective breeding.

Yet as unnatural as clean meat might sound to some people now, most of them act as if conventional meat is already produced this way. We don’t think of actual animals at all when we buy flesh in packaged, faceless chunks. In the book Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer recalls his childhood shock and horror when a babysitter said the chicken he and his brother were eating came from once-living chickens. I bet it will not take long for clean meat to seem far more normal than farm-grown meat, because it will be exactly what it looks like: that is, packaged protein with no relationship to the death of a living being.