Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity's Favorite Food--And Our Future

"This packed account makes food science feel like an urgent and essential undertaking." --Publishers Weekly (Top 10 New Release in Science)

"A strong case for how science can come to our rescue in the kitchen--if we let it." --Kirkus Reviews

Good Food Institute founder and president Bruce Friedrich offers a hopeful and rigorously researched exploration of how science, policy, and industry can work together to satisfy the world's soaring demand for meat, while building a healthier and more sustainable world.

The human love of meat appears to be hard-wired. The world consumes more than 550 million metric tons of meat and seafood each year. That number has been climbing for decades and is expected to continue to rise through at least 2050.

What if we could give humanity the meat it craves, but produced differently? Plant-based and cultivated meat that are just as delicious as the meat you love, but more affordable and healthier.

Think it's not possible? With examples ranging from the "horseless carriage" (car) to the smart phone in your pocket, Meat reminds readers that scientific innovations often move from disbelief or opposition to inevitability and ubiquity, much faster than almost anyone expects.

Envisioning a future where meat is both a delight and a force for good, Friedrich explores:

Humanity's 12,000-year-old practice of raising animals for meat, and why we need to figure out a better way. The science and scientists behind the efforts to create plant-based and cultivated meat that is indistinguishable from conventional animal meat, but less expensive, more nutritious, and safer. How plant-based and cultivated meat can preserve forests and biodiversity, mitigate climate change and ocean pollution, and lower antimicrobial resistance and pandemic risk. The economic and food security benefits of making meat more efficiently, which include trillions of dollars in economic output annually, tens of millions of good jobs, and the possibility of a revitalized farm economy.

Meat offers a vision of the next agricultural revolution that is optimistic, achievable, and delicious.

Author: Bruce Friedrich
Publisher: Benbella Books
Published: 02/03/2026
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 4.90h x 6.10w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781637747933


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2026
Publishers Weekly 12/01/2025

About the Author
Bruce Friedrich is the founder and president of the Good Food Institute (GFI), a global science think tank with more than 230 full-time team members, the plurality scientists. Climate charity evaluator Giving Green recommends GFI as a top six charity for climate impact, highlighting its "successful track record, breadth of expertise, and strategic approach," and calling it "a powerhouse in alternative protein thought leadership and action."

Bruce has written for The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Wired, Nature, and more. His TED Talk has been viewed more than 2.4 million times and translated into 30 languages. He has appeared on The Ezra Klein Show, TED Radio Hour, New Yorker Radio Hour, and Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast, among others.

Bruce graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics, and Grinnell College.