The new food: meet the startups racing to reinvent the meal

Lab-grown meat and food-tech companies in the US are showing that applying science to what we eat can save the world and make money

"If you make food that tastes really good, you win," says Josh Tetrick, with a smile. And winning is crucial, he says, with his company Just in the vanguard of a new sector with an ambitious mission: to use cutting-edge technologies to create food that will take down the meat and dairy industries.

The scope is huge: growing meat in labs, producing creamy scrambled "eggs" from mung beans, or making fish that has never swum in water, or cow's milk brewed from yeast. The drive is to lessen the colossal environmental damage wrought by industrial farming, from its vast carbon emissions to water pollution and disease.