Spiritual Forum

• First 'synthetic egg' product to go on sale in Tesco in the UK this August
• Its arrival is part of a multi-million dollar high-tech food business big in US
• Silicon Valley visionaries are working on growing meat and eggs in labs
• Just Mayo, containing eggs made from plants, to rival Hellmann's brand

Fancy the idea of a full English breakfast grown entirely in a science lab?

That is the vision of Silicon Valley’s latest craze – high-tech food – and Britain is about to get its first taste when a synthetic egg product goes on sale in Tesco this August.

It is a multi-million dollar business which has taken the US by storm and includes everything from lab-grown meat to total food replacements.

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Ask Rob Rhinehart, 26, how he sees the future and the computer scientist will tell you that food will eventually be made so cheap that only the rich will cook.

For the past two years he has been living on a food substitute which sees him drink three portions of a nutritionally complete liquid every weekday.

Explaining how he developed the product, Rhinehart wrote in a blog post that he had researched 'every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form'.

He has since added: 'I don’t know who was the first farmer, but I want to be the last.

'We have successfully structured communications networks and antibiotics. 

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'Why are we putting up with the waste and violence of agriculture? 

'Agriculture butchers billions of animals, covers over a third of the earth’s habitable land and uses 80 per cent of our water supply. Every year. 

'One day the vast swaths of polluted land will be free. Our Anthropocene will be beautiful, peaceful, and healthy.'

Rhinehart's product went on sale in May 2014 and has since sold more than a million units.

 I don’t know who was the first farmer, but I want to be the lastRob Rhinehart

At one point demand outstripped supply to such an extent that there was a two-month waiting list. The American company is now looking to increase its production and expand its delivery network to other locations, including the UK.

Elsewhere, Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google with Larry Page, has funded a project which is aiming to grow meat in a lab.

The first prototype, a 142g patty which cost £250,000 to make, was unveiled in 2013 by the Dutch scientist who created it, Mark Post.

And the world's richest man Bill Gates has put money into a company that sells products that look, cook and taste like meat but are actually made out of plant proteins.

The popularity of high-tech food is, in part, due to the fact that by 2050 it is estimated that there will be nine billion people on Earth and not enough food to go round if the current food production systems don't change.

Now, with the arrival of the artificial, man-made egg, the UK is about to experience the beginnings of such a potential movement.

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Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise - without a chicken ever coming close to the production process.

The product in question is Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo, which is coming to Tesco in the UK in August and costs about the same as a jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise.

It was last year’s best-selling mayonnaise brand at the American supermarket Whole Foods.

The company was founded by Josh Tetrick, 35, from Alabama in the US. He launched it after hearing about the often-disgusting conditions chicken eggs are produced in, coming up with the idea for synthetic eggs.

Whether the movement can grow to the point where people are happy to substitute a real full English breakfast for one made entirely of plants remains to be seen.

But that is not going to slow down the visionaries who believe such an idea can become reality.