Professor Frankel’s fake flesh: a history of “synthetic meat” (1949–1953)

Frankel’s fake flesh was the first attempt to create a commercial meat substitute in Israel, shortly after the country’s establishment in 1948. Introduced by its creator as “the new meat,” the product was designed to satisfy a desire for beef in an economy and ecology that could not provide it. The product illuminates how local political and economic challenges manifested through questions of access to food, and underscores Israel’s historical struggles with meat production as rooted in its settler-colonial structure. “The new meat” also echoed global concerns over nutritional security in the post-World War II era. Marked by the intensification of agricultural development and the industrialization of food production, the postwar period also nurtured utopian fantasies about the future of food. Frankel’s fake flesh encapsulates the entangled relationship between meat and meat substitutes, between scarcity and scientific exploration, and between ideas about protein, plenty, and nutritional security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]