How The Next Generation May Be Ordering Its Eggs

Do you like your eggs over-easy, over-hard, scrambled, or powdered? In a movement to change the "Future of Food," Bill Gates is now investing in the last option: an egg substitute called Beyond Eggs, a completely plant-based alternative with no chickens (ducks, quails, or ostriches) involved.

According to Gates, the world's growing meat consumption is not sustainable for the world's growing population. "Raising meat takes a great deal of land and water and has a substantial environmental impact," he wrote on his blog in a slideshow to promote animal product alternatives, such as Beyond Eggs. "Put simply, there's no way to produce enough meat for 9 billion people."

Beyond Eggs was created by Hampton Creek Foods, a San Francisco based food lab whose mission is to "make (good) food available to everyone on the planet." The company is also producing meat substitutes called — can you guess? — Beyond Meat. The egg substitute is made of ground-up peas, sorghum, and other vegetarian ingredients.

With the powdered egg substitute — already shown to work equally well in baked goods like cookies and even scrambled eggs — Hampton Creeks has created an eggless mayonnaise.

While the substitute can't replicate the bliss of a runny yolk soaking into a piece of toast, perhaps when it comes to baked goods and other recipes that require, but don't feature eggs, substitutes might just become the expected norm.     ­