By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
“It smells like meat. It even looks like meat.” The long forgotten tale of a synthetic meat / meat substitute / meat analogue / meat alternative / imitation meat sometimes called Sure Food
James Pearson (right), at the facility of Wentworth Canning Company Limited of Hamilton, Ontario. Anon., “La viande, synthétique, produit canadien, pourrait sauver de la famine les peuples affamés d’Europe.” Photo-Journal, 5 February 1948, 3.
Greetings, my reading friend. Yours truly has a question for you. Are you a foody / foodie, in other words a Homo sapiens very interested in cooking and eating different kinds of food? Yes? Wunderbar! Are you familiar with synthetic meat / meat substitute / meat analogue / meat alternative / imitation meat by any chance?
Yes, yes, synthetic meat. The world needs such a product in a bad way. Do you not know that red meat is a significant contributor to climate change? Indeed, it is a major factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America. The current level of red meat production is simply not sustainable.
Countless people in developing countries are going to bed hungry each night because land that could be used to feed them is being used to feed cattle, whose meat is too expensive for them to buy and which is often intended for export anyway.
And do not get me started on Western countries’ continuing efforts to satisfy our, yes, yes, our whims and cravings (palm oil from Indonesia, cut flowers from Kenya, avocados from Mexico, etc.). All of that land could feed people.
Worse still, eating too much red meat is bad for the health of Homo sapiens. Years if not decades of research have shown and continue to show a clear link between a high consumption of red meat and a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, not to mention a higher risk of premature death.
The kicker, of course, is that, as people in places like India, China and elsewhere become more prosperous, red meat consumption goes up. Who could blame these people? After centuries of Western, dare I say (type?) white exploitation, they want to live a little. Western countries have, however, polluted our big blue marble, depleted its resources and messed up the climate to such an extent that the people in developing countries now find themselves at conferences where everybody is asked to tighten up their belt to clean up the mess in which developing countries had played precious little part in creating.
How does that expression go again, my reading friend, westernise the profits and globalise the losses? But I digress.
Many people tend to think of synthetic meats as vegetarian / vegan products based on soy but the truth is that some of them were / are in fact made from milk. Yes, yes, from milk.
Eager as ever to be briefer than in previous months, may I interest you in a few words on the gentleman at the heart of this story. No, not the Canadian food chemist whose photo you saw at the beginning of this article. In other words, not James Pearson. The gentleman at the heart of this week’s issue of our illuminating blog / bulletin / thingee is Barnett “Barney” Sure, born in 1891 in a region of the Russian Empire, the Vilna Governorate, which more or less corresponds to present-day Lithuania. He attended school in the Russia Empire and South Africa.
And no, the name Sure was given at birth was probably not Barnett Sure. He seemingly gained that descriptor when / after he emigrated to the United States, presumably with his family, in 1908. He became a naturalised citizen in 1915.
Sure studied at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison,… Wisconsin, where he earned a bachelor’s degree (1916), master’s degree (1917) and doctorate (1920). In July 1920, he became and assistant professor of agricultural chemistry at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville,… Arkansas. Sure might, I repeat might, also have occupied the post of assistant chemist at the Agricultural Experiment Station of that university.
In 1927, Sure seemingly became a full professor. Better yet, he became at some point the chairperson of the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at the University of Arkansas. Sure seemingly remained in that position until his retirement, in 1958, I think.
Barnett Sure. Anon., “U. W. Graduate Patents Vitamin B Production.” The Wisconsin State Journal, 9 April 1935, 7.
Sure’s career followed a steady path during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, the research he conducted in biological chemistry and the development and use of vitamins was / is among the most important of the age. One only needs to mention his contribution to the introduction of Vitamin B12 / cobalamin and vitamin B1 / thiamine as dietary supplements. Sure was also seemingly involved in the discovery of a group of vitamins collectively known as Vitamin E. Indeed, he might have proposed that very name.
A brief digression if I may. In 1949-50, Sure showed a great of interest in a century old galactogogue native to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize, namely a species of euphorbia / spurge known locally as ixbut, and…
You have a question, do you not, my puzzled reading friend? A galactogogue / galactagogue is a substance which promotes lactation in humans and other animals. And yes, we are animals, very dangerous ones actually. Understandably enough, galactogogues are also known as lactation inducers or milk boosters.
Even though no scientifically valid clinical trial supports the use of ixbut as a galactogogue, there is some evidence that animals fed certain types of euphorbia extracts show an increase in the production of prolactin, a hormone responsible for lactation and milk production. A test conducted in 1949, for example, allegedly resulted in a 100 or so % increase in milk production by cows, and this with no reduction in milk quality.
The short-lived interest in ixbut in the United States resulted at least in part from an August 1949 article, cutely entitled “Milkweed,” published in the very popular American weekly magazine Time, which examined some recent studies made in Guatemala. In one case, almost a third of the 1 800 women experiencing milk production problems who had joined a study saw that production increase at least a little thanks to an ixbut infusion. Half of the women could produce milk only after taking the infusion.
What caught the attention of American readers, however, was probably the suggestion that ixbut might give male Homo sapiens the ability to breast feed children. I kid you not.
To answer your questions, the title of the article, “Milkweed,” is nice because it is an untranslatable pun. In everyday life, milkweed is translated as asclépiade in French.
Incidentally, yours truly wonders if Sure knew that other species of euphorbias had been, and were still being used as galactogogues in places as far apart as India and the Estado da África Ocidental, a Portuguese colony in Africa, today’s Angola, but back to our topic.
In the mid 1940s, the serious protein deficiency experienced by the people of Europe as a result of the Second World War, allied with increasing meat prices in the United States, led Sure to look into the possibility of developing a low cost yet high protein food.
By the late summer or early fall of 1947, Sure had completed the development of a meatless meat, a “milk meat” according to some, made up of dry non fat milk solids, vegetable shortening, defatted soy bean meal, cracked whole wheat flour and food yeast, in other words things which were readily / easily available in North America. In its basic / raw form, that concoction was a white powder.
In order to make it edible, said powder was mixed with water on a 1 to 1 basis. That mixture was then beaten up, cooked and canned. Once reheated / recooked, that product looked like meat, smelled like meat and tasted like meat. Would you believe it allegedly had the same protein content as lean beef? It was also high in Vitamins A, B and D, and as such was clearly superior to lean beef.
Depending on what and / or how said product was cooked with, it could be turned into croquettes, hamburger meat, meatballs, meatloaf, sausages, waffles (!), etc.
A group of 15 to 20 or so individuals consisting of representatives of the British Food Mission in Canada, the Canadian Red Cross Society, the Department of Agriculture of Canada, journalists, etc., tasted Sure Food, as the new product was sometimes / often called, as a meatless meatloaf, in Ottawa, Ontario, at the Château Laurier, in December 1947. And yes, said meatloaf had been prepared by a chef at that prestigious hotel. Cooked to a golden brown, it was served with gravy, potatoes, salad, etc.
The overall reactions were somewhat muted. The meatloaf was “good,” “like chicken” or “innocuous,” but every guest emptied his plate. The devil’s advocate in me wonders if the human guinea pigs might simply have been polite, or acting out of habit.
John Franklin Singleton, Associate Director, Marketing Service, Dairy Products, at the Department of Agriculture, was a tad more positive. Sure Food had an agreeable taste. Its resemblance to real beef was striking. This being said (typed?), added Singleton, “I do not know if I would like to make it my usual food.” R.L. Wheeler, Assistant Director, Marketing Service, Fruit and Vegetable Division, at that same department, seemed to concur. “This product tastes good and can make for an enjoyable meal once in a while.”
Frederick Parmiter, Chief Veterinarian, Meat Inspection, at that same Department of Agriculture, stated, and I quote, “Personally, I am a meat lover. But I must admit that this product is nourishing.”
Beverley Woon Browne, Assistant National Commissioner of the Canadian Red Cross Society, seemingly did not have much to say about Sure Food. He did point out, however, that, it might be best to send that product overseas in its original, powder form, which would save space and weight. Mind you, Sure Food could also be shipped overseas in cans, already cooked and ready for reheating / recooking.
Speaking (typing?) of shipment of overseas, it would be worth noting that the deputy head of the British Food mission in Canada, A.P. Lyons, did not think that Sure Food would be one of the Canadian food products bought by the British government. Nay. It would buy bacon, beef and eggs.
As you know, my reading friend, even though the Second World War was over, food rationing was still a thing in the United Kingdom in 1947. Indeed, it ended only in 1954 and meat was the last item to be rationed. Given that, typical British families would probably not want to use the precious coupons of the individual ration books issued by the Ministry of Food for some newfangled meatless meat when they could get the real thing. And yes, meat had been the first item to be rationed, in March 1940.
Oh yes, and Lyons pointed out that the Sure Food meatloaf served at the Château Laurier reminded him of the sausages served to members of the British Army during the Second World War. Ow…
The journalists who covered the food tasting pointed out that it was the first time Sure Food has been tasted in public on planet Earth. Better yet, they pointed out that Canada would be the sole producer of Sure Food. Both of these statements may seem a tad farfetched but might well have been true, at least in part.
You see, the gentleman in charge of that demonstration was, no, not Barnett Sure. He was the aforementioned Pearson. You do remember that this gentleman was a food chemist, do you not? Good. Indeed, he may well have been the one and only food chemist working for a Canadian canning company based in Hamilton, Ontario.
Somehow, he heard about Sure Food and was intrigued. Indeed, Pearson was so intrigued that he might have quit his job and dug into his pockets to buy the Canadian (and overseas?) manufacturing rights from the University of Arkansas Research Foundation. He then signed a deal with his former employer in order to produce Sure Food in Hamilton. Or maybe not.
You see, Pearson’s former employer had a factory in nearby Brantford, Ontario, at the local airport actually, and yours truly doubts it had another one. Said factory was located in a Second World War hangar linked to an advanced flying school operated under the auspices of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan – one of Canada’s greatest contributions to the victory of the Allies in 1945. No. 5 Service Flying Training School was equipped with Avro Ansons used to train bomber pilots.
And yes, there is an Anson in the awe inspiring collection of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, in Ottawa.
You did not think that this glorious institution would be mentioned in this issue of our blog / bulletin / thingee, now did you? Given that there is a will on my part to do so as often as (in)humanly possible, you can be sure that I will do my very best to find a way to do it, but back to our story.
Even though the name of that Canadian firm was not mentioned in the press, days of snooping led me to a name: Wentworth Canning Company Limited of Hamilton, and…
How did I unearth that priceless piece of information, you ask, my slightly nosey reading friend? If may be permitted to paraphrase my old buddy Felonius Gru, um... okay, okay, you got me. The museum curator thing is more of a hobby. In real life, I am a spy. And it is top secret, and you may not tell anybody, because if you do… Just kidding. Maybe. (Slightly disturbing / threatening music.) Now back to our story.
Would you dare to express doubts if I told you that the 3 cans of Sure Food needed to make the meatloaf gobbled up by the 15 to 20 or so people who took part in the luncheon at the Château Laurier cost 29 or 30 cents a can, a sum which corresponds to $ 4.30 or $ 4.45 in 2023 currency? Incidentally, those 29 or 30 cents would have bought about 450 grammes (1 pound) of Sure Food.
Pearson was pleased to point out that Sure Food had a lot to offer. After all, the new versatile product could help the hungry / starving people of Europe as well as North American families struggling with high food prices. Speaking (typing?) more frivolously, to quote a journalist, “vegetarians with a secret hankering for animal flesh and Roman Catholics who don’t enjoy fish will welcome it with open mouths.”
This being… You seem very perplexed all of a sudden, my reading friend. Did you not know that until the publication in October 1966 of a pontifical document bearing the signature of Pope Paulus VI / Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, practicing Catholics did not have permission to eat meat on Friday? I kid you not. The publication of said document caused a reduction, what am I saying, a fall in fish sales in Québec which was close to 35 or 40 % – a reduction / fall greater than that which affected sales elsewhere in Canada, it was said.
Incidentally, said reduction did not particularly annoy the management of the Pêcheurs-Unis du Québec, a cooperative founded in May 1939. After all, the bulk of the production of Québec fishermen, 90% perhaps, was intended for export.
Before I forget, Montini was mentioned in a November 2019 issue of our blog / bulletin / thingee, but back to our story.
This being said (typed?), the devil’s advocate in me has to point out that ground beef seemingly sold for around 64 cents a kilogramme (29 cents a pound) in Québec, Québec, in late 1947 or early 1948. In other words, Sure Food seemed to be as expensive as ground beef. Given that, one was entitled to wonder if typical Canadian families would want to spend their hard earned dough on some newfangled meatless meat when they could get the real thing.
As far as yours truly can tell, at least 10 or so anglophone newspapers in 5 provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Québec and Saskatchewan) published the Canadian Press story on Sure Food in December 1947. A single francophone newspaper, Le Droit of Ottawa, published the story at that time. Mind you, a second one, Photo-Journal of Montréal, Québec, published that story, in February 1948. The article was announced in ginormous font, on the front page of that weekly newspaper: “The food of tomorrow: so-called ‘synthetic’ meat.” And yes, that was a translation.
Incidentally, the Photo-Journal article was seemingly not based on the Canadian Presse report. A journalist conducted interviews and gathered a fair amount of information. Would you believe that the only 1947-48 photographs linked to our topic that I could find were the two published in Photo-Journal in February 1948? You have already seen the main one, but here comes the other one…
James Pearson at the factory of Wentworth Canning Company Limited of Hamilton, Ontario. Anon., “La viande, synthétique, produit canadien, pourrait sauver de la famine les peuples affamés d’Europe.” Photo-Journal, 5 February 1948, 3.
The April 1948 issue of the American monthly magazine Food Industries contained some additional information on the continuing saga of Sure Food.
The new food has been successfully canned on a pilot plant scale in six different forms. Canned in its basic form, it may be used in any recipe calling for ground meat. Or it can be sliced, fried in shortening, and used in sandwiches. It has also been canned in ready-to-eat: (1) Dairy loaves of differing composition to meet various income levels, (2) dairy balls in Spanish sauce and spaghetti, (3) croquettes in sauce, (4) ravioli and (5) tamales.
Yours truly is pretty sure that the successful canning was done by Wentworth Canning. And yes, I too thought that spaghetti was more Italian than Spanish but what do I know? The tamale recipe, on the other hand, might have been prepared to please the palates of people living in Mexico. A recipe which included rice was apparently developed to please the palates of people who hailed from Asia.
In case you do not know, a tamale is a classic / traditional Mesoamerican dish made of corn dough steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. It can be filled with cheese, fruits, meat, vegetables, or combinations thereof.
Incidentally, Wentworth Canning was by no means a one pony show. Its Harvest brand products included margarine as well as canned apple sauce, asparagus, cherries, corn, peas, plums, spinach, tomato juice and tomatoes.
This being said (typed?), as you may well imagine, both Pearson and Wentworth Canning hoped that various organisations and governments would knock on their door to order large quantities of Sure Food. In any event, the sky, it seemed, was the limit and… nothing happened.
You see, Wentworth Canning seemingly went under in 1950. Indeed, its assets were sold in early 1951. York Farms Limited of Toronto, Ontario, a division of Canadian food producing giant Canada Packers Limited of Toronto, had taken over the Brantford factory no later than August 1950.
It is worth noting that an entity known as Wentworth Canning Company of B.C. Limited of New Westminster, British Columbia, was incorporated in February 1950. It became Westminster Foods Limited in March 1953. That packager of margarine, salad oil and shortening, the largest of its kind in Western Canada, was officially taken over by a wide ranging conglomerate (bottling, communications, construction, engineering and food processing) in October 1971.
In August 1977, said conglomerate, Agra Industries Limited of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, sold Westminster Foods to CSP Foods Limited of Saskatoon, a firm created and owned by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool of Regina, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba Pool Elevators Limited of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The latter gave up its share in March 1992.
CSP Foods was sold to Dawn Food Products (Canada) Limited of Saskatoon, a subsidiary of an American bakery supplier and distribution company, Dawn Food Products Incorporated, in Feb 2002. By then based in Brampton, Ontario, Dawn Food Products (Canada) was still going strong in 2023, but back to the main thread of our story.
The failure of the Canadian production project did not discourage Sure all that much. Nay. Negotiations to produce his low cost, high protein and low calorie food, presumably in the United States, were proceeding in 1952. By then, the formula of the product had changed somewhat, as a result of an increase in the cost of milk and out of a desire to simplify said formula. By 1952, the product consisted of dry non fat milk solids, vegetable shortening, defatted soy bean meal and cracked whole wheat flour, in other words things which were still readily / easily available in North America. Oh yes, and some tomato catsup / ketchup was added to improve the taste.
You may have noticed the absence of the expression Sure Food in the preceding paragraph. Yours truly has a feeling that Sure might have had some misgivings / reservations about that moniker.
Anyway, Sure was still convinced that his invention had much to offer. The protein content of the new recipe was still comparable to that of beef. The information provided by Sure also demonstrated that his meat substitute was less likely to damage the health of a typical Homo sapiens. A kilogramme of it contained about 1 650 calories compared to 2 650 calories in the case of medium fat beef and 3 300 calories for hamburger meat. Indeed, Sure was keen to point that a lot of Americans were overweight – and paying an increasingly heavy price as they grew older.
All right, all right, here is the same information in Imperial measurements: A pound of Sure Food contained about 750 calories compared to 1 200 calories in the case of medium fat beef and 1 500 calories for hamburger meat.
By the way, did you know that the calorie used when dealing with the energy content of food is not, I repeat not, the calorie used when dealing with the energy content of a beaker of water in high school chemistry laboratory. Nay, it is not. The calorie used with food is (should be?) called a food calorie, kilogram calorie or large calorie. A food calorie corresponds to 1 000 so-called small calories.
Actually, one could argue that the measuring units known as the calorie should not be used at all. Nay. They are not, I repeat not, units found in the International System of Units (SI), which is the modern iteration of what is commonly called the metric system. The SI unit used to measure energy is the joule, a unit named after the English physicist and brewer James Prescott Joule, but I digress.
By the end of 1952, Sure’s meatless meat had been used as a meat extender (chili, hamburger, meatball, meatloaf, mince pie, ravioli, Salisbury steak, stuffed pepper, etc.) or meat substitute (chili, croquette, mince pie, patty, polpette al sugo, etc.) in more than 10 000 test meals in a variety of settings, from students in Arkansas grade schools, high schools and colleges / universities to malnourished children of Rome, Italy, not to mention adults of course. Some of the test groups included up to 450 people. All in all, the human guinea pigs thought that Sure’s product was thoroughly acceptable.
Whether or not said guinea pigs were told before their big nosh that were eating something new was / is unclear. Whether or not they complained was / is equally unclear. This being said (typed?), some / many members of the Fayetteville chapter of the International Association of Lions Club who had taken part in a testing were not amused when they were told.
To answer your question, polpette al sugo is a classic / traditional Italian dish which consists of soft juicy meatballs in a rich tomato sauce. It is a transcendent comfort food.
Sure seemed confident that mass producing his innovative food product would bring the cost down to about 20 cents for the 450 gramme (1 pound) can a typical family could purchase, which corresponds to approximately $ 3.10 in 2023 Canadian currency. Institutions buying a 4.55 kilogramme (10 pounds) can would pay 14 or 15 cents for 450 grammes (1 pound) of good quality food, which corresponds to something like $ 2.15 to $ 2.35 in 2023 Canadian currency.
As far yours truly can tell, Sure’s low cost, high protein and low calorie food was not mass produced and slipped into oblivion. Pity.
Sure himself left this Earth in June 1960. He was 68 years old.
And that is it for today. And yes, I might have some vegan tuna for dinner. (Hello, EP!) Would you like to join me? There will be tofu cheesecake for dessert. And some alcohol free beer, cider, spirits / hard liquor and wine to help everything go down.
By the way, do you remember the line spoken by the father of Sandra Annette Bullock’s character in the 2002 American romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice? Something about eating a piece of cheesecake made entirely of soy – and hating it.
Sorry, I digress.
Rénald Fortier
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