Plant-based meats may be high tech, but the ideas behind them have been around for decades.

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Meatless Burgers Are on Trend. Eating to Save the World Has a Long History.

Producer: Jill Rosenbaum
Editor: Anne Checler
Associate Producer: Sandra McDaniel and Victor Couto

More Americans than ever are seeking out alternatives to meat, convinced that consuming plant-based substitutes may help solve climate change. Today’s newest meatless burgers have the sizzle, smell and taste of the animal variety, but the idea has roots in a movement that took off in the 1970s with Frances Moore Lappé’s counterculture bestseller, “Diet for a Small Planet.”

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