Dive Brief:

• Beyond Meat, which produces plant-based foods that can be used in lieu of meat, is rolling out nationally.
• Fortune magazine is reporting that Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, is one of the company's backers.
• Gates apparently signed on after sampling the product and being unable to tell it from real chicken.
• Other investors include Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone; Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital fund; and Morgan Creek Capital, which manages some $6.5 billion on behalf of institutions and universities.

Dive Insight:

The founder and CEO of Beyond Meat is Ethan Brown, a vegan who was raised on a dairy farm. His love of animals, he says, is what drives the business. Food scientists at Beyond Meat say they have created a product that looks, feels and tastes like chicken. We hope they are right. We like animals too.

But we're realistic enough to know that people won't stop eating meat unless the substitutes tastes the same as the real thing. So far, no one has been able to make such a product.