Most of my fondest childhood food memories involve meat.
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The treat of a steak sandwich with charred onions and barbecue sauce, dripping out of white Tip Top bread, after an athletics carnival, a burger with 'the lot' after Sunday morning swim club and fresh seafood to go with crusty baguettes, crisp salads and soft cheese at Christmas.
Taste aside, I find the way most meat is farmed distressing and wasteful and, as a result, have chosen to be vegetarian for the past 20 years.
It's a favourite sport of meat-eaters to try to rile vegetarians and poke holes in the logic (sometimes fairly: 'do you own any leather?', 'what about calves being killed in the dairy industry?').
But for many, trying to move towards a more ethical way of eating, removing or reducing our intake of meat is a step in the right direction.
About 5 per cent of Australians are vegetarian and it is becoming a more popular option.
Richard Branson gave up beef earlier this year.
"More and more people recognise that conventional meat production can have truly devastating environmental impacts," he wrote in a blog about producing food for future generations as part of World Food Day on Thursday.
"It's one of the reasons I gave up eating beef earlier this year, and it looks like I am not the only one. Surprisingly, for myself, I haven't missed it at all.
"If we could get many other people to do the same, we would be healthier, and we would help sustain the beautiful biodiversity we are losing in the rainforests."
Branson is referring to the increasing demand for meat as the world's population of 7 billion grows and the impact this has on the environment.
About 40 per cent of the the world's land is used to support livestock, driving deforestation.
And with agriculture responsible for between 15 and 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, there may be no other single human activity that has a bigger impact on the planet than the raising of livestock.
One study earlier this year found that eating less red meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars.
Becoming a vegetarian is just one option. Looking at sustainable meat-production practices, including lab-grown meat, is another.
"Today we maintain a global herd of 60 billion animals to provide our meat, dairy, eggs and leather goods," says bioprinting entrepreneur, Andras Forgacs in this TED talk about "culturing" meat and leather without the animal.
"And over the next few decades, as the world's population expands to 10 billion, this will need to nearly double to 100 billion animals."
He argues that whatever choice we make, we need to be creative and innovative in our approach to solving the problem.
"We need to move past just killing animals as a resource to something more civilized and evolved," Forgacs argues. "Perhaps we are ready for something literally and figuratively more cultured."
Beef substitutes make "the transition to more conscious consumption a little easier", Branson says.
"One such company is Beyond Meat, which is developing plant-based foods that taste just like meat but eliminate the need for cattle and other animals to be eaten.
"This will result in us being able to utilise 35 times less lamb alone, 15 times less water and could be as much as 20 times less costly. And on World Food Day, we should applaud any effort that helps make food production more sustainable."
