The Salt
Originally published on Thu May 17, 2012 7:49 pm

Photo by Yuki Noguchi / NPR
Those who've tried it say fake chicken salad looks and tastes like the real thing.

Photo by Yuki Noguchi / NPR
Ethan Brown, founder of Beyond Meat, holds a chicken raised on his family's farm. He says childhood experience with farm animals was the inspiration for starting his company.

Photo by Yuki Noguchi / NPR
A dry mix of soy and pea powder, carrot fiber and gluten-free flour is heated, cooled and extruded through a machine, producing a fake meat that mimics chicken.
Beyond Meat, a new company based in Maryland, has come up with an alternative to chicken meat that it claims is a dead ringer for the real thing. And unlike other meat alternatives on the market, this one aims to be cheap as well as tasty.
The inspiration for Beyond Meat (formerly known as Savage River Farms) started, oddly enough, in "chicken country." Founder Ethan Brown grew up spending weekends on his family's farm in Grantsville, Md., near the Pennsylvania border.
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