By Ben Hill For Daily Mail Australia
Published: 00:41 BST, 15 April 2019 | Updated: 00:43 BST, 15 April 2019
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Silicon Valley's obsession with eating healthy food that has a limited impact on the environment is behind the explosion of the vegan 'meat' industry.
The fake meat industry is growing increasingly popular thanks to support from celebrities and technology entrepreneurs in the United States - and is expected to be worth a whopping $6billion in just four years.
New Zealander Shama Shukul Lee is the founder of Sunfed Foods, a company that produces substitute meat products including 'chicken-free chicken'.
Shama Shukul Lee (pictured) is the founder of Sunfed Foods, a company that produces substitute meat products including 'chicken-free chicken'
Formerly a software engineer, Ms Shukul Lee said she raised $10million to start her company and make convincing meat replacements for vegans.
She said she dropped meat from her diet to improve her health, benefit the environment and due to concerns for animals.
'I was not very well versed in eating other kinds of foods because I think eating meat makes you lazy. You have to figure out what food to eat, I was completely ignorant,' she told news.com.au.
'Everything I went through was not like the texture of meat, it was more like tofu. With meat, there's a mouth feel - the bite, the texture, and I was missing that quite a bit.'
Her chicken substitute sold well in New Zealand and together with a beef-free burger will be on available to buy in Australia in June.
Sunfed Foods fake chicken is made from
