[HN Gopher] 'I'd rather eat an actual burger': plant-based meat'...
___________________________________________________________________
'I'd rather eat an actual burger': plant-based meat's sizzle
fizzled in the US
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-09-24 12:10 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| statuslover9000 wrote:
| Lots of people I know dislike the taste of Beyond Meat
| specifically, but like Impossible and other fake meats. This
| article seems to be sensationalizing and over-generalizing from a
| single company's failure.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I tried Panda Express' new vegan orange chicken head to head
| against their regular orange chicken last week and it's very
| impressively close. A little bit lighter feeling afterwards. I
| hope these companies succeed in the end.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I find it strange that they didn't focus on tourist-heavy
| locations and airport locations when rolling this out.
|
| Yes, this costs a bit more (although the price will go down with
| scale and iteration), so they should have focused on locations
| where people are more likely to pay more.
|
| This was a good product, it's unfortunate that they've
| discontinued it.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| I am hoping for wider availability of affordable cell based
| cultured meat which is a better alternative. It is not vegan, but
| I am really curious how it would taste. Ditto with dairy
| alternatives.
| Nursie wrote:
| Maybe they aren't as messianic as the marketing copy proclaimed
| (what ever is?) but impossible mince makes a lot of difference to
| my life - I'm an unrepentant carnivore that lives with a
| vegetarian.
|
| We cook meals several evenings a week and without a half-decent
| mince substitute there are a lot of dishes that would feel too
| much like a compromise to be enjoyable. I enjoy making and eating
| vegetarian food as well, I think I make a great dahl for
| instance, but my diet would be less fulfilling without it. Or
| we'd end up doing more "I have a fish steak, she has a quorn
| fillet' nights.
|
| So I hope that these newer, closer recreations of beef don't
| disappear. But at the same time none of them is _exactly_ on the
| mark, so I 'm also not that surprised they haven't taken the
| world by storm.
| Proven wrote:
| miked85 wrote:
| I've found it interesting that we've been told how terrible
| highly processed food is, but somehow that doesn't apply to
| plant-based meat.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Vegan are generally bunch of contradictions in other ways also.
| To each his own.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Are the same individuals are telling you both of those things?
| miked85 wrote:
| How many vegans/vegetarians are proponents of processed food?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not know. But I also am not surprised when people with
| different economic incentives tell me different things, or
| even a single person with an economic motive tells me
| conflicting things to advance their interest.
| TillE wrote:
| "Processed" is not one thing. The bad part is usually additives
| like large amounts of salt.
|
| It's obviously not inherently bad to mix a bunch of different
| ingredients together.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I never ate one as the idea of fake bleeding meat is grotesque.
| Meat eating friends who tried it all said that it was either
| mediocre or gross. Vegan friends didn't care for it at all. So it
| comes as no surprise to me that eating fake bleeding meat is not
| popular.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Meat eating friends who tried it all said that it was either
| mediocre or gross.
|
| Mediocre is good. I eat a lot of mediocre meat. If a little bit
| of msg will get me over the line to "alright American comfort
| food", I'm in a good place. Vegetarian comfort food usually
| doesn't get me anywhere. I don't like avocado that much.
| unsigner wrote:
| I'd rather eat a falafel pita wrap, or a Indian spicy potato
| burger, or a bean burrito. There's plenty of great vegetarian
| food, no need to torture plants to become something else.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I sent a few years in India. I found the vegetarian emulations
| of western dishes all pretty unsatisfying vs an impossible or
| beyond meat version (note: actual Indian food is great, I'm
| just saying I don't love McPaneers and even higher end
| restaurants vegetarian burgers). I did recently see that beyond
| meat or impossible was looking at offering some products in
| India and I bet if they get their prices and branding right,
| they'd do really well there
| _glass wrote:
| Mostly I think the same way. Except sometimes when I go with my
| friends to McDonalds or Burger King, then it's nice to not be
| excluded, and have this meaty textures. As I am a vegetarian
| since 14, now with 37 I really was shocked by the first Beyond
| Meat burger, I thought they mixed up my order.
| neither_color wrote:
| I'm not a vegetarian but the first time I went to Indonesia and
| tried tempeh I thought it was fantastic and could be used as a
| substitute protein in so many western dishes.
| hedora wrote:
| I'd add veggie burgers (conventional ones that don't try to be
| meat) to that list.
| weberer wrote:
| Yeah, I actually prefer black bean burgers over beef. Its a
| shame nobody wants to sell black bean burgers except in the
| frozen isle.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Exactly. I'm not a vegetarian, and I won't even consider buying
| an impossible burger or whatever, but I would love to eat some
| meat free meals like you described.
|
| I'm also really picky about meat and I love vegetables.
| starkd wrote:
| If you're going to go vegetarian, go all the way. No need to be
| a vegetarian while pretending to eat meat.
| shlant wrote:
| mock meats make transitioning easier for a lot of people
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| No need to pretend anything to want lots of flavor and
| texture options.
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The simple fact is that humans are omnivores so they are inclined
| to eat both plants and meat.
| jdmg94 wrote:
| The world would be a better place if we abandon the standard US
| diet
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Meh. I just don't like the idea of eating something that comes
| with an NDA. I'm not a vegan, but until a recent move grew a lot
| of my own food. Raising cattle, goats and chickens is more
| annoying than plants and fish (at least in my opinion) and
| therefore ate a macrobiotic-ish diet. Not completely meat free,
| but lower in meat than the typical American.
|
| Also, it always seemed to me there were annoying vegans trying to
| force their ideology on you. I get it that you don't want to eat
| honey. That's fine. Please don't tell me I'm destroying the world
| by eating honey. Maybe that Cadillac Escalade is more harmful to
| the environment than the honey I eat. Very clearly there are
| decent folk eating a Vegan diet who aren't dicks. I'm not talking
| about you.
|
| Wow. I got off topic here. Guess there was some pent up rage
| there. To reiterate my original point, I appreciate what
| Impossible and Beyond are trying to do, but I think open source
| food is probably more important than something that looks like a
| beef product I'm not a complete fan of. Ymmv.
| curtainsforus wrote:
| If I'm going to eat vegetables, I want to eat real vegetables,
| not an assortment of pea protein and flavorers slathered in
| preservatives that doesn't even taste as good as the thing it's
| imitating!
| owly wrote:
| Yes!
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| red meat is bad for the environment but there is no conclusive
| evidence that is bad for you.
|
| So while we wait for this final evidence that will prove that
| read meat is satan, I think it means that its good for you
| overall because it tastes delicious and eating delicious things
| is good for mental health
| tomweingarten wrote:
| The negative health effects of red meat are one of the few
| things in nutrition that we have consistent, overwhelming
| evidence for.
|
| See for instance the studies linked here: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Red_meat#:~:text=Health%20effe....
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| Not all red meat is processed meat.
| paulcole wrote:
| Things that are bad for the environment are bad for all of us
| and those of us who aren't born yet. Source: The world.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| I won't sacrifice myself for the benefit of some Malay or
| Indian farmer who can now light on fire even more palm oil.
|
| The answer to environmental problems can't be leaving quality
| of life on the table. If you leave a vacuum other people are
| gonna fill that vacuum . India and China would consider a
| huge success a scenario in which climate gets worse but there
| is a reversal in the quality of life metrics: that is Europe
| and US becoming second world and them taking the spot of
| first world.
|
| A comment such as yours can only be produced by an overtly
| concerned American or European who is not aware that if you
| stop fighting for quality of life it's gonna be taken away
| from you. Then you'll have the worst of both worlds: Low
| quality of life and climate change still unsolved.
|
| It is a huge dichotomy to fight for freedom in Ukraine and
| then lose the fight for quality of life at home, all because
| John Kerry and Al Gore tell you to stop being a proud
| American. These are the same people that don't believe in
| American exceptionalism and want to destroy NATO so that the
| West is vulnerable to attacks from India, Russia and China.
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm an American and (for environmental consciousness and
| personal preference), I've chosen a "low quality of life"
| compared to what many wealthy Americans believe is a high
| quality of life: I don't eat meat, I don't drive, I don't
| fly in planes, I don't have children, and I live in a small
| apartment.
|
| I have no doubt that climate change will remain unsolved.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| The West limiting itself will only destroy our mental
| health and creativity in a moment where both are needed
| the most to fight old enemies such as Russia, China,
| India etc. But also to fight new enemies such as climate
| change.
|
| There is a reason why monks don't come up with world-
| changing inventions. Necessity is the mother of invention
| after all.
|
| We invent stuff to keep improving our quality of life,
| that is a complete different approach than regressing and
| limiting ourselves which has never worked and never will.
| paulcole wrote:
| Monks also didn't totally fuck up the climate.
|
| I really don't think it matters how any of us live. When
| it comes to climate change, we went ham with our credit
| card. Now we're just waiting for the bill to come due
| knowing we don't have the money to pay it.
| Clampower wrote:
| I prefer to eat the vegan whoppers. I'm not vegan but don't like
| eating trash meat of bad quality. Hadn't been to BK in years, now
| it's a regular option for me because I'm not disgusted by the bad
| quality meat and enjoy the occasional easy fast food burger.
|
| I also buy Beyond Burgers for at home. I prefer them to many many
| other real meat burger patties from the super market. Beyond meat
| is delicious.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I prefer eating the wrapper over the burger. Less chemicals.
| analog31 wrote:
| Kind of an analogy: A number of years ago, my city banned smoking
| in bars. There was a lot of discussion about the economic impact.
| The city was betting on non smokers coming out to replace the
| smokers, maybe even in greater numbers. As a musician who worked
| in those places, I was optimistic.
|
| Instead, the bars just cleared out, and many went out of
| business. What had happened was that non-smokers had already
| adjusted their lifestyles as if bars didn't exist, and those
| lifestyles didn't change. Bar business eventually came back, but
| it took several years, and the bars themselves reconfigured in
| terms of things like food offerings and even location.
|
| The same thing seems likely to happen with meat. The vegetarians
| have by and large adjusted their diets to not involve meat. Many
| of them (some of my family members) actually don't like the
| taste, and have no interest in trying a meat substitute.
|
| My hunch is that market size is not just a function of counting
| numbers of people, but also, predicting the time scale of how
| long it will take for people to change ingrained food
| preferences, recipes, shopping habits, and so forth. And like
| non-smokers and bars, a lot of vegetarians have largely given up
| on restaurants.
| colordrops wrote:
| These meat substitutes have allowed my vegan family to eat at
| places like Denny's, which basically have nothing else on the
| menu that we can eat. Even with the tides supposedly rolling
| back, I expect many non-veg restaurants will continue to carry
| these burgers as an option, and that's still a huge market.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I take issue with the word "can". I don't think there are any
| involuntary vegans, so it's not that there's nothing else on
| the menu that you can eat, but rather that there's nothing
| else on the menu that you want to eat.
| colordrops wrote:
| Ok, well, I didn't open this "can" of worms... But I can
| murder people. I can jump off a cliff without a chute. I
| can burn my life savings. "I can't go to the store right
| now. Why? Because I'll miss my appointment. Well
| _technically_ you still could go to the store. "
|
| By your standard, if it's not against the law of physics,
| then "can't" shouldn't be used. Obviously that's not how
| it's used idiomatically and colloquially, so there is
| clearly something other than physical impossibility that
| drives people to use the word, whether ethics, suffering,
| or other other frictions.
|
| I suspect you've got your own ethical stance and are trying
| to lay it on me.
| josephcsible wrote:
| But you won't go to jail, die, be destitute, or miss an
| appointment by eating meat. There are no consequences for
| not being a vegan anymore. When else is "can't" ever used
| for things that there'd be no consequences for doing?
| colordrops wrote:
| Once again, you are laying your own subjective ethical
| judgements on me. My ethical stance is that killing
| animals, whether for food or otherwise, is tantamount to
| murder and is completely unacceptable to me - on the
| level of going to jail or being destitute.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I'm just a voice of one, but every week I like to substitute
| 1-3 vegetarian meals for my current meat focused diet. However,
| I need the food to taste great and be healthier - so I prefer
| black bean burgers to Impossible.
|
| Meatless Monday inspired me - I'm not trying to go vegetarian,
| but for health and ethical reasons would like to reduce
| consumption. I try - but having more options has helped me in
| some very real if small ways.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| I bought a couple of Beyond Meat burgers at the supermarket
| recently and tried them. Big mistake. The texture was nothing
| like a real burger and they left an unpleasant pea protein
| aftertaste in my mouth for ages afterwards.
| icedistilled wrote:
| I actually quite like the beyond meat burger as a burger or in a
| tomato sauce, but the impossible burger is to beef like for my
| taste now.
|
| There's going to be all sorts of opinions, but I would not expect
| any of these meat substitutes to sell well at mcdonalds. It's not
| typically where people who care about any of the things that lead
| people to eat less meat typically buy their food. I've eaten
| there zero times in the last decade+.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| There is a vegan ice cream chain which seems pretty successful
| because it doesn't try to recreate traditional flavors. Thus, you
| have no point of comparison and you can't be disappointed.
|
| McDonald's should try offering some veggie Indian options, I
| haven't eaten at McDonald's in forever but it'd make a stop to
| try a their take on a curry.
| gimme_treefiddy wrote:
| McD India has great options. Some of these chains are actually
| much better outside the US.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I think the expectations are too high for plant-based meat.
|
| By going straight for mass-market "burgers", they're putting
| themselves into a hard situation where they've got to win over
| disinterested comfort-food-only consumers. Even if it were
| perfect, it's just not going to work with that market.
|
| It's like they're trying use Tesla's approach for cars but
| skipped over the part where they introduce this stuff to high end
| consumers like Tesla did with the Roadster.
|
| I think plant-based meat would do better if it were introduced in
| fancy molecular gastronomy haute-cuisine and then more as an
| ingredient in mainstream stuff than as a mass-market centerpiece
| menu item like a hamburger would be. That would give it a chance
| to work itself into food preparations where it really shines and
| is not merely "a replacement" for the real thing.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I'm a meat eater. Yeah it tastes nothing like meat, but I LOVE
| the taste of the Beyond Meat burger patty. We make stuffed
| peppers and put the ground Beyond Meat in it, so so good. I tell
| people to just think of it as a really delicious vegetable in
| patty form and not so much a "meat alternative" because it
| definitely isn't that. If I want a meat-burger I just go get an
| actual burger.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| I tried impossible burgers and such many times..but over the
| course of months I stopped and went back to real burgers and wow.
| You don't know what you're missing until its gone! real burgers
| are just waaay better. I don't think i'd try fake meats again
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Funny I had the opposite experience. Going back to meat was
| distasteful. The texture and flavor of the cow was mediocre,
| regardless of who and how it was made.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I don't think the value proposition was ever that meat
| substitutes taste better than meat. It's positioned as an
| ethical alternative which you pay a premium for.
| tomweingarten wrote:
| If you did a blind taste test between Impossible and Beyond (or
| the McPlant), I suspect people would pick Impossible nine times
| out of ten. Writing off all plant-based meat at this point feels
| a bit like saying the Internet is a failure in 2002 because Yahoo
| is losing steam.
| FiddlerClamp wrote:
| I wish they would provide a meat substitute in Canada with a no-
| sodium-added version. I understand our diet is heavily salted and
| sugared, but it would be great for those of us on special diets
| (or caring those who are).
| eternalban wrote:
| I gave it a ~try. Uncooked, it looked and smelt like dog food.
| Went straight to trash.
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont even like them, but wtf, most meant to be cooked
| products are going to seem not great uncooked.
| eternalban wrote:
| Ok, get a can of dog food and cook it and get back to me :)
|
| p.s. I go strictly by "body knows best". If something makes
| me feel nauseated, I do _not_ eat it, cooked or not.
| medo-bear wrote:
| > Last week, [Beyond Meat's] chief operating officer was
| reportedly arrested for biting another man on the nose
|
| enough said
| MisterTea wrote:
| That immediatly bought this scene to mind:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11gOV4FhuCk
| noasaservice wrote:
| I heard that nosemeat is in season this time of year.
|
| At least according to the COO of Beyond Meat agrees that nose is
| the best, when he bit someone's nose after an accident/road rage
| incident.
|
| https://www.bonappetit.com/story/beyond-meat-coo-bites-nose
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I would buy it except that I suspect GMO ingredients. I do not
| believe spin articles about sales volumes of basic products, at
| all however.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I recently tried a vegetarian (I think vegan, even) burger at a
| German McDonalds and it tasted more like it contained meat than
| the meat based burgers they sell.
|
| It wasn't even significantly more expensive, I think.
|
| There's a good chance I'd choose it again when/if I go to
| McDonalds the next time.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Did anyone hear how the CCO of beyond meat recently got locked up
| for BITING AT SOME GUYS NOSE IN A PETTY ARGUMENT?
|
| Beyond meat alright - https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2022/sep/20/beyond-meat-...
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Probably in a death spiral after his stock grants are worth
| 1/10 as they were before.
| solardev wrote:
| That wasn't a fight, that was market research.
| iseanstevens wrote:
| Speaking as an American who likes burgers, but has spent some
| real amount of time being vegetarian/vegan/unrestricted diet... I
| like the impossible burgers better than most meat burgers.
|
| That is my anecdata.
|
| I think it's quite an accomplishment and can see it being an on-
| ramp for more people to eat less meat. Which I think is probably
| good.
| _nalply wrote:
| It seems plant-based meat falls between two stools: vegetarians
| and vegans don't need a meat substitute and meat-eaters prefer
| the real deal.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Maybe my coffee hasn't kicked in yet but I didn't catch in the
| article the health disadvantages of veganism: the article spoke
| about health broadly, tackling climate change and it talked about
| culture war issues. I wonder if the plant-based alternative meat
| vendors need to admit that animal products contain essential
| nutrients and that perhaps then they can _add_ them.
|
| As someone who's quite active I've found my optimal diet isn't a
| lot of red meat, but a lot of fish, a lot of leafy vegetables,
| olive oil as the fat, and generally a LOT of protein with full
| amino acid profiles (chicken, whey protein-based things like
| Quest chips and Core Power Protein shakes that are made from real
| milk). YMMV but that's what I've found as a middle-aged guy who's
| experimented and does many hours of muscle-destroying activities
| as a hobby.
|
| Veganism doesn't fit into this picture. I could MAYBE tolerate
| alternative tastes, but I can't risk my health because of a loose
| ethical goal that concerns all of our (and especially our
| industry's) behaviors in relation to climate change.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I've tried plant based burgers multiple times and it's just not
| the same. The first time I had an "impossible burger", I didn't
| actually know it was fake meat, I just assumed it was the name of
| the burger at the time, I thought it was horrible. I had a
| different shops "impossible" burger few years later and it was
| far from horrible, but just doesn't have the same impact as a
| good burger.
|
| Edit: Either it's juicy and the texture isn't right, or the
| texture is right but it isn't juicy, or the flavour isn't there.
| It just doesn't taste real enough, in some ways its SO close...
| /end edit.
|
| Wife and I tried some of the beyond meat from the super market
| and that was once... never again, it was not good, any of it. Its
| sometimes /very/ salty, even if I don't add salt...
|
| (as a side note I donno if it's changed but it's more expensive
| to buy beyond meat than it is to buy real meat)
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| It's not just the taste and texture, the nutritional profile is
| worse than actual meat for my dietary needs.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Weird, not my experience at all. I prefer the alternatives now
| and for anything requiring ground beef in a sauce it's
| indistinguishable
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Most people do such an awful job of cooking ground beef, just
| making a gray mush, I could see how the fake stuff wouldn't
| be any worse.
| naravara wrote:
| Ground meat in a sauce is actually the only situation where
| it is easily distinguishable for me. The texture doesn't feel
| right. It ends up rubbery, kind of like overcooked fish. And
| it doesn't impart the same kind of umami depth of flavor. I
| end up having to supplement with bouillon instead, but then
| it gets a little too salty.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You don't have to use bouillon, though. There are lots of
| ways to increase umami: Soy sauce, tomato paste, and ground
| mushroom powder all work out well, and the last two are
| low-to-no salt.
| Accacin wrote:
| Sorry if I come across as a little rude here, but, it's never
| going to be the same. Never, ever. The problem is people keep
| using it as an excuse now, "well I'd be vegan if there was fake
| meat that tasted like the real deal".
|
| At some point people are just going to have to admit either
| they're selfish and want to keep eating meat, or they really do
| want to stop eating meat and just do it. It's just a human
| thing to try and find excuses.. I do it with going to the gym
| and going swimming more.
|
| Also, as a side note. If you don't buy meat OR fake meat, it's
| cheaper. There are hundreds of cuisines around the world that
| don't depend on meat.
|
| Sorry but it does wind me up the mental gymnastics people do to
| justify continuing doing something they know it bad.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| The first time I had a good vegetarian burger was when it
| wasn't trying to imitate the real thing. As others already
| commented, I also think trying to engineer a schnitzel from
| tofu and whatnot that tastes and feels like the original is
| just the wrong approach. Vegan cheese, like wtf, I was curious
| and tried it once; that was so bad I had to throw away that
| stuff. But I digress. The burger I liked had a patty made from
| broccoli and just had its own distinct texture and taste.
|
| Same goes for tofu. The Asian cuisines have created dozens of
| great recipes over decades if not centuries that involve tofu,
| but here people completely ignore all that and try to make tofu
| look, feel and taste like sausages, schnitzel, and mostly fail
| at it.
| graton wrote:
| I had the same experience. I have tried both the impossible and
| beyond meat burgers and ended up not being able to finish them
| as I really didn't like the taste.
|
| I had high hopes because I had watched these TV segments where
| they were eating them and saying how it tastes like a burger.
| But not for me.
| manfre wrote:
| The plant based meat alternatives are more expensive. It's a
| newer, smaller scale manufacturing process and regular meat
| benefits from US agricultural subsidies.
|
| I switched from sirloin burgers (~$1.30/patty) to beyond
| burgers (~$2/patty). I found the taste and texture of Beyond
| Burgers to be better than Impossible burgers, but neither is as
| good as the sirloin burgers. Cooking them on a smoker narrows
| the flavor gap. Beyond burgers are lower fat and 100 calories
| less per patty, the primary reason I made the substitution and
| one of reasons I haven't switched back.
|
| General comment about salt: packaged foods in the US are
| overloaded with salt and your doctor will be happier if you
| never add salt to what's on your plate.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| In Singapore I used to buy 4x wagyu beef burger Pattie's.
| Cost around $12 sgd but they were amazing.
|
| I'll admit tho if we compare fast food then I don't really
| mind impossible meat. Fast food burgers are very soso.
| pithon wrote:
| I was making an America Goulash recipe once, and thought I'd
| give the beyond burger or whatever a try; it wasn't patties but
| was jut a pound of ground "beef." It didn't brown or cook up
| correctly; it smelled awful and perfumed the whole house. I
| made the recipe and it was straight up gross. We threw it all
| away.
| thret wrote:
| Huh, tried the impossible burger and a normal one side by side,
| and I preferred the impossible burger. I still think it's the
| best thing on their menu.
|
| So I think the problem is not the taste, it's simply that
| people who eat healthy or vegan don't go to burger king in the
| first place.
| koheripbal wrote:
| When I think "burger", I think of one I make on my grill,
| which is delicious, not a McDs or BK burger.
|
| If you compare it to garbage fast food, then of course the
| impossible burger will be better.
| OJFord wrote:
| And you probably buy good meat, or even mince it yourself
| and make your own right?
|
| The vegetarian equivalent isn't anything you can buy (in a
| supermarket anyway), they're all crap, it's making your own
| with good (non-meat) ingredients.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Then you're discussing pretty minor differences. Plenty of
| people (a billion a day?) enjoy fast food burgers. This
| seems like just bragging about having really good taste.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I suspect that the core audience for plant-based burgers
| generally tries to avoid fast food anyway.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which was why it was amusing how much marketing dollars
| were spent getting it into fast food locations (where it
| inevitably was a "buy once and never again" for the vast
| majority of those who even bothered to try it).
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > pretty minor differences
|
| There's a massive difference between a McDonald's burger
| and the kind of burger you'd make fresh (or order at a
| non-fast-food restaurant). It's not a subtle issue of
| taste. They're just completely different dishes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Plenty of people (a billion a day?) enjoy fast food
| burgers.
|
| Whoa there. "Enjoy" might be a bit generous. I might
| suggest endure. A lot of people eating fast food burgers
| are not doing it because they enjoy it, but at their
| cheap prices it is just something they can afford. Yes,
| there is a large portion of people that "like" fast food
| burgers, and that might be a number that reaches
| "plenty". But I would imagine that enjoyment is similar
| to when I was a broke ass college age person that could
| only afford ramen and enjoyed it as being better than
| nothing.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Lol this is kinda crazy: I'm a skinny person that still
| had to overcome a fast food phase/mild addiction, and my
| favorite order was 4 junior bacon cheeseburgers from
| Wendy's. They are so good I'd love one right now.
|
| And I love well prepared burgers. I love steak. And I
| love goldfish. I disagree strongly with your comment.
| Klonoar wrote:
| "Endure" also fits well for regions that are effectively
| food deserts, where fast food chains might be one of your
| limited options.
| evandale wrote:
| Foodie gatekeepers are among the most hilarious of all
| gatekeepers. Everyone has different tastebuds and just
| because you don't like fast food doesn't mean the whole
| world doesn't like fast food. I love the fanciest
| restaurants, but I can still admit the Big Mac is one of
| the greatest burgers ever created.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Fast food burgers don't taste much worse than frozen or
| even just refrigerated store-bought patties. Neither are
| tasty.
|
| I guess the pre-made plant burgers will be close to pre-
| made meat burgers.
|
| I wonder if you can make your own burger out of soy
| granules, which I found to be the closest to ground beef
| when properly spiced during rehydration. I should try that
| some time.
|
| Tanget: Americans in Germany often say our McD tastes
| better. I find that fascinating, as McD here tastes
| absolutely horrible to me.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I've never seen anything wrong with grocery store
| patties. I think the problem with fast food burgers is
| the bad bread, weird sauces, missing/sparse toppings, and
| most of all the sloppy half-assed construction. If you
| make the burger at home with the same patty, it will
| almost certainly come out much better.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Also decent restaurants get their patties pre-made..
| Semaphor wrote:
| The only decent restaurant burger I had was in an
| American restaurant that grinds their own meat.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with the meat quality per se, but
| if you're cooking a frozen premade patty you're not
| properly seasoning it and it's not going to have a good
| taste.
|
| You could thaw it out, break it down, season it and re-
| form it. But who does that?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Ngl I don't even know what seasoning I would put on a
| burger patty. A burger patty to me is just a disc of
| ground beef, I don't expect anything else from it.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| In my experience, if the beef is fresh, high quality, and
| the right cut, grind and fat content, all it needs is
| salt on the surface at the time of cooking.
|
| The salt mixed into many pre-made patties makes them
| increasingly rubbery the longer they sit in the
| supermarket. The seasonings are usually a crapshoot.
|
| Toppings are a separate matter. Go to town.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I suspected as much, but I didn't want to be rude. A lot
| of people are unaware of seasoning and don't really think
| about why food from one place taste so much better than
| food from another.
|
| There's a whole lot of seasoning going on with well
| cooked ground beef. When you go to a restaurant and the
| burgers pop -- this is why.
|
| The most basic seasoning is salt. Unseasoned beef doesn't
| taste great and when it's cooked less than ideally often
| excess condiments are used to make up for the lack of
| seasoning.
|
| When I cook burgers at home I often mix in diced garlic,
| a tiny bit of soy sauce, cayenne, msg, and rosemary.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Nothing rude about it, it's the way I prefer burgers.
| I've never considered restaurant burger special or
| 'pop'ish, mostly just convenient. I do put lots of raw
| onions on the burger though, the refreshing crunch of
| freshly sliced onion goes well with the greasy meat.
| Restaurant burgers rarely have much onion, and when they
| do it's usually cooked or limp and sad. A lot of
| restaurant burgers go heavy on lettuce instead, but
| lettuce is bland compared to onions.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I know some people prefer unseasoned food, but I think
| you probably shouldn't be surprised when people complain
| about lack of seasoning.
|
| One of my kids went through a phase of eating burgers
| with no toppings at all. Another, noodles with no sauce.
| It's a preference, but - if the topic is quality of
| cuisine it shouldn't be surprising that people have
| higher expectations.
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| It's not obvious that fake meat is healthier than real meat.
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't think 'healthy' meant no meat there, it was just
| about (lack of) fast food (whether it be meat or not, but
| mostly is).
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Depends on the meat and its alternative. Later is always
| better for the environment
| Apes wrote:
| Why does it cost more then?
| pittmajp wrote:
| Meat is heavily subsidized.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Subsidies. I'll just link my other comment from this
| thread.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=32964298
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Because it's newer and externalities exist?
| linsomniac wrote:
| I'm assuming it is because of the lower volume of
| alternative burgers. Looking at my supermarket, they have
| probably 150-200 linear feet dedicated to meat and maybe
| 5-10 for alternatives.
| code_runner wrote:
| I've yet to try an impossible burger but one of the best
| burgers I've ever had was a veggie burger patty made in house
| at a little brewery near me. Seasonings and texture etc were
| perfect. Wasn't trying to be a burger but trying to be a very
| good veggie patty and succeeded.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Veggie pattys are great and standard faire in India.
|
| I agree, I'd just like a good veggie burger sometime. Doesn't
| need ultra processing.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I once accidentally ordered a veggie burger. It was called a
| "garden burger" on the menu and I naively assumed it was a
| regular burger with vegetables on it. When I got it I
| immediately recognized my error, but ate it anyway and it was
| fine. Not what I wanted, but wholly inoffensive.
|
| Years later I tried an impossible whopper, and unlike the
| veggie burger it was actually vile. The taste and texture
| were bizarre, not like meat but neither like vegetable. It
| tasted like something that came out of a chemistry lab, not a
| kitchen.
|
| Elsewhere in this thread I see people suggesting that real
| meat be taxed, or subsidies removed, or some other form of
| government action to twist people's arms into eating a meat
| substitute. My advise to those commenters is this: Do it with
| traditional veggie patties and the general public might
| forgive you. Do it with these new wave of psuedo-meats and it
| will make people hate vegans with 10x more passion than they
| already do.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Ecological engineer Howard Odum developed a system for tracing
| back the energy inputs into something back to sunlight which
| revolved around 'embodied energy' or emergy.
|
| When you analyze something you first do the components that you
| have an analysis of (fuels, ...) and then for what is left over
| you multiply the dollar cost by a ratio representing the
| emergy/dollar ratio for the economy.
|
| A consequence of that is that something expensive is probably
| unecological because money is a license to use resources and
| trash the environment.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You need to add in the externalities that aren't being paid
| for, too, which can vary significantly between different
| kinds of farming.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Odum's system has numerous problems.
|
| One is that the "transformity" (ratio of emergy to energy)
| is path dependent. One ear of corn might have been produced
| with more or less water or fertilizer, both of which
| contain more emergy than the sunlight that falls on it.
|
| Another is that you can't trace all energy to "the" sun or
| at least not our sun. The energy of Thorium and Uranium in
| the Earth's crust probably came from two other stars that
| became neutron stars and crashed into each other.
|
| Emergy accounting does a good job of accounting for
| externalities of consumption (e.g. trace back water use in
| Central Valley agriculture to Shasta Lake) but doesn't do a
| good job of accounting for the production of noxious
| influences.
|
| The latter may be intractable, may really be the death of
| environmental accounting, because instead of producing one
| number for a product you produce numerous numbers. How can
| you compare 1 g of tetraethyl lead in the air to 1 ton of
| CO2? A megacurie of Krypton 85 to a kilogram of PFAS?
|
| There is a field of "multiobjective optimization" that
| considers these problems but leaves as many questions as
| answers in that different people are going to see the
| trade-offs differently.
|
| (It reminds me of the doomed project where I was working
| with some people to create an "NQ" score for the
| nutritional value of food and we couldn't get consensus on
| how to combine factors. For instance it is good to eat
| riboflavin but you can't give nutritional yeast, which
| colors your urine bright yellow with riboflavin, a score
| proportional to how much riboflavin it has. It wasn't clear
| to us if it really made sense to evaluate individual
| foods... You really need to eat protein/Vitamin C/Zinc if
| you haven't had any today, you don't need to if you have.
| We weren't even sure you could assign it to foods w/o
| reference to portion size... One scoop of ice cream is not
| so bad but the whole box is something different.)
| NameGenerator2 wrote:
| I certainly don't think I'm the target audience for plant meat.
| As a vegetarian, I don't actually want my burger to look it taste
| like meat. I like to know that what I'm eating isn't meat, and I
| see no need to blur the lines and enable someone to accidentally
| serve it to me.
| typest wrote:
| As someone who would want to be a vegan but struggles not to eat
| meat, I've been very interested in Impossible since it started.
| The idea that you might make synthetic meat that tastes as good
| as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring -- seemingly,
| you could eliminate most meat consumption globally.
|
| At the same time, over the past few years, I've explored more of
| the world's cuisines and generally become a better cook. What
| I've learned (which surely is obvious to many but was not obvious
| to me) is that the typical US diet is unnecessarily meat centric,
| and that being a vegetarian is much easier, healthier, and
| tastier when one basically stops eating typical American meals.
| Being a vegetarian is much easier when eating Indian food for
| instance, and it's laughably easy when eating Ethiopian.
|
| I'm still rooting heavily for Impossible, because factory farming
| is a global atrocity. And, it would be really cool if one day, I
| could eat an Impossible burger that was cheaper and healthier
| than a regular burger. But for now, and for the foreseeable
| future, I think that my attempts to be vegetarian will revolve
| around learning to better cook food from non-American cuisines,
| foods that are better suited to not having meat.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > The idea that you might make synthetic meat that tastes as
| good as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring
|
| This sounds like:
|
| "The idea that you might make synthetic fuel that has a higher
| energy density than petroleum while being cheaper is very
| alluring"
|
| Of course it sounds good - but reality isn't that simple to
| twist to our desires. Impossible meat was more expensive (in
| spite of them running at a loss), didn't taste as good, wasn't
| any healthier, and by many accounts wasn't any better
| environmentally. All downsides and no upside.
|
| I'm not surprised it fizzled out given those realities. Perhaps
| if they'd had another 5 years to perfect it before launching
| they could have overcome one or two of those deficits?
| azakai wrote:
| > by many accounts wasn't any better environmentally
|
| This is false according to every serious analysis I've seen.
|
| For example:
|
| > The most popular plant-based alternatives, Beyond [Meat]
| and Impossible Burgers, produce about 90 percent fewer
| greenhouse gas emissions in comparison with beef [..] They
| reduce land use by at least 93 percent and water use by 87
| percent to 99 percent. They also generate no manure
| pollution.
|
| https://www.rd.com/article/plant-based-meats/
|
| Beef is by far the worst option (see the graph there); it
| isn't hard to beat.
| Ntrails wrote:
| I read articles like that and they talk about reducing land
| usage by not having cattle or sheep. How they cause
| groundwater pollution.
|
| Then I walk on the moors or the highlands with scattered
| livestock and I struggle. I believe the problem is mass
| production, factory farming, not meat. The issue is trying
| to keep meat insanely cheap such that it can be eaten every
| meal.
|
| I _think_ if I source grass fed meat properly my impact is
| minimal. But. Maybe I am wrong!
| progman32 wrote:
| Having viable meat substitutes is a path towards reducing
| the need for mass meat production.
| Ntrails wrote:
| Hard disagree, eating veggie is perfectly fine and does
| not require meat substitutes.
|
| However, the solution to mass meat production is
| regulation imo. But it is politically untenable because
| it amounts to pricing people out of their lives
| Amezarak wrote:
| There are a lot of variables when it comes to the
| environment. Grass-fed cattle grazing in the Great Plains
| would be tremendously better for the environment than the
| mass soybean/canola/corn agriculture permanently destroying
| the entire Midwest.
|
| The reason the Midwest is so fertile and has so much
| topsoil is because of thousands of years of ruminant
| grazing. We're destroying millennia of ecological
| development and topsoil in decades. Not to mention what all
| the fertilizers and herbicides do.
|
| Your article just blanketly declares animals bad for the
| environment and plants good, which is absurd. Are we better
| off for having killed nearly all the buffalo? Clearly
| feeding cows M&Ms and canola/soy is bad. But so is mass
| agriculture in the first place. Responsible animal
| husbandry can be an actual ecological positive.
| hardolaf wrote:
| You can reduce beef's greenhouse gas emissions by just
| mandating a different animal feed that results in less
| methane production by the cattle. But that would require
| governments to actually do something.
| tomcam wrote:
| Do you feel that governments would be better at farming
| than farmers? If so I assume you feel that government
| bureaucrats can do your job better than you.
|
| I am against all farm subsidies BTW.
| ddulaney wrote:
| One difference between fuel and food is that the fundamental
| ingredients are cheaper for "meat" than meat. Impossible has
| huge and ongoing R&D expenses as they try to simulate more
| things and enter more markets. But at the end of the day,
| raising animals is expensive and soybeans are cheap. The
| crappy pre-Impossible veggie burgers are cheaper than real
| meat for this reason (though less tasty, of course). As the
| R&D requirement slows down, I would expect a similar path for
| Impossible and other fake meats.
| typest wrote:
| > "The idea that you might make synthetic fuel that has a
| higher energy density than petroleum while being cheaper is
| very alluring" Of course it sounds good - but reality isn't
| that simple to twist to our desires. Impossible meat was more
| expensive (in spite of them running at a loss), didn't taste
| as good, wasn't any healthier, and by many accounts wasn't
| any better environmentally. All downsides and no upside.
|
| To me, it seems that the question comes down to energy
| efficiency. How many calories in are required to produce one
| calorie of beef? Our World In Data claims the efficiency is
| 1.9% [1], whereas Yale Center for Business and the
| Environment claims it's 2.5% [2]. So, it seems that if
| somehow you could figure out how to reconfigure plants into
| meat in a way that isn't as inefficient, you could come out
| ahead on cost. Now, maybe this is way too hard to do
| currently (I don't know since I don't know much of the
| science), but it at least seems like there could be an
| opportunity.
|
| Another place where cost could cost factor in would be if
| governments were to enact a carbon tax (or, alternatively,
| tax meat, or subsidize plant based meats). If the actual cost
| to the environment could be reflected in the cost consumers
| pay, that's another opportunity for plant based meats to come
| out cheaper.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-
| meat... [2] https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat
| [deleted]
| damidekronik wrote:
| Ethiopian is an extremly underrated cousine. Both the distinct
| but simple taste of the "curries" and the unique flavour of the
| "pancake" which is traditionally used to eat (instead of
| cutlery) is a pleasant experience. Regardless of your diet
| please give it a try!
| tomcam wrote:
| Kills me that Ethiopian restaurants are so hard to find here
| in Seattle. The other Washington, as in D.C., has several
| excellent ones. Get on the stick, people!
| brudgers wrote:
| With 370mg of sodium, it will never taste like an actual
| hamburger with only ground beef...it's about five times as
| much.
|
| That's part of what makes it taste good.
|
| And why it's just another processed food item.
|
| The US diet is more salt centric, more sugar centric, more fat
| centric, than meat centric.
| erulabs wrote:
| As far as I've read, and I am not a doctor (although am
| married to one), it's the lack of fiber and huge amounts of
| sugar and salt that contributes to most of the health issues
| we North Americans face. Meat-replacements though are more
| about environmental causes (as this article points out). I
| think they would do tremendously better if they could argue
| that they were healthier options too.
|
| The milk-replacements are even worse in this regard. Oat milk
| seems healthier than cows milk somehow, until you realize it
| has 50% more sugar, twice the carbs, half the protein, and
| fewer nutrients. I really don't understand how alternative
| milks have positioned themselves as healthy and artificial
| meat somehow has not.
| Klonoar wrote:
| There are brands of Oat Milk that are better than others. I
| usually drink soy, but sometimes I want an oat milk latte
| and I find I have to ask the barista exactly what brand
| they're using.
|
| At home I just use Elmhurst plant milks, which function
| fine as a base. Then again, this brand works for me because
| I've never used milk as a nutrient source - it's just a
| flavor or texture.
| brudgers wrote:
| The marketing for meat replacement is about the
| environment.
|
| The actual product is pretty much Plinket's pizza rolls.
|
| I mean your faux burger has added salt and fat to the
| intrinsic carbs.
|
| You can get oat milk without sugar and containing less
| sodium that cow's milk...mild hypertension and type 2
| diabetes: it's what I put in my coffee.
|
| You can also make oat milk yourself pretty easily. Like
| everything with diet, it's a matter of having the time.
| tomcam wrote:
| calling them milks was marketing black magic
| akudha wrote:
| Produce is of lower quality in general, in the U.S. And also
| more expensive, compared to meat. I have never eaten meat in my
| life. Out of curiosity, I checked the prices of chicken vs
| produce. It was depressing to see how much chicken I can buy
| for the same price of 3 mangoes (current almost 3$ for a single
| mango in my area).
|
| I wish produce was subsidized instead of meat and dairy) or in
| addition to meat)
| bolt7469 wrote:
| It depends what you mean by "produce." Beans are far cheaper
| than chicken and have a more similar dietary role than
| chicken vs mangoes.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Why are you using mangoes as your metric? You can get giant
| bags of frozen vegetables for a dollar or two.
| antifa wrote:
| We have huge meat subsidies, at the minimum, we should adjust
| that and let the market correct the pricing.
| solardev wrote:
| For what it's worth, there are some pretty decent "New
| American" recipes too, for lack of a better word. They are
| often vaguely inspired by ethnic fusion foods and then modified
| both for Americanness (more sugar, less spice, familiar
| seasonings, etc.) and vegetarianness. But they include
| everything from sandwiches to lasagnas to pot pies to chicken
| strips to meat loaves to chicken-fried steak to burritos to
| grain bowls and salads.
|
| Only very rarely do they use mock meats, but tofu, seitan
| (concentrated wheat protein), legumes/beans, and jackfruit are
| common. The trick, as you noticed, is to make the meal tasty as
| itself, not to make it pretend to be meat.
|
| You don't have to give up meat to enjoy those dishes once in a
| while, or as a side.
|
| If you eat out often, the HappyCow app is specifically for
| finding restaurants with good veggie options. It's free and
| super helpful whether you're in your home town or traveling.
|
| If you want to cook, there are a ton of purpose made vegan
| cookbooks. I personally like the quick and easy ones that
| emphasize meals under 20 minutes, vs the super fancy ones that
| take forever.
|
| Bon appetit.
| hardolaf wrote:
| My problem with all of these fake "meats" is that they don't
| taste like meats, they taste like vegetables and fruits that
| have been handled to the point of not being enjoyable to eat.
| I'd rather just eat well prepared and cooked vegetable dishes
| like what you can get in many nations and cultures around the
| world than these fake "meat" products.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The fake meats are of course the epitome of ultra-processed
| food. Hallmarks of which are if fats, proteins, sugars are
| entirely reshaped in a way that does not happen in cooking.
| dmix wrote:
| Being a vegetarian, or Mediterranean, or keto usually means you
| have to cook.
|
| Eating out in North America (Canada and Mexico too) is always
| full of meat. Even in nicer restaurants.
|
| Cooking at home regardless of your diet is the simplest way to
| eat better. I used to used Uber Eats 3-4 times a week and I got
| 10x healthier just making my own food and it's been a great way
| to get off social media and spend more time with people.
|
| People want to come over and socialize when you get good at
| cooking. Which is 10x better than getting into the 100th
| argument online.
| spfzero wrote:
| Restaurants almost all use inferior fats, such as seed oils.
| It's rare to find one using real butter, decent olive oil,
| etc. They also generally buy their sauces and dressing from
| large industrial processors. If you are trying to avoid
| PUFAs, you need to cook your own meals.
| tomcam wrote:
| One hack I used during my decades as a vegetarian was
| ordering side dishes, not entrees. Even in, maybe especially
| in, steak houses the non-meat entrees are often every bit as
| interesting as the main course.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Something I've noticed about being vegan is the way the meals
| change. In a lot of American meat based meals, the meat is the
| center piece and everything else is peripheral. In a well made
| vegan meal, there is often no specific center piece. Instead,
| you get a multitude of flavors that all work together in
| complex ways. It can be really wonderful. I'd encourage anyone
| who eats meat every day to consider experimenting with periodic
| meat free days. I used to eat meat almost every meal but I've
| now quit entirely. I almost never eat meat substitutes but
| instead eat meals with a mixture of foods that all work
| together. It's really lovely!
| autoexec wrote:
| > I'd encourage anyone who eats meat every day to consider
| experimenting with periodic meat free days.
|
| I don't mind not having meat, but I'm not very good about
| eating vegetables. I'm a supertaster with a diet that learns
| towards childish. Most spices and bitter veggies are out, so
| it's difficult to find vegetarian or vegan dishes I can
| tolerate. All the vegans and vegetarians I know love these
| crazy spicy foods and I'm over here avoiding certain brands
| of gum and toothpaste because they're too much for me.
|
| Meat free days for me would likely end up being full of
| pasta, fruits, nuts, or even something like PB&J or French
| toast!
| swivelmaster wrote:
| I've found that with sea salt, olive oil, garlic, and an
| air fryer, just about any vegetable can be made hot and
| delicious in 15 minutes or less.
| colordrops wrote:
| Totally agree. I find that I eat more mindfully and
| appreciate various ingredients and flavors to a greater
| degree.
| typest wrote:
| Any cookbooks or recipes you recommend? How does one figure
| out which different pieces of the meal go together well?
| bolt7469 wrote:
| _The Flavor Bible_ is an excellent book for pairing foods.
| They also have a vegetarian version.
| 7speter wrote:
| Falafel with either pitas and tzatziki (its what I use) or
| turmeric garlic rice:
|
| Falafel: https://youtu.be/2l9TyNV64Zo
|
| Turmeric rice: https://youtu.be/tLiRpUmr8Cg
| boulos wrote:
| I'm not Vegan, but I do own The Veganomicon from which I've
| liked several dishes (I don't have it handy, but there are
| some great chickpea dishes in there).
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| This is a good question, but I don't work well with
| cookbooks. They tend to sit on my shelf closed. I learned
| by experimentation. I do know of one cookbook because I
| heard an interview with the author on the radio, called
| "Decolonize your diet" about traditional indigenous recipes
| from Mexico before the Spanish arrived and made everything
| about meat. The authors deserve support but for the curious
| it is also on library genesis.
|
| But I do a combination of looking online at vegan recipes
| and experimenting with stuff on my own. I make a lentil
| sweet potato curry that is really filling and delicious.
| Here is my recipe copied from a tweet I made about it:
|
| Large onion, chopped. 'Sautee' in water until partially
| clear. Add minced garlic and ginger paste. Saute 2 more
| mins. Add curry powder, turmeric, any other spices, salt,
| pepper. Add can chopped tomatoes, 2-3 cups oat milk, 1.5
| cup washed lentils, Add chopped large sweet potato, add a
| can of garbanzo beans, add a small can of chopped mushrooms
| (drained). Serve with brown rice. Can add raisins and
| nutritional yeast. Can get a sweet crunch adding candied
| nuts.
|
| I also find this lecture helpful for thinking about foods
| to experiment with:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpRrD58Ah3Q
|
| You can also look for vegan or vegetarian restaurants in
| your area and try them, see what you like, and try to work
| with those foods. And look for different cultures like
| Indian food that focus on more vegetarian meals.
|
| Bon appetit!
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Try Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi. He's known for complex,
| Middle eastern influenced cuisine, but this book has a lot
| of stripped down recipes that you can put together easily
| and quickly.
| garren wrote:
| I'm not a fan of meat substitutes like impossible or beyond,
| but tofu, seitan, and (occasionally) tempeh are awesome and
| easy to cook up. I agree with you that a vegan meal generally
| doesn't have a centerpiece food item, and that the complexity
| of flavor more than makes up for it.
|
| The problem with meat substitutes and alternative meat dishes
| (i.e black bean or beet burgers, or tempeh "bacon", etc.) is
| that no matter what, it's not going to taste like what you're
| expecting. I'm often happier eating vegan recipes that make
| no attempt to replace meat.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > In a well made vegan meal, there is often no specific
| center piece. Instead, you get a multitude of flavors that
| all work together in complex ways
|
| Yep. That's what I have been finding out recently as well.
| The vegan 'meat alternatives' should be considered full-
| fledged dishes with their own excellent flavor themselves.
| Since its much easier to balance different flavors because
| the overriding flavor of the meat/protein is less in plant
| based protein.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > meat that tastes as good as real meat while being cheaper is
| very alluring
|
| Interestingly, it seems that every time I see an Impossible
| burger on a menu, it's not cheaper. Often it's more expensive,
| but usually roughly the same price. I'm not sure why this is,
| but it seems like it's probably holding folks back from eating
| it regularly.
| SuperQue wrote:
| I needed to source food for an event with 500 people.
|
| Burger meat was 0.80EUR person for 125g, not organic/bio. But
| good quality from a German butcher.
|
| I got Beyond burgers for the veg option. Best price I could
| get wholesale was 2.00EUR per person.
| sillystuff wrote:
| > I got Beyond burgers for the veg option.
|
| As someone who doesn't eat meat, I prefer not to have fake
| meat. I'll often just pass on eating anything if fake meat
| is the only non-meat option.
|
| A stir fry with rice or veggie fajitas (could be just
| peppers and onions) with Mexican tortillas possibly with a
| side of beans would be much preferable, and cost nearly
| nothing. Adjust for regional tastes.
|
| Easy to justify when it is something that can be a main
| dish for the non-meat eaters and a side dish for the meat
| eaters. But, if people are serving themselves, the non-meat
| item should be earlier on the table / separated from the
| meat, so meat eaters do not contaminate it with meat
| (common).
|
| Fake meat is a nice option for meat eaters who are trying
| to reduce their consumption of meat for $reason(s), but
| still crave meat. But, for folks like me who do not eat
| meat nor have any inclination to do so, it is kinda weird.
| tomcam wrote:
| I was a vegetarian for 40 years. I could never understand
| why people go vegetarian and then... eat fake meat? WTF?
| There are zillions of awesome vegetarian dishes in this
| beautiful culinary world.
| rhdunn wrote:
| You don't need to use a meat replacement for burgers. You
| can have various style burgers that I've seen for
| ~PS2.25-PS2.85 for 4, e.g.:
|
| - Bean (often spicy)
|
| - Halloumi
|
| - Parsnip & Carrot Nut
|
| - Plantlife Crunchy Vegetable Crispbake
|
| If you do want to use a meat substitute, I've found the
| following have comparable prices to the meat based versions
| at ~PS2.00 for 2:
|
| - Linda McCartney's Burgers
|
| - Richmond Vegan Meat Free
|
| Other meat replacement brands (Beyond Meat, Moving
| Mountains, Fried Jackfruit, etc.) are dearer at
| ~PS4.00-PS4.50 for 2.
|
| I'm not sure how the wholesale prices compare, I just
| checked the prices on Waitrose's website. I've had several
| of these.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| I feel the very fact that we need to refer to a brand name
| for the meat replacement is a clear indicator of how
| immature the market is.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Maybe it's for the same reason cinema ticket prices are the
| same for every movie. Price is a (often inaccurate) signal of
| quality. By lowering the price you are saying this product is
| inferior.
|
| On the other hand it could be because if restaurants have a
| similar product at a lower price, then customers might go for
| the cheaper option, thus reducing overall profits.
| bootlooped wrote:
| I think demand is a big part of it.
|
| Vegetarians and vegans are willing to endure a lot of costs,
| financial and otherwise, to adhere to a special diet.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Often it's more expensive, but usually roughly the same
| price. I'm not sure why this is
|
| Because the scale of meat alternatives did not reach the
| scale of being cheaper yet...
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's more expensive because the cost of meat is heavily,
| heavily subsidized by the government (at least in the US).
| The actual cost to produce meat is much higher than
| Impossible or Beyond [1].
|
| > The United States federal government spends $38 billion
| every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries.
| Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price
| of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of
| hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today.
|
| 1. https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
| typest wrote:
| I am really not that knowledgeable about this space, but I
| would imagine it's because A) there are a lot of subsidies
| for the meat industry, and B) there are a lot of economies of
| scale present in the meat industry that do not yet exist in
| alternative meat industries.
|
| Of course, it makes sense that when introducing a new product
| like this to the market, it is potentially going to be more
| expensive than existing products. It seems like, in theory,
| one should be able to make it much cheaper just because
| producing meat by way of animals is just very wasteful from
| an energy perspective. However, I have no clue what is
| required to synthesize such compounds without the use of
| animals, so I don't know how far away we are from being able
| to do this.
| oezi wrote:
| It just takes time to tilt the economies of scale. For soy
| milk it took 10 years from niche appearance in supermarkets
| to being cheaper than real milk.
| antifa wrote:
| I checked Kroger's website, which had some strange
| problems. You can't sort by lowest price and there are
| approximately 2.5k results for "milk". The "dietary
| preferences" filter does not include "lactose intolerant"
| or anything equivalent for milk alternatives, despite all
| milk alternatives being in the search results. The only
| one that looked genuinely useful (but not for me) was
| "Gluten free".
|
| That being said, I did a price check and found that soy
| milk was not cheaper than regular milk. Kroger milk is
| $3.29 for 1gal and soymilk is $2.59 for 0.5gal.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/6motDcj.png
| nu11ptr wrote:
| I will respectfully disagree, and at risk of downvotes, I think
| food science is a very difficult field due to difficulty
| getting good cohorts. Vegetarians and vegans tend to be very
| health conscience, but often studies lump "meat eaters" in with
| the same group who have a diet of highly processed foods and
| fast food.
|
| I would also disagree most diets are "unnecessarily meat
| centric". Getting adequate amounts of protein is incredibly
| important and is very hard to get that as a vegan/vegetarian.
| It is of course possible, but would take conscious work most
| people would not take. I would bet most vegans have inadequate
| protein consumption.
|
| Lastly, Impossible burgers are NOT good for you. They are
| highly processed junk food. Take a look at the ingredients.
| Full of seed oils and other things that are simply not good for
| you.
|
| In summary, I don't claim to know all the answers, but I'm
| betting on a real food diet of meat, eggs, and vegetables. I
| shun processed foods 98% of the time and things with added
| sugar. I don't think it is terribly obvious what is the "best
| diet" and there are several conflicting studies, but eating a
| "real food" diet mostly avoiding "food product" strikes me as a
| reasonable bet.
| prox wrote:
| What many people don't do or know is that you don't have to
| eat meat everyday. In fact once or twice a week is more than
| enough, unless you have a super strenuous physical job.
|
| That's the best of both worlds without going all polarized
| for/against meat.
|
| Getting good meat sources (aka not from Brazil for instance)
| is a great second choice one can consciously make.
| dixie_land wrote:
| what's wrong with Brazil
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Cattle (and crop production for cattle feed) in Brazil is
| decimating the Amazon
| prox wrote:
| Brazil is the world largest exporter of beef (mostly to
| the US) and it costs huge swathes of land, killing the
| rainforest plus more methane in the atmosphere. So it's a
| double whammy when it comes to environmental costs. And
| lets not start talking about the main company behind it,
| feel free to research that.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/july/brazil-
| once-a...
| mc32 wrote:
| The largest importers of Brazilian beef are China and
| Hong Kong, with South Africa and the Middle East taking
| up the rearguard, not the USA.
|
| Surprisingly the second largest exporter of beef is
| India.
| phunkay wrote:
| It is prohibited to export beef from India at all [1].
| Where did you learn that they are the second largest
| exporter?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_slaughter_in_India
| mc32 wrote:
| According to the USDA: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-
| waves/2019/july/brazil-once-a...
| dmarble wrote:
| India's beef exports are primarily buffalo meat
| ("carabeef"), not cow meat. In addition, there are states
| in India where slaughtering cows is permitted.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| They use the trees in the forests. Forests grow back. I
| suppose we could let some people starve, so the trees
| won't be used for wood. Just as long as mother nature is
| ok, right?
| jaclaz wrote:
| As a matter of fact the "original" Mediterranean diet (i.e.
| what people actually ate in countries like Italy or Greece)
| rarely included meat more than once or twice per week (but
| not being actualy vegetarian or vegan it did include fish,
| eggs, cheese).
| hardolaf wrote:
| The advice that I've gotten from my doctor is five to seven
| portions of meat at spread over at least two days per week.
| So yes, you don't need to eat it every day, but you still
| need to eat a good amount. And it may just be simpler to
| eat 3 to 4 ounces of chicken each day with something else
| than to track how often you're eating 2-3x that much over
| two days in the week.
| prox wrote:
| I am not going to argue with what a doctor advises you,
| but I am going to say it must be personal. Lots of people
| live their whole lives without eating meat and do fine.
| Anyway, the take away is that a lot less is probably fine
| for you if you are the typical meat eater 7x a week.
| speakfreely wrote:
| Did you ask your doctor what he's basing this on? I'd
| like to read more.
| jhbadger wrote:
| People say "it's hard to get adequate amounts of protein" as
| a vegetarian/vegan, but really people don't need the hundreds
| of grams of protein a day a typical meat eater gets. Just
| 50-60 grams a day is fine even by the USDA (which if anything
| has been criticized as being beholden to the US meat and
| dairy industries and as such that estimate is if anything an
| overestimate). It's really not that hard to get 50-60 grams
| of protein from non-animal sources without even trying.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| I do not think that is enough, and by the look of the body
| mass of most people I see, most don't get enough.
| tanaros wrote:
| What are these meat eaters consuming that's giving them
| hundreds of grams of protein per day? A 14oz ribeye is only
| 98 grams of protein and I hardly think typical meat eaters
| are consuming those for every meal.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > What are these meat eaters consuming?
|
| Everything. To start, the term "meat eater" is not only
| stupid, but also deliberately deceitful. People that eat
| meat eat also vegetables, legumes, fish, eggs, milk and a
| diet that is as much wider as they want.
|
| There is not such thing as hypercarnivore humans that eat
| only meat and water.
|
| The correct term is omnivore. If vegans want to be taken
| seriously, they must start talking seriously and don't
| rely on cheap tricks.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The person you are responding to eats meat. Why should
| what they say change whether you take vegans seriously?
| tomcam wrote:
| > There is not such thing as hypercarnivore humans that
| eat only meat and water.
|
| Not true. Look up "lion diet", "carnivore diet", and the
| like. Tons of anecdotal reports that people with hard-to-
| treat autoimmune diseases are benefitting. Yes, I know
| "anecdotal"; I emphasized it already. Might be bunk. I
| don't care either way. But it is a growing movement.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Ok, not a common case, but far point. That would the real
| opposite then. When people talks about vegetarian versus
| "meat eaters" don't use it in this sense normally. Is
| often used by vegetarians as a synonym of fast food diet
| or "Mcdonalds diet" or "extreme obesity diet". They often
| flag this red-meat herring, and this is not really fair.
|
| And then we are told that vegetarian diet is more healthy
| because X,Y and Z good stuff coming in plants A,B & C.
| But they forget to notice that omnivores receive exactly
| the same healthy benefits from exactly the same
| ingredients in their diets, because they also eat A,B and
| C. Plus the proven benefits that came from eating meat,
| fish or eggs.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm with you on all of that. I believe the carnivore diet
| thing could lead to some interesting insights once
| falsifiable tests can be created.
| jraph wrote:
| "Meat eater" just means "someone who eats meat". You
| really are reading too much into this expression. There's
| nothing in it that says that you eat meat _exclusively_.
| You are also a computer user, but that does not prevent
| you from using a knife, or any other tool.
|
| You should not find the expression "meat eater"
| offensive, unless you somehow find that eating meat is
| wrong in some kind of way (in which case, do yourself a
| favor, do something to solve the discrepancy). There's
| nothing deceitful in "meat eater", it actually cannot get
| clearer. It also does not bear any judgement. Of course,
| that does not mean a vegetarian won't judge you, but this
| won't be conveyed by using this expression alone ("You
| damn meat eater" would of course be very different in
| this respect).
|
| > The correct term is omnivore
|
| "An omnivore is an animal that has the ability to eat and
| survive on both plant and animal matter" [1]. Omnivore is
| not "eats meat and plant matters", it is " _can_ eat meat
| and plant matters " (biologically speaking). Which
| applies to vegetarian.
|
| "Omnivore" relates to a species and is not really
| adequate to qualify an individual / is ambiguous.
|
| Also, on a personal note, I hope that you are not waiting
| for vegans to prepare you a professional presentation and
| "look serious" for you to think about the topic. I think
| they should make sure to give a good impression, but
| that's not their job. You do you. The topic is highly
| documented at this point in all the directions you could
| imagine.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore
| lfpeb8b45ez wrote:
| Check out the carnivore diet.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Only? That is one meal. Many eat three meals and snacks.
| Very easy to hit 150g of protein in a day consuming meat.
| There is a good comment below on the breakdowns.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I'm currently on a short bulk so getting about 200g a day,
| 50~60g is my breakfast (this is from plants)
| Amezarak wrote:
| Anecdotally 50-60 grams protein is definitely not enough
| for me, I would guess people consuming that figure
| generally have very little lean body mass.
| rzimmerman wrote:
| I think you're right that lumping anyone that eats meat at
| all into one big group hides the diversity there. It's
| completely reasonable to eat a healthy diet with meat in it
| (lean chicken, fish, occasional beef, good sources of fiber
| and healthier fats, etc). It's also possible to have a
| vegetarian diet that's unhealthy. When I switched to being
| vegetarian my diet was very carb and cheese heavy at first.
|
| I don't think people considering leaning vegetarian/vegan
| should worry about getting enough protein. Protein deficiency
| is rare and just including eggs and dairy in your diet is
| really enough to not worry about it. If you're bodybuilding,
| sure, you need to supplement, but that's true for a meat diet
| as well. Many millions people lead healthy lives without meat
| protein and without keeping track of anything. I think people
| curious should try a meat-free day or two a week and see how
| they feel. I was skeptical (growing up where every meal had a
| serving of meat) but it's really not an issue.
|
| Full vegans need to make sure they're getting the full range
| of protein types but it's pretty easy if you have a diverse
| diet of grains, legumes, nuts, and other protein-rich foods.
| Basically don't go in thinking vegan == "I only eat lettuce"!
| There's lots of great, filling, protein-rich vegan food out
| there. Even a few vegan/veggie meals a week is a good thing.
|
| 100% agree impossible burgers are not good for you. Like real
| burgers they're fine in moderation. My personal love for an
| impossible burger is that it satisfies a craving without
| causing harm to an animal. It doesn't even need to be as
| good, just good enough to keep me from getting beef.
| djleni wrote:
| > Getting adequate amounts of protein is incredibly important
| and is very hard to get that as a vegan/vegetarian.
|
| Why do you believe this is the case? It really isn't.
|
| What do you consider "adequate" protein consumption?
| nu11ptr wrote:
| I'm a weight lifter and consume 100-150g daily. I think
| everyone should consume around 75g daily (I should add: as
| an absolute minimum)
| djleni wrote:
| You can nearly hit 75g a day with PB&J sandwiches. That's
| not exactly difficult.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| Your recommendation is that people eat 18 tablespoons of
| peanut butter a day to get their protein?
| djleni wrote:
| Not at all. Just pointing out that 75g isn't some
| breathtakingly large number to hit without meat.
|
| A wheat bread PB&J hits about 23G of protein with 4TBSP
| of peanut butter.
|
| White rice and tofu, the most boring meal I can think of
| already gets you to 14g or so.
|
| Hitting 150g of protein is really difficult and arguably
| a gross way to eat if you're just eating meat anyways.
| That's over TWO POUNDS of ground beef.
| messe wrote:
| 4 _tablespoons_ of peanut-butter on a sandwich? Isn't
| that quite a lot? That'd cover a most of the bread
| without even having to spread it.
| capitalsigma wrote:
| The issue with the PB&J is that it's > 700 calories (440
| just from the PB, call it 100 for a TBSP of jelly,
| probably 100-200 for the bread), whereas a grilled
| chicken breast might give you 30 G of protein with maybe
| 250 calories. If you were getting 150G of protein from PB
| alone, you would have to eat ~3.5k calories.
|
| Some more data points:
|
| * 150 g of protein from lentils: 1.9k
|
| * 150 g of protein from chickpeas: 2.9k
|
| * 150 g of protein from grilled chicken breast: 750
|
| * 150 g of protein from whey powder: 675
|
| * 150 g of protein from egg whites: 640
|
| My experience is that I don't need to worry much about
| "getting meat in" when I'm bulking up, but when I'm
| cutting calories to lose weight (and trying to keep
| protein extra high in order to maintain lean
| mass/increase satiety -- I'll have as much as 200-230g
| per day on maybe 2400 total calories), it's really tough
| to hit without having a lot of lean meat in my diet.
| djleni wrote:
| Okay I mostly agree with that. It's difficult to lose
| weight while not eating meat and maintaining a high
| protein diet.
|
| But my point isn't that, it's that for an average person
| eating average calories it's not difficult by any means
| to get enough protein.
|
| To be fair though, plant based protein powder is about
| 700 calories for 150g of protein too :)
| sieabah wrote:
| The "average" American is obese, so I'm not sure we
| should be encouraging this inefficient source of protein.
| dixie_land wrote:
| I think the point being made is about the "density" of
| protein per serving. Sure you can get 75 from PB but that
| would also give you diabetes, and excessive fat too.
|
| Same goes for plans, yes in powder form it's a few scoops
| but you probably would be way too stuffed if you eat the
| actual veggies.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| > but when I'm cutting calories to lose weight (and
| trying to keep protein extra high in order to maintain
| lean mass/increase satiety
|
| You need to cut down on broscience, To go into catabolic
| mode you need a hig caloric deficit for a long time
| combined with inactivity.
| tomcam wrote:
| How do you get the 100-150g?
| dixie_land wrote:
| 1 gram per lb of body weight
| djleni wrote:
| Might be more than you need:
| https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-
| health/speak...
|
| But regardless, not hard to hit with legumes and soy and
| nuts and meat replacements like Impossible.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The big difference is you actually have to actually pay
| attention to your protein intake. If you just eat meat all
| the time, you can be pretty confident you'll get enough
| protein with maybe a tiny bit of supplementation.
| Convenience, in a word.
| buu700 wrote:
| As someone who's been strictly keto for over a decade, it would
| be difficult for me to maintain my macros without meat, or a
| close substitute. (I would mirror nu11ptr's comments[1] as
| well.) As someone who finds mass murder and exploitation of
| other animals distasteful, I'm also constantly on the lookout
| for realistic alternatives.
|
| For a while, I really tried to make Beyond Meat work. I wasn't
| thrilled about introducing a highly processed food filled with
| low-quality fat (canola oil) as a daily staple, but the macros
| weren't _terrible_ (although far from ideal).
|
| It worked for a few months, but one day it was like a switch
| had suddenly flipped in my head, and even the smell of cooking
| it was enough to make me gag. I haven't been able to stomach it
| ever since. Impossible is probably more workable in that
| regard, but the macros are even worse, it's also highly
| processed (arguably more so), and I'd be skeptical of using soy
| as my majority protein source due to the phytoestrogens.
|
| All that being said, I recently got a chance to try a "chicken
| cutlet" from Meati[2]. I would _highly_ recommend it to anyone
| who isn 't allergic. Summary:
|
| * Rather than imitating ground meats, they sell fake steaks and
| chicken cutlets.
|
| * Rather than a highly processed blend of ingredients, it's a
| whole food -- just a particular species of mycelium (what
| they're branding as "mushroom root"), grown in molds to fit
| certain shapes then flavored and pressed to remove water.
|
| * Complete protein, 0g net carbs, good variety of (naturally
| occurring) micronutrients. If this matters to you, it's also
| low-fat.
|
| If I hadn't known otherwise, I would've assumed it was just a
| lean cut of chicken that had been marinated in some sort of
| mushroom sauce, and I'm saying this as someone who eats actual
| meat on a daily basis.
|
| From my perspective, Meati seems like the holy grail. It's good
| enough to convince me that cultured meat may turn out to be
| redundant. The current supply is too limited to use as a daily
| staple, but it's going to become my go-to protein as soon as
| they finish scaling up production.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964029
|
| 2: https://meati.com
| Klonoar wrote:
| The estrogen concern with soy is fairly overblown and not
| really an issue.
|
| Anyway, another one to look out for is Juicy Marbles. Cannot
| wait to see these things get wider distribution.
| tomcam wrote:
| Do you ever consider getting meat from a humane farm? To me
| that's as fair a solution as I can find. Especially
| understanding that during plant harvests thousands of small
| animals can be killed or greviously wounded.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| hakfoo wrote:
| To me, that's the "where's the beef" moment. The meatless
| alternatives are usually _more_ expensive than the cheapest
| real-meat options in the stores.
|
| While I suppose some of this is still "relatively early-stage
| firm versus entrenched industry that's spent the last century
| streamlining its operations", it means that it's still a
| conscious "I'm going out of my way to choose the meatless
| wonder" decision.
|
| Once it got cheap enough, I figured you'd start to see it
| widely adapted by food services as a way to stretch margins or
| compete more aggressively. Although I suspect this will be
| hindered by various product-labeling legal issues; they'll have
| to still be explicitly telling people "it's not beef" and
| that's going to shape customer expectations.
|
| I always liked the premise of selling vegetarian products as an
| economic choice rather than a moral one-- it avoids any direct
| personal values conflict by saying "You could try the McVeggie
| and save a buck on this meal."
| isthisthingon99 wrote:
| What is so difficult about pan frying a steak for 3 minutes on
| each side followed by 4 eggs, scrambled and some broccoli
| florets steamed in the microwave for 2 minutes?
| tomcam wrote:
| I dunno about the broccoli prep, that doesn't sound so
| great... air fryer FTW. Much slower though.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| ThalesX wrote:
| I just don't see any future where I won't be eating meat.
|
| My grandparents and cousins raise farm animals; I've helped raise
| farm animals: horses, oxen, cows, chickens, pigs, goats...
|
| What stops a family from raising their own hamburgers? In my
| vision, it's a lot cleaner and easier to understand than lab
| grown meat.
|
| I was just talking to my grandpa, in Europe, he was laughing at
| the news about needing to eat insects in the future, he also
| mentioned no one he knows would have trouble sourcing meat in any
| vision of the future.
|
| (Edit: downvote me all you want with no comment but this is a
| part of reality no matter how much you ignore it; good luck
| convincing generational farmers, that grow their own food, to
| start getting pre-frozen insect meat or meat alternatives,
| delivered to them from god knows where.)
| hedora wrote:
| I don't think people realize how low emissions are for poultry.
| Also, adding supplements like seaweed to cow diets reduces
| their emissions substantially.
|
| Ultimately, we have to do direct air carbon capture anyway at
| this point (the climate is already unacceptably screwed up),
| and doing that will be far more economical and scalable than
| eliminating long tail carbon emissions.
|
| After all, meat production is only a bit over 5% of global
| emissions. Carbon capture will dwarf that: we're committed to
| capturing > 100% of current emissions for many years, whether
| we like it or not. Estimates say carbon capture will cost about
| a dollar per gallon of gasoline-equivalent emissions.
|
| Would people rather give up beef, or pay $0.10-0.05 more per
| gallon of gasoline?
| toast0 wrote:
| > What stops a family from raising their own hamburgers?
|
| Mostly that they take a lot of space or a lot of feed or both.
| I borrowed two cows (or loaned a pasture) for a couple of weeks
| once, and they cleaned it out real fast. A lot of people in
| single family homes could keep chickens or maybe even goats,
| but cows are right out.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| It's the same line of argument as "well my dad was a chain
| smoker and he died at 92 and it wasn't lung cancer!"
|
| It's undisputable that producing meat requires way more land
| and resources than any plant or vegetable. Sure, nobody cares
| about the farmer and his five cows he keeps for himself, what's
| rather the problem is giant animal farms with questionable
| hygiene, sick animals, bad treatment of them, and the general
| expectation of more and more parts of the world population to
| eat meat every day instead of once or twice a week.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Go ahead but that's a lot of expense and/or land needed, and
| isn't relevant to most people
|
| But also it's silly of you to equate "lab grown meat" to stuff
| that's just different plants processed and mixed.
| standardUser wrote:
| I love the modern meat alternatives, but they are comparatively
| carb-heavy and are replacing one of the few foods I eat regularly
| that are not carb heavy. That's just not compatible with how I
| need to eat to feel good and maintain my body weight, so I almost
| never go for them.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Trying to compare a veggie fake meat to real meat is like trying
| to market wacking off is better than the real thing
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I remember Boca burgers, Quorn, and similar products being
| acceptable in the 1990s. If people are impressed by Impossible
| Burgers they have a short memory and/or allergic to history.
| wpietri wrote:
| For me Impossible and Beyond are a big step above Boca.
| casion wrote:
| For me, they taste nearly identical with a different texture.
| There's a bitterness that they share which overwhelms
| everything. Most people don't seem to notice it, but I've met
| a few with the same experience.
| falcolas wrote:
| Bitterness... Are you a cilantro-soap taster as well? I too
| notice that things are usually more bitter for me than
| others find them. Like the lightly flavored carbonated
| beverages.
| Nursie wrote:
| The ones in the 90s were nowhere near as close to beef burgers
| as these new ones. Quorn has come on leaps and bounds since
| then, and is a vaguely good chicken substitute, but _nothing_
| like impossible or beyond.
| starkd wrote:
| "But the consumer environment is tough, and this stuff is not
| cheap," he added. "It's going to take time to change cultural
| practices. It's not going to happen overnight."
|
| There's a hint of authoritarianism in that statement. 'change
| cultural practices' confers a sense of social engineering to the
| intent here. People don't like to be told what to eat. It has to
| be significantly better than the standard option.
| kashunstva wrote:
| I've been vegan for nearly a quarter century. Part of the problem
| is that deliberately positioning the fake meat products as, well,
| "fake meat" will forever create unreasonable expectations by way
| of comparisons. I have only the faintest recollection of what a
| hamburger, or steak, or fried chicken tastes like but if my
| experience were more recent, then I would probably reject the
| vegetarian alternatives if they were positioned as comparable in
| the market.
|
| But I think fast-food places have few alternatives to this
| practice. Outside of the fast food world, it's easier because
| restaurants are at greater liberty to not be constrained by the
| typical ways that animal flesh is shaped and used.
|
| It's a shame, because occasionally, those who don't eat animal
| products end up in social situations where they have to eat at
| fast-food places and are often left eating nothing.
| cronix wrote:
| > Part of the problem is that deliberately positioning the fake
| meat products as, well, "fake meat" will forever create
| unreasonable expectations by way of comparisons.
|
| I've always thought that was strange. Naming products they
| consume after the very things a lot of vegans are against. Like
| if a meat eater made something that looked like lettuce out of
| meat and called it a salad.
| tomcam wrote:
| Love that analogy
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Beyond Meat, for example, has the goal of reducing the
| ecological impact of meat consumption. It's not for seasoned
| vegan vets. It's for nascent, plant-curious folk who just need
| a little push in the right direction.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The company's goal is to make money, full stop. The way to
| make money, is to tell a story about reduced ecological
| impact, which is (like any marketing pitch) heavily biased
| and short on unintended consequences or contradictory facts.
| It's an effective marketing plan, because so many people seem
| to a) believe it without much checking and b) want to believe
| it, that is, have a healthy conscious by "doing their part"
| about the environment.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Do you know what a stopgap is?
|
| Yes, they want to make money. Yes, it's a great way to get
| people started on the journey to meat-free diets. What's
| your problem with that?
| gorbypark wrote:
| I've been a vegetarian for similar length of time (30 years
| give or take) and have also always wondered why fast food
| places only seem to do "fake meat". My local Subway did a trial
| of falafels and it was amazing. After about 6 months they went
| back to the (imo) gross soy protein veggie pattie's. Anyways, I
| always thought most fast food places could basically replace
| their meat with falafel's and 80% of vegetarians would love it,
| but none seem to have ever done it. I'm sure they do focus
| groups and have figured out the fake stuff sells better, but I
| think with a bit of marketing about it not being "fake" it
| could do as well, if not better, than the imitation meat stuff.
| ianai wrote:
| Agree. Falafel is delicious and fits perfect in so many
| places. Shame we can't easily get a falafel marinara
| sandwich, etc.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > But I think fast-food places have few alternatives to this
| practice
|
| Yup. Your practice is certainly a great one and it works for
| some things and gradual changes, but it probably won't work
| very well for people who are not very fond of change when they
| notice it, which is likely most of them.
| oezi wrote:
| I think you do have a good point but want to provide a small
| counter argument:
|
| The alternative meat offerings are providing food in a package
| which is easier to turn in a dish than other vegetarian / vegan
| ingredients. You get lots of things that can just be fried in a
| pan: fake meat balls, fake schnitzel, fake chicken nuggets,
| etc. These things don't need to taste like meat, they just need
| to taste good to succeed. The manufacturers are piggybacking on
| form factors and taste-signatures which have a name for
| consumers to recognize.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I think you're correct in fact, but have the wrong
| conclusion.
|
| I'm vegetarian and my partner (who I live with) is not.
|
| Those meat-fakes and vegetarian chicken nuggets and shit are
| sad. They just don't taste as good as the originals. If you
| take a could-be-vegetarian person and say "it's easy to try
| out being vegetarian, just swap meat for fake meat" then
| you'll disappoint them. It's just worse and they won't stick
| with it. Those products are for people who are committed to
| being vegetarian but haven't yet discovered new ways to eat
| or people catering to vegetarians who are meat eaters. I've
| been to friends house where someone made a meat dish and made
| me a few fake-meat nuggets to be nice. It was a kind gesture.
| "Real" vegetarian don't eat like that though, they find
| recipes designed to be enjoyed as is.
|
| If you're trying to go vegetarian, eat Indian or ethiopien
| food. Explore real Mediterranean food. Don't try to make
| steak and potatoes vegetarian. Yogurts or smoothies are good
| snacks. Etc.
|
| Disclaimer: I love a good hamburger and fake hamburger meat
| I'll tolerate. If you're American you may not want to give up
| burgers entirely.
| outime wrote:
| I was going to post a similar comment to yours. I'm not
| vegetarian/vegan but I've been very keen on testing
| alternatives to meat and dairy and I completely agree with your
| statement:
|
| >Part of the problem is that deliberately positioning the fake
| meat products as, well, "fake meat" will forever create
| unreasonable expectations by way of comparisons.
|
| Look, I have eaten some patties which were made of very tasty
| vegetarian/vegan combinations (lentils, beans, carrots, etc)
| and I do enjoy these a lot. Now if you call them a replacement
| for meat patties it's just not gonna work out. Even the ones
| that really try hard to imitate meat just don't cut it in my
| opinion (plus all the processing and ingredients they use to
| imitate meat is worrying to me). Are they bad? No they aren't,
| they're delicious and I can take them anyday as long as they're
| somewhat healthy and nutritious but please don't call them
| "fake meat", they're not and they must not be marketed that way
| because it'll make people reject them, which is probably part
| of the failure we're seeing now.
| ianai wrote:
| As a vegan, agree. I once described benevolent bacon as "you're
| not going to think 'oh wow I totally just ate bacon' but you
| might think 'oh wow I don't need bacon after that."
|
| And it's a recipe thing. Just need to get a little creative
| perhaps.
| ianai wrote:
| Also when I made my own vegan bbq out of seitan (gluten) I
| can mix the smoke flavor right into the wheat flour mixture.
| It doesn't take the 14-18 hours to coax smoke flavor into a
| bit of meat. Can dial it all right to whatever I want from
| the get go.
|
| But ultimately finding recipes that people want to eat
| without meat should be a better goal. Feels like a false
| premise.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Not a vegan here, but to bolster your point somewhat, there's
| this huge assortment of South Indian food that is completely
| meat-free, it's grain and plant based, and it is ancient
| cuisine that mastered being delicious. It has no pretense
| around fake chicken or fake this or that.
|
| It does contain a lot of ghee, so it isn't vegan, but my point
| remains. Once I was taken to a vegan sushi place, and I was
| given some sort of "vegan salmon roll" that was made with mango
| slices. It wasn't bad - but the fact that you said it was
| salmon, and it wasn't, is a turn-off. They'd be better off just
| saying, we're a vegan restaurant, here's our food to try,
| rather than calling it something fake.
|
| People don't like to play pretend, it feels odd, and it doesn't
| convert the non-vegans like myself.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _South Indian food that is completely meat-free_
|
| Indeed, I am a meat lover but most of my South Indian meals
| during the week are meat-free. Our family historically and
| usually only eats meat on the weekends because meat used to
| be expensive back in the day in the old country.
| tomcam wrote:
| South Indian cuisine is da bomb. Here in the PNW it's picking
| up steam and I like that trend very much. Stout patriot here,
| but American cuisine is loathsome. Indian, French, Israel,
| Lebanon, Afghanistan, Szehchuan, Canton, so many cultures do
| so much better that the good old US of A it's embarrassing.
|
| My Chinese wife finds this bemusing and jokes that I was a
| Szechuan farmer in another life.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Speak for yourself. :)
|
| I've had the opposite experience. I'm not vegan, but my diet
| has trended that way lately - and I'm totally fine and prefer
| when restaurants liken foods to salmon/tuna/etc. I _want_ the
| point of comparison.
| UglyToad wrote:
| Would be interested if the article expanded further into the
| situation in other markets. Just before I left the UK there was a
| huge and exciting amount of development in the meat substitute
| market. Some great, some ok, some terrible.
|
| From my perspective while I agree there's a bunch of recipes that
| are purely vegetarian that might taste better and be healthier I
| also... don't care.
|
| I am a bad cook, I grew up eating meat and meat based dishes, I
| neither have the patience, skills or access to ingredients for
| cooking vegetarian dishes well. I don't really like vegetables,
| I'm an incredibly picky eater and you can take these meat
| substitutes from my cold dead hands.
|
| They're not going to revolutionise your life or be the best thing
| you've ever tasted but as a meat eater for 2 decades and
| vegetarian for around 1 neither were a lot of meat dishes. Stop
| mythologising the burger, or sausage.
|
| As for health concerns I think the only approach to dietary
| 'science' is to ignore anything it claims and just eat a good mix
| of various things until they manage to develop an evidence based
| approach of any reliability or predictive power.
|
| Food and politics are inextricably linked and I guess it makes
| sense that they're struggling in a market where 'soy boys' gained
| currency as a thing. People who bought into a study about red
| clover consumption in Australian sheep are probably not going to
| make rational decisions about food.
| brap wrote:
| Boy was this thing hyped!
|
| I remember during the peak hype I was super eager to try it.
| People were saying it's indistinguishable from real meat and will
| cause a revolution! Even as a meat lover, I was honestly super
| excited when [either "Impossible" or "Beyond", don't remember
| which] burger came to my country. It was the first (and only)
| time in my life when I was excited to try a vegan burger. This
| will change everything!
|
| I had it at a very nice restaurant. And it was... extremely
| underwhelming. I remember thinking to myself "really? that's
| it?". It tasted exactly like those supermarket veggie burgers my
| vegetarian sister used to microwave in the early to mid 90s. You
| know, those veggie patties that are _obviously_ not meat, and
| have too much spices on them to try to mask it and pretend to be
| something else. Not gross, just meh. An ok side dish at most.
|
| I guess it was all about having really, really good PR.
|
| Still excited for lab-made meat, though. Maybe some day.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Modern fake meats (Beyond, Impossible etc) are unmistakeably
| superior to legacy fake meat. I don't know what you were
| served, or how it was prepared, but if it was indistinguishable
| from 90s microwave "meat", it wasn't representative.
|
| You should try a Beyond Meat burger from one of the many
| restaurants who regularly serve them. I wouldn't say it's
| indistinguishable from meat -- and it's totally fair to hate it
| -- but it's in a different league to the fake meat of the 90s.
|
| I recommend the McDonald's McPlant, it's a great
| representation.
| _xerces_ wrote:
| The article just mentioned McDonalds is getting rid of their
| fake meat burgers, so try it while you can.
| starkd wrote:
| Yes, anyone who has been around for awhile should be able to
| recognize it as nothing more than a soy burger or veggie
| pattie. It shows the power of marketing to create novelty out
| of the ordinary.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Yes, anyone who has been around for awhile should be able
| to recognize it as nothing more than a soy burger or veggie
| pattie._
|
| Out of curiosity: Have you eaten one in a restaurant setting?
| They're credible ground beef analogs (and are judged harshly
| since the bar is higher), where soy/veggie patties don't even
| pretend to be beef.
|
| In any case, it was all over once Big Beef's (JBS, Tyson,
| Cargill, Marfrig) P.R. machines established "fake meat" as
| the name for beef alternatives.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I seem to recall Impossible had a v1 recipe and then a v2
| recipe. Any idea which you tried? V1 would've been years ago
| during the initial hype cycle.
| direl wrote:
| As a vegetarian, I agree that most of these meatless burgers are
| somewhere between vile and mediocre.
|
| The only one I've enjoyed so far is Linda McCartney's Vegetarian
| Mozzarella Burger. Grill it for 10-15 minutes or so, adding a
| slice of extra mature cheddar on top when it's nearly done, then
| serve in a buttered brioche bun with a sprinkle of salt and
| pepper on the cheese. It's surprisingly delicious.
|
| Besides, there are plenty of alternatives to meat that aren't
| trying to be meat-like: tofu, seitan, cheeses with high melting
| points such as halloumi and paneer. Better to enjoy these, than
| be disappointed with products that attempt mimic the taste and
| mouthful of flesh.
| Elinvynia wrote:
| Hello vegetarian, please see "Diary is scary" on YouTube, won't
| be one for much longer, hopefully.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| mcdonald's plant-based burger is tasteless. size is very small.
|
| on the other hand, burger king's rebel whooper is very good.
| problem I experienced was that staff takes too much time to make
| it.
|
| I have no developed taste for "real" burgers and I still wouldn't
| eat plant-based ones regularly. at least the pricing is normal,
| compared to burgers in vegan restaurants that cost 3-5 times
| more.
|
| is meat consumption in fast-food chain the majority of meat
| consumption? if not, why the need to discuss the global meat
| consumption in the context of fast-food chains.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > mcdonald's plant-based burger is tasteless. size is very
| small.
|
| That sounds like a Woody Allen quote.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You have to come at it from a very particular angle to be
| funny.
|
| Otherwise it's just "this neither satisfied my tongue nor my
| stomach". You don't want a subpar meal to also be small
| unless you have the spare time and money to get a
| replacement.
| Macha wrote:
| To be fair, mcdonald's beef burgers are pretty weak tasting too
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I'm not bullish on plant-based meat taking over the market from
| real meat; I don't think that's going to happen. But I can see
| plant-based meat substitutes taking a place as a now-and-then
| substitute. The Boca Burger is a good example, because it's not
| meat, it doesn't really pretend to be meat, but it's _good food
| in its own right_ , and it can serve the same function as meat in
| a meal despite fooling absolutely nobody. I serve them to my kids
| and eat them myself when we're in the mood for something that
| fills the gap of meat but want a lower-calorie choice.
| paulcole wrote:
| My hottest take has been that fast-food restaurants in the US
| will be 100% plant-based in my lifetime. Whether it's
| economics, politics, ethics, or health that drives the
| decision, something is going to make it happen.
|
| My original belief was that one big prion disease outbreak in
| the US would be the tipping point, but post-COVID I don't think
| that'll do it.
|
| Now, I think it's going to be climate change. I honestly don't
| see how animal meat is sustainable for more than another
| generation or two.
| nsenifty wrote:
| Ultimately meat substitutes are yet more processed crap. If you
| want to try to cut down meat, I'd recommend trying any number of
| cuisines that have culturally evolved largely around plant based
| foods and sustainable fish. Most cuisines outside Europe-
| influenced world don't have a hunk of meat as the main event for
| every meal
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I know many people don't experience this, but beyond meat
| products taste like ass (to me.) But my spouse and child seem to
| be okay with them. Maybe it's like cilantro; some portion of the
| population thinks cilantro tastes like soap.
|
| Maybe the percentage of people who are genetically predisposed to
| think either beyond or impossible tastes bad is just big enough
| to give the whole concept a bad name.
|
| But all is not lost. I still like boca burgers with black beans,
| cheese and peppers.
| yellowpencil wrote:
| VC got their IPO, thats all that ever mattered.
|
| it was kind of funny to see the PR campaigns ramp up - placement
| in news articles, podcast interviews with the founder,
| partnerships with fast food chains.
|
| after the smoke cleared there was never any real demand, just
| hype. a bunch of people made money, rinse repeat.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Social media hype is cheap to purchase these days. That's why
| we see so many stupid fads and political outrage hypertrends.
| starkd wrote:
| But they actually got funding to implement these fads. It
| took a decade of near-zero interest loans.
| starkd wrote:
| That's what you get when you have over a decade of near zero
| interest rates and easy money. A lot of hyped products and
| companies that mysteriously don't make any money. We're paying
| the price now.
| kube-system wrote:
| There was also a lot of cool and important shit that was made
| due to the same conditions. I hope things turn around asap.
| Cheap money is good for fake progress as much as it is for
| real progress.
| mindslight wrote:
| Or we could just produce less crap to be wasted, and have
| healthier work-life balances to boot. It takes an
| especially foolish kind of monetary environment to
| manufacture perfectly good e-scooters just to dump them
| into rivers and onto sidewalks, hoping that enough people
| tripping over them will create a recurring revenue stream
| from the coins falling out of their pocket. Plus that whole
| disenfranchisement of individuals further into renters
| rather than distributed capital owners.
| jmpman wrote:
| I was impressed by the impossible whopper. It was 70% as good as
| the meat version. If it was half the price, I might order it
| again. Instead, it's a premium. Unless you have ethical or
| religious reasons, why would you pay more for an inferior
| product? My first purchase was for novelty reasons, but I haven't
| been able to justify a second.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I feel similarly. Impossible is good enough on taste for many
| dishes now. To become a commonplace/default, its current price
| matches its brand name.
| awestroke wrote:
| Beef is heavily subsidized in the US. Let's bring subsidies to
| zero and see which burger is cheaper
| voisin wrote:
| > If it was half the price, I might order it again. Instead,
| it's a premium.
|
| This is a common issue for all things vegan, organic, etc. they
| are always - and I am not exaggerating here - a premium. The
| issue I think is partially scale and partially subsidies. The
| only way to get the cost down is if the government stops
| subsidizing the stuff that's bad for the environment, starts
| forcing the externalities to be priced and internalized in
| their costs, and maybe even uses some tax revenue on these
| things to subsidize the alternative stuff that's good for the
| environment to get the scale up.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I mean why isn't ethical enough? Meat processing is one of the
| single worst industries for climate change, a surprising amount
| of the energy production field.
| philwelch wrote:
| Because most people don't agree with the ethical premise that
| it's bad to eat meat.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| prepend wrote:
| It seems evident why ethical isn't enough as we could just
| eat meat and only consume a nutrient slurry for ethical
| reasons.
|
| There needs to be an economic reason and it doesn't make
| sense that an impossible whopper costs more than a whopper.
|
| For that price, I'd rather have a sustainably raised, organic
| whopper that tastes the same or better.
| ianai wrote:
| There probably is enough economic reason if the
| externalities were properly accounted. If it's not in the
| price (and worse-subsidized) there's no hope of the market
| reaching a suitable equilibrium.
| plmpsu wrote:
| > I mean why isn't ethical enough?
|
| It is. GP is just saying that different people have different
| ethics.
| wpietri wrote:
| And let's not forget the cows.
|
| I'm in no way a vegetarian. And I'm too set in my childhood-
| established food biases to make huge changes. (I tried for a
| year or two. It didn't take.) But the Impossible and Beyond
| burgers are close enough for me. Could I tell them apart in a
| patty taste test? Probably. But once it's on a bun with
| cheese and barbecue sauce and whatnot, I don't notice a
| difference.
|
| So at that point, I'm like, "Cows are nice animals." I have
| made the acquaintance of a few and I like them. For an
| equivalent experience, I can either kill the cow or not. So
| we've been gradually shifting toward the high-grade fake
| meats. I look forward to further improvements on this front.
| Elinvynia wrote:
| Every vegetarian should look up "Dairy is scary" on
| YouTube.
|
| Wouldn't be one for much longer.
| swiley-gin wrote:
| wpietri wrote:
| Ah, reality. As defined by somebody so unable to function
| in it that he can't make it 24 hours here without getting
| 3 flagged/dead comments and a negative karma score.
|
| But thank you for the comment. It's nice to know that the
| people opposed to crazy things like human rights are this
| dysfunctional. You give me hope for the future.
| Lammy wrote:
| I don't like the push to define humanity as a thing somehow
| separate from the Earth and all that entails. Cows wouldn't
| exist at all if humanity didn't depend on them. The most
| pro-cow stance is to raise them with love and respect and
| use all they offer us without wasting.
| wpietri wrote:
| Do you really believe that if everybody turns vegetarian
| tomorrow cows will just stop existing? If so, India would
| like a word.
| Lammy wrote:
| I'm talking about the past, not the future. Bos
| taurus/indicus wouldn't exist without man:
| https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-domestication-
| of-co...
| wpietri wrote:
| Ok? I don't think that has anything to do with what I
| said, but you do you.
| robcohen wrote:
| Not to go down this annoying rabbit hole, but if you and
| others didn't eat it, wouldn't it not exist in the first
| place due to lack of market demand? Is a short life with a
| quick end worse than no life at all. Would it be acceptable
| if they were sufficiently happy or cared for? Is this a
| form of slavery and therefore bad? Where do we draw the
| line? How much freedom and life is a worthy trade off vs no
| life at all?
|
| It seems to me that this argument isn't sufficiently
| strong. The global warming argument seems strong.
| wpietri wrote:
| Buddy, I'm not making an "argument". I'm explaining my
| thought process. If I can live my life in ways that are
| equivalent except one has less unnecessary killing, I'm
| going to pick that one. If that doesn't matter to you,
| that's fine by me.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I have grazed steers on my property and they didn't make
| such a positive impression on me. If they didn't produce
| beef I'd much rather not have them around.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Tax meat, then, and get the prices into parity. I know it's
| literally violence to have to pay for your externalities, but
| that's a couple of the main things that governments are for:
| to do violence and tax externalities.
| tptacek wrote:
| We're talking about the US market, right? You can't tax
| meat here. You might as well propose to a new tax on
| baseball or the national anthem.
| Bakary wrote:
| You don't even need to tax meat in most situations. Just
| remove subsidies.
| VLM wrote:
| meat producer subsidies already don't exist.
| kennend3 wrote:
| Why do you think the tax system should be used for this?
|
| The tax system should have a single purpose - Raise funds
| for government expenses.
|
| This is why the tax system is the mess it currently is.
| Everyone thinks the solution to their personal "social
| change" is to "tax whatever they disagree with".
|
| You dont like carbonated drinks, advocate for a "soft drink
| tax".
|
| You dont like people eating meats, advocate for a "meat
| tax".
|
| Should we increase the fuel taxes to account for all the
| diesel used to produce a vegan diet? Besides the farming,
| there is the water and transportation to account for. Some
| produce (nuts, avocados) are very damaging on the
| environment, should we tax them?
|
| Or, is this a "bad tax" because it impacts you?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I feel like you're making fun of me but I am genuinely okay
| with implementing a carbon tax.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I am not. I am agreeing with you enthusiastically.
| starkd wrote:
| "a couple of the main things that goverments are for: to do
| violence and tax externalities"
|
| huh? Maybe in authoritarian countries, but not in countries
| whose constitutions are geared for individual liberty. Your
| fascist tendencies are showing.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What? It's the people that focus really hard on
| individual liberty that call government action violence,
| my dude.
| starkd wrote:
| Only when government action infringes on what they want
| to eat, dude.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That depends on whether you consider taxing externalities
| to be infringement.
|
| I definitely don't. Taxing externalities is great and not
| fascist.
| Bakary wrote:
| A country with a constitution that is geared like this is
| still using violence or the implied threat of it to
| guarantee these rights or even private property in
| general.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Meat processing is one of the single worst industries for
| climate change
|
| Wild claim!
|
| Despite all the media coverage on farming/meat industry,
| coal-powered power plants remain the single most polluting
| industry in terms of GHG.
|
| Followed by all the hydrocarbon fuel based Transportation and
| (by a large step margin) the steel industry.
|
| [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-
| sect...
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I'd likely to have to do more research before I'm confident
| to address everything you've said. However, I have issues
| with the way things are categorized because meat production
| is more than just livestock. It uses a lot of energy and
| transportation both of which are huge categories on your
| source. I spoke to a climate scientist I'm friends with a
| while back and it's my memory of the conversation that gave
| me the anecdote above. I'll have to do more research before
| weighing in any further than that.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| To be clear I am 100% in agreement that the meat industry
| is both unsustainable and unethical. However,
| specifically on GHG it really is not the worst offender.
|
| Effectively if you would stop commuting with a car,
| reduced AC/Heating to bare minimum and simply bought less
| 'stuff' (non-essential goods), you would be doing more
| for the environment than not eating meat.
|
| The unconfortable truth is that once we start discussing
| these things very few people are willing to curb their
| 'standard of living', in reality it is a first world
| luxury not a given right.
|
| Nevertheless if you tell me that we need to curb meat
| consumption to avoid animal suffering than I am equally
| on board with you. But the environmental angle in my view
| is a distraction from the other elephants in the room.
| philwelch wrote:
| The better question is whether or not meat can be
| produced sustainably. Humans have been raising livestock
| for millennia, and climate change only seemed to start
| after the Industrial Revolution, so meat isn't obviously
| necessarily causative of climate change.
|
| To my understanding, the climate problem is basically one
| of not having closed loops. For instance, burning fossil
| fuels is a problem because you're taking carbon that's
| buried underground and pumping it into the atmosphere. So
| to the degree that meat is a problem, there's probably a
| loop we need to close. Energy and transportation are
| instances of the same burning-fossil-fuels problem that
| we need to solve anyway.
|
| As for the livestock themselves, I know they produce
| methane as a byproduct of digestion, but that seems like
| a potentially closed loop to me. Wasn't it a closed loop
| during all the centuries that humans raised livestock
| before the Industrial Revolution? If so, what changed?
| The way we produce fertilizer, for one. But we also need
| fertilizer to grow vegetables, so we need to solve the
| fertilizer problem anyway. Plus, livestock are also the
| primary source of organic fertilizer, so maybe they're
| part of the closed loop. They sure used to be.
| solarkraft wrote:
| It feels like most people don't have ethics most of the time.
| You have to convince them on other grounds. Price would be a
| part of that.
| kennend3 wrote:
| Ethics is subjective.
|
| Is it ethical to eat dogs? Some societies do, some don't.
|
| Should we judge lions for eating meats? Perhaps convince
| them to move to a vegan diet?
|
| What you are advocating is forcing your views on others,
| and that "price" should be the factor.
|
| What if others don't want you do to do something, would you
| enjoy having it priced out of your reach?
|
| Why do you "have to convince them" in the first place?
| wouldn't it be easier to do what makes you happy and keep
| your opinions to yourself and your like-minded friends?
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Would you care to source that claim? All of the research I've
| encountered suggests agriculture in toto contributes around
| 8% of total GHG emissions, with meat production responsible
| for at most 60% of that number. Even if meat production was
| eliminated that would not in yield a 5% reduction in GHG as
| additional plant-based food production would be required to
| pick up this slack. Given the current state of play of arable
| land globally (near maximum utilization, available land
| shrinking rapidly, unrecoverable topsoil depletion rampant
| globally) one wonders where proponents of this idea think all
| of this extra agricultural output is supposed to come from.
| Bakary wrote:
| Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land,
| yet produces less than 20% of the world's supply of
| calories. See the source for a list of nations with
| globally unsustainable diets in terms of land.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-
| diets
|
| 36% of crops globally are used for animal feed. This climbs
| to 67% in the USA.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-
| fuel...
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Given the frequency with which livestock is grazed on
| land that is utterly unsuitable for any other
| agricultural purpose that 80% is substantially less
| meaningful than it may appear at first glance.
| stickfigure wrote:
| These numbers don't really translate to meaningful
| information.
|
| Livestock eats bulk commodities like corn and grain,
| which modern mechanized farming has made incredibly
| efficient. Those staples are grown in regions that don't
| require irrigation (iowa, kansas, etc). Wheat and corn
| are already so cheap that they're almost free in the US.
| Humans get their fill.
|
| It's not like little Johnny can't have broccoli this week
| because the fat cats are eating burgers.
|
| Look at it from this perspective: Shipping corn and wheat
| is a relatively efficient way of moving "water" from
| places that rain a lot to places where it doesn't.
| mauflows wrote:
| This doesn't account for the carbon cost of fixing
| nitrogen for fertilizer to grow corn in monocultures
|
| Or the unused manure, nitrogen runoff, methane from cows
| philwelch wrote:
| Livestock also produce organic fertilizer though.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| Measuring food production by calories feels like
| measuring programmer productivity by lines of code.
|
| How does it compare to other sources of proteins with
| full amino acid profiles?
| pittmajp wrote:
| Irrelevant. You can get a full amino acid profile by
| combining plant based sources. It is basic high school
| biology that there's less energy available the higher up
| on the food pyramid you go.
|
| Farming Lions for meat would be less economical than
| farming cows. Farming cows is less economical than
| farming wheat.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| > You can get a full amino acid profile by combining
| plant based sources.
|
| Well, yeah, that's why I'm asking how meat compares to
| those rather than pure calories sources like corn or
| sugar cane.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Totally agree. I think the fake meat people are too worried
| about the taste, not enough about the cost.
|
| As a small incremental expense, a veg burger has to be a _lot_
| cheaper than a meat burger for people to choose it
| consistently. The taste is a minor issue once you load it up
| with ketchup, pickles, special sauce, etc.
|
| Whereas more expensive things like solar panels or electric
| cars, only have to be a _little_ cheaper to make a meaningful
| marginal economic difference to most people.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm sure they know that. But I think they're following the
| well-trodden approach for tech products: find an initial
| market that will pay a premium, use that to get in the black,
| and keep investing in R&D to bring the cost down.
|
| I'm definitely in their target market. I'm willing to pay a
| modest premium for what they're offering. And at cost parity,
| I'll buy their product a lot.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Should it even _be_ a tech product?
|
| What's the mass market business model for "pretty good,
| minimally processed, reasonably healthy, low cost burger
| alternative"? Institutional? Workplace? Schools? Prisons?
| Dollar store frozen food section? Food cart?
| wpietri wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand the question. It seems to imply
| that there's some sort of limit on the number of people
| who can try finding a new thing for people to eat. This
| is one of the ways and they are doing it. I don't see how
| "should" enters into it.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Isn't it their stated goal to "solve" the major "problem"
| of the environmental impact of meat production?
|
| In a way, it's like the debunked story of the expensive
| NASA space pen versus the cheap cosmonaut pencil.
|
| Of course, the facts of that story are that private
| investment, not government spending, came up with an
| advanced solution, and that pencils really were a
| potential problem in spacecraft due to fragmentation and
| flammability. In popular perception, though, the original
| false story remains very convincing.
|
| Not many of us are going to space regularly. Cheap
| pencils and pens own the market that matters.
|
| If a fake meat company wants to make a meaningful
| difference on the environment, they need to cut the cost
| sharply and make something that can take the mass market.
| wpietri wrote:
| In the long term, sure.
|
| Similarly, there were people in the 1970s and 1980s who
| wanted computing to be available to the masses. That now
| exists, but the road that led to it wasn't a direct one.
| The original Macintosh was the equivalent of $6500 bucks
| today. Was that the right price? In one sense no, because
| most people couldn't afford to spend good-used-car kinds
| of money on a computer. But it was the right price in
| that it was enough money to sell a bunch of units,
| establish a market, and help fund their R&D going
| forward. Which over time led to today's world of
| ubiquitous cheap computing power.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What's the mass market business model for "pretty good
| low cost noodle soup alternative"? Turns out the answer
| is "everywhere and everyone" - I WFH and love cooking yet
| I still eat instant noodles pretty regularly.
|
| I don't think it's unreasonable for a plant based meat
| company to hope they can accomplish something similar.
| Wikipedia tells me (I've made no effort to verify this)
| that instant noodles were also originally sold above the
| price point of the normal noodles they were replacing.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Yeah, I waaant to buy them, but like, be cheaper.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Totally agree. I think the fake meat people are too worried
| about the taste, not enough about the cost.
|
| Every few years a lawsuit or accusation about the absence of
| meat comes up in the media cycle, Taco Bell and Subway are
| favorite targets. If I hear that Taco Bell is selling non-
| meat tacos as meat tacos and people are enjoying them, to me
| that's good news and they should be encouraged to share their
| tactics.
|
| Food that is cheap, nutritious, palatable, and doesn't cause
| a lot of damage in its production is good. We should use
| whatever tactics we can. Compromising any of these too much
| is not good.
| bryan0 wrote:
| I really appreciate all of the plant-based options. My take on it
| is: if I can barely tell the difference then I will buy the
| product which doesn't involve killing animals.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Reading about the unsustainability of the plant based fake meats
| was all it required for every single person I know who cares
| about such things to never even try them.
| Clampower wrote:
| Please provide a source or delete your claim.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Who are you to make such a demand? Talk to politically aware
| vegetarians and they'll tell you it is common knowledge among
| that population.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Okay come on. I believe you saw something credible at some
| point, but to post "it's common knowledge" two minutes
| after saying you can't find a source is a really weak
| argument and doesn't justify "who are you".
| bsenftner wrote:
| Back when the Impossible Burger first came out, there was
| quite a bit of interest in vegetarian circles. That
| interest turned sour very quickly as the sustainability
| of their process was investigated. This was about 2 years
| ago? Today the vegetarians I know have entirely moved on
| and the idea of plant based meats is just yet another
| meat culture noise to be ignored.
| ipaddr wrote:
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/news/insigh.
| ..
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That amp link doesn't work for me.
|
| But the article doesn't really support the argument.
| Complaining that many soy farms are currently using bad
| practices doesn't make soy inherently unsustainable.
| Neither does an argument that cow farming preserves certain
| grasslands. And even if CO2 is a "limited" metric it's one
| that's pretty relevant to sustainability.
|
| So I'm open to being convinced, but this article ain't it.
| tomweingarten wrote:
| Even if this is true (and I've never been able to find credible
| evidence it is), what we're seeing now is just the upper bound
| of sustainable plant-based food production. As they scale it up
| and take advantage of technologies like precision fermentation,
| all evidence suggests this will continue to improve even
| further. Compare that to animal agriculture, where
| thermodynamic limitations on increased efficiency are strong,
| and most of the options to increase sustainability come at the
| cost of terribly inhumane practices.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I've not seen this. What source do you have?
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| Also interested in sources
| bsenftner wrote:
| I hate our SEO'd world: trying to locate the sources again,
| there is a full on propaganda war taking place on this issue.
| It has become full time work to locate reputable sources at
| this time. Searches give pages and pages of marketing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yeah, there's not a chance. You have to save them when you
| find them. That's the real benefit of the actual source
| over the pop science article or press release summarizing
| it: the real source is going to be typeset into a pdf that
| you can keep, instead of being a link that changes or rots,
| or a memory of something that was dropped from search
| engines or out-SEO'd.
| Bakary wrote:
| I am sympathetic to your ideological worldview, but simply
| claiming that something is common knowledge and being
| unable to come up with sources is concerning, even in the
| context of an SEO war.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I feel like the premium pricing for the plant based alternative
| is a major problem. Personally I think they've achieved "good
| enough" results, but I rarely eat them because of the cost
| difference at restaurants.
|
| The story is flipped for home cooking, e.g., making mapo or
| meatballs at home. We actually prefer the plant based alternative
| there, and lately it's also been the economical choice.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Eh, I think the fact that they are not healthier (by fat or
| calorie content, I forget which) is a major deterrent.
|
| Admittedly, this is a very informal survey, but of the people I
| know of who have tried one, all of them claimed that not eating
| meat was not a big enough motivation to change. They'd rather
| they also be healthier than they actually are.
|
| Cheaper might actually harm adoption. when you compare eating
| ground meat to an engineered product, making the engineered
| product cheaper just makes it seem more like processed junk
| food.
| ericmcer wrote:
| In retrospect it should have been obvious that they would not
| be healthy.
|
| Taking a bunch of plants and heavily processing them to make
| them look, taste and feel like ground beef is clearly not
| going to be as healthy as just eating plants or eating beef.
| We just do not understand nutrition and biology well enough
| yet to do that. The actual "Beyond" meat will be when someone
| figures out how to grow it safely in a petri dish, hopefully
| people stop eating meat from slaughtered animals then, but
| who knows.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Yeah, I mean soy burgers already were full of so many
| additives they weren't much better than beef. And those
| have been around for ages.
| gw99 wrote:
| They beyond meat McPlant is a hell of a lot healthier than a
| Big Mac or a quarter pounder with cheese here in the UK.
|
| I'm not a vegetarian as such but the McPlant burgers are
| rather better tasting as well.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I think the fact that they are not healthier (by fat or
| calorie content, I forget which) is a major deterrent._
|
| I think another minor item that's overlooked is that there
| are a number of people trying to avoid "processed" foods, and
| there's few foods on the planet more processed than
| artificial meat.
|
| People interested in their health and this line of thinking
| will take beef from a local butcher over shrink-wrapped
| frozen frankenfood that is pretending to be beef.
|
| I'm not much of a meat-eater. I probably eat meat maybe three
| or four times a month. But when I do, I get something from
| the farmer down the street who is happy to show me her cows,
| pigs, and chickens, and not something from a cardboard box
| that came from an industrial factory.
| mandarax8 wrote:
| Is it not more like processed junk food?
| zdragnar wrote:
| I was referring more to what the pricing does to consumer
| perception- of course, it is very much heavily processed,
| and not particularly healthy.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Generally, they are lower in saturated fat, but that's less
| of a "lose weight this year" improvement and more of a
| "reduce your chance of a heart attack in 20 years"
| improvement.
| ericmcer wrote:
| We really don't know that, and there is a huge difference
| between eating canola or palm oil and eating beef fat
| (although we throw them all under a blanket "saturated"
| label). I would guess beyond is using a variety of seed,
| palm, and coconut oils to fatten the burgers. Everyone can
| have their own opinion on this but I believe animal fats
| are healthier than those seed oils.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Everyone can have their own opinion but the best research
| says that replacing animal fats with plant fats in one's
| diet leads to longer life:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qInpEKHdjXk
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Dr Paul Mason on "Saturated Fat is not Dangerous"[1]
| talks about the introduction of the "lower saturated fat"
| guidelines in Australia and how it was not based on any
| evidence or medical literature review. He mentions three
| meta-analyses on saturated fats:
|
| " _Insufficient evidence of association is present for
| intake of ... saturated or polyunsaturated fatty acids;
| total fat ... meat, eggs and milk_ " - Mente A, et al. A
| systematic review of the evidence supporting a causal
| link between dietary factors and coronary heart disease.
| Arch Intern Med. 2009 April 13.
|
| " _... no significant evidence for conclusing that
| dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased
| risk of CHD or CVD_ " - Siri-Tarino PW, et al. Meta-
| analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the
| association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease.
| Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar.
|
| " _There were no clear effects of dietary fat changes on
| total mortality or cardiovascular mortality..._ " -
| Hooper L, et al. Reduced or modified dietary fat for
| preventing cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database
| Syst. Rev. 2011 Jul 6.
|
| And he says "the balance of evidence available at the
| time of developing our nutritional guidelines says that
| saturated fat in the diet is not associated with any
| deleterious health outcomes, that is, it's safe".
|
| Newer research published after 2013, same results, he
| cites three more reviews and meta-analyses, two from the
| British Medical Journal.
|
| Then he mentions the biggest most expensive study done on
| reducing dietary fat, $700,000,000 dollars, 50,000
| people, 8 years, and the _only_ statistically significant
| result from the study was that women with a history of
| heart disease who were randomly selected into the lower
| fat group, increased their risk of problems such as heart
| attacks was _increased_ by 26%.
|
| That is, saturated fat (animal fat tends to be) hasn't
| been proven to do anything bad, and reduced fat
| (vegetarianism tends to be , but not necessarily) hasn't
| been proven to do anything beneficial.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUY_SDhxf4k
| merrywhether wrote:
| These claims have been coming under scrutiny:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32724569
| RC_ITR wrote:
| If you read that article, the "scrutiny" is that the
| original research didn't factor in potential benefits of
| vitamins in meat, which feels like a stretch.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| The best research does not say this. The best research is
| completely unclear since nutritional epidemiology is
| plagued with bad data, bad science and political agendas
| one way or the other.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Good video, I am a little suspicious of the neutrality of
| a channel called "plant chompers" with other videos about
| how plant protein is as good as meat protein etc. but it
| has some good points.
| tlogan wrote:
| It is not clear. Why people in Caucasu region live so
| long? They only eat meat and cheese? But maybe it is
| true.
|
| Anyway, "Meat is not healthy" is distraction against the
| real killer: sugar. The main problem in typical American
| diet is way too much sodium and sugar. But sugar industry
| is way way too powerful do do anything.
|
| So let's attack meat ... or gluten or whatever. But god
| forbid removing sugar from bacon and hamburgers (and
| plant based burgers have about 10g of sugar in it).
| djleni wrote:
| > and plant based burgers have about 10g of sugar in it
|
| Where are you getting this? Impossible's nutrition facts
| state < 1g per serving.
| tlogan wrote:
| They hide it under carbohydrates. Meat should have 0g of
| carbohydrates.
| djleni wrote:
| I guess if I'm being pedantic, sugar isn't technically
| the same as carbs, but from a health perspective carbs
| aren't much better. I'll give you that. No one is going
| to be using using this stuff for a keto diet :)
| [deleted]
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| The "best research" 20 years ago said fat free was the
| solution, now everybody is walking around with mental
| health issues. When it comes to nutritional science
| there's WAY too much corporate influence to trust "the
| best research" at any given point in time.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| No to mention it is super hard to do any kind of real
| world research on long term effects of certain foods.
|
| Plus the food we eat does all kinds of stuff to our
| bodies. What is good for our bodies on one dimension
| might be bad on another. Our interaction with food is
| incredibly complex.
| bawolff wrote:
| > eating canola or palm oil and eating beef fat (although
| we throw them all under a blanket "saturated" label)
|
| Wait, what? Canola oil does have some saturated fat but
| is mostly unsaturated fat. (You know, because its "oil")
| zdragnar wrote:
| Perhaps coconut oil was intended? That's been a big fad,
| though lately not in processed foods except for keto
| snacks.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| This is my problem. Id rather have an "old school" black bean
| or soy based veggie burger. I'm not a low fat adherent or
| vegetarian but I'd rather have the nutrient density, fiber
| content, and fewer calories of the traditional alternatives.
| Otherwise I'm ordering a quality meat product or a salad.
| rchaud wrote:
| I had these all the time in college 15 years ago. I liked
| them!
|
| I've had the Beyond Meat burger patties. The taste is not
| bad at all, but there is an uncanny valley feeling when you
| eat it (with the manufactured juiciness) that isn't there
| with black bean burgers.
|
| It's also very expensive. In Canada, a pack of 4 patties is
| $8.49.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Costco has a 10-pack for much cheaper (~1/burger IIRC).
| Tepix wrote:
| Indeed. It's probably both subsidies for meat production and
| high margins for the fancy new meat replacements. Looks like
| there's a need for more competition.
| paulcole wrote:
| Is it premium pricing on plant-based products or that animal-
| based products are subsidized?
| hn2017 wrote:
| Bingo
| drvdevd wrote:
| This is the exact reason I didn't order a plant based burger
| yesterday.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's certainly a hard pill to swallow. I spend much more on
| food now than I did before being veg.
| kfarr wrote:
| Totally agree and another anecdote to add to the pile is that
| our kids love the fake meat chicken nuggets and don't know the
| difference. Nor do I. I could see this being a bigger long-term
| impact on low-end meats than high-end meats where you are
| paying for the rarity.
| Insanity wrote:
| Good enough? As a vegetarian who moved from EU to Canada, I
| honestly dislike the meat-free replacements here. They try to
| make them represent actual meat and it doesn't work.
|
| More variety in EU and overall better quality. (That actually
| goes for many food products though)
| jghn wrote:
| I can never remember if it is Impossible or Beyond but one of
| the two has reached "close facsimile" for my tastes when I
| have them at local spots. Burgers, meatball subs, that sort
| of thing.
|
| Personally I don't care about the health aspect, and as long
| as they're somewhat close in cost that's fine by me. I like
| that it is cutting down on the ecological impact, or at least
| that's the claim. At the same time I don't care about that
| impact so much that I'm going to cut meat out of my diet.
| This provides a nice middle ground for me.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Probably Impossible. Beyond is good but it has a unique
| flavor that I think anyone would recognize as "not beef."
| They might think it's some other real meat, though.
| jghn wrote:
| Yep, I just looked and you're right. Beyond tastes to me
| like a better version of those frozen patties at the
| grocery store. It still has that "fake meat" flavor I
| always hated, but not as strong. I don't mind them but
| don't like them as much as Impossible.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Like electric cars, America could choose to subsidize the more
| ecological friendly choice until it scales.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| This would reduce the motivation to actually make it cheaper.
| It's equivalent to "we lose money on each user but we'll make
| money at scale". Fine for investors to fund this, but why
| should taxpayers?
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The electric car industry would likely not exist without
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| fair reason but if we'e going to do that, then lets remove
| the gas subsidies for ice vehicles too then?
| antifa wrote:
| Won't subsidies invite competition and competition lead to
| innovation? Or does capitalism not work?
| monkpit wrote:
| Do you use a substitute for ground beef/pork in the mapo?
| zbrozek wrote:
| We directly substitute with either Beyond or Impossible
| ground-meat-substitute based on whatever is cheaper when we
| go grocery shopping.
| spfzero wrote:
| The one thing not unhealthy in a typical fast-food meal is the
| beef patty. Everything else is sugar, seed oils, grain and
| starch. You can throw away everything but the patty, scrape off
| the condiments, and have a small nutritious meal.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I noticed that plant based burgers are less filling, i think
| because they contain less protein - 19g vs 26g according to
| Google. I don't mind the taste though
| c0l0 wrote:
| Since we had grasped the implications of this graph[0] a few
| months back, the wife and I finally managed to actually make the
| jump to drastically reduce our meat consumption, and also mostly
| replaced dairy products with soy- and oats-based alternatives.
| I've even had the McDonald's "McPlant" three or so times since
| then, and must say that it tastes about the same as I recall
| other burgers' taste with similar toppings. Turns out I'm totally
| fine with "fake" meat, and I would encourage everyone to give it
| a shot.
|
| [0]: https://coloss.us.to/food_co2.jpg
| loceng wrote:
| Does anyone readily have access to the graph of emissions by
| each industry so this is seen in context?
| c0l0 wrote:
| Maybe check out https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-
| sector
| loceng wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| After scrolling a bit it shows that "Energy" accounts for
| 73%+ of greenhouse gas emissions. Seems like 100% of effort
| should be going to energy production for the highest yield,
| most efficient outcome - and while not increasing the cost
| of food for everyone which disproportionately causes
| suffering for the poor; increasing energy cost does the
| same of course, so it has to be done carefully.
| c0l0 wrote:
| I disagree. All of our effort should go towards _all_
| (relatively) easily attainable reductions of emissions in
| parallel. Substituting consuming meat with consuming
| plants is such a thing for me, so I readily do it.
| loceng wrote:
| So you're 100% for adding 3% of seaweed to cow's diets
| for an 80%+ reduction, or assuming that ~5% of reductions
| from livestock (from the chart on the URL you shared) are
| mostly from cows, bringing that 5% of total global
| emissions from cows down to just 1%?
|
| And then buying meat, from producers who use seaweed in
| their diets, will accelerate the adoption of that
| practice as the benefits economies of scale occur -
| bringing down the price of quality and very low emissions
| beef; and more money available for other goods or to
| invest in green energy, as plant-based are more expensive
| overall.
|
| That's a win-win-win scenario/strategy, no?
| tomweingarten wrote:
| The seaweed diet is just the result from a single study
| that has yet to be widely replicated. I'd caution against
| putting the fate of the planet into the hands of miracle
| cures until the scientific process can do its thing.
|
| Even if the seaweed diet does help, the fundamentals of
| thermodynamics dictate that eating animals will never
| come close to the efficiency of eating plants, fungi, and
| microorganisms. Cows, chicken, and fish spend most of
| their energy living (to whatever extent spending every
| hour of your day in a windowless cage can be called
| living).
| loceng wrote:
| You do understand that's because it's not meant to - and
| it's not actually a valid comparison?
|
| That's the point: the animals do the work of the
| processing and concentrating protein, fat, and
| nutrients/amino acids into a source that is arguably a
| perfect single food source for human consumption (high
| fat red meat, in this case); yes, your gut biome has to
| adapt for it, and yes, some lineages of humans will not
| have evolved with access to meat or benefit the same from
| having some or mostly meat in their diet like some other
| lineages of evolution.
|
| It'd be more efficient to just consume sunlight, if
| possible, rather than waste it to the plants too - if
| maximizing for pure efficiency is the answer.
|
| And let's also not be blindly virtuous about plants when
| looking at the primary and harmful method of agriculture
| also of monocultures. The Sacred Cow documentary also
| presents a good case for the benefit and need of cows,
| not in factory farms, for being a necessary part of the
| ecosystem/life cycle for soil health - healthy soil that
| is needed for plants; or do we ignore some facts and wait
| 50-200 years to see what disastrous problems we encounter
| because we don't include all arguments, perspectives, to
| manage from an all encompassing holistic view point?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Efficiency of turning sunlight into calories? Absolutely
| agree. But that's not the same as greenhouse gas
| emissions.
| hedora wrote:
| This NYT reprint points out Beyond Meat and Impossible
| neither track nor disclose their carbon emissions nor
| land footprint:
|
| https://bdnews24.com/environment/plant-based-food-
| companies-...
|
| They're probably not providing more than a 90% reduction
| in emissions vs beef.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Sure, but brisket is _so_ good
| humanistbot wrote:
| Sure, but is it 100 times better than plant-based
| alternatives? Because it is 100 times the carbon cost.
| miked85 wrote:
| It is well above 100 times better.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| I absolutely love Beyond and Impossible alternatives, they are
| making it viable to not eat meat while getting an experience in
| the similar ballpark.
|
| My only issue is actually not enough places offer them, or at
| least not in a variety of dishes. I don't want to eat burgers
| multiple times a week, regardless of if they are beef or not.
| allthecybers wrote:
| Same here. For whatever reason I prefer an Impossible patty
| over a beef burger in my regular eating. My brain knows it's
| not beef but is equally satisfied with it. I don't expect
| everyone to love it like I do. But I started doing it for
| health and now really like the taste of meat alternatives.
|
| A beef burger then becomes a treat, rather than a diet staple.
| indymike wrote:
| Two problems with plant based meat: It costs 2-3x more than the
| real thing at the grocery store and it is higher in carbohydrate.
| The carbs are a problem to insulin resistant type 2 diabetics and
| people in a keto diet.
| loceng wrote:
| It's also now known that adding a 3% concentration of a
| specific algae/seaweed to a cow's diet reduces their emissions
| by something like 80%+:
|
| "New Long-Term Study Could Mean More Sustainable Burgers" -
| https://caes.ucdavis.edu/news/feeding-cattle-seaweed-reduces...
|
| So the current harm that is used as the primary reason
| [allegedly] for the push to reducing meat consumption (global
| climate change) becomes a moot point and actually a relatively
| very low added cost if needed to start mass producing and
| farming seaweed to add to a cow's feed; if this isn't part of
| the conversation of those pushing for beef alternatives, then
| realize they are ideological and not critically thinking - and
| may have ulterior motive, even if that's simply trying to
| generate/drive profit for their own industry of plant-based
| products.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If it's so easy to adopt that food additive, and it's so
| effective, we can also do that while trying to go meatless.
| If the additive works well, and livestock emissions (and
| _runoff_ ) become not a big issue, I'm sure people will
| happily return to meat (unless the alternatives have become
| too comfortable.)
|
| If it turns out to be hard, we'll be glad that people were
| pushed toward meatless. If it's easy, it won't ultimately
| matter that people were pushed toward meatless.
| nilespotter wrote:
| I'm not surprised, it is just Gardenburger and Boca Burger with
| obnoxious new marketing. Wake me up when there's lab grown
| _meat_.
| pittmajp wrote:
| Beyond is a world ahead of both of those. The actual problem is
| that they're not as good as the impossible that Burger King has
| seen success with.
|
| Fake meat has gotten much better over the past few years, and
| there are still companies producing the bad versions from
| decades ago.
| nilespotter wrote:
| ... so good the stock is in the tank, they're losing FF chain
| customers and laying off employees. OK.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Generally what I find is that the bean burgers that are vegan,
| are just if not more tasty. While the fake burgers try this weird
| meat taste that doesn't come close to beef texture. Both bean and
| meat burgers need to be prepared fresh for optimal taste. It's
| like fresh burgers are like the 10x of frozen/pre made burgers.
| While choosing burgers among the pre-made will always be marginal
| in gains.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I think you're right that a bean burger is more tasty than the
| processed beef texture burgers -- but neither are anywhere near
| as good as actual beef.
|
| You know what's really good, though? Fake chicken patties. And
| it's been good for _decades_. I really wonder what the fixation
| is on beef patties, when there are other types of much more
| easily replaceable meat.
|
| I also wish we would see more creative partial substitutes.
| Bean _and_ beef patties? Sign me up.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > I really wonder what the fixation is on beef patties, when
| there are other types of much more easily replaceable meat.
|
| The negative environmental impact of beef is much greater
| than other meats so the potential positive impact is much
| greater moving food production away from beef.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| I have been a vegetarian the past few years and can absolutely
| not relate. Bean patties at majority of restaurants are dry, I
| can't even remember a good bean burger I got.
| mmmpop wrote:
| > Generally what I find is that the bean burgers that are
| vegan, are just if not more tasty.
|
| ...than? Beef? Your vegan opinion is irrelevant in a
| conversation about meat and things that are meant to taste like
| meat, frankly.
| LBJsPNS wrote:
| I believe the vegan comment was about the burgers, not the
| poster. But it's interesting to see your apparent anger
| towards vegans come roaring out.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| I like Impossible meat quite a lot, but best in ground beef
| scenarios. If you're putting it into sloppy joes, hamburger
| helpers, and the like, it's really hard to even notice the
| difference. The texture is right and most of the flavor is coming
| from the other ingredients.
|
| It's less flavorful than cow meat as a burger patty, and it's
| enough of the flavor profile to notice.
|
| I'm bullish on these products becoming the default restaurant
| vegetarian option, topping the last generation of plant-based
| burger brands. And for them to find success in less meat-forward
| recipes. I'm bearish on there being some sort of cultural or
| ethical revolution. That won't happen until it's cheaper than
| meat.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I agree 100%. I remember joking with a friend that the less
| meat is in your meat, the cheaper it is until 0 where it's
| suddenly the most expensive options.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Do you think you'd prefer something that's half meat half
| cheap filler over impossible/beyond?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Me personally? I don't think so... If I'm taking the hit in
| taste/texture quality I might as well go all the way. Like
| drinking water over Coke Zero
| hedora wrote:
| Definitely (though not half and half). We usually put
| breadcrumbs and eggs in our meatballs, for example.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Definitely (though not half and half).
|
| That doesn't count, then. I specifically mean half or
| even larger amounts.
|
| The point is, the place you go as filler takes over is
| very different from these products. I'm not saying
| anything at all about small amounts of additive.
| hedora wrote:
| For heavily seasoned stuff like tacos, I find ground turkey to
| be much closer to ground beef (and easier to prepare) than
| impossible meat.
|
| Impossible doesn't audit or disclose their carbon footprint,
| but it has been estimated to be a 90% reduction from beef. It
| turns out switching to turkey also produces a 90% reduction,
| and is much cheaper:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...
|
| The article I just linked is excellent. It also has data on
| climate emissions from transportation and refrigeration for
| different food types (transportation is a tiny factor for most
| foods; refrigeration is a larger factor than I realized) and
| data on emissions from food waste.
|
| Tl;Dr: buy rapidly perishable goods locally; don't bother with
| things that have a long shelf life. Avoid beef and other
| ruminants. Don't waste food.
|
| That last point is a big deal for us, as we feed scraps to the
| chickens, and doing so reduces our emissions way more than I
| realized (rotting food has very high emissions).
| Lammy wrote:
| I'm in no hurry to ever try these plant-based meat substitutes
| again since the coconut oil / cocoa butter "marbling" gives me
| the runs, like Ole Olestra all over again:
| https://web.archive.org/web/19990203160042/http://www.zug.co...
| cercatrova wrote:
| This is why I advocate for lab-grown meat (from previous comments
| I've made here):
|
| > One can never convince a statistically significant amount of
| people to switch to meat, so one must find ways to make the meat
| itself more sustainable.
|
| > It's thinking with the end in mind. Once you axiomatize the
| ends, you can then figure out the means to get there.
|
| ...
|
| > The reason I like lab grown meat is not (necessarily) because
| of reduced suffering, but because in the future, I can get a very
| high quality cut of meat for much cheaper than today, simply
| because cuts of meat differ mainly in their amalgamation of fat
| and muscle cells, and if you control the entire cell cultivation
| process, well, you can reorder the fat and muscle cells in
| whatever way you want.
|
| > Imagine getting wagyu every day for cheaper than regular cuts
| now, simply because you don't have to grow an entire cow and
| massage it its entire life, you can just grow it on a Petri dish.
| ssl232 wrote:
| Maybe people are starting to see through the "plant-based"
| marketing when they see the 20 industrially produced ingredients
| on the back of the pack. I for one have been steering clear of
| seed oils and foods high in linoleic acid that have been linked
| to a plethora of modern health problems, and most of these
| products are stuffed full of them and are not remotely natural -
| no thanks.
| owly wrote:
| Agreed. Maybe people could just start eating plants instead of
| over engineered industrially processed blocks of "food".
| standardUser wrote:
| If you think humans are going to start eating a more boring,
| simplified diet, you are missing a major plot line of human
| civilization, which continues to give us an ever-increasing
| array of foods in every possible configuration.
| shlant wrote:
| > seed oils and foods high in linoleic acid that have been
| linked to a plethora of modern health problems
|
| The best evidence we have does not support what are usually
| low-carb talking points
|
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
|
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/fo/c7fo0...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7524638/
| Klonoar wrote:
| I am fairly certain the seed oils talking bit can be traced
| back to a quack doc interviewed on Rogan's podcast, which
| people then ran with. It's the soy meme version 2.0, just
| grounded in even less reality.
| TillE wrote:
| It's hilarious because "seed oils" is a totally arbitrary,
| incoherent category that they just made up. Pure quackery.
| waynecochran wrote:
| The American market is not big enough for these "in between"
| items. Another example are products like Dr Pepper 10 which used
| some sugar -- I loved it, but these never succeed in the market.
| Americans are polarized -- we like either 0 sugar or a ton of
| sugar.
| skhameneh wrote:
| I've had a few brands and products for plant-based "meat".
|
| One brand's products were simply awful and another brand managed
| to produce a very convincing burger that I wouldn't order again.
| The convincing burger was acceptably tasty but overly dry and
| priced higher than their real beef burger. It tasted like "beef",
| but it didn't taste "good".
|
| As products get better, we'll see more adoption, but it will take
| some effort to overcome the damage done by releasing products
| that don't fare favorably on their own. The average consumer
| isn't going to pay more for a product that isn't as "good".
| cassepipe wrote:
| In the article, they talk about McDonalds... I don't know about
| other stores but when I went there as a kid, in Europe, the meat
| had no taste and its texture was s*t so I don't think the the
| problem comes from fast food meat being better than plant-based
| meat. I don't think it's about taste. I think it's about price
| and about culture.
|
| "But the consumer environment is tough, and this stuff is not
| cheap," "If I'm spending money in a restaurant, and I'm a meat
| eater, why would I spend money on plant-based meat? I would
| rather eat an actual burger," --> I want the bang for my buck.
|
| I think people who to eat in fast/junk food restaurants are : 1.
| Rather poor so concerned by price 2. Participate in a working
| class culture in which hard working men lives must be fueled by
| meat, which is effectively a super-food. So a cultural matter.
|
| The sad thing though is that culture demands meat but the
| quality/taste of the meat provided is shit. I am personally in
| favor of banning processed meat (the one that's bad for your
| health) and that non processed meat is reserved to people doing
| hard physical work while the rest of enjoy our plant based meals
| :D
| code_duck wrote:
| I don't think it's accurate to assume that the majority of fast
| food customers are low income men with blue collar jobs. It's
| more of a broad cross-section of society in my experience.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Oh I did not mean to say low income men with blue collar jobs
| are the majority of the customers, I just meant to explain
| what I think is the reason why eating meat is tied to status
| in working class culture and how being deprived of it may be
| lived as a loss.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In general, banning most of the population from having a
| superfood is something I would rate D:
| enviclash wrote:
| Every Cuisine ha straditional beans that everyone has forgotten
| because they cannot be made immediately ready they just require a
| bit of mindfulness about the kitchen and the food; they are super
| healthy if you know how to do it, with a bit of preparation beans
| (including chickpea) are much better than any meat substitute
| manishsharan wrote:
| I like Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers but I find making those
| burgers at home very expensive compared to a comparable
| vegetarian meal. If they could reduce the price, it would be an
| easy meal for days when we don't want to cook a real meal.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I've been eating more plant based burgers because meat is
| unsustainable. Carbon emissions from meat are more than all the
| planes, trains, and automobiles combined. Water required to make
| 24 hamburgers will fill a pool. Meat is simply an inefficient way
| of making the calories and proteins we need.
|
| I still eat meat, I've just started moving to more plant based
| products.
|
| Mark Rober has a good coverage of this in his video "Feeding Bill
| Gates a Fake Burger (to save the world)":
| https://youtu.be/-k-V3ESHcfA
| rchaud wrote:
| Meat isn't particularly cheap, especially now.
|
| Plant-based meat substitutes are very expensive, and simply
| cannot take market share to make a dent in meat production, at
| current prices.
| Isamu wrote:
| This is really the goal of Impossible Foods. It's to transition
| to a sustainable future by winning over consumers who prefer
| meat, and can only be persuaded by taste.
|
| I hope they manage to get the price down, then it will be
| competitive in the long run.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It's not a charity, their goal is to make money.
| typest wrote:
| You can do both at the same time. If Impossible could
| actually succeed in making a meat alternative that tastes
| as good as meat, but is cheaper (e.g. because they don't
| have to waste a bunch of energy growing an entire animal),
| then they could be poised both make a ton of money (by
| being a major player in the global food market) AND help
| end factory farming/animal consumption (by providing a
| superior product).
|
| Furthermore, this is such a research heavy endeavor, you
| need upfront capital to fund it, which means it would be
| hard to structure as a non profit. Structuring as a for
| profit is the right move, and it doesn't mean what they're
| working towards isn't a good cause, or that they are
| somehow ethically compromised.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| They have a niche product that requires a lot of up-front
| investment; getting it cheaper than mass produced beef is
| a pipe dream. They're out to make money from price-
| insensitive vegetarians, which means prices will stay
| high. The only way this will change is with some sort of
| government action to raise the price of beef for
| consumers, but that isn't going to happen because this is
| a democracy; beef is popular and veggie burgers are a
| niche product. Even vegetarian dictators don't expend
| their finite political capital on issues like this.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > Even vegetarian dictators don't expend their finite
| political capital on issues like this
|
| I would be 1000x more supportive of such an effort than,
| say, Duterte's brutal drug war.
| Isamu wrote:
| The stated goal of the founder is to replace meat
| consumption. Why would you create a charity for that? That
| makes no sense. You need to create a whole new industry,
| and yes, it has to pay for itself.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Im buying plant-based Mediterranean protein food for a while now
| (in Europe). And I can easily say that most of the selection
| surpasses the taste of the meat dishes they imitate. So much that
| one could consider them newly created dishes instead of being
| meat knockoffs.
|
| https://heurafoods.com/
|
| This is likely because of the exquisite spice and other
| ingredient balance. When the protein is plant based, it does not
| repress other tastes like how meat normally does.
| bawolff wrote:
| Im a vegitarian. I tried it once and it was just average at best.
|
| It seems like most of the people in love with these types of
| burgers are meat eaters who wouldn't eat them anyways.
| shafyy wrote:
| McDonald's did a lot of things wrong with their plant-based meat
| burger. If you want to see it done right, just take a look at
| Burger King. In Germany, you can now substitute animal meat for
| plant-based meat in every burger, and on top of that they have
| very tasty plant-based burgers like the long chicken and vegan
| chicken nuggets. In Vienna, they've opened their first 100%
| plant-based location.
|
| And yes, Beyond Meat's stock is not doing well, but this doesn't
| mean plant-based meats in general aren't doing well.
| Clampower wrote:
| McDonald's Netherlands did the most idiotic approach. They
| started offering vegetarian burgers that were made of like 80%
| dairy. So incredibly stupid I still can't believe it.
| Vibgyor5 wrote:
| Enlighten me - what's stupid about it?
| polski-g wrote:
| All vegans are vegetarians. So those burgers are not an
| option for some portion of vegetarians
| shlant wrote:
| as a vegan myself - have you ever considered that not
| every meat alternative is made for you?
| Elinvynia wrote:
| As a vegan (not the pick-me kind) then you should see why
| murdering animals is wrong. And that these products
| should never be made.
|
| People in 100 years will look at meat eaters like we do
| at slavery nowadays.
|
| Be on the right side of history on this one, folks.
| kennend3 wrote:
| > Be on the right side of history on this one, folks.
|
| this is a clear indicator you are a "lost cause" social
| justice warrior type. Equating slavery and eating meats..
| OMG.
|
| Have you considered taking an African safari and
| encouraging lions to stop eating meats?
|
| Why do people like you use "be on the right side of
| history" and other catch buzzword type sayings?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Should we drive lions to extinction by sterilizing them
| all, since the only way they can live is by murdering
| other animals?
| outime wrote:
| I humbly suggest to change your communication efforts
| towards your cause. It'll only cause rejection if you
| keep using pretentious statements.
| Clampower wrote:
| Phew where do I begin?
|
| From a sustainability POV, using living beings for milk
| production is vastly worse than a plant based alternative.
|
| From a animal friendliness perspective, it abuses the same
| animals that would be slaughtered for meat, for long
| periods of time in cruel ways.
|
| From a business and consumer POV, this limits your burger
| to only Omni and vegetarians, excluding the entire market
| of vegans, and people with dairy intolerances who would opt
| for this option instead.
|
| All around a PR inspired, stupid half measure that is
| insulting at best.
| ianai wrote:
| Most stocks have been taking a massive hit and valuations are
| down near 2020s lows for the first time. Reads like opportunism
| to knock on new market entrants through a bit piece.
|
| Are they going to claim EVs are failing next, too? How about
| solar? Why not go all out.
| shafyy wrote:
| Exactly. For example, Shopify's stock is also down a lot and
| nobody is saying that e-commerce is dead.
| karol wrote:
| Nothing but good news. Fakeness and corrupt impossible promises
| fade away.
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