One thing i’d genuinely like to see more of in the US is easy and sanely priced access to wild game.
Deer populations being what they are, and populations of environmentally troublesome species such as feral
boars being what they are, it seems like a net win.
i would love to be able to get my hands on venison or boar that’s been processed in a USDA-approved way, because the meat’s high quality, the animals had lives entirely free of cages and farms, and we really do kind of need to balance out herd sizes in the northeast.
it is currently a regulatory nightmare to do this at scale, which is why nobody does. I can solve my own problem with a 6 week wait and a slug gun, but it’d be nice to address the conservation need at a more moderate scale.
> One thing i’d genuinely like to see more of in the US is easy and sanely priced access to wild game.
That could pose a problem with Chronic Wasting Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease). Prion illnesses are no joke, so widespread consumption of wild game in North America presents a small but concerning risk of spreading the disease to humans.
Do you honestly believe that hogs are destroying the environment of Texas?
If so, then I guess we have different definitions of “destroying the environment.” Some damaged farmland, a few possible fishkills, and some erosion are blips on the radar compared to the damage done by industrial farming, suburban sprawl, oil companies, etc.
I guess it is nice to have a scapegoat though — or in this case a scape-hog.
In most (all?) states in the US selling hunted game, such as deer or boar, is illegal.
Conflicted opinions on this. I very strongly support the right to hunt, and also find it vastly more humane for the animals. On top of this I also tend to take a libertarian slant on most things. However, in this specific case you have a textbook tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. The reason game is so widespread is specifically because of these laws. When it was legal to hunt and sell game meat/products we hunted numerous species far beyond sustainability.
Maybe one solution would be to offer limited vouchers that enable an individual hunter to market some fixed amount of game -- not all that different from how wild fishing/crabbing/etc is handled. But I think it's clear that without extremely judicious management here you'd likely see over-hunting rapidly take hold, and that's no good for hunter, animal, or society.
It does, but we're talking about seriously overpopulated animals which are destroying ecosystems - wild pigs are the biggest concern there. For those, even where there are permits, there usually aren't quotas. And despite no limits, there aren't enough hunters to keep them in check.
it’s not illegal to sell game meat per se, but the hoops you have to jump through are (probably intentionally) prohibitive.
it’s illegal to sell anything without a USDA stamp on it, and economy of scale means that it’s not profitable to have an inspected and cleared process and processing facilities just for game.
Other perfectly reasonable nations don’t do this—and in part due to the fact that deer are an invasive pest in New Zealand, you can buy wild game meat pies in gas stations for about 3 bucks there.
Deer and pig populations are indeed out of control in many places due to a lack of predators. More hunters are needed. An intriguing example of pest control was a series of videos of wild hog hunting in the most Texan way possible: from a helicopter. Exterminating 80-100 hogs per flight! Hopefully something is being done with all of that pork, but I do imagine regulation makes it very very hard to sell.
Wolves are the classic problem in ecology because while they have clear and obvious benefits to the ecosystem, people are really freaked out by them. And ranchers tend to think of any livestock theft as deserving of capital punishment. It's almost impossible to have a rational discussion about any of our fellow apex predators.
I live in New Zealand, and I recently switched basically entirely over to wild game for red meat. I can buy it in my local supermarket, it's more expensive than cheap meat but actually less than the high-welfare farmed meat that I bought previously. It's also very tasty. I'll probably start ordering directly from the provider (http://www.game-meats.co.nz/) soon since they offer a much wider range of products than the supermarket has.
Here in New Zealand there's an additional bonus that deer and boar are invasive introduced species which are considered noxious pests, so I like supporting an industry which controls them.
He’s talking about meat stand-ins, things designed to mimic meat in every way. Definitely a market for that.
But fantastic meat substitutes already exist. I’m not vegetarian but never order meat with Indian or Chinese or Thai food and am thrilled with so-called mock duck, chicken and even fish. And when that’s not available, tofu does the job. At home, bolognese, tacos or chili with fake ground beef are awesome and I look forward to those being on menus too. I agree we’re at a tipping point.
Seitan is nice! A lot of americans who are in the demographic to be into substitute meat won't touch it because it is literally a blob of gluten with sauce.
I think where seitan excels is where the meat it is substituting is heavily seasoned and in smaller pieces.
I’d never eat a seitan log as a Thanksgiving turkey substitute, but ironically one of the things you discover when you begin to substitute meat is that a lot of “classics” are flavorless. Chicken, turkey and most fish flesh can be bland and rubbery, which is why they are fried or smothered in sauces as a rule.
Speaking of texture though I think Chipotle made a mistake by using tofu in their meat-substitute filling - it’s just too smooshy for most people. Seitan would have been more successful and I bet they were just afraid of using that word on the menu.
Yes preparation matters and I’m not trying to say all meat is disgusting. Just relating the experience of discovering, upon regularly substituting meat in dishes, that there is nothing inherent to chicken turkey etc that makes it a preferred protein. Meat substitutes can be rubbery too.
>Chicken, turkey and most fish flesh are bland and rubbery, which is why they are fried or smothered in sauces as a rule.
Come visit. I'll bake you a chicken, and i only need about 6 ingredients to change your mind. (salt, pepper, chicken, butter, thyme, dijon mustard optional).
Turkey has never been a favorite of mine, but I had an exceptionally good one that was salted and peppered and then cooked in a big green egg.
Fish has a wide range of flavors, and you clobber them by overwhelming the dish with sauce. I prefer smoked (mmm, kippers. mmm, salmon) or raw (mmm, tuna) over cooked, for sure.
> "Come visit. I'll bake you a chicken, and i only need about 6 ingredients to change your mind. (salt, pepper, chicken, butter, thyme, dijon mustard optional)."
That's my favorite way to make a good quality chicken shine by itself, with nothing masking it or covering it up. Cold butter and dijon mustard just works so well with chicken.
I am extremely hesitant to replace actual meat for anything where you only process it very lightly, roast and the like. But for curries or lasagna and similar dishes, bring on the seitan and anything else. I'm a big fan of using mushrooms, both for their structure and for their flavors.
What tastes good is salt, pepper, butter, thyme, dijon mustard, not to mention garlic, root vegetables, and more salt. I eat chicken, I have enjoyed it - all I'm saying is I've learned that going without chicken is doable, not by abstaining but by substituting.
It's not apples-to-apples. Chicken tastes different than something that is not chicken. Having experienced both, I really prefer the not chicken.
> a lot of “classics” are flavorless. Chicken, turkey and most fish flesh are bland and rubbery
That's because most people enjoy tastes that are loud rather than subtle. It's a bit about educating your palate, but also about sitting down to enjoy the food itself rather than the food being an accessory to some other activity.
yikes. i think you will have a better experience eating in a seafaring culture - the british, french, norwegians, coastal china, japan, even new england? i think something is quite wrong if you think cod, haddock, sole, tuna, and salmon all taste the same.
I didn't say all fish taste the same. But I maintain that once you have decided to stop eating meat, it becomes more fun to experiment with different textures of meat substitutes once you consider carefully how different meats are vs how we imagine meats to be.
FWIW I grew up in Japan and live in New England. I know from fish. Good fish is hard to substitute but it can be done, e.g. Sichuan food is great with the fake stuff. But most fish eaten in America is in fact bland and rubbery (most of it is eaten at places like Red Lobster).
PG's essay is about companies inventing the perfect tuna steak substitute. My point is you can use a lot of existing substitutes, in the right dishes.
Seitan and tempeh are by far the tastiest "substitute meats" because they don't really try to morph into a "nugget" or a "burger" but just show what that plant protein is like at its best
I’m in Indonesia at the moment, where tempeh is a food, not a ‘meat substitute’.
I enjoy it quite a bit, it has a mild mushroomy flavour and a nice texture.
Consider frying it and serving with a coconut curry sauce or a sambal. Don’t think of it as meat or use it as a meat substitute, that’s setting up for failure to enjoy.
His statement about how it will increase economic inequality is pretty interesting. Meat substitutes/alternatives are often marketed ideologically as something that will help reduce economic inequality since it would eventually become more cost effective than trying to raise something to slaughtering age. I'm not sure how it being a startup is a problem, but didn't think about the smaller farms who would be out of business.
To raise chickens you need a hen. Add a rooster and you're now the proud owner of a chicken farm. Seriously. Ideally you'd setup a roosting spot for them. And you can tweak their diet to increase their production, growth, etc but chickens 'free ranging' with very minimal support is how they were cultivated for millennia. The one and only problem you run into is that roosters are very loud. The point is that anybody can start raising chickens with very little cost.
'Meat substitutes' are going to be grown in fairly sophisticated labs and sourced from artificially reproduced or otherwise obtained cells. And it's not going to taste like e.g. chicken once the cells are grown. The taste you know from various meats is a product of that animal's physiology and diet. The meat will also not have the same texture. So once you grow your cells in a lab you then need to artificially flavor them and then artificially generate a meat-like texture. The upfront costs for this will all not only be very expensive but there will also be a minefield of intellectual property, patent, and other such barriers all throughout the field. This is why the first artificial meat companies are working on is hamburger -- you can simply grind up the cells and then dump in lots of flavoring.
I expect we'll see the same thing happen to meat that happened with genetically engineered plants. The entire industry will be rapidly monopolized. And our new 'Meatsanto' will undoubtedly lobby the government for favorable treatment which at the minimum will include them being able to label these artificially flavored and textured cells as simply 'chicken'. Add in artificial undercutting of prices and other incentives and you'll see Meatsanto gain more and more marketshare, perhaps including licensing their technology to ranchers now put out of business. And it's at that point, once the monopoly and dependence is established, that they begin to squeeze their new monopoly and start printing billions.
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I think there's a pretty simple rule of thumb. Centralization leads to wealth inequality, decentralization leads to more equitable wealth distribution. When you add barriers to entry, you create centralization. As an example of this consider shoes. At one time shoes were an industry that used to support countless thousands (millions?) of cobblers, apprentices, and their local market interrelations. It's now been replaced by a small handful of multinational corporations that produce billions of shoes worldwide at immense profit margins. Of course in exchange shoes are undoubtedly now higher quality than they've ever been, and you can pick up a reasonable pair of shoes for a few hours of minimum wage, but I do not think more affordable shoes positively affects wealth inequality as much as removing immense number of jobs and redirecting all proceeds to a handful of companies does to negatively affect it.
I've never heard of meat substitutes being "marketed ideologically as something that will help reduce economic inequality"—that's such an odd argument to make.
What I have heard before is:
- more resource-efficient and green since livestock farming requires a lot of feed and has a higher carbon footprint than all vehicles combined, and
- that it's less cruel than raising animals to be slaughtered.
In terms of economics, a cheaper meat substitute would just mean a cheaper source of protein for people, comparable to eating vegetables.
As a side note, does anyone know why Paul Graham has been talking about economic inequality recently? Is it just politics season and that this is a debate issue?
> does anyone know why Paul Graham has been talking about economic inequality recently?
Back in January of 2016, in the aftermath of the occupy movement and the height of the US presidential campaign, he penned this essay as a sort of "defense" of inequality:
We're ramping back up to another presidential election, the concerns about inequality have only gotten greater, and for the first time, mass transformation of dietary habits via technology as a way to combat climate change has gone from a niche to a national topic.
In keeping with that 2016 post, using the opportunity to again point out the difference between zero sum inequality vs real wealth creation where a good share goes to incentivize invention.
I think he's wrong about people not having loyalty to meat. There is a ton of literal hatred for veganism and vegetarians in this world. Think of the practically cult-like following bacon has. I recall a thread some years ago on Reddit's r/fitness with someone asking for vegan protein sources due to certain allergies or other health restrictions and it was spammed with dozens of comments along the lines of "bacon" and even one that suggested semen. People have their diet deeply embedded in their self-image. Cheaper and tastier won't change that many people's opinions. Meat will stay at least a luxury food even if the alternatives are literally superior in every tangible way - it'll be signalling at the very least. Cheaper might actually make it into a "poor person's food." But there'll also be aversion to "lab grown" instead of "natural" and things like that - see resistance to GMOs.
I remember when Vegan/Vegetarians were sneered at in the UK 25 years ago, but they aren't now.
In the space of 25 years it's gone from being rare to see veggie options, to it being the norm to have at least 25% non-meat options on the menu. Attitudes change, and once it's gone, most people will eventually find the idea of rearing animals to kill repellant.
If you can deliver me meat taste and texture without the environmental consequences of meat rearing, I'd definitely switch. I'd even pay a premium, though in reality it should rapidly become cheaper than the labor/land intensive meat industry.
Vegans/Vegetarians are still sneered at in the US. Any non major city/college town in the South/Midwest is still dominated by meat and the associated culture.
Thanksgiving alone is a nearly insurmountable hurdle. “Tofurky” is still a gross joke to most people.
You and PG are both vastly underestimating the emotional attachment people have to their current way of life.
To me it just seems like the clearest indication of a bubble in Silicon Valley in particular, and the Bay Area in general. Even putting aside emotional attachment, people actually enjoy the taste of meat and don’t see a pressing reason to stop. Aside from some YouTube hype, I’ve never met anyone offline who thinks the various meat subsitutes are remotely like the real thing.
Then again I remember when Soylent was “the big thing that everyone was going to get into” in tech circles. I tried to explain that it just didn’t appeal to 99% of people, and revolted many of them. Fortunately reality does seem to seep through eventually. When it comes down to it, “save the earth” arguments aimed at something other than energy generation, shipping, industry, and transportation are too easy to shoot down.
The present options are rubbish, that's NOT what we're talking about. pg is not talking about Tofurky or tofu, he's talking about lab grown meat.
Lab grown meat tastes, smells, cooks and is textured exactly like meat.
If you can buy something that's much cheaper than meat, but has all the plus sides, why would you choose meat?
Plus on top of that there's been a lot of media coverage the last 2 or 3 years that meat is causing a lot of problems environmentally. So there's an environmental and an economic reason to switch.
Food is one of the deepest and most defining parts of a culture.
Not only that but I grew up in a rural area and have killed my own meat. I don't have any qualms about it. The issues people have with it are purely a side effect of chic urban programming.
May I ask what point you are trying to address? Did I say that there was a worldwide trend for veganism in the 7th century BCE? Or that eating meat was a recent practice?
You said you had no qualms with killing animals for food, and that "the issues people have with it are purely a side effect of chic urban programming." Even without resorting to a possibly contentious archaeological record, we know from recorded history that the Jains abstained from meat for ethical reasons from all these centuries ago, as they do today, which I think falsifies your claim. If you want to dispute the specific example of the Jains, there are other groups of ethical vegetarians going back thousands of years to cite.
I lived in Indiana from birth until my mid-30's. I've lived another nearly 6 years in Norway.
And sure, most menus were dominated by meat when I left and they are here as well. I'm not completely vegetarian - I eat fish. And honestly, it was easier to find veggie options in Indiana than fish options. But it wasn't too horrible either. Most folks didn't find my eating habits a big deal, even if I just ate the appetiser. A few assholes made fun of others, but that's the case with anything. And it has only gotten better with time.
I don't see how it is a big deal with "Tofurky". Don't eat it. Lots of meat products are like this too.
Most folks aren't that emotionally attached to their meat if they can make it with something else. Foods have trends - the candy isle is full of these trends as are Oreo flavors. Oreos, by the way, have changed greatly over the years - they used to have lard in them and people are still eating them. But folks can still eat their beloved oreos - I don't know why meat would be any different save for the few that decided to be really into meat.
> Thanksgiving alone is a nearly insurmountable hurdle. “Tofurky” is still a gross joke to most people.
I share Thanksgiving dinner with a number of vegetarians. We all enjoy making many different dishes, and the vegetarians just skip the ones with meat. I don't think I've ever heard anyone utter the word "tofurkey" and tofu has never featured in such a meal. (Total veganism is trickier to accommodate)
I think our Thanksgiving dinners would be harder for a person with an aversion to root vegetables to navigate than a vegetarian. I wonder how most people are doing Thanksgiving dinner, is having all meat dishes the norm?
This might be the case where you live, but it's definitely not the case in many countries around the world. I like to travel and part of the reason I gave up vegetarianism is because I was tired of eating the same stuff over and over again while traveling because there were no other options (caprese sandwich in Europe). Not to mention the extreme difficulty of limiting carbs and sugars while maintaining any kind of taste in vegetarian diets. As for synthetic meat, which is what pg is talking about, I can't possibly see it making inroads if it costs more than meat, which it sounds like pg is implying. Most people can barely afford meat as it is.
Restaurants have to have at least one veg option on the menu. This is mostly due to migration from different countries, not Vegans. By offering a veg meal you can serve a halal/kosher/"hindu" dish.
There's 'meat' that we eat, and 'meat' as in dead animal. We've got quite good in the west at separating the 2.
I don't think steak and other cuts of meat are going anywhere that quickly. But mince, 'chicken' breast, nuggets, sausages, that kind of stuff, I can see switching fairly quickly if there was a decent, cost effective alternative.
I'm pretty sure the "hatred" towards vegans and vegetarians isn't actually hatred, but defensiveness. I think most meat-eaters wouldn't care about veganism and vegetarianism at all if there weren't so many vegans and vegetarians trying to moralize to the rest of world how they ought to be eating.
As a vegetarian who makes a point of being low key about it, not bringing it up unless asked, etc, there is almost endless judgment and questioning put forth in my direction. Every time I go out for a work lunch and order the black bean burger, or meatless sides at a BBQ joint or whatever, people want to dust off their freshman philosophy class ethical arguments.
People with non-normative beliefs stand out from the normative culture just by virtue of existing. If we must defend ourselves constantly it sounds louder. I understand that can be annoying to people like you.
We'll look at WeWork, they banned their employees from expensing non-pescatarian meals. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an example of an employer who banned their employees from expensing vegan meals.
One company among the thousands upon thousands of non-vege-/pescatarian companies limiting their meal reimbursement policy does not support the argument that there exist "so many vegans and vegetarians trying to moralize to the rest of world."
In fact, I believe it is evidence of the opposite: members of the normative culture are so protective of their own homogeneity, wittingly or not, that they consider a single example of heterodoxy to be intolerably deviant.
Wow, an employer dictating my diet is where I draw a HARD line of “get the ____ out of my life”. This seems discriminatory and unethical to say the least.
They aren't "dictating your diet" unless you plan on eating all of your meals during business travel. They are telling you the scope of items they are willing to reimburse.
It would seem far more discriminatory and unethical to me to ban the creation of vegetarian institutions. If not unethical, at least antithetical to any minimally principled formulation of capitalism.
You're right, but meat will go up in price, and I think rich people aren't as stubborn when comes to sticking with class symbols that become unfashionable and stigmatized. I think high-quality meat will be like cigars, a former status symbol that a few eccentric people stick with for personal reasons but whose connection to opulence is stuck in the past.
With fashion turning against it and most people sticking to mass-produced food for economic resaons, there will be a huge decline over the next generation or two. People in rural areas will be able to raise their own animals, but it will be forced underground as a moral outrage like cockfighting is today.
> There is a ton of literal hatred for veganism and vegetarians in this world. Think of the practically cult-like following bacon has.
It's not that much hatred for veganism as rejection for something that is different in general.
The first vegans came mainly from outcast communities, like hippies, or pet lovers.
There is also the problem of feeling they are being judged: you'll often see somebody defensively saying "I could never be a vegan because of so and so" while nobody ever asked.
At last, we still live in a society with a macho touch, and meat is associated with being manly.
So really it's not about veganism, but about deeper issues from our society.
The fact there are more veggies and vegan today is a good news though: it means the society is becomming more tolerant, more open minded, and have the technology to support a less destructive lifestyle.
Like with every deep change in society, the best we can do is to help everybody get along and support each others. Cooking wars are just a symptom, and not the proper battle field.
There is a ton of literal hatred for veganism and vegetarians in this world.
I think there is a ton of literal hatred for vegans and vegetarians, who tend to position themselves as morally superior to meat eaters and brag about how they are kinder and gentler than meat eaters, often while being openly cruel people. They are frequently seemingly oblivious to the glaring contradictions between their self image and their actual behavior.
I've known at least one person who used the label vegan while not actually being vegan. She was vegetarian and sometimes ate vegan, but calling herself vegan for the moral superiority points. She was a high-handed judgy person who was openly, consistently and persistently ugly to me when I was homeless and extremely ill.
(When I have remarked on that to vegetarians trying to lecture people about stuff, they are almost never sympathetic to how awful that was for me. Their default reaction boils down to a callous and narcissistic "Get over your crap, honey. #NotAllVegans. Your one time totally unimportant negative experience shouldn't be used to impugn my stellar character!")
Maybe if more people eat vegetarian burgers because, meh, climate change and clean eating for my own health and similar reasons without it being treated like some cult you need to join to save your soul, open hatred of meatless meals will go way down.
My daughter recently said something about "narcissistic ideology" - something that is adhered to, not because it's true, but because it gives a sense of moral superiority to the adherent. I think that's an interesting label for the type of person you had the misfortune to run into.
It's unfortunate because it gives a bad name to a generally positive life choice and because there's really no means to determine if the toxic vegetarians are simply a vocal minority.
You hear the same kind of thing about atheists. Consider that the few outspoken individuals you meet who are like this are rare and most people in that group are just quietly trying to live their lives. They're not seeking an argument or your approval, and you aren't even aware of most of the people you know who fit into that group. So your known encounters with that group are rare, and you carry your own personal bias, so any negative experience is magnified.
I cannot think of a single atheist who ever tried to convince me I was required to join them in being an unbeliever. I don't try to cram my beliefs down their throats, they don't try to cram theirs down mine, IME.
On the other hand, I grew up in the Bible Belt and have known plenty of hellfire and damnation type Christians who wanted me to convert or die.
I definitely see a lot of mockery of vegans among my circle of friends/acquaintances. Not outright hatred, but definitely mockery and it's not directed solely at vegans. It's just that vegans tend to be rather vocal about their choices, and they tend to be very social media adept and like to arrange eye-catching demonstrations in public, at least around here. I think a lot of the mockery comes from insecurity, I know some guys who are very adamant about their Manly Personality, which has meat, booze, beer and cigars as mandatory elements.
There is a segment of vegans who are very enthusiastic about calling non-vegans "murderers" and shaming them for "eating corpses" and the like. It's a small fringe group, but they are very vocal, and are deliberately very attention-grabbing.
Since I sometimes move in the same or adjacent social circles, I do know quite a few people who are vegan, and they're pretty relaxed about it, outside of occasional activities in protests and the like. I like talking about recipes with them, stuff like finding the best egg substitute for Belgian waffles, always a great way to get a vegan very enthusiastically chatty about a subject they really care about :-)
I'm very open-minded about food, so while I do like dishes with meat, I'm also very enthusiastic about good veggie dishes, and I don't want to judge people for their dietary choices.
I'm vegetarian. I never bring it up, but when other people find out about it they will not shut the fuck up about it.
They will tell me why they aren't vegetarian, they will ask me why I'm one, and they will tell me about all the vegetarians or vegans in their lives who they claim won't stop talking about it. I suspect that's more than a little projection.
Meat is just a part of some people's identity, just like sexuality, religion, and politics. And they react along the typical spectrum of reactions for those things.
Same here. I have a rule to never tell people about my diet unless they ask and never attempt at proselytizing. At least once a month somebody will tell me how preachy vegetarians are and attempt at interrogating me.
Agreed, no meat substitute I've had tastes the same or even good, including Beyond Burgers and such. A good veggie burger, that is not trying to be faux meat, but instead is highlighting the veggies, can be great. And unlike every faux-meat substitute it has the added benefit of not making me sick to my stomach...
Agree with you. Luckily, the similar look/feel/taste of meat substitutes isn't much geared to vegetarians, but to those stuck on meat who aren't willing to give up what they've been accustomed to.
Would substitute meat be cheaper than regular meat? Sure, the inputs might be cheaper eventually, but it's not as if the firm that solves the riddle will simply give their IP to competitors.
Animals are inefficient at turning plants into meat, so from an energy inputs point of view you'd expect the substitutes to be cheaper. But then farming is heavily subsidised, and we don't know what competitive advantages the substitute companies will end up having.
I think the term 'meat' is very broad. Taste-wise there will (and maybe already are) meat-substitutes that are comparable to animal-meat. But these are very artificial products and healthwise maybe not a good choice.
Animal meat itself varies in it's nutritional properties, depending on how the livestock is treated. Grass-fed, free range beef is not the same as grain fed, factory raised.
I'm not sure about in-vitro meat, but I doubt it is from a nutrition standpoint even comparable to, for example, high quality beef.
My point is, meat != meat and often I read only about mimicking taste and texture. For me the nutritional profile is more important (also ethics, but this normally goes hand in hand with meat-quality).
But these are very artificial products and healthwise maybe not a good choice.
Even if they actually are fine heathwise, it might be hard convincing people of that fact. My wife for example refuses to buy frozen ready made veggieburger patties and insists on making them from scratch because she wants to know what she's eating. There is no way you could convince here to buy these artificial meat substitutes over ground beef no matter what they taste like or what health arguments you make.
FWIW I think he's predicting something which is already beginning to happen. Carl's Jr. (Hardees to you midwestern/east coast folks) recently added Beyond Meat patties to their menu (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-beyond-meat-carl-s-jr-idU...). For a small price extra, you can get a not-farmed-meat burger and they're promoting it pretty heavily.
I dropped in a while back, was surprised to see it on the menu, thought "eh, what the hell", and it was pretty good. I have the kind of palate that would make Gordon Ramsay cry himself to sleep, so I wasn't able to tell the difference between one of their Beyond burgers and one of their regular burgers. Probably helps that their items are a mess of sauces and nonsense too.
Anyway, now when I go back in, I find that I'm having to justify to myself getting a farmed meat burger vs. a Beyond burger, and ... there's not really any justification for it.
I doubt most of Carl's customer base debate personal ethics while staring at the menu, but still, there's no way I'm the only one.
Funnily enough low quality patties like fast food burgers have been using more soy protein as a filler for a long time. Maybe one day they'll be honest and sell it as 50% vegetarian burgers or something.
McDonalds: "Yes, every patty is 100% real beef with no fillers, additives or preservatives."
Burger King: "Our beef patties are made with 100% beef with no fillers, no preservatives, no additives, no nonsense."
Wendy's: "100% pure beef across the menu"
Regional:
Carls Jr: "100% Pure Ground Beef."
Sonic: "100% pure beef patty"
Jack in the Box: "100 percent beef"
Funnily enough, it's the more expensive casual restaurant chain burgers that tend to contain textured soy protein and other things. Fast food is pretty much always 100% beef as others have pointed out.
I've definitely noticed this as someone allergic to soy protein. The big fast-food chains are generally safe. It's fast casual, local diners, and that kind of thing that's the problem for me.
This is also happening at White Castle, where they are selling Impossible Burger Sliders for 1.99. I will say I didn't particularly enjoy it but I will also say I it was the first time I've been to a White Castle when I'm sober, so YMMV.
I think ground-beef is easier to mimic with vegetarian substitute for whatever reason. Probably because fast food meat is already so weird and processed. Same with vegan sausage/hot dogs versus the meat-based sausage.
Obviously if someone loves eating expensive steak, that would be hard to replace with a vegetarian substitute.
My last three trips to A&W have been for the Beyond Meat burger. Like you, my palate can't really tell the difference. Like you, I don't see any need to go back to an animal burger.
They've also started carrying them at the local grocer, so I'll probably bring them home for BBQ season.
Living in SC, we live on the edge of the urban-rural divide. I anticipate the urban transition to meatless happening pretty quickly but I could see substantial opposition from rural people for a couple reasons:
(1) they’re closer to the people actually farming cattle.
(2) a general distrust of science
(3) the price drop to the traditional meat market as tremendous new supply floods the market.
You think meat prices can drop? I thought Tyson etc. have already destroyed the margins at the price of horrible conditions for the animals. Where can you go lower from there?
I find that these meat substitutes, vegetarian, and vegan options do not do very well because often times they are not only inferior in taste, but they cost way more. I do not see many people changing their mindsets until they can make these things significantly cheaper than eating meat products. As it is currently, vegetarianism and veganism are pretty much only available to middle class and higher people who can afford to make those choices. Healthy and environmentally-friendly options should not be a premium! They should be the default, mainstream, and accessible.
Note: Yeah, it can be cheap to go meatless if you do all the cooking yourself, but with premade products or meals at a restaurant, the vegetarian/vegan options are often priced higher, convincing no one to try them instead of affordable, flavorful meat-based dishes they are familiar with.
Maybe it's my rural background and associations, but I see a powerful psychological effect to eating meat from a real animal, and that won't disappear because some meat substitute tastes pretty good. I like falafel, I like shiitake mushrooms, I like a good veggie burger, but there's no substitute for the flesh of an animal — especially one I raised, where I know its diet, its experiences, and how it was slaughtered and butchered. I feel like I'd lose something essentially human in giving that up.
That's where I see meat going in the next few decades. Most meat eating right now is mindless and low quality and convenient. Definitely not some farm-to-table experience.
> there's no substitute for the flesh of an animal — especially one I raised, where I know its diet, its experiences, and how it was slaughtered and butchered
When PG said eating meat might sound perverse one day, it's hard to imagine how a comment like this might come across. I'm not a vegetarian and even I find it difficult to differentiate between the above justifications and the ravings of a serial killer.
Oh, you see, that's easy — a serial killer kills people. Is it maybe more moral not to think about where your meat comes from? If you are eating meat, but you can't contemplate the death of the animal that provided it, maybe you're not as morally elevated as you think.
Note that I said nothing about morals or being morally elevated. Just that what you said could have been a line from Silence of the Lambs.
I think it's our automatic defensiveness about having our morals questioned that leads to all these strange, weak arguments (e.g. "powerful psychological effect to eating meat").
Instead of doubling down on our position to mentally justify our possible transgressions, one alternate possibility is to recognize the real negative impacts of our actions and work towards limiting our meat consumption and promoting substitutes.
As an aside, based off of what you said about falafels and shiitake mushrooms, it sounds like you maybe haven't tried a lot of common meat substitutes that are already difficult to distinguish from processed meats (things like Morning Star Grillers Original that I've gotten from a bunch of grocery stores).
That's an interesting response, and one that would make sense from a vegetarian. But you ignore the main point of my reply: I eat meat with the ramifications of my actions in full view, and you eat meat even though you find the thought of the animals previous life and death comparable to the musings of a serial killer. Then, having made that comparison, you suggest that you weren't discussing morals.
What, pray tell, was the point of comparing my motivations to those of a serial killer, if not to make a suggestion as to the morality of my reasoning? I welcome a discussion of morality; I'd hold that it's key to the matter of eating animals.
(As to your aside, I've tried a number of those products, and they are just fine. So is homemade seitan. But they provide a different experience from meat, for the "strange, weak" reason I related above.)
There are a lot of things we do out of convenience that we don't delight in, like walking over ants. There's a distinct difference between welcoming an easy alternative to walking over ants and delighting in squishing them under your feet (regardless of how brazenly you celebrate your actions).
Are you suggesting that you eat meat because paying $10/pound for a mediocre steak that gives you the moral willies is honestly more convenient than buying a can of beans and taking a vitamin supplement? I'm saying I delight in eating the flesh of an animal, and that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure.
Your reasoning is pretty waffly and evasive to serve as a basis for comparing someone to a serial killer — which, as you may have noticed, I resent, as I consider almost anyone would.
> Are you suggesting that eating meat because paying $10/pound for a mediocre steak that gives you the moral willies is honestly more convenient than buying a can of beans and taking a vitamin supplement?
Humans naturally enjoy meat. As such, we have to go out of our way and sacrifice a little enjoyment if we want to be vegetarians (which I believe is the true reason you argue for meat). I don't really follow your argument that it would be more convenient to avoid all meat in our society in exchange for a can of beans and a vitamin. The crux of what PG was saying is that making it more convenient to avoid meat will lead to less meat consumption, which is hard to argue with.
> I'm saying I delight in eating the flesh of an animal, and that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure. Your reasoning is pretty waffly and evasive to serve as a basis for comparing someone to a serial killer — which, as you may have noticed, I resent, as I consider almost anyone would.
That resentment is what I previously referred to defensiveness of having your morals questioned. Of course you resent comparisons to your actions to things society has already deemed inappropriate. Whether those comparisons are justified or not is up to you (and society), but you don't make it easy on yourself with your particular brand of justifications (which sound deranged). Imagine if you raised a child or pet dog, cut them open and ate them with the justification "that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure". The difference between murdering your pet dog and a pet pig are very slim in our society already, so I wonder how you'd imagine you sound if you just drew the line a little bit differently.
> That resentment is what I previously referred to defensiveness of having your morals questioned.
You mean when you compared my thinking to that of a serial killer, and called them hard to distinguish? Which, as I've expressed, is a conversational gambit unlikely to arouse sympathy? Yes, I found that put me on the defensive a bit. Did you notice that it didn't make me suddenly see your point in a blinding Damascus flash of light?
Here in is what triggered the negative reaction to your most-parent comment.
> There's no substitute for the flesh of an animal — especially one I raised, where I know its diet, its experiences, and how it was slaughtered and butchered
> I'm saying I delight in eating the flesh of an animal, and that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure.
The former comment can be misconstrued to mean that 1) you revel in the power you have over animals you raise or 2) you enjoy the process of slaughtering an animal, in of itself.
The latter comment makes it clear that your intent is to give animals the best life possible (given your decision to eat meat).
We don't give our golden retrievers a comfortable life and then kill and eat them. They don't want to die for that. Why do we treat pigs and cows differently? Pigs have even scored higher than dogs on some intelligence tests. I found Melanie Joy's book on the related human history and psychology helpful here: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows.
On the contrary, contemplating the death of the animal that provided it is the primary reason I am compelled to eat less meat. I find it difficult to imagine that contemplating the death of an animal might have any other effect.
It sounds like you're attacking the parent commenter's morality as a way of defending your own actions' morality.
However, it's entirely possible that both parent commenter's actions AND your actions are immoral. In other words, the claim that "ignorant meat eating" is immoral doesn't make "aware meat eating" moral.
I think one argument you could make is that animals are somehow not worthy of the same just actions we deem humans to worthy of. But, if we value animals to the same degree we value humans, most ppl would deem your actions to be immoral.
I'm sorry anyone brought out a serial killer comparison. Our dominant culture for decades has provided the belief that eating animals is natural, normal and necessary.
Some plant-based advocates suffer from amnesia where they forget they ever ate meat, along with the beliefs they held at the time to justify it.
Maybe it's my rural background and associations...
Almost certainly. People tend to feel that however they grew up is the one right and true way to live. It can be an extremely difficult feeling to escape, even in cases where they actively very much want to leave it behind and live some other way, for example people who were abused and are in therapy and trying hard to find a better way to live.
I don’t think the parent commenter is claiming that his/her way of life is “the one right and true way.” I think the point is that people’s own preferences are influenced by how they grew up and thus changing their diets dramatically will not be so simple.
I think the point is that people’s own preferences are influenced by how they grew up and thus changing their diets dramatically will not be so simple.
A point I was 100% agreeing with, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Can you explain what you mean with 'psychological effect'?
And what exactly of eating the flesh of another animal makes you human.
I can understand our ancestors having to hunt and kill animals to survive.
But I don't think modern society needs to kill so many animals (billions) and destroy the environment to survive. It's a rather inefficient way to feed the world.
I agree, my "loyalty" to meat is strong, but irrational, even after I was a strict vegetarian for 7 years (a long time ago). If someone brought me something that just tastes better, they'd also have to make a convincing case of better nutritional benefits and that's not really a field with stable results and opinions. Price has nothing to do with it at all...
Many vegans see a powerful psychological effect to eating meat from a real animal -- you probably weren't thinking of them as examples of people like you!
One problem I can see is that a lot people who philosophically might be early adopters of these sorts of products also tend to be in the Michael Pollan 'natural' food camp and on principle avoid heavily processed foods.
Sure, if you can make a Burger that tasted better than average Burger made with Real Angus USDA Choice, preserving all its protein and nutrition benefits, healthy while being cheaper. I am all for it.
( Lots of Meats Subs ( Not just Burgers ) tends to Add other ingredient making taste or looks better, but in reality aren't as healthy to consume as compared to Meat. I can see the Market force will drive Meats Sub to lower cost while being more like process, unhealthy type of food, which kind of defeat the purpose. )
This has added benefits to Supply Chain where Cattle has a long lead time to slaughter and don't adopt well to sudden demand. Compare to possibly mass manufacture plant based Meat Sub.
The problem is I have yet to taste any Meat Substitutes that is remotely close to being as good as meat. They are good I won't mind having them, but given the choice I would pick meat any day.
And all of them were comparatively pricy. If these Meat Subs aren't at least 30%+ cheaper while being as good or better tasting , it will remain in a niche for those non-veg people. I think the price to quality is something we won't see in the next 10 years. And getting people to changes its attitudes will take even longer than that.
I've had the same thought - vegetarianism is a proven healthy diet choice, the problem is, its not really something you can manufacture and make money off, because its just plants. Enter manufactured meat substitute, its made of plants, so it must be healthy, but that's not necessarily true. Much of the health benefits of a plant diet seem to come from trace phytochemicals and no one really knows which ones work, and there seem to be interactions between them (e.g. antioxidants).
I'm looking forward to the cow/pig/sheep/chicken extinction event - no one will keep them around, except maybe in zoos, if the whole world is vegan.
Edit: a downvote? this is totally serious - what are they going to be - released back into the wild where they roam free? There won't be any more, except as I said in zoos, if the whole world goes vegan
"need" is too strong a word here, especially as milk gets more expensive if you cannot sell excess meat (and not everyone wants milk from hormone-treated cows).
Chickens, cows and pigs are overbred to have more meat etc. some of those breeds can't walk properly anymore... They are far from what their early ancestors were...
They were all modified through the generations to make them a commodity. If they have no purpose, them going extinct is not a bad thing. Most of them are optimized for meat or other purposes and they probably can't survive outside. It would be humane to let them go extinct after we transition. FWIW we already wiped them off the Earth, you don't find a lot of wild cows or chickens other than the ones we have modified.
Who's going to pay to transport sheep to grassland? Who's going to rehabilitate a pig that's never been outside a cage? What do we do with cows? There's a lot of unanswered questions, and not many mountains waiting for unwanted sheep.
I didn't say we should move any around. The person I was replying to said extinction as in all of them, even those minding their own business elsewhere.
I was pointing out that the people who say we shouldn't eat meat haven't really thought it through. I would guess that this would be an unintended consequence of their actions and I've never heard it said - the only reason these animals exist is because we've bred them for food - if we don't eat them any more then they'll no longer exist.
I'm pretty sure the Animal Liberation, considered one of the founding blocks of militant vegetarians and vegans in occident, raised this question in… 1975. I think it would be like horses, you would still find (healthy, relatively happy) chicken, cows, pigs, in the countryside; but in smaller numbers and not tortured by millions in factories. No "unintended consequence" there.
ok, I've said this to quite a few people and the result is pretty well what it was here, denial and outrage :-) I don't think its well publicized but happy to be proved otherwise.
Chickens will probably stick around. A German company has discovered a way to determine a chick's gender while still in the egg. That will end the cruel practice of tossing male chicks into a grinder. And will allow cruelty free eggs to be produced. As long as the hens have space, comfortable quarters, and allowed to keep living in those conditions after they stop laying.
For those who are vegan for purely ethical reasons, this will allow them to have eggs.
I think the argument is that half the animal are killed, because they are roosters instead of hens. In addition to whatever their living standards are.
It's not a good idea to be confident predicting how anyone will see your ethical argument. There's a lot of things people still consider cruel left in egg production after the practices you mention change.
There are robust feral populations of each of those in different parts of the world. It takes surprisingly few generations to "undo" the domestication too. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_wild_cattle
I was brought up vegetarian, and while I gave it up when I got married and had kids, I've never really grown to love the taste of meat. The thing I'm most annoyed by is that nice tasting veggie dishes are often being replaced in restaurants with horrible tasting meat-substitute dishes trying to capture the taste of beef or whatever. This is probably just me against the universe though.
One of my worst meals ever was a vegetarian Asian meal in Salt Lake City. The dish was “Chicken...” something or other. The “chicken” was tofu shaped like a chicken wing with feathers. No where on the menu did it say the place was vegetarian.
I have nothing against eating tofu. I enjoy tofu. But the bait and switch ruined the meal for me.
These restaurants are somewhat common, and are usually run by Buddhists. I've never seen one that lacked a label; while the individual menu items might be confusing, there's usually a big clue.
Here's the one near my apartment, it has vegan in the name of the restaurant: http://www.gardenfresh.us/
I can't speak to the general quality of these restaurants, but I actually go to the Garden Fresh in Palo Alto pretty regularly and love it (I've heard the Mountain View location isn't quite as good).
Best Thai restaurant outside Thailand I’ve ever been to is called Plumeria in San Diego — it’s completely vegetarian (optional egg) with meat-like substitues.
I never order chicken satay as an appetizer (even in Thailand) as I usually find it bland, the texture too dry, and generally boring — but I will always order the “chicken” satay from Plumeria ... better than meat.
Penn of Penn and Teller discussed on his podcast how he stopped eating meat and had a similar stance on foods pretending to be meat. Then he was compelled to try a particular meat substitute and discovered that it was actually not just trying to be meat but was actually better than meat - meat has grisle and bits you don’t really want to eat, the substitute is only “the good stuff.” Better texture, etc.
It was an eye opening anecdote for me (as a meat eater).
This is what lifelong meat eaters experience, but I just can't comprehend. There is no meat that on its own is particularly tasty to me. Chicken, at its absolute best, tastes like a disappointing roast chestnut. What's worse is meat doesn't really marinade as well as everyone makes out, so often I'll be enjoying a dish but I keep chewing and realise I just like the sauce and then that fades and - yuck - you're left with meat.
Again, this is my very narrow experience as a vegetarian who lapsed well into adulthood and just didn't learn an appreciation of the savoury flavours involved. Objectively it's clearly people love the taste of meat.
Chicken is about the worst meat to eat on its own, especially if you are baking boneless skinless chicken breasts. Dark chicken meat has actual flavor, so thighs and drumsticks are probably your best bet.
If you want good meat with no extra flavoring I recommend good steak (like the $60+ steak you can get at a nice steakhouse). Pulled pork is also good, though it's usually somewhat flavored, doesn't necessarily need to be. Lamb prepared gyro style is pretty good. Pretty much any meat will taste better grilled than baked in an oven too.
I'm on the opposite side of this. I've eaten meat for the first 23 years of my life, but my current partner is vegan. A large part of our relationship has been discovering that vegetables are actually good to eat when they're not an afterthought to a meal. I go out of my way to try the meat substitutes now, because I'm holding out that one of them will actually be good enough for me to show my carnivore friends.
For many years, I've wanted to try being vegetarian as a way to reduce my environmental impact. To me, meat substitutes are the last missing piece in the puzzle, the piece that shows that its possible to consume staples like hamburgers or spaghetti and meatballs.
Not all of the meat substitutes are good. Not all of them have to be. But a more sustainable future, where meat (and especially seafood) are cultivated in a way that has a less harmful impact on the environment, is a future that I want to help facilitate.
At risk of sparking an ethics debate, why do most people who turn vegetarian out of conscientiousness seem to very disproportionately do it for environmental reasons?
I mean, on one hand, it makes complete rational sense, because it's self/species-interest: reduced meat consumption should decrease the effects of global warming and other issues, and you want a world that you and future generations of people can safely and healthily live in. I get it.
But are you then still not doing it for selfish reasons, or at least species-selfish reasons? If hypothetically some new technology could suck all of the excess carbon out of the atmosphere and replant things and otherwise 100% negate all of the environmental effects of all the different kinds of meat production, would you and other vegetarians with similar motivations no longer feel any reason, or ethical obligation, to be vegetarian?
I do it for selfish reasons. Veggies are cheap and easy to grow and full of minerals and protein. And high fibre legumes and grains are really good for gut bacteria
As someone who is a "save the planet" vegetarian, I am mystified by your comment. No, I wouldn't start eating meat if there was a magic machine that sucked carbon out of the atmosphere, and I am not claiming my personal reasons for not eating meat are somehow not selfish.
But most of all, that's not the only reason I'm a vegetarian.
I don't think you're going to end up with a good discussion if you start it like this.
I know people have many different reasons for becoming vegetarian and that the poster I was replying to was not necessarily implying it was their sole reason. But it was clearly their primary reason, and it seems to very often be people's primary or sole reason.
And to be clear, I also have no problem with people doing it for selfish reasons.
I think it is hard to claim that you care about the animals and ethics once you realise what goes on to produce milk or eggs which is what most vegetarians (lacto-ovo-vegetarians, really) consume and support.
I briefly looked at those links. The first one, "Beliefs and Attitudes toward Vegetarian Lifestyle across Generations", says in the introduction
"Younger people significantly agreed more with the moral reason and with the environmental reason. People ages 41–60 significantly agreed more with the health reason. [i.e. not in absolute terms, just compared with other age groups]
A study publish[sic] in 1992 found that the highest number of vegetarians, 46 percent, chose a vegetarian diet for health reasons, 15 percent chose to be a vegetarian for animal rights reasons, 12 percent for friend/family influence, 5 percent for ethical reasons, 4 percent for environmental issues and 18 percent indicated other reasons.."
Their study:
"The objective of the study was to examine whether reasons to adopt vegetarian lifestyle differ significantly among generations. ...This cross-sectional, observational study was completed at Andrews University which is a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) institution of higher learning. SDA represent a unique population known for their wide range of dietary habits. This conservative religious group prohibits the use of alcohol, tobacco, and pork and recommends that members adhere to lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet. ...Participants were drawn from a large undergraduate introductory-level nutrition class that is open to students from all academic directions."
So, 609 people at a Seventh-Day Adventist college who'd signed up for a nutrition class. That seems a super-bizarre, unrepresentative group to study for the purpose. And in Figure 1, the "Health" reason seems to be the strongest reason given, for every age group.
The other link is to a picture, which seems to be an Australian event, Veganuary, I guess trying to get people to sign up to be vegan in January? Anyway, that says people who signed up for that gave 43% "animals" and 39% "health" reasons, 10% environment, 8% other. They're mostly not vegetarians or vegans, it also says in the picture.
Neither of those two, and particularly not the first, seem to suggest that vegetarians and vegans are principally concerned with animal ethics - even if one assumes they're what they're not, perfectly representative of the beliefs of the entire population of the planet, or your country, or whatever region you're talking about. Still, they were interesting, thanks.
You know, I actually agree somewhat. I almost noted that I was having trouble finding more reliable sources, particularly concerning vegetarianism and veganism in the USA, but thought that would have completely torpedoed my argument. ;)
More seriously: the "environmental" claim rang hollow to me, so I set out in search of some facts, and I think what I found supports that intuition, but the burden of proof is not really mine. (I will retract my "it's animal ethics yo" statement—clearly a reach.)
The burden of proof should've been on me, for sure. I was going off of anecdote. Now I'm not so sure on what the actual percentages are, though I do still think that description probably does apply to a large number of vegetarians and perhaps vegans.
Hunting is most likely the best option from an animal ethics standpoint. Although it doesn't scale well. But make that point to a vegan and suddenly they're vegan primarily for environmental concerns.
I just think it's all more complicated than people want it to be. Some choices in life MIGHT have a slight net positive on the environment or on animals deaths. But then people get so invested in the outcomes that they paint it as completely black and white.
As someone who doesn't eat meat or dairy I've heard the argument that the environmental impact would be less than a vegan that lives in a city.
The argument being that a hunter is killing an animal that lived naturally is less of an environmental impact than getting food packaged and sent across the country, etc.
I'm not sure I agree, but it's the most plausible argument I've seen for not being Vegan.
> getting food packaged and sent across the country
You missed the biggest factor: industrial farming. Have you been to the midwest-does that look like a healthy, natural ecosystem? A vegan (well, most people really ) who lives there gets their food from the same place as one in the city.
I'm not sure any form of food production/gathering, at the scale needed today, would look any better though.
Farming at any scale results in unintended animal deaths, serving no purpose other than to "get out of the way" so we can farm here.
Hunting results in the death of a single animal, and that animal is then directly used for food. There is virtually no environmental impact as a result of well regulated hunting.
A vegan would argue that the death of a single animal should be prevented if at all possible. They would probably argue that hunting is much more ethical than factory farming, but still very unethical.
I know, I've had these arguments. But it's asinine because it is quite literally impossible for any human to exist without animals dying as a result of it. There are a small percentage of vegans that are convinced that their existence results in zero animal deaths. These people are delusional. Luckily there aren't many of them.
The reasonable vegans admit that it's a matter of causing as little animal death or suffering as possible. And then some percentage of what I've deemed "reasonable vegans" will also agree that hunting is about as good as any other options.
I'd like to think I fall in the "reasonable vegan" category. I know it's impossible for humans to prevent all possible animal deaths.
But there's a massive gap between hunting and not killing and eating animals for food at all. Of course I'd prefer if factory farming was replaced with hunting, but I'd prefer even more if synthetic meat were the norm and raising or killing animals for food just wasn't even part of the equation anymore (as PG, and others, are predicting).
As a human animal, I'd certainly rather live ~50% of my expected natural life in the wild and have it end in an instant from a weapon than be born in crammed captivity and force-fed horrible anti-biotic-laden meal for years for some higher-intelligence extraterrestrial species to consume, sure. But even though it's preferable, I still don't want to be shot and killed, even if I knew with certainty that my death was going to be short and painless.
Similar to PG, I predict killing animals for sport or for food will be considered very taboo within a century. At least in Western countries.
>why do most people who turn vegetarian out of conscientiousness seem to very disproportionately do it for environmental reasons? ...are you then still not doing it for selfish reasons, or at least species-selfish reasons?
You seem to have answered your own question there. It shouldn't be surprising, although yes, it surprises me too I guess. (I became vegan because..how to put it..Humans have no right to treat animals as if their lives are nothing, as if they're just things for humans to eat, if we can easily avoid it. Which I can. I'd rather not be killed, and want to avoid pain, so I figure non-human animals want that too.)
I think the spark that starts the vegan is one reason but as the transition happens you start embracing more of the arguments for veganism.
I decided to switch to a plant based diet for environmental reasons. I calculated my carbon footprint and noticed I could cut it in half by excluding animal products, so I did. Then I learned the health effects by losing weight and stopped having migranes I previously had approximately bi-weekly since late adolescence. They just stopped. The energy dips I used to have after lunch? Gone. Breath smells better. PH balance restored from being way too acid. There are so many things that are just fixed by eating plants instead of animal based products. I also learned to love that there is no bone, sinew or thick rubbery fat in whatever I'm chewing. I used to hate fish bones or a piece of fat in a steak or burger I'd have to spit out in a napkin.
Then it started to dawn on me how inhumane I'd been to other species on the ground of them being a part of my diet. I've always loved animals and the outdoors but some animals I'd been okay with murdering and eating. It just felt hypocritical. Not to mention that my argument for it was that _it tastes good_. Who do I think I am? Scaring and killing living beings because they _taste good_? Fuck me. I don't want to support an industry based on the evil premise of destroying the planet by killing animals because they taste good so from now my money will go to my plant based diet. Less money than before, I might add.
Speaking from personal experience as someone who often seems that way, it's because environmentalism is a rational argument that people can easily approach without having the urge to defend their own morality (which doesn't make for great dinner conversation).
As a staunch lover of meat I am fundamentally against meat substitutes. I love vegetarian dishes and eat them often, but I will not touch a meat substitute if I can avoid it. Many asian foods include tofu and that’s fine.
My reasoning is that if a dish is supposed to be vegetarian, or it just doesn’t include mat because it doesn’t need to, then keep it vegetarian. Veggies are delicious. Why ruin a perfectly good dish with fake meat?
If a dish is meant to include meat, then just use meat. It has different macros and very different taste than current meat substitutes. Why ruin a perfectly good dish with fake meat?
If you’re gonna not eat meat all the power to ya, don’t eat meat. But don’t then try to replicate meat with not-meat that’s just lazy. Explore the world of proper vegetarian and vegan dishes. You might be pleasantly surprised by how great they are.
I know meta-discussion on HN is frowned upon, but seriously, I just have to ask those who down-voted this comment: why? Just... why? What is the problem with this sentiment with respect to its contribution to this thread?
If it helps, I think this is a reasonable point (don't try to fake the meat, just skip it - i've thought it myself often).
I haven't commented in here in SO LONG, and I know I will pay for the insurrection of asking the invisible commenters to justify yourselves, but I just can't help it because I do not understand how down-voting this is justifiable in any way with respect to content moderation.
Because it's making this statement about what others should do based on a personal preference, and not taking into account at all why people stop eating meat?
As someone who was raised vegetarian I also have next to no interest in meat replacements personally, but they should be great for people who love the taste of meat but want to give it up for ethical/environmental reasons.
This reply is worth a thousand down-votes. I see where you are coming from and I appreciate that you shared it in words, not just a click on a down arrow. Thank you.
But I still think the down-voters are taking it personally. I don't believe anyone is actually being chastised for their position by this commenter. I took it as offering another option - instead of telling someone who likes meat that you have a great substitute that tastes just like meat and they'll never know the difference, try saying "there are many ways to prepare any of a large variety of vegetables - maybe you can enjoy vegetables as much as you enjoy meat if you find some recipes you like". Maybe those dishes will taste "meat-like" or whatever, but there is value in saying "Stop trying to fake it. Embrace the choice to do it differently."
For the record, I personally believe that this is a more honest tack for someone who is pursuing the option for ethical/environmental reasons.
Why must I not fake it? Who cares?
If someone wants to eat meat substitute, who are you to tell them otherwise?
You sounds like when the LED lightbulb that reduces energy usages of the old light bulb by 100 times, you will say "Why fake it? If you want to reduce energy usage, you must live without electriciy! Using newer, more energy efficient light bulb just means you don't save the world the true way".
I think your analogy is poor - an LED does not produce fake light. Is a candle fake light compared to the sun?
But anyway, you missed the point - I am not telling you what to do. I am simply suggesting the alternative of "not faking it" by adding to a comment I felt was doing the same. If you feel like you are being told what to do, I apologize.
> But don’t then try to replicate meat with not-meat that’s just lazy.
Considering the amount of effort going into developing meat substitutes, "lazy" seems like a strange characterization. Besides, if someone has decided for reasons external to taste that they're not going to eat meat but they miss it, why shouldn't they try meat substitutes?
As a long time vegetarian and off-and-on vegan, I suspect you'll be less disappointed if you look for and cook meals that just don't include meat, rather than substituting it for something else. There are tons of them, and many are incredibly tasty.
Indian restaurants, for example, often have entire sections of the menu that are vegan or vegetarian without substituting in fake meat.
It's a little more work initially, but after a while you won't miss the meat, whereas if you're eating fake burgers you're going to be reminded they're fake every time you eat one.
I found transitioning to vegan to be almost impossible when I stuck to my old meal routine. All my meals had the same fundamental, irreplaceable component; meat. Chicken and fries. Steak and veg. Slow-cooked beef stew. Bangers and Mash. Fish and chips. Burgers. Pizza. Wings. Veg was a side thought. I tried at first to replace all this with plant 'replacements' but kept failing miserably.
After some research on what vegans actually eat, not what I thought they ate, I swapped to a diet of porridge, curries, chillis, stir-frys, stews, pastas, soups, and salads, which were meals I loved and could do easy, mostly in one pot. At first I could have the meat I craved, but over time I could do a straight 1:1 swap of meat for peas, beans, seeds, nuts and lentils, without tarnishing the quality of the meal.
People fail at the first hurdle when they try to replace a bacon sandwich, pizza, hamburger or steak with something that is a fundamentally different food. Replacing bacon with a sliced mushroom is like trying to replace a water pipe with some electrical wire. They're both great, but for different things. Likewise, replacing some berries in a bowl of cereal with pork cutlets or a fried egg would likely make you a guest on Strange Eaters. It works both ways.
If I've discovered anything during my lifestyle change, it's that eating is 95% habitual, and any argument I had against vegans in hindsight was because I didn't want to have to break out of my habit. I now have no interest in eating meat again, because I'm in a new habit and to have a steak would be breaking out of that again.
As a meat eater, yeah, agree. My wife and I have reduced our meat consumption by ~50% over the last few years, and we've done it mostly by finding dishes that were veg*n to start with, as opposed to meat substitutes.
Some Buddhist monks are known to make plant protein taste like meat and resemble the texture of meat. These are served with regular vegetables. Anyhow, some are better than others. Of course palates are quite personal.
I was brought up omnivore and have been vegetarian since August 2018 and love the meat substitutes. Beyond Burgers and Field Roast sausages helped me with the transition to plant based.
There are many industrial complexes at play that's putting a constant negative pressure on the quality of our lives, including the quality of our food and food availability.
I'm a lifelong vegetarian who has very literal tolerance for the taste of meat. Can we give it up with these meat substitutes already? Even if they absolutely nail the taste of real meat, I don't want my food to taste like that.
Let me tell you as a lapsed vegetarian, the worst thing isn't even the taste - these people eat stuff that doesn't even dissolve in your mouth. The first time I had lamb, I just chewed for about five minutes before realising I was going to have to overcome my gag reflex to force this tasteless brown stuff down. I'd be horrified if we started replicating _that_.
> Can we give it up with these meat substitutes already?
Who should give up on them? The people who like them? The manufacturers? There's clearly a market for good-tasting meat substitutes. If they serve enough peoples' wants and are nutritious while being better from an environmental perspective, why not just live and let live?
Yes, I'm aware of this, and I realise I am just an old man shouting at a particularly niche cloud. But many restaurants are foregoing some variety in vegetarian dishes that they previously had to offer meat substitutes. I happened to quite like a lot of veggie burgers, for example, but I do not like the faux beef burgers that have replaced them in some places.
> that nice tasting veggie dishes are often being replaced in restaurants with horrible tasting meat-substitute dishes
Ha, this is a problem my wife has started having after impossible burger became popular in the bay area. All our favorite burger joints now serve that, instead of the brilliant vegan burgers they used to have (including my workplace).
I am a meal eater with a majority vegetarian friends group, so I inevitably cook a lot of veg food.
Greek, Indian, Thai and Chinese customers lend themselves really well to vegetarianism and I'm surprised that it isn't catching on in the US. (Especially Indian)
Meat substitutes don't hold a candle to a single one of these for items.
I've tried the current state of the art in meat substitutes ( impossible) and it's still bad.
I live on and help operate a small family farm (230 head of grass fed cattle) and I don't think that meat substitutes will hurt our sales or margins, unless and until their quality results in a broad shift in societal attitudes that leads to meat itself becoming illegal.
I do absolutely think that it will reduce the demand for industrially farmed, feedlot-fed, commodity-priced meat, and this is a good thing.
I'm a carnivore and my diet is 100% meat (health reasons). Should I be concerned about moves like this? Do you think this will negatively affect the price of meat for consumers?
This whole discussion reminds me of the LED benefits promised. We would save so much energy. Same thing here- we will have so many calories with so little agri-culture- and we will all give it back to nature.
Fast forward - and i cant see the stars in my city.
Moreover, they disrupt circadian rhythms of all animals around cities that can't get good sleep due to blue/daylight component of LED lights installed in the cities.
it seems inevitable that fake meat will reach a texture and taste level that's "good enough" for fast food titans to offer alongside the normal, bargain (dollar menu ish) type stuff. if you add in the economic arguments - fake meat being way cheaper logistically i'm guessing and only going to get cheaper, perhaps order of magnitude levels so - then i would wager that the lower-end options will be the fake meat stuff (which those of "lesser means" might switch to consuming) whereas the "real meat" becomes the more affluent option.
There are some sketchy chicken dishes, like the subway chicken, who have claimed to be about half soy, although subway disputes it. But at least in terms of beef, I couldn't find a company in the top 5-6 fast food burgers that don't claim 100% beef.
Capitalism isn't required for meat substitutes to be researched and developed. Transition programs, agricultural or job sectoral, or subsidies would be available in any sane society for small farmers if they were pushed out of the cruel practice of animal slaughter.
We don't need saviors. We don't need the rich. We just need each other and the will to move beyond private ownership of the factories, farms, and shops.
Since we're making predictions here, I predict that shortly after we adopt meat substitutes, we'll start to question what's inside them. Then the conversation will change from meat substitutes being good and healthy to something akin to the GMO debate about meat substitutes not being natural. And just like GMOs, whether it's actually bad for you or not won't matter. This debate will be a proxy war between Big Meat and some faceless VC-backed corporations trying to make meat proprietary. Some meat substitutes will actually be pretty terrible but #notallmeatsubstitutes. Unfortunately, it will only take a few bad substitutes to ruin the name of all.
I also predict that meat substitutes, if made cheaper than meat, will be deemed inferior in quality (cheap = inferior, because psychology) and reserved for those who cannot afford real meat (the "meatless masses").
On a tangential note, I wish it were possible to buy foods specifically because they contain GMOs. I intentionally avoid buying foods labeled "non-GMO" in a feeble attempt to vote with my wallet.
This is what progmo don’t understand most engineering isn’t for qualities the end consumer wants! Easier to produce doesn’t mean better. And yeah 90% of the time when it is gmo it’s as you imply using roundup ready (tm) seeds to spray more now legally cited as carcinogenic glyphosate
I concur with the sentiment. Isn't GMO to create foods that require less pesticides? So wouldn't that be a good thing if there are less chemicals used on our foods, seeping into our soil and water supply? I never really understood why people are so scared of GMO....
I can see GMO foods being owned by the likes of Monsanto, earning healthy royalties on seeds that cannot bear offspring. I think there should be a GMO open source initiative...
Not really, Monsanto GMO roundup ready crops are crops specifically modified to be able to take larger amounts of their roundup pesticide, leading to more chemicals being sprayed on our food.
The problem being that the signal to noise ratio is very low as to whether or not there are harmful effects. Normal exposure to glyphosphate in people is very low and at those levels you are exposed to many different substances even in wholly natural food.
Compounded with that is there are very few people doing research without an agenda.
You also have to realize that "organic" in the US doesn't mean treatment-free crops. There are a large number of substances approved to treat crops for pests and weeds and still be counted as organic with the rationale that those treatments are less synthetic. There is absolutely no guarantee that this means they have fewer negative effects.
Yeah, I get these are small proportions. I'm definitely not recommending "organic" produce/meat. I meant that whatever we try to do at this point seems to be "let's use a little bit of this carcinogen which is spreading everywhere in tiny amounts so we don't have to use more of a different toxic substance". It feels depressing that these are our choices.
> Isn't GMO to create foods that require less pesticides? So wouldn't that be a good thing if there are less chemicals used on our foods, seeping into our soil and water supply?
As mentioned by wonderwonder, Roundup-ready soybeans are the poster child for GMO varieties being create to allow more chemical herbicides. And in this case glyphosate (RoundUp) is being seen more and more widely as a really nasty chemical to allow into the water supply and into nature. It has been linked to honey bee colony collapse, and the general insect collapse, not to mention lymphomas and lukemias.. (As an old Iowa farm boy, I am shocked at the number of relatives and their neighbors that are getting strange lymphomas and lukemias.)
> I never really understood why people are so scared of GMO....
But I do agree that eating a GMO grain is not scary by itself. It is the side effects of the different style of agriculture it allows that concerns me. (see glyphosate, above, and more below).
> I think there should be a GMO open source initiative...
Just Monsanto's poor luck that you can not create an unstable soy bean hybrid. They all breed true. The is the great advantage of selling seed corn, if you just avoid doing the last, stabilizing, cross, you can sell seed corn that will create a healthy plant who's seeds will not produce productive plants. Mother Nature gives you free IP protection. (Monsanto is a nasty company in so many ways.... I don't even want to get into it.)
Another chemical-related factor with GMO varieties is the unintended consequences of evolutionary selective pressure. A common GMO application in maize is to modify the plant to produce a toxin that is poisonous to the root-worm moth and/or the corn-borer moth. So, in this case, less pesticide chemicals. Which is great, but used indescrimanently, in a few generations we will have largely resistant moth populations. The state of Iowa has been very forward-thinking on this front, and requires that some percentage of every field planted to the GMO variety (like 15% or so, I forget the exact number) must be planted to "refuge rows". That is, if you plant a GMO moth-resisant variety, a percentage of the same field must be planted to traditional varieties to create a refuge for the moths so that the population does not develop resistance. Now, since maize does best in large blocks, the fence rows never yield as well anyway. And you always have turn-round rows where machines trample some unlucky plants as well. So plant the already poor-yielding rows to the refuge variety, and the GMO variety more than makes up for the loss. So it still pencils out advantageously.
What concerns me about this scenario is more environmentally naive and myopic regions might allow 100% GMO-toxin varieties, for the moth or other similar scenarios where evolutionary selective pressure can be a fast-acting force. Rolling out a GMO variety of anything requires examining the second- and third-order consequences.
So while I have little fear of eating GMO Doritos, I don't want GMO Doritos to bring on The Invasion of the Super Locusts in 3D with Dolby sound.
> Isn't GMO to create foods that require less pesticides?
That depends entirely on the kind of GMO. GMOs don't exist for any particular single purpose. Some GMOs exist to make it easier to use pesticides. Some GMOs contain pesticides.
Some GMOs have nothing to do with pesticides but add nutritional value. For example, Golden Rice, which has beta-carotene added to increase the vitamin-A intake of the hundreds of millions of people who subsist mainly on rice, generally gets mentioned as the one GMO that's completely positive with no discernible downside: it doesn't mess with ecosystems in any way, beta-carotene is already common in many plants, it doesn't do anything pesticide-related, and it makes people healthier.
Golden Rice is cool. And it's "nice" that the intellectual property owner has relaxed royalties for now. But it will be interesting to see how fast ancient local strains of rice disappear and there is less biodiversity. How hard is it to mix in a few greens with rice to get vitamin A?
As far as I understand, it doesn't have any kind of boosted resistance or anything, so it shouldn't dominate and replace wild rice the way other modified rice might.
That said, if farmers move from producing a wide variety of rice strains to only golden rice, that's still a significant reduction in biodiversity. Maybe they should make beta-carotene versions of more kinds of rice.
Mixing in a few greens is surprisingly hard when people are almost too poor to buy rice.
Biodiversity, I think is the biggest problem. The potato blight spread so rampently because mostly one clone of the exact potato was being grown everywhere. Some sort of rice or corn blight would be catastrophic.
Absolutely true. Also consider the fate of the Gros Michel banana. Biodiversity is vital for our food production, and GMOs definitely carry the risk of creating monocultures.
I won't be surprised if meat substitutes end up being much more expensive than meat is today (and "normal" meat even pricier). My prediction is for meat prices to rise as more and more people reduce consumption, maybe a couple of generations from now meat consumption will be a luxury item.
>I also predict that meat substitutes, if made cheaper than meat, will be deemed inferior in quality (cheap = inferior, because psychology) and reserved for those who cannot afford real meat (the "meatless masses").
I think there will be such a period, but eventually it'll swap.
Both because more affluent people will tend to be more pro-animal welfare and so synthetic meat will be more associated with the successful, and because eventually (probably distant future, but who knows) all the meat substitutes will just taste better than real meat and anyone who's ever had a meal won't be able to deny the reality.
Most of the meat in the market is already something else than what people think meat is.
Meatballs may have more than half chicken skin. Burgers contain 25% filler. Pink slime (= lean finely textured beef) is a highly processed meat by-product. In the US its processed with ammonia but that's not allowed in EU.
Which is why one needs to be cooking for themselves as I have while eating my--coincidentally enough--made from scratch spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight.
"Pink slime" is made by centrifuging heated fatty offcuts, which doesn't turn my stomach that much.
I have a sneaking suspicion that what people find disgusting is the industrial production of meat, and that if Gordon Ramsey had a small and inoffensive centrifuge attachment for his KitchenAid the process would seem less gross.
Home production of meat is equally gross if not more. You probably haven't seen the meat market in Lagos (I’d think twice before searching that on Google Images). At least the industry has to comply with regulation and hygenical standards.
High status for the rich food can be gross, but it can't be low quality. Ammonia or citric acid processed slime-paste is as low quality as it gets. Adding pink slime to the product changes the texture. Pink slime less meaty and juicy compared to normal beef.
Good chef can do good simple food, but they want good ingredient and that's not that pink slime is.
On the other, isn't it all really quite subjective? What you describe is tied every bit as much to irrational emotions about histories of things as it is about 'quality' in any measurable sense. What is considered the highest delicacy with a complex preparation in one century has that same process industrialized and becomes 'poor people junk food' in the next, despite being objectively, measurably a better quality product by every possible metric.
While your statement is true it's not exactly that straightforward since that is only part of the process and rationale for it. The US has just recently changed course on allowing pink slime to be labeled as "ground beef". Because of those recent changes by the FDA consumers have lost insight to what's in their meat unfortunately.
Most of the preprocessed meat maybe. I've never put chicken in my meatballs. And meatballs are easy enough to make that for the life of me I can't figure out why anybody would buy them premade. Make a large batch and freeze them yourself. They'll be a thousand times better than the trash you can buy at the store.
This. Or even making your own marinara sauce. It’s payoff for the amount of time invested. NYtimes has a good recipe that takes about 20 minutes. The only trick is to find really good canned tomatoes.
> I can't figure out why anybody would buy them premade
People who don't have a kitchen big enough for cooking in bulk like that? People without freezers? People without that amount of free time? People don't really like food? People with motion disabilities? I've probably missed out some groups.
>People who don't have a kitchen big enough for cooking in bulk like that?
By "bulk" I mean an oven tray or two. I'm not rocking an commercial kitchen here.
>People without freezers?
Where do they put their frozen meatballs from the store?
The time is amortized, if you don't like food then you shouldn't care anyway, and I really doubt most people buying frozen meatballs from the store have disabilities.
Eating only lean muscle meat is not a good idea anyway. Not sure the products you mentioned are healthy, but mixing things up a bit with skin, organs etc might be beneficial. Don’t hate the meat byproducts per se.
I concur but I see a potential third tier: we might have the Meated, the Entomeated, and the Meatless.
With strata within each caste of course. The grass-fed yak-meated vs the factory-pig-meated; the wild-grasshopper entomeated vs the squishy-larva entomeated; and the fresh-veg meatless vs the Wal-Soylent meatless.
Hopefully the cheaper meat substitutes end up in all the processed and consumer food that is most unconsciously eaten and already of the lowest quality. Thinking Taco Bell.
RealMeat will never be replaced with some mystery goop made of soybean and seaweed powder. You will never have the nutrient diversity of a real living tissue in a mystery goop. And cow body is way more alike to us than seaweed.
People have already been questioning what's inside meat substitutes. The most recent scandal I can recall involved vegan fake meat which tested positive for eggs, probably used as a binder.
There already is to some extent. In Netherland, there's the "Vegetarische Slager" (vegetarian butcher) which produces fairly convincing substitutes of specific types of meat. But they can't call their fake chicken "chicken", or their fake beef "beef", because there's no actual chicken or beef in it. But they do want to make clear to the consumer that they're meant to be substitutes specifically for chicken and beef.
Now they can sell it as long as they spell it differently. So we get lots of fake meat with spelling errors now.
Also, 10 years later, there will be fads and forwards which talk about eating "Natural" protein, not this fake stuff.
15 years later, there will be science talking about how micro nutrients are missing from meat substitutes and how a natural, healthy and balanced diet is necessary for human beings.
And there will be a movement "Grow your own meat" which proposes to keep bunnies and slaughter them yourself. Members will be proud to be not grossed out of the gore. Groups will discuss the best ways to feed and slaugther bunnies. They will have Thanksgiving bunnies.
I presume you were pointing this out in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, rather than predicting a future state, but just in case anyone else is curious here’s a 20 year-old reference:
Science will prevail eventually, on that I will agree. Unfortunately most nutrition science today is complete garbage. The evidence doesn't back up the results they claim.
Basically, at this point each person has to try various things and figure out what works best for themself.
Quoting from the first link: "In the case of red meat, the classification is based on limited evidence from epidemiological studies showing positive associations between eating red meat and developing colorectal cancer as well as strong mechanistic evidence.
Limited evidence means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed chance, bias, or confounding) could not be ruled out."
This is garbage science. It's all like that. Believe whatever you like, though.
I was on such a diet for many years and eventually gave up on it because I could not make it work in a healthy way.
Why?
Too many deficiencies. Example: Linseed oil /= DHA/EPA. Many or most people cannot make long chain Omega 3 fats in the quantity needed from vegetable "Omega 3" fats.
Too many anti-nutrients in plants.
Get on youtube and search "I used to be a vegan" for numerous cases like mine, health irreparably damaged.
> A high carb low fat low protein whole food plant based diet with (cheap) vitamin supplements and maybe linseed oil:
> - is the healthiest diet.
I would love to see the argument for this. I accept that it's the most cheap, efficient and possibly ethical (although there are a lot of ways you can go about producing this food, not all of it ethical), but healthiest? High carbs makes you fat. You need proteins and some fat. Having your diet be all carbs sounds like a bad idea.
I'm no dietician, but here's a couple of facts/myths/urban legends I've heard about nutrition. No idea how true they are, but they sound plausible to me:
* carbs digest into glucose
* too much glucose in your blood triggers insulin production which turns glucose into fat
* a glucose spike can trigger an insulin spike which leads to a glucose dip an hour or two after lunch
* eating fat triggers the feeling of being full, reducing your desire for more food
I have no idea how true these all are, but my impression is that there's at least some evidence supporting these. And if you add them all up, it sounds to me like you get fatter from eating carbs, because that can lead to a glucose spike -> insulin spike -> glucose dip which makes you want more sugar to get your glucose back up. Whereas food with more fat may make you feel full and stop craving more food.
But your conclusion is still not true. Saying carbs should be avoided is like saying water should be avoided because people died from drinking too much.
Biochemistry and psychology is complicated.
But a healthy diet is well known and not complicated.
Basically: Whole food plant based diet with vitamin supplements (notably vitamin B12) and e.g. linseed oil for the essential fatty acids.
I think there are significantly more people who eat too many carbs than people who drink too much water.
Speaking for just myself, I used to feel that sugar low after my lunch, and I know that craving for more carbs. I gained too much weight as a result. Now I've cut down on my carbs and I mostly snack on veggies these days and try not to overdo carbs at lunch, and that seems to help at least with that sugar low.
> I also predict that meat substitutes, if made cheaper than meat, will be deemed inferior in quality
I'm not sure if they'll be universally cheaper than meat. There's a lot of diversity in meat substitutes in the Netherlands, and you already see quite a price difference between the "high-end" meat substitutes, and the basic store brand soy burgers. We seem to be going in the direction where there are "inferior" meat substitutes, and high quality ones that are considered better than at least cheap meats.
> Then the conversation will change from meat substitutes being good and healthy to something akin to the GMO debate about meat substitutes not being natural.
While I actually haven't seen this debate online,I hear it in real life when the subject lands on those meat substitutes available where I live.
People who look at the ingredients list see a lot of E-numbers and things that sounds even scarier.
Well one of the wonderful things about the current meat alternatives is they are relatively easy to make at home from a few basic plant ingredients that are really quite easy to say, yeah, thats fine, and the end product tastes good.
Its when you get into the territory of that "natural flavor" ingredient listing that things get really weird in food. Think la croix soda. Freakish, really unnatural flavor, almost salty even, but somehow they have two things listed. Water, Natural Flavor.
People don't seem to bat an eye at that, but having seen firsthand beverage formulation work (not la croix) its a pretty odd thing. Dozens of small glass vials with oil extracts with intense fragrances of orange, lemon, lime, cherry, etc. Even among one of those, there might be dozens of variants, each a different oil from the plant that produces that orange smell.
How carcinogenic are these things? Do they have any poor side effects? Why aren't they listed individually? Have there been studies on each one?
Its like the FDA caters to large companies not wishing to share beverage and food formulations, despite a cancer epidemic.
Yeah, I don't eat meat at this point because of health problems, but I miss it, and have zero desire to switch to that. and you are absolutely correct on substitute foods.
You do have a good point about the track record of some substitutes, but that ignores the track record of the health and environmental damage of our current meat consumption.
It was never legalised in most developed countries, though, and I’d call it more a historical oddity than a health disaster.
I assume they’re talking about aspartame myths on the sweetener thing. Some countries ban cyclamate, though there’s not much evidence that it’s actually dangerous. There’s lead acetate, I suppose, but that hasn’t been commonly used for centuries.
Tastier, cheaper, AND equally nutritious (or even more nutritious). I see this as kind of inevitable. It will take a lot of iterations though before the nutrients are optimized. We still don't really have a good understanding of the role played by all the components of food, and the interactions with gut bacteria specific to a person.
Rather than the pretend-meats like impossible burger and beyond burger, I am more excited for lab-grown meat. That is much more likely to have the exact same features are actual meat (because it is, after all, actual meat). Minus the moral and environmental concerns.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] threadDeer populations being what they are, and populations of environmentally troublesome species such as feral boars being what they are, it seems like a net win.
i would love to be able to get my hands on venison or boar that’s been processed in a USDA-approved way, because the meat’s high quality, the animals had lives entirely free of cages and farms, and we really do kind of need to balance out herd sizes in the northeast.
it is currently a regulatory nightmare to do this at scale, which is why nobody does. I can solve my own problem with a 6 week wait and a slug gun, but it’d be nice to address the conservation need at a more moderate scale.
That could pose a problem with Chronic Wasting Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease). Prion illnesses are no joke, so widespread consumption of wild game in North America presents a small but concerning risk of spreading the disease to humans.
If so, then I guess we have different definitions of “destroying the environment.” Some damaged farmland, a few possible fishkills, and some erosion are blips on the radar compared to the damage done by industrial farming, suburban sprawl, oil companies, etc.
I guess it is nice to have a scapegoat though — or in this case a scape-hog.
Conflicted opinions on this. I very strongly support the right to hunt, and also find it vastly more humane for the animals. On top of this I also tend to take a libertarian slant on most things. However, in this specific case you have a textbook tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. The reason game is so widespread is specifically because of these laws. When it was legal to hunt and sell game meat/products we hunted numerous species far beyond sustainability.
Maybe one solution would be to offer limited vouchers that enable an individual hunter to market some fixed amount of game -- not all that different from how wild fishing/crabbing/etc is handled. But I think it's clear that without extremely judicious management here you'd likely see over-hunting rapidly take hold, and that's no good for hunter, animal, or society.
it’s illegal to sell anything without a USDA stamp on it, and economy of scale means that it’s not profitable to have an inspected and cleared process and processing facilities just for game.
Other perfectly reasonable nations don’t do this—and in part due to the fact that deer are an invasive pest in New Zealand, you can buy wild game meat pies in gas stations for about 3 bucks there.
Here in New Zealand there's an additional bonus that deer and boar are invasive introduced species which are considered noxious pests, so I like supporting an industry which controls them.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin hunters take 300,000 deer each season, each state probably has 4-5 times that total population.
To put that into perspective, the USA slaughters something like 40 million cattle per year.
But fantastic meat substitutes already exist. I’m not vegetarian but never order meat with Indian or Chinese or Thai food and am thrilled with so-called mock duck, chicken and even fish. And when that’s not available, tofu does the job. At home, bolognese, tacos or chili with fake ground beef are awesome and I look forward to those being on menus too. I agree we’re at a tipping point.
I’d never eat a seitan log as a Thanksgiving turkey substitute, but ironically one of the things you discover when you begin to substitute meat is that a lot of “classics” are flavorless. Chicken, turkey and most fish flesh can be bland and rubbery, which is why they are fried or smothered in sauces as a rule.
Speaking of texture though I think Chipotle made a mistake by using tofu in their meat-substitute filling - it’s just too smooshy for most people. Seitan would have been more successful and I bet they were just afraid of using that word on the menu.
Come visit. I'll bake you a chicken, and i only need about 6 ingredients to change your mind. (salt, pepper, chicken, butter, thyme, dijon mustard optional).
Turkey has never been a favorite of mine, but I had an exceptionally good one that was salted and peppered and then cooked in a big green egg.
Fish has a wide range of flavors, and you clobber them by overwhelming the dish with sauce. I prefer smoked (mmm, kippers. mmm, salmon) or raw (mmm, tuna) over cooked, for sure.
That's my favorite way to make a good quality chicken shine by itself, with nothing masking it or covering it up. Cold butter and dijon mustard just works so well with chicken.
I am extremely hesitant to replace actual meat for anything where you only process it very lightly, roast and the like. But for curries or lasagna and similar dishes, bring on the seitan and anything else. I'm a big fan of using mushrooms, both for their structure and for their flavors.
It's not apples-to-apples. Chicken tastes different than something that is not chicken. Having experienced both, I really prefer the not chicken.
That's because most people enjoy tastes that are loud rather than subtle. It's a bit about educating your palate, but also about sitting down to enjoy the food itself rather than the food being an accessory to some other activity.
yikes. i think you will have a better experience eating in a seafaring culture - the british, french, norwegians, coastal china, japan, even new england? i think something is quite wrong if you think cod, haddock, sole, tuna, and salmon all taste the same.
FWIW I grew up in Japan and live in New England. I know from fish. Good fish is hard to substitute but it can be done, e.g. Sichuan food is great with the fake stuff. But most fish eaten in America is in fact bland and rubbery (most of it is eaten at places like Red Lobster).
PG's essay is about companies inventing the perfect tuna steak substitute. My point is you can use a lot of existing substitutes, in the right dishes.
I enjoy it quite a bit, it has a mild mushroomy flavour and a nice texture.
Consider frying it and serving with a coconut curry sauce or a sambal. Don’t think of it as meat or use it as a meat substitute, that’s setting up for failure to enjoy.
'Meat substitutes' are going to be grown in fairly sophisticated labs and sourced from artificially reproduced or otherwise obtained cells. And it's not going to taste like e.g. chicken once the cells are grown. The taste you know from various meats is a product of that animal's physiology and diet. The meat will also not have the same texture. So once you grow your cells in a lab you then need to artificially flavor them and then artificially generate a meat-like texture. The upfront costs for this will all not only be very expensive but there will also be a minefield of intellectual property, patent, and other such barriers all throughout the field. This is why the first artificial meat companies are working on is hamburger -- you can simply grind up the cells and then dump in lots of flavoring.
I expect we'll see the same thing happen to meat that happened with genetically engineered plants. The entire industry will be rapidly monopolized. And our new 'Meatsanto' will undoubtedly lobby the government for favorable treatment which at the minimum will include them being able to label these artificially flavored and textured cells as simply 'chicken'. Add in artificial undercutting of prices and other incentives and you'll see Meatsanto gain more and more marketshare, perhaps including licensing their technology to ranchers now put out of business. And it's at that point, once the monopoly and dependence is established, that they begin to squeeze their new monopoly and start printing billions.
----
I think there's a pretty simple rule of thumb. Centralization leads to wealth inequality, decentralization leads to more equitable wealth distribution. When you add barriers to entry, you create centralization. As an example of this consider shoes. At one time shoes were an industry that used to support countless thousands (millions?) of cobblers, apprentices, and their local market interrelations. It's now been replaced by a small handful of multinational corporations that produce billions of shoes worldwide at immense profit margins. Of course in exchange shoes are undoubtedly now higher quality than they've ever been, and you can pick up a reasonable pair of shoes for a few hours of minimum wage, but I do not think more affordable shoes positively affects wealth inequality as much as removing immense number of jobs and redirecting all proceeds to a handful of companies does to negatively affect it.
What I have heard before is: - more resource-efficient and green since livestock farming requires a lot of feed and has a higher carbon footprint than all vehicles combined, and - that it's less cruel than raising animals to be slaughtered.
In terms of economics, a cheaper meat substitute would just mean a cheaper source of protein for people, comparable to eating vegetables.
As a side note, does anyone know why Paul Graham has been talking about economic inequality recently? Is it just politics season and that this is a debate issue?
Back in January of 2016, in the aftermath of the occupy movement and the height of the US presidential campaign, he penned this essay as a sort of "defense" of inequality:
http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html
We're ramping back up to another presidential election, the concerns about inequality have only gotten greater, and for the first time, mass transformation of dietary habits via technology as a way to combat climate change has gone from a niche to a national topic.
I remember when Vegan/Vegetarians were sneered at in the UK 25 years ago, but they aren't now.
In the space of 25 years it's gone from being rare to see veggie options, to it being the norm to have at least 25% non-meat options on the menu. Attitudes change, and once it's gone, most people will eventually find the idea of rearing animals to kill repellant.
If you can deliver me meat taste and texture without the environmental consequences of meat rearing, I'd definitely switch. I'd even pay a premium, though in reality it should rapidly become cheaper than the labor/land intensive meat industry.
Vegans/Vegetarians are still sneered at in the US. Any non major city/college town in the South/Midwest is still dominated by meat and the associated culture.
Thanksgiving alone is a nearly insurmountable hurdle. “Tofurky” is still a gross joke to most people.
You and PG are both vastly underestimating the emotional attachment people have to their current way of life.
Then again I remember when Soylent was “the big thing that everyone was going to get into” in tech circles. I tried to explain that it just didn’t appeal to 99% of people, and revolted many of them. Fortunately reality does seem to seep through eventually. When it comes down to it, “save the earth” arguments aimed at something other than energy generation, shipping, industry, and transportation are too easy to shoot down.
The present options are rubbish, that's NOT what we're talking about. pg is not talking about Tofurky or tofu, he's talking about lab grown meat.
Lab grown meat tastes, smells, cooks and is textured exactly like meat.
If you can buy something that's much cheaper than meat, but has all the plus sides, why would you choose meat?
Plus on top of that there's been a lot of media coverage the last 2 or 3 years that meat is causing a lot of problems environmentally. So there's an environmental and an economic reason to switch.
Not only that but I grew up in a rural area and have killed my own meat. I don't have any qualms about it. The issues people have with it are purely a side effect of chic urban programming.
You said you had no qualms with killing animals for food, and that "the issues people have with it are purely a side effect of chic urban programming." Even without resorting to a possibly contentious archaeological record, we know from recorded history that the Jains abstained from meat for ethical reasons from all these centuries ago, as they do today, which I think falsifies your claim. If you want to dispute the specific example of the Jains, there are other groups of ethical vegetarians going back thousands of years to cite.
And sure, most menus were dominated by meat when I left and they are here as well. I'm not completely vegetarian - I eat fish. And honestly, it was easier to find veggie options in Indiana than fish options. But it wasn't too horrible either. Most folks didn't find my eating habits a big deal, even if I just ate the appetiser. A few assholes made fun of others, but that's the case with anything. And it has only gotten better with time.
I don't see how it is a big deal with "Tofurky". Don't eat it. Lots of meat products are like this too.
Most folks aren't that emotionally attached to their meat if they can make it with something else. Foods have trends - the candy isle is full of these trends as are Oreo flavors. Oreos, by the way, have changed greatly over the years - they used to have lard in them and people are still eating them. But folks can still eat their beloved oreos - I don't know why meat would be any different save for the few that decided to be really into meat.
I share Thanksgiving dinner with a number of vegetarians. We all enjoy making many different dishes, and the vegetarians just skip the ones with meat. I don't think I've ever heard anyone utter the word "tofurkey" and tofu has never featured in such a meal. (Total veganism is trickier to accommodate)
I think our Thanksgiving dinners would be harder for a person with an aversion to root vegetables to navigate than a vegetarian. I wonder how most people are doing Thanksgiving dinner, is having all meat dishes the norm?
I don't think steak and other cuts of meat are going anywhere that quickly. But mince, 'chicken' breast, nuggets, sausages, that kind of stuff, I can see switching fairly quickly if there was a decent, cost effective alternative.
People with non-normative beliefs stand out from the normative culture just by virtue of existing. If we must defend ourselves constantly it sounds louder. I understand that can be annoying to people like you.
In fact, I believe it is evidence of the opposite: members of the normative culture are so protective of their own homogeneity, wittingly or not, that they consider a single example of heterodoxy to be intolerably deviant.
It would seem far more discriminatory and unethical to me to ban the creation of vegetarian institutions. If not unethical, at least antithetical to any minimally principled formulation of capitalism.
With fashion turning against it and most people sticking to mass-produced food for economic resaons, there will be a huge decline over the next generation or two. People in rural areas will be able to raise their own animals, but it will be forced underground as a moral outrage like cockfighting is today.
It's not that much hatred for veganism as rejection for something that is different in general.
The first vegans came mainly from outcast communities, like hippies, or pet lovers.
There is also the problem of feeling they are being judged: you'll often see somebody defensively saying "I could never be a vegan because of so and so" while nobody ever asked.
At last, we still live in a society with a macho touch, and meat is associated with being manly.
So really it's not about veganism, but about deeper issues from our society.
The fact there are more veggies and vegan today is a good news though: it means the society is becomming more tolerant, more open minded, and have the technology to support a less destructive lifestyle.
Like with every deep change in society, the best we can do is to help everybody get along and support each others. Cooking wars are just a symptom, and not the proper battle field.
I think there is a ton of literal hatred for vegans and vegetarians, who tend to position themselves as morally superior to meat eaters and brag about how they are kinder and gentler than meat eaters, often while being openly cruel people. They are frequently seemingly oblivious to the glaring contradictions between their self image and their actual behavior.
I've known at least one person who used the label vegan while not actually being vegan. She was vegetarian and sometimes ate vegan, but calling herself vegan for the moral superiority points. She was a high-handed judgy person who was openly, consistently and persistently ugly to me when I was homeless and extremely ill.
(When I have remarked on that to vegetarians trying to lecture people about stuff, they are almost never sympathetic to how awful that was for me. Their default reaction boils down to a callous and narcissistic "Get over your crap, honey. #NotAllVegans. Your one time totally unimportant negative experience shouldn't be used to impugn my stellar character!")
Maybe if more people eat vegetarian burgers because, meh, climate change and clean eating for my own health and similar reasons without it being treated like some cult you need to join to save your soul, open hatred of meatless meals will go way down.
On the other hand, I grew up in the Bible Belt and have known plenty of hellfire and damnation type Christians who wanted me to convert or die.
There is a segment of vegans who are very enthusiastic about calling non-vegans "murderers" and shaming them for "eating corpses" and the like. It's a small fringe group, but they are very vocal, and are deliberately very attention-grabbing.
Since I sometimes move in the same or adjacent social circles, I do know quite a few people who are vegan, and they're pretty relaxed about it, outside of occasional activities in protests and the like. I like talking about recipes with them, stuff like finding the best egg substitute for Belgian waffles, always a great way to get a vegan very enthusiastically chatty about a subject they really care about :-)
I'm very open-minded about food, so while I do like dishes with meat, I'm also very enthusiastic about good veggie dishes, and I don't want to judge people for their dietary choices.
They will tell me why they aren't vegetarian, they will ask me why I'm one, and they will tell me about all the vegetarians or vegans in their lives who they claim won't stop talking about it. I suspect that's more than a little projection.
Meat is just a part of some people's identity, just like sexuality, religion, and politics. And they react along the typical spectrum of reactions for those things.
A good veggie burger patty beats the Impossible burger, in my book.
I'll take an Impossible Burger over a veggie burger any day.
Animals are inefficient at turning plants into meat, so from an energy inputs point of view you'd expect the substitutes to be cheaper. But then farming is heavily subsidised, and we don't know what competitive advantages the substitute companies will end up having.
Animal meat itself varies in it's nutritional properties, depending on how the livestock is treated. Grass-fed, free range beef is not the same as grain fed, factory raised.
I'm not sure about in-vitro meat, but I doubt it is from a nutrition standpoint even comparable to, for example, high quality beef.
My point is, meat != meat and often I read only about mimicking taste and texture. For me the nutritional profile is more important (also ethics, but this normally goes hand in hand with meat-quality).
Even if they actually are fine heathwise, it might be hard convincing people of that fact. My wife for example refuses to buy frozen ready made veggieburger patties and insists on making them from scratch because she wants to know what she's eating. There is no way you could convince here to buy these artificial meat substitutes over ground beef no matter what they taste like or what health arguments you make.
I dropped in a while back, was surprised to see it on the menu, thought "eh, what the hell", and it was pretty good. I have the kind of palate that would make Gordon Ramsay cry himself to sleep, so I wasn't able to tell the difference between one of their Beyond burgers and one of their regular burgers. Probably helps that their items are a mess of sauces and nonsense too.
Anyway, now when I go back in, I find that I'm having to justify to myself getting a farmed meat burger vs. a Beyond burger, and ... there's not really any justification for it.
I doubt most of Carl's customer base debate personal ethics while staring at the menu, but still, there's no way I'm the only one.
McDonalds: "Yes, every patty is 100% real beef with no fillers, additives or preservatives." Burger King: "Our beef patties are made with 100% beef with no fillers, no preservatives, no additives, no nonsense." Wendy's: "100% pure beef across the menu"
Regional:
Carls Jr: "100% Pure Ground Beef." Sonic: "100% pure beef patty" Jack in the Box: "100 percent beef"
Obviously if someone loves eating expensive steak, that would be hard to replace with a vegetarian substitute.
They've also started carrying them at the local grocer, so I'll probably bring them home for BBQ season.
(1) they’re closer to the people actually farming cattle. (2) a general distrust of science (3) the price drop to the traditional meat market as tremendous new supply floods the market.
Note: Yeah, it can be cheap to go meatless if you do all the cooking yourself, but with premade products or meals at a restaurant, the vegetarian/vegan options are often priced higher, convincing no one to try them instead of affordable, flavorful meat-based dishes they are familiar with.
When PG said eating meat might sound perverse one day, it's hard to imagine how a comment like this might come across. I'm not a vegetarian and even I find it difficult to differentiate between the above justifications and the ravings of a serial killer.
I think it's our automatic defensiveness about having our morals questioned that leads to all these strange, weak arguments (e.g. "powerful psychological effect to eating meat").
Instead of doubling down on our position to mentally justify our possible transgressions, one alternate possibility is to recognize the real negative impacts of our actions and work towards limiting our meat consumption and promoting substitutes.
As an aside, based off of what you said about falafels and shiitake mushrooms, it sounds like you maybe haven't tried a lot of common meat substitutes that are already difficult to distinguish from processed meats (things like Morning Star Grillers Original that I've gotten from a bunch of grocery stores).
What, pray tell, was the point of comparing my motivations to those of a serial killer, if not to make a suggestion as to the morality of my reasoning? I welcome a discussion of morality; I'd hold that it's key to the matter of eating animals.
(As to your aside, I've tried a number of those products, and they are just fine. So is homemade seitan. But they provide a different experience from meat, for the "strange, weak" reason I related above.)
Your reasoning is pretty waffly and evasive to serve as a basis for comparing someone to a serial killer — which, as you may have noticed, I resent, as I consider almost anyone would.
Humans naturally enjoy meat. As such, we have to go out of our way and sacrifice a little enjoyment if we want to be vegetarians (which I believe is the true reason you argue for meat). I don't really follow your argument that it would be more convenient to avoid all meat in our society in exchange for a can of beans and a vitamin. The crux of what PG was saying is that making it more convenient to avoid meat will lead to less meat consumption, which is hard to argue with.
> I'm saying I delight in eating the flesh of an animal, and that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure. Your reasoning is pretty waffly and evasive to serve as a basis for comparing someone to a serial killer — which, as you may have noticed, I resent, as I consider almost anyone would.
That resentment is what I previously referred to defensiveness of having your morals questioned. Of course you resent comparisons to your actions to things society has already deemed inappropriate. Whether those comparisons are justified or not is up to you (and society), but you don't make it easy on yourself with your particular brand of justifications (which sound deranged). Imagine if you raised a child or pet dog, cut them open and ate them with the justification "that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure". The difference between murdering your pet dog and a pet pig are very slim in our society already, so I wonder how you'd imagine you sound if you just drew the line a little bit differently.
You mean when you compared my thinking to that of a serial killer, and called them hard to distinguish? Which, as I've expressed, is a conversational gambit unlikely to arouse sympathy? Yes, I found that put me on the defensive a bit. Did you notice that it didn't make me suddenly see your point in a blinding Damascus flash of light?
> There's no substitute for the flesh of an animal — especially one I raised, where I know its diet, its experiences, and how it was slaughtered and butchered
> I'm saying I delight in eating the flesh of an animal, and that knowing I gave it a comfortable, healthy life and a merciful death contributes to that pleasure.
The former comment can be misconstrued to mean that 1) you revel in the power you have over animals you raise or 2) you enjoy the process of slaughtering an animal, in of itself.
The latter comment makes it clear that your intent is to give animals the best life possible (given your decision to eat meat).
However, it's entirely possible that both parent commenter's actions AND your actions are immoral. In other words, the claim that "ignorant meat eating" is immoral doesn't make "aware meat eating" moral.
I think one argument you could make is that animals are somehow not worthy of the same just actions we deem humans to worthy of. But, if we value animals to the same degree we value humans, most ppl would deem your actions to be immoral.
Some plant-based advocates suffer from amnesia where they forget they ever ate meat, along with the beliefs they held at the time to justify it.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Almost certainly. People tend to feel that however they grew up is the one right and true way to live. It can be an extremely difficult feeling to escape, even in cases where they actively very much want to leave it behind and live some other way, for example people who were abused and are in therapy and trying hard to find a better way to live.
A point I was 100% agreeing with, so I'm not sure what your point is.
We are essentially omnivorous by nature.
We mostly all ate meat, not just 'some rural people'.
We literally evolved around it, so it's part of our composition in a very, very fundamental way.
And what exactly of eating the flesh of another animal makes you human.
I can understand our ancestors having to hunt and kill animals to survive.
But I don't think modern society needs to kill so many animals (billions) and destroy the environment to survive. It's a rather inefficient way to feed the world.
Sure, if you can make a Burger that tasted better than average Burger made with Real Angus USDA Choice, preserving all its protein and nutrition benefits, healthy while being cheaper. I am all for it.
( Lots of Meats Subs ( Not just Burgers ) tends to Add other ingredient making taste or looks better, but in reality aren't as healthy to consume as compared to Meat. I can see the Market force will drive Meats Sub to lower cost while being more like process, unhealthy type of food, which kind of defeat the purpose. )
This has added benefits to Supply Chain where Cattle has a long lead time to slaughter and don't adopt well to sudden demand. Compare to possibly mass manufacture plant based Meat Sub.
The problem is I have yet to taste any Meat Substitutes that is remotely close to being as good as meat. They are good I won't mind having them, but given the choice I would pick meat any day.
And all of them were comparatively pricy. If these Meat Subs aren't at least 30%+ cheaper while being as good or better tasting , it will remain in a niche for those non-veg people. I think the price to quality is something we won't see in the next 10 years. And getting people to changes its attitudes will take even longer than that.
Edit: a downvote? this is totally serious - what are they going to be - released back into the wild where they roam free? There won't be any more, except as I said in zoos, if the whole world goes vegan
A vegan society could still keep sheep for example to keep grassland under control?
Just a bit odd to look forward to an innocent species _being wiped off the face of the Earth_.
You should come and see the sheep roaming around the mountains near me.
They keep the grasslands under control, and they happily mind their own business. I don't think they need genocide.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/0...
I never asked for them to be killed. Letting them go extinct is different from killing them en masse.
For those who are vegan for purely ethical reasons, this will allow them to have eggs.
¹ By weight, at least
I have nothing against eating tofu. I enjoy tofu. But the bait and switch ruined the meal for me.
Here's the one near my apartment, it has vegan in the name of the restaurant: http://www.gardenfresh.us/
I never order chicken satay as an appetizer (even in Thailand) as I usually find it bland, the texture too dry, and generally boring — but I will always order the “chicken” satay from Plumeria ... better than meat.
It was an eye opening anecdote for me (as a meat eater).
Again, this is my very narrow experience as a vegetarian who lapsed well into adulthood and just didn't learn an appreciation of the savoury flavours involved. Objectively it's clearly people love the taste of meat.
If you want good meat with no extra flavoring I recommend good steak (like the $60+ steak you can get at a nice steakhouse). Pulled pork is also good, though it's usually somewhat flavored, doesn't necessarily need to be. Lamb prepared gyro style is pretty good. Pretty much any meat will taste better grilled than baked in an oven too.
For many years, I've wanted to try being vegetarian as a way to reduce my environmental impact. To me, meat substitutes are the last missing piece in the puzzle, the piece that shows that its possible to consume staples like hamburgers or spaghetti and meatballs.
Not all of the meat substitutes are good. Not all of them have to be. But a more sustainable future, where meat (and especially seafood) are cultivated in a way that has a less harmful impact on the environment, is a future that I want to help facilitate.
I mean, on one hand, it makes complete rational sense, because it's self/species-interest: reduced meat consumption should decrease the effects of global warming and other issues, and you want a world that you and future generations of people can safely and healthily live in. I get it.
But are you then still not doing it for selfish reasons, or at least species-selfish reasons? If hypothetically some new technology could suck all of the excess carbon out of the atmosphere and replant things and otherwise 100% negate all of the environmental effects of all the different kinds of meat production, would you and other vegetarians with similar motivations no longer feel any reason, or ethical obligation, to be vegetarian?
Not anti meat, just pro plants
But most of all, that's not the only reason I'm a vegetarian.
I don't think you're going to end up with a good discussion if you start it like this.
And to be clear, I also have no problem with people doing it for selfish reasons.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257659/
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/10062622/data/veganuary-infogra...
"Younger people significantly agreed more with the moral reason and with the environmental reason. People ages 41–60 significantly agreed more with the health reason. [i.e. not in absolute terms, just compared with other age groups]
A study publish[sic] in 1992 found that the highest number of vegetarians, 46 percent, chose a vegetarian diet for health reasons, 15 percent chose to be a vegetarian for animal rights reasons, 12 percent for friend/family influence, 5 percent for ethical reasons, 4 percent for environmental issues and 18 percent indicated other reasons.."
Their study:
"The objective of the study was to examine whether reasons to adopt vegetarian lifestyle differ significantly among generations. ...This cross-sectional, observational study was completed at Andrews University which is a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) institution of higher learning. SDA represent a unique population known for their wide range of dietary habits. This conservative religious group prohibits the use of alcohol, tobacco, and pork and recommends that members adhere to lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet. ...Participants were drawn from a large undergraduate introductory-level nutrition class that is open to students from all academic directions."
So, 609 people at a Seventh-Day Adventist college who'd signed up for a nutrition class. That seems a super-bizarre, unrepresentative group to study for the purpose. And in Figure 1, the "Health" reason seems to be the strongest reason given, for every age group.
The other link is to a picture, which seems to be an Australian event, Veganuary, I guess trying to get people to sign up to be vegan in January? Anyway, that says people who signed up for that gave 43% "animals" and 39% "health" reasons, 10% environment, 8% other. They're mostly not vegetarians or vegans, it also says in the picture.
Neither of those two, and particularly not the first, seem to suggest that vegetarians and vegans are principally concerned with animal ethics - even if one assumes they're what they're not, perfectly representative of the beliefs of the entire population of the planet, or your country, or whatever region you're talking about. Still, they were interesting, thanks.
More seriously: the "environmental" claim rang hollow to me, so I set out in search of some facts, and I think what I found supports that intuition, but the burden of proof is not really mine. (I will retract my "it's animal ethics yo" statement—clearly a reach.)
The argument being that a hunter is killing an animal that lived naturally is less of an environmental impact than getting food packaged and sent across the country, etc.
I'm not sure I agree, but it's the most plausible argument I've seen for not being Vegan.
You missed the biggest factor: industrial farming. Have you been to the midwest-does that look like a healthy, natural ecosystem? A vegan (well, most people really ) who lives there gets their food from the same place as one in the city.
I'm not sure any form of food production/gathering, at the scale needed today, would look any better though.
Hunting results in the death of a single animal, and that animal is then directly used for food. There is virtually no environmental impact as a result of well regulated hunting.
The reasonable vegans admit that it's a matter of causing as little animal death or suffering as possible. And then some percentage of what I've deemed "reasonable vegans" will also agree that hunting is about as good as any other options.
But there's a massive gap between hunting and not killing and eating animals for food at all. Of course I'd prefer if factory farming was replaced with hunting, but I'd prefer even more if synthetic meat were the norm and raising or killing animals for food just wasn't even part of the equation anymore (as PG, and others, are predicting).
As a human animal, I'd certainly rather live ~50% of my expected natural life in the wild and have it end in an instant from a weapon than be born in crammed captivity and force-fed horrible anti-biotic-laden meal for years for some higher-intelligence extraterrestrial species to consume, sure. But even though it's preferable, I still don't want to be shot and killed, even if I knew with certainty that my death was going to be short and painless.
Similar to PG, I predict killing animals for sport or for food will be considered very taboo within a century. At least in Western countries.
You seem to have answered your own question there. It shouldn't be surprising, although yes, it surprises me too I guess. (I became vegan because..how to put it..Humans have no right to treat animals as if their lives are nothing, as if they're just things for humans to eat, if we can easily avoid it. Which I can. I'd rather not be killed, and want to avoid pain, so I figure non-human animals want that too.)
I decided to switch to a plant based diet for environmental reasons. I calculated my carbon footprint and noticed I could cut it in half by excluding animal products, so I did. Then I learned the health effects by losing weight and stopped having migranes I previously had approximately bi-weekly since late adolescence. They just stopped. The energy dips I used to have after lunch? Gone. Breath smells better. PH balance restored from being way too acid. There are so many things that are just fixed by eating plants instead of animal based products. I also learned to love that there is no bone, sinew or thick rubbery fat in whatever I'm chewing. I used to hate fish bones or a piece of fat in a steak or burger I'd have to spit out in a napkin.
Then it started to dawn on me how inhumane I'd been to other species on the ground of them being a part of my diet. I've always loved animals and the outdoors but some animals I'd been okay with murdering and eating. It just felt hypocritical. Not to mention that my argument for it was that _it tastes good_. Who do I think I am? Scaring and killing living beings because they _taste good_? Fuck me. I don't want to support an industry based on the evil premise of destroying the planet by killing animals because they taste good so from now my money will go to my plant based diet. Less money than before, I might add.
My reasoning is that if a dish is supposed to be vegetarian, or it just doesn’t include mat because it doesn’t need to, then keep it vegetarian. Veggies are delicious. Why ruin a perfectly good dish with fake meat?
If a dish is meant to include meat, then just use meat. It has different macros and very different taste than current meat substitutes. Why ruin a perfectly good dish with fake meat?
If you’re gonna not eat meat all the power to ya, don’t eat meat. But don’t then try to replicate meat with not-meat that’s just lazy. Explore the world of proper vegetarian and vegan dishes. You might be pleasantly surprised by how great they are.
If it helps, I think this is a reasonable point (don't try to fake the meat, just skip it - i've thought it myself often).
I haven't commented in here in SO LONG, and I know I will pay for the insurrection of asking the invisible commenters to justify yourselves, but I just can't help it because I do not understand how down-voting this is justifiable in any way with respect to content moderation.
As someone who was raised vegetarian I also have next to no interest in meat replacements personally, but they should be great for people who love the taste of meat but want to give it up for ethical/environmental reasons.
But I still think the down-voters are taking it personally. I don't believe anyone is actually being chastised for their position by this commenter. I took it as offering another option - instead of telling someone who likes meat that you have a great substitute that tastes just like meat and they'll never know the difference, try saying "there are many ways to prepare any of a large variety of vegetables - maybe you can enjoy vegetables as much as you enjoy meat if you find some recipes you like". Maybe those dishes will taste "meat-like" or whatever, but there is value in saying "Stop trying to fake it. Embrace the choice to do it differently."
For the record, I personally believe that this is a more honest tack for someone who is pursuing the option for ethical/environmental reasons.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214965
You sounds like when the LED lightbulb that reduces energy usages of the old light bulb by 100 times, you will say "Why fake it? If you want to reduce energy usage, you must live without electriciy! Using newer, more energy efficient light bulb just means you don't save the world the true way".
But anyway, you missed the point - I am not telling you what to do. I am simply suggesting the alternative of "not faking it" by adding to a comment I felt was doing the same. If you feel like you are being told what to do, I apologize.
Considering the amount of effort going into developing meat substitutes, "lazy" seems like a strange characterization. Besides, if someone has decided for reasons external to taste that they're not going to eat meat but they miss it, why shouldn't they try meat substitutes?
Indian restaurants, for example, often have entire sections of the menu that are vegan or vegetarian without substituting in fake meat.
It's a little more work initially, but after a while you won't miss the meat, whereas if you're eating fake burgers you're going to be reminded they're fake every time you eat one.
After some research on what vegans actually eat, not what I thought they ate, I swapped to a diet of porridge, curries, chillis, stir-frys, stews, pastas, soups, and salads, which were meals I loved and could do easy, mostly in one pot. At first I could have the meat I craved, but over time I could do a straight 1:1 swap of meat for peas, beans, seeds, nuts and lentils, without tarnishing the quality of the meal.
People fail at the first hurdle when they try to replace a bacon sandwich, pizza, hamburger or steak with something that is a fundamentally different food. Replacing bacon with a sliced mushroom is like trying to replace a water pipe with some electrical wire. They're both great, but for different things. Likewise, replacing some berries in a bowl of cereal with pork cutlets or a fried egg would likely make you a guest on Strange Eaters. It works both ways.
If I've discovered anything during my lifestyle change, it's that eating is 95% habitual, and any argument I had against vegans in hindsight was because I didn't want to have to break out of my habit. I now have no interest in eating meat again, because I'm in a new habit and to have a steak would be breaking out of that again.
And yeah, there are several restaurants I stopped eating at because they replaced perfectly fine veggie dishes with things that were more meat-like.
I'm a lifelong vegetarian who has very literal tolerance for the taste of meat. Can we give it up with these meat substitutes already? Even if they absolutely nail the taste of real meat, I don't want my food to taste like that.
Who should give up on them? The people who like them? The manufacturers? There's clearly a market for good-tasting meat substitutes. If they serve enough peoples' wants and are nutritious while being better from an environmental perspective, why not just live and let live?
Ha, this is a problem my wife has started having after impossible burger became popular in the bay area. All our favorite burger joints now serve that, instead of the brilliant vegan burgers they used to have (including my workplace).
I am a meal eater with a majority vegetarian friends group, so I inevitably cook a lot of veg food.
Greek, Indian, Thai and Chinese customers lend themselves really well to vegetarianism and I'm surprised that it isn't catching on in the US. (Especially Indian)
Meat substitutes don't hold a candle to a single one of these for items.
I've tried the current state of the art in meat substitutes ( impossible) and it's still bad.
I do absolutely think that it will reduce the demand for industrially farmed, feedlot-fed, commodity-priced meat, and this is a good thing.
A lot of the 'grass-fed' beef out there is grain-fed in a pasture.
Fast forward - and i cant see the stars in my city.
We don't need saviors. We don't need the rich. We just need each other and the will to move beyond private ownership of the factories, farms, and shops.
I also predict that meat substitutes, if made cheaper than meat, will be deemed inferior in quality (cheap = inferior, because psychology) and reserved for those who cannot afford real meat (the "meatless masses").
https://soylent.com/blogs/news/proudly-made-with-gmos
I can see GMO foods being owned by the likes of Monsanto, earning healthy royalties on seeds that cannot bear offspring. I think there should be a GMO open source initiative...
Herbicides are actually a _kind_ of pesticide (weeds are a kind of 'pest'), so Roundup is actually both. TIL!
Roundup-ready GMOs led to replacement of many more toxic herbicides with glyphosphate. BT GMOs led to much less usage of insecticides on crops.
Compounded with that is there are very few people doing research without an agenda.
You also have to realize that "organic" in the US doesn't mean treatment-free crops. There are a large number of substances approved to treat crops for pests and weeds and still be counted as organic with the rationale that those treatments are less synthetic. There is absolutely no guarantee that this means they have fewer negative effects.
As mentioned by wonderwonder, Roundup-ready soybeans are the poster child for GMO varieties being create to allow more chemical herbicides. And in this case glyphosate (RoundUp) is being seen more and more widely as a really nasty chemical to allow into the water supply and into nature. It has been linked to honey bee colony collapse, and the general insect collapse, not to mention lymphomas and lukemias.. (As an old Iowa farm boy, I am shocked at the number of relatives and their neighbors that are getting strange lymphomas and lukemias.)
> I never really understood why people are so scared of GMO....
But I do agree that eating a GMO grain is not scary by itself. It is the side effects of the different style of agriculture it allows that concerns me. (see glyphosate, above, and more below).
> I think there should be a GMO open source initiative...
Just Monsanto's poor luck that you can not create an unstable soy bean hybrid. They all breed true. The is the great advantage of selling seed corn, if you just avoid doing the last, stabilizing, cross, you can sell seed corn that will create a healthy plant who's seeds will not produce productive plants. Mother Nature gives you free IP protection. (Monsanto is a nasty company in so many ways.... I don't even want to get into it.)
Another chemical-related factor with GMO varieties is the unintended consequences of evolutionary selective pressure. A common GMO application in maize is to modify the plant to produce a toxin that is poisonous to the root-worm moth and/or the corn-borer moth. So, in this case, less pesticide chemicals. Which is great, but used indescrimanently, in a few generations we will have largely resistant moth populations. The state of Iowa has been very forward-thinking on this front, and requires that some percentage of every field planted to the GMO variety (like 15% or so, I forget the exact number) must be planted to "refuge rows". That is, if you plant a GMO moth-resisant variety, a percentage of the same field must be planted to traditional varieties to create a refuge for the moths so that the population does not develop resistance. Now, since maize does best in large blocks, the fence rows never yield as well anyway. And you always have turn-round rows where machines trample some unlucky plants as well. So plant the already poor-yielding rows to the refuge variety, and the GMO variety more than makes up for the loss. So it still pencils out advantageously.
What concerns me about this scenario is more environmentally naive and myopic regions might allow 100% GMO-toxin varieties, for the moth or other similar scenarios where evolutionary selective pressure can be a fast-acting force. Rolling out a GMO variety of anything requires examining the second- and third-order consequences.
So while I have little fear of eating GMO Doritos, I don't want GMO Doritos to bring on The Invasion of the Super Locusts in 3D with Dolby sound.
That depends entirely on the kind of GMO. GMOs don't exist for any particular single purpose. Some GMOs exist to make it easier to use pesticides. Some GMOs contain pesticides.
Some GMOs have nothing to do with pesticides but add nutritional value. For example, Golden Rice, which has beta-carotene added to increase the vitamin-A intake of the hundreds of millions of people who subsist mainly on rice, generally gets mentioned as the one GMO that's completely positive with no discernible downside: it doesn't mess with ecosystems in any way, beta-carotene is already common in many plants, it doesn't do anything pesticide-related, and it makes people healthier.
That said, if farmers move from producing a wide variety of rice strains to only golden rice, that's still a significant reduction in biodiversity. Maybe they should make beta-carotene versions of more kinds of rice.
Mixing in a few greens is surprisingly hard when people are almost too poor to buy rice.
The industry seems to object to any such suggestion.
I think there will be such a period, but eventually it'll swap.
Both because more affluent people will tend to be more pro-animal welfare and so synthetic meat will be more associated with the successful, and because eventually (probably distant future, but who knows) all the meat substitutes will just taste better than real meat and anyone who's ever had a meal won't be able to deny the reality.
Meatballs may have more than half chicken skin. Burgers contain 25% filler. Pink slime (= lean finely textured beef) is a highly processed meat by-product. In the US its processed with ammonia but that's not allowed in EU.
And I'm the one who used to be a vegetarian for nearly 20 years.
(The best bit of the chicken is the thigh, though.)
I have a sneaking suspicion that what people find disgusting is the industrial production of meat, and that if Gordon Ramsey had a small and inoffensive centrifuge attachment for his KitchenAid the process would seem less gross.
Good chef can do good simple food, but they want good ingredient and that's not that pink slime is.
On the other, isn't it all really quite subjective? What you describe is tied every bit as much to irrational emotions about histories of things as it is about 'quality' in any measurable sense. What is considered the highest delicacy with a complex preparation in one century has that same process industrialized and becomes 'poor people junk food' in the next, despite being objectively, measurably a better quality product by every possible metric.
https://newfoodeconomy.org/bpi-pink-slime-ground-beef-usda-r...
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015987-classic-marinara...
People who don't have a kitchen big enough for cooking in bulk like that? People without freezers? People without that amount of free time? People don't really like food? People with motion disabilities? I've probably missed out some groups.
By "bulk" I mean an oven tray or two. I'm not rocking an commercial kitchen here.
>People without freezers?
Where do they put their frozen meatballs from the store?
The time is amortized, if you don't like food then you shouldn't care anyway, and I really doubt most people buying frozen meatballs from the store have disabilities.
Perhaps they're buying frozen ones to cook immediately (much like frozen meals)?
> I really doubt most people buying frozen meatballs from the store have disabilities
It might not be "most" for that one group, sure, but the groups I suggested probably do cover "most" in total.
With strata within each caste of course. The grass-fed yak-meated vs the factory-pig-meated; the wild-grasshopper entomeated vs the squishy-larva entomeated; and the fresh-veg meatless vs the Wal-Soylent meatless.
* There will be a meat substitute options catered to groups with higher net income.
* Nations dependent on meat products for export will try (in)directly impact society's view on these meat substitutes.
* We will see issues with IP laws associated with meat substitutes
* There will be 'generic' meat substitutes similar to the prescription drugs.
We'll have to download filet mignon from thepiratebay to get around the 'French cuts of meat' DLC.
Now they can sell it as long as they spell it differently. So we get lots of fake meat with spelling errors now.
15 years later, there will be science talking about how micro nutrients are missing from meat substitutes and how a natural, healthy and balanced diet is necessary for human beings.
“Backyard Production of Meat Rabbits in Texas”[0]
[0] http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/877...
A high carb low fat low protein whole food plant based diet with (cheap) vitamin supplements and maybe linseed oil:
- is the healthiest diet.
- is the cheapest diet.
- is the most efficient and environment friendly diet.
- is the most ethical diet with regard to immoral animal suffering caused by humans.
But not eternally. Science will prevail eventually.
Basically, at this point each person has to try various things and figure out what works best for themself.
Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat. https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19562864/
Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27886704/
Nutrition concerns and health effects of vegetarian diets. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21139125/
Why Doctors Don't Recommend A Vegan Diet | Dr. Michael Greger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1Ca6SsKfE
New Canada Food Guide: Some Can't Handle It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4zWaLE_ik
Unfortunately lies and fake science affected by a personal or political or financial agenda confuse people.
Quoting from the first link: "In the case of red meat, the classification is based on limited evidence from epidemiological studies showing positive associations between eating red meat and developing colorectal cancer as well as strong mechanistic evidence.
Limited evidence means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed chance, bias, or confounding) could not be ruled out."
This is garbage science. It's all like that. Believe whatever you like, though.
Even kitchen machines for vegetables have "low carb" stickers on the box. Crazy.
> Vast majority of people in America get majority of their calories from carbs.
Maybe they still get too much calories form other sources. Of course sugar in soft drinks are not the best carbs.
Dr Garth Davis: Americans have become obsessed with Protein (2015-10-28). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCt3IhaUtU
And US food and junk food is quite fatty. Also because of meat.
I was on such a diet for many years and eventually gave up on it because I could not make it work in a healthy way.
Why?
Too many deficiencies. Example: Linseed oil /= DHA/EPA. Many or most people cannot make long chain Omega 3 fats in the quantity needed from vegetable "Omega 3" fats.
Too many anti-nutrients in plants.
Get on youtube and search "I used to be a vegan" for numerous cases like mine, health irreparably damaged.
Besides: Vegans In The US Can Now Get Cheaper Life Insurance Thanks To Their Diet : https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/vegans-plantbased-cheape...
DHA/EPA are not essential fatty acids but conditionally essential fatty acids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid
> Get on youtube and search "I used to be a vegan" for numerous cases like mine, health irreparably damaged.
What did a vegan diet do to you ? Lack of vitamin B12 or other vitamins ? I advice to use vitamin supplements no matter the diet.
I agree that youtube offers much true and useful knowledge.
Unfortunately youtube offers also much false and harmful knowledge.
Some better youtube channels about nutrition:
Mic the Vegan : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/vid...
Nutritionfacts.org : https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg/videos
PLANT BASED NEWS : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/vid...
An excess of energy makes you fat. Besides, fat is much easier to store as body fat for the body than carbs or protein.
> You need proteins and some fat. Having your diet be all carbs sounds like a bad idea.
I wrote whole food plant based diet.
I wrote high carb, low fat, low protein.
NOT: max carb, min fat, min protein.
* carbs digest into glucose
* too much glucose in your blood triggers insulin production which turns glucose into fat
* a glucose spike can trigger an insulin spike which leads to a glucose dip an hour or two after lunch
* eating fat triggers the feeling of being full, reducing your desire for more food
I have no idea how true these all are, but my impression is that there's at least some evidence supporting these. And if you add them all up, it sounds to me like you get fatter from eating carbs, because that can lead to a glucose spike -> insulin spike -> glucose dip which makes you want more sugar to get your glucose back up. Whereas food with more fat may make you feel full and stop craving more food.
But your conclusion is still not true. Saying carbs should be avoided is like saying water should be avoided because people died from drinking too much.
Biochemistry and psychology is complicated.
But a healthy diet is well known and not complicated.
Basically: Whole food plant based diet with vitamin supplements (notably vitamin B12) and e.g. linseed oil for the essential fatty acids.
Dr Garth Davis: Americans have become obsessed with Protein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCt3IhaUtU&feature=youtu.be...
Speaking for just myself, I used to feel that sugar low after my lunch, and I know that craving for more carbs. I gained too much weight as a result. Now I've cut down on my carbs and I mostly snack on veggies these days and try not to overdo carbs at lunch, and that seems to help at least with that sugar low.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food
I'm not sure if they'll be universally cheaper than meat. There's a lot of diversity in meat substitutes in the Netherlands, and you already see quite a price difference between the "high-end" meat substitutes, and the basic store brand soy burgers. We seem to be going in the direction where there are "inferior" meat substitutes, and high quality ones that are considered better than at least cheap meats.
While I actually haven't seen this debate online,I hear it in real life when the subject lands on those meat substitutes available where I live.
People who look at the ingredients list see a lot of E-numbers and things that sounds even scarier.
Its when you get into the territory of that "natural flavor" ingredient listing that things get really weird in food. Think la croix soda. Freakish, really unnatural flavor, almost salty even, but somehow they have two things listed. Water, Natural Flavor.
People don't seem to bat an eye at that, but having seen firsthand beverage formulation work (not la croix) its a pretty odd thing. Dozens of small glass vials with oil extracts with intense fragrances of orange, lemon, lime, cherry, etc. Even among one of those, there might be dozens of variants, each a different oil from the plant that produces that orange smell.
How carcinogenic are these things? Do they have any poor side effects? Why aren't they listed individually? Have there been studies on each one?
Its like the FDA caters to large companies not wishing to share beverage and food formulations, despite a cancer epidemic.
Also, the track record on substitute foods isn't good. Look at the health disasters caused by artificial sweeteners, artificial oils, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat
It was never legalised in most developed countries, though, and I’d call it more a historical oddity than a health disaster.
I assume they’re talking about aspartame myths on the sweetener thing. Some countries ban cyclamate, though there’s not much evidence that it’s actually dangerous. There’s lead acetate, I suppose, but that hasn’t been commonly used for centuries.
Rather than the pretend-meats like impossible burger and beyond burger, I am more excited for lab-grown meat. That is much more likely to have the exact same features are actual meat (because it is, after all, actual meat). Minus the moral and environmental concerns.