Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities. (Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.)
Even if we ignore externalities and pollution costs, just stop outright subsidizing animal meat production so much. The reason meat is so cheap is because our government puts a lot of effort and money into making it cheap.
I don't know why more people aren't trying to sell this to the "free market" crowd as government overreach. The reality right now is that plant-based protein is gaining popularity despite the market being artificially biased against it in terms of price. Animal meat should cost more than it does, not just in the sense of "you're not paying for the true environmental cost", but also in the sense of, "you're not paying the actual monetary cost it takes to produce this product."
The US government throws billions of dollars into subsidizing meat and dairy production every year. Plant-based protein's growth is restricted in part because our food prices and production aren't determined just by the free market. That's not necessarily bad, but if we're going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things.
And we could obviously do more than just lowering subsidies, I'm not saying we should ignore externalities or that we should just completely abandon all subsidies entirely. But I am saying we shouldn't pretend that meat actually costs what we see in the store. Meat is cheap because (for various reasons) as a society we've all collectively decided to spend tax money so that we can pretend that it costs very little to produce.
It's a reasonable argument that government subsidies for farmers reduce prices for the consumer, but I don't think it's necessarily a correct assumption.
Subsidies help the local farmers to compete with farmers in low cost countries. Transportation costs are usually insignificant.
So without subsidies the consumer might pay the same price, but the store just ends up sourcing the product from a different country. However, having a significant amount of food production locally has obvious strategic benefits (and I don't mean just war, even a draught could create sufficient shortages)
While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given?
Now I'm not saying that subsidising farmers to produce huge crops of the same 3 crops is the best way of continuing to ensure no one goes hungry, it self evidently doesn't work given the current status quo.
However, to talk about making huge changes to these systems without stopping to consider what impact it will have on that part of society is an incredibly rose tinted view of the world.
That is due to extreme levels of inequality in the US and one of the stingiest welfare systems in the whole developed world. It is not due to food prices. If that was the deciding factor then Norwegians and Japanese would be starving.
A lot of the low food prices in the US also contribute to this poverty. The low prices come at the back of people in the food industry doing long days for shitty pay. If the “solution” to people not getting food on the table was to keep pushing food prices down then one easily end up in a situation arguing against minimum wage and workers rights.
One has to look at the whole system and not just a tiny sliver of it.
> While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given?
So let's funnel that 25% import tarif or money we save from not subsidizing the meat industry into the federal food stamps program.
You're missing the part where those government subsidies are being issued to growers who provide products certified for the SNAP and WIC programs. You remove the subsidies and mess with the tariffs too much and now you're into a whole other problem of growers now refusing to participate in either program.
Why would a grower refuse to participate in either program? They wouldn't get the option to not not-get subsidies. Their incentive to participate in getting their products certified for SNAP and WIC is that their costs are now higher so they have to raise their prices, and so then it'd be more important for them to get their products certified so that SNAP and WIC recipients can purchase them (thus expanding/retaining their customer base).
I'm skeptical about tariffs and I'm not necessarily opposed to subsidies (although I do kind of question whether they are actually an efficient way to help income-challenged Americans) -- but we could still distribute those subsidies differently in order to cheapen healthier food that's in our better interest to encourage. We could also, if we're getting rid of subsidies, consider giving income-challenged people money directly, which may or may not be comparatively cost-effective to working directly with the industry.
So there's a lot of avenues that we could take, and yeah, eliminating food subsidies entirely and not giving any other kinds of aid would probably be a mistake. I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just... there's a lot of things we could change or try that wouldn't leave people to starve. Recognizing that meat is subsidized opens up doors for us to talk about whether our current system is efficient, about what behaviors our current system incentivizes. If nothing else it at least acknowledges that we are currently messing with the market, that meat prices aren't naturally low, and that we if we're comfortable with that kind of intervention, then we could at least mess with the market in different ways to promote more diverse foods.
Right now, we are artificially boosting a few segments of the food industry to frankly unhealthy levels of consumption (at least in most of the US) in order to help people afford food. It is worth considering if it is possible to help those people without propping up industries that are at least indirectly responsible for a nontrivial number of health risks and environmental challenges in the US. I don't think most people here are saying we should leave income-strapped Americans to starve (or at least I'm not), but like you said, the current status quo isn't really working, and it has some some pretty big downsides.
Even if you don't want to touch subsidies at all, at the least we could talk about stuff like checkoff programs. I find it much harder to argue that government intervention into how food is advertised is for the benefit of low-income Americans, and I think the advertising that comes from that forced tax on food is responsible for some increase in consumption.
If you remove subsidies you got more money to spare for other things. As a general rule, and policy affecting consumer prices should look at its effect on consumers and combine such changes with other measures.
Money saved one place can be spent other places. Instead of spending it on more tax breaks for the rich it could be spent on the poor providing a net gain for them.
It is not naive. What is naive is to leave to market to its own devices and assume everything will work themselves out beautifully.
You always make a proper analysis and do multiple changes money earned on price increases on one category of foods could be spent to reduce another category of food.
You could e.g. tax sugar and junk food and use those earning to subsidize healthier foods , making healthier food more accessible to poor people.
We import those products like garlic and broccoli from China as part of a trade deal where they import corn and other grains even though they can and do produce their own. They have many more mouths to feed, so on their end, getting all of this extra grain in exchange for shipping over a select variety of vegetables and fish is a net plus to them, and to us, it provides an established return on government provided grain subsidies that allow them to issue more grain subsidies.
Tariffs are a much worse idea than direct subsidies to farmers. If you want people to buy American garlic, pay US farmers to sell it for cheaper than the Chinese garlic. A tariff is a regressive tax that makes life harder for the poor.
Taking your argument at face value and assuming you're right, I still want to point out that those subsidies are applied primarily to a subset of foods, especially feed crops for animals.
Our government isn't spending nearly the same amount of time and money trying to subsidize fruits and vegetables. Shouldn't we be just as worried about those products being sourced from other countries? Why are we treating animal feed so specially over other crops?
If you take the point of view that we're just trying to keep food production domestic, then it's still pretty clear that we care mostly about keeping some foods domestic -- primarily the ones that are necessary for a thriving beef and dairy industry.
From a strategic perspective grain is the most important thing in a food shortage. People can live a year or two without fruit or vegetables, but without the calories in grain things will get violent fast.
I'm not going to dismiss it outright, but I am mild-to-medium skeptical of this theory. Take a look at some of the recent years of subsidies listed on https://farm.ewg.org/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr.... It's not just that we prioritize feed crops more than oranges, we also prioritize feed crops more than potatoes and root vegetables. Our corn subsidies are on average over twice as high as our wheat subsidies, and over 7 times as high as rice subsidies.
Even dairy consistently gets more subsidies than fruits and vegetables. Are we really just optimizing for a worst case scenario where we literally run out of food? Does it really make sense for us to say that during a famine or a drought that milk will be an efficient use of resources? Nobody is baking bread with canola seeds, is it really more important during a famine that we have canola oil than potatoes?
Maybe this is the result of a highly researched government program about how to survive a worldwide famine. But the numbers I'm seeing aren't doing a lot to convince me that famine planning is a more likely cause than lobbying.
The strategic goal of having domestic food production and growing specific foods don't necessarily go hand in hand. While it makes a lot of sense to counter a famine with potatoes, in normal times you want to mostly produce what your population consumes. The corn subisides are much higher, because the corn production is much higher. The US produced 330 million tonnes of corn in 2009 [1] and just 55 million tons of wheat in 2012 [2] (that's the numbers I could easily find, and unfortunately they seem to use slightly different types of tons which differ by ~10%, metric system anyone?). Taking this into consideration, wheat subsidies are actually a bit higher per ton produced than corn subsidies.
The US consumes a lot of corn, either directly through corn sirup, or indirectly through meat. So it does make sense to have a significant amount of domestic production of what your population actually consumes. That corn might not be healthy is another important topic on it's own.
So subsidizing local farmers isn't the same thing as optimizing for a worst case scenario. In case of a large-scale multi-year war that triggers a famine, you could still order your farmers to switch to growing potatoes, when you have enough actively harvested farmland to begin with. That means subsidizing what is actually consumed during times of peace.
But I'm not saying that's the only reason for the subsidies. Lobbying definitely plays a big (the biggest) role and the largest industries have the strongest lobbying power. But when you have the strategic argument in hand, lobbying for subsidies becomes a lot easier, especially in a country that spends more on the military than any other.
> The corn subisides are much higher, because the corn production is much higher.
Is it that our corn production is naturally very high, and so we subsidize it more? Or is it the other way around?
My understanding is that a lot of corn uses were developed in part because of corn subsidies and requirements around ethanol. As corn became an extremely cheap material, people started looking for uses for it. And you can quickly enter a spiral there, where as corn becomes more useful, we subsidize it more, which encourages more companies to figure out how to make more stuff out of corn.
> That means subsidizing what is actually consumed during times of peace.
It feels like this has looped around and that the current balance of subsidies are no longer about disaster planning. If your starting premise is that we're trying to keep production local (or at least, production capabilities local), and you're also saying that during disaster periods we can pivot to more necessary crops -- then what is the problem with changing how our current subsidies right now are distributed to encourage different crops? What do we lose?
I am skeptical that a dairy farm is going to be able to quickly shift to planting potatoes or grain, it probably doesn't have the equipment or the right land to do that. But taking your argument at face value and assuming they can make that pivot, then we could also collectively decide as a society that we produce too much meat/grain as a nation during times of peace, and we could collectively decide to subsidize local production of more diverse foods. We could subsidize the same number of farmers to produce different things.
I think you'll find it's largely due to historical precedent and lobbying.
Very much the government altering the free market. Corn subsidies are not without their consequences. Cattle do not live healthily on corn. People don't do so well on corn syrup either.
I'm not a huge fan of reducing my own meat consumption but think the government should stop subsidizing these industries.
The UK quite correctly determined during WWII that to feed the population during a blockade, it was much more efficient to eat potatoes and peas and so on directly and make bread from wheat, than it was to feed livestock for meat and dairy.
That is as true today as it was back then. Especially when you're feeding the cattle soybeans, which are perfectly good food for humans.
>Maybe this is the result of a highly researched government program about how to survive a worldwide famine. But the numbers I'm seeing aren't doing a lot to convince me that famine planning is a more likely cause than lobbying.
Your skepticism is warranted. After all, we had a highly researched government program about how to effectively tackle a worldwide pandemic, and... well.
"That means corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre" "wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million" "Other vegetables, while much more nutritious than corn, wheat or potatoes, are far less energy-dense. Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million"
Some of the subsidies are entrenched and strongly lobbied. There is no reason at all to be wasting water on almonds or cotton in California, for an example.
The farming industry in California would be non-existent without constant subsidizing both of the crops and the extraordinarily wasteful and expensive importing of water from numerous other states to prevent the farmland that was originally desert from reverting back to it's natural state.
> Even if we ignore externalities and pollution costs, just stop outright subsidizing animal meat production so much. The reason meat is so cheap is because our government puts a lot of effort and money into making it cheap.
The same applies to plant based subsides, by the way. I'm in favour of doing away with them entirely in a gradual phase, and offering new farmers low interest loans (lock these current historical rates for first generation farmers) on land and equipment and help much of the dienfranchised and under/unemployed youth into sustainable, organic Agriculture and its ancillary businesses and let them set and the make the market for their products. Not hedge funds and wall street speculators!
This at scale could help make environmentalism profitable like nothing else.
Crop insurance could be offered privately and locally by a series of brokers and established companies and a resurgence of farmers markets as a hub of local communities could do so much good given how destroyed the food Industry is after COVID which would be ideal to ensure we don't repeat the same mitakes.
I'm a 'free market guy,' and also did horticulture Ag and focused on the 'Rolls Royce' of food (Biodynamic) in the EU and then in the US that commanded a significant premium on price and exclusivity. I understand this topic very well and has been focus of most of my adult life. By the way: Free Markets are entirely incompatible when coupled to Central Bank based fiat currencies, and impossible when the very unit of account is manipulated by centralized entities.
I could break down your entire post, but I won't, but suffice it to say your argument is missing that it's not just distorting the market and sweeping the externatlities of livestock (meat) raising but also crop and specific commodities--corn and cotton being the highest culprit on that list that use the most pesticides and poison the soil and water which should be regarded as the crime that it is: Ecocide. Which is done to feed a growing populace, which also includes vegetarians and vegans.
Do you have any links to sources or further reading material regarding this current state of affairs? It seems not entirely obvious, nor easily checked for a casual reader. (Maybe that's part of the issue of why this is not a more popular topic yet.)
Kind of a tangent but Michael Pollan's books always open my eyes about these topics. In particular for this subject https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore%27s_Dilemma gives a good overview of why fast food (and all highly processed food) are so much cheaper than eating whole food. In the process you start to understand the role corn has on it and why it's the biggest crop of grain in the world.
> Maybe that's part of the issue of why this is not a more popular topic yet
I do think it's kind of under-discussed (it's not the only thing, a lot of niche topics like this, especially around food, don't really get covered much unless they're popular). The thing is that the people who do talk about it are usually in opposition to the meat industry, so most of the articles you find online are going to be written with a pretty obvious bias. As someone just looking for more information, that might bother you or it might not.
The vast majority of subsidies are towards "feed" products like corn and soy. In a lot of ways, corn's impact in particular has been a lot bigger than just on meat -- we saw a big shift towards corn-based products (including ethanol) that came as a result of this massive increase in resources towards both producing corn and researching uses for it.
You can also see the impact in products like soy, which, coincidentally with being one of the second-most subsidized foods in the US, is pretty cheap in the US. If you're looking for a meat "substitute" that is actually easy to find at much cheaper prices than meat, tofu can be a very cheap replacement, at least in my experience. I'm being a little bit deceptive there, because most soy is used for animal feed, it's not like we're just throwing funds into tofu. Even there, the primary reason we're subsidizing soy is to make it easier to raise meat. But it does still have some impact outside of the meat/dairy industry.
In comparison, our subsidies towards vegetables and fruits are basically nonexistant (I think ~50 million a year for "specialty crops", but I might have my numbers wrong). It's actually kind of startling how cheap fruits and veggies in the US are given how few resources our government puts into encouraging their production.
If you're curious, you can also look into checkoff programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_checkoff_program) that basically boil down to a mandatory tax on commodities like beef/dairy that is then redistributed to organizations that promote those commodities wholesale, rather than specific brands.
Checkoff programs are not a direct subsidy, but they raise their own set of concerns about free speech and government involvement in advertising and direct promotion of commodities that might not be in the public's best interest to be so heavily advertised.
Sorry, I know that's not the same thing as just listing an easy-read casual resource, but there aren't many neutral casual resources online, at least not that I'm aware of. Because it's a niche topic, most of the explainers are being written by people who specifically want to draw attention to the problem and are writing from a vegetarian/vegan perspective. Which is what you would expect from a topic that doesn't get brought up very often, but it does mean that if you don't want to rely on those sources, you have to do a bit of digging.
Have you considered why we do this? How would our society be different if only well-to-do people could eat meat regularly? Would a regular guy be content with wealthy people eating steaks while jet-setting around the globe because of climate change?
I think a populist uprising would occur almost immediately and we’d see heads on pikes with their decapitated mouths stuffed with cabbage for all to see. It would be super easy for a party to take advantage of this and they would.
> That's not necessarily bad, but if we're going to be messing with the market anyway we could choose to subsidize other things.
I'm saying we shouldn't pretend that meat is as cheap as it is on its own. We should acknowledge what the reality is: meat is cheap because as a society, we choose to use tax dollars to make it cheap.
We could do the exact same thing with plant-based meat. We could shift some of those subsidies so that meat and plant protein were equally subsidized. We could balance them out. We can talk about the logistics.
But I think sometimes the conversation gets stuck entirely on "how could we make artificial meat cheaper" when the reality is that animal meat is expensive, and the big difference between animal meat and plant meat is that we pretend that animal meat costs less than a free market would otherwise dictate. Of course I want to artificial meat to be cheaper, but I'm also not going to pretend that it's a fair fight.
The reason why this matters is because I do see arguments from people that say that it's just too expensive to have a social shift towards vegetarianism, and it can't possibly scale, and it's government interference to try and prop up plant-based foods. And yeah, we can have a values conversation about whether society wants us to make meat cheap. But most of the rest of those objections are crap. There are a lot of people that do think that meat is actually priced realistically based on what it costs to produce. They don't realize that it's just that our government chooses to make very specific farming outputs cheaper.
That's a separate issue to whether we should value a free market. Or is it? If we're only going to support a "free market" in spots where it's politically convenient, but be enthusiastic about stripping any regulations that are politically viable, then what we'll see is a systemic stripping of regulations that protect people without power, without touching regulations of people with power.
And they'll replace their meat with what? More sugar? Bread? Sugary bread? I think you underestimate how big of a deal food is to people. I believe that any change will be towards food that's even worse for people.
Because of how much of it is added into every alternative meat replacement product, and it's a shockingly high amount if you read the labels on some "organic" and "plant-based" products.
I have a few issues with this. As far as I know health concerns related to meat replacements aren't to do with sugar levels, probably more likely with saturated fat and sodium (which exists in regular meat too). Also I don't know why you bothered to put organic in there as well since the we're talking about meat replacement. Finally I think you're making the assumption that if we don't eat meat we need meat replacements at all.
If meat is the trigger to generate real social change then great! I don’t want to see heads on spikes, but if people are genuinely bought off by cheap meat that’s kind of sad.
I’m not sure it’s the type of social change you’re anticipating.
I think the fact everyone has access to the food they want and is part of their culture is a major reason we generally have a peaceful and free society.
I can only imagine the resent from the middle and lower classes when “the elites” eat steaks on airplanes and they, the plebs they are, are forced to subside on processed alternatives while being forced to become a proselyte to a cause that those that can afford to ignore do.
If you wanna go down that route selling this to the “free market” crowd, than Id love to let the free market settle itself out in healthcare too and pretty much everything else that the government controls pricing on.
As much as I would love to see subsidies ended on animal products, it couldn’t happen overnight without huge backlash.
Lowering the subsidies over time and eliminating the power that the animal agriculture industry has over politics would do a lot to increase the number of plant-based eaters.
There are proposals for carbon tax schemes that go like "we'll pay back all the income from the carbon tax to all citizen directly". You can imagine the same for methane. Pretty sure such a proposal would be popular.
A carbon-tax funded UBI would be popular, but ideally wouldn’t funding from a carbon tax go towards sequestering the carbon and other green initiatives instead of giving it back to consumers to spend on high-carbon goods and services?
It’s essentially what we do today. High tax payers consume more and their tax revenues subsidize things like Ag which make things like meat affordable to poor people.
So yeah, get rid of subsidies and replace with UBI and we’re probably in nearly the same place. Maybe a good deal of people would forego newly expensive meat and spend their UBI on the lotto?
I don't know every carbon pricing scheme in the world, but I have never heard of any that would involve agricultural methane.
The EU ETS, which is not a carbon tax, but an emission trading system, but which is the largest carbon pricing scheme in the world, does not include methane at all. The EU has just decided that they want to start monitoring methane emissions, but that's about it. They have no plans right now to regulate or price methane emissions.
You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat. Good luck dealing with the political fallout from that. Subsidized meat is a special kind of a American socialism where the wealthy tax payers fund the subsidies so everyone else can eat meat.
Honestly, so many of the ideas for addressing climate just prevent poor people from participating. The upper middle class who are most concerned with these issues (and have the most political power) simply wouldn’t be affected much at all by things that make access more difficult and/or expensive.
Rationing in the name of “equity” won’t happen because these same people will actually be affected so the line is drawn there. We need more housing development but not in my backyard, etc.
I don’t offer a particular solution other than giving people incentives to eat plant based diets and using tax revenues to invest in engineering the problem away as much as possible.
> You get rid of subsidies and then poor people can’t eat meat
So stop subsidizing meat and spend the same money augmenting the income of the poor, then poor people will be at least as able to eat meat and be at least as well off when doing so as they were with the meat sibaidies, while those who choose not to will be even better off than they were with meat subsidies.
> So, I pay the same taxes and then I also get to spend a lot more on food for my family?
Well, no, not necessarily. You pay taxes right now to subsidize meat consumption across the board, to everyone, even rich people.
Under a system like UBI, you pay the same taxes, your food costs more, but you also get a check in the mail that balances out the extra food cost.
Or under a targeted system that is designed to specifically benefit the poor, you pay more for food but fewer taxes, because you're only paying taxes to subsidize the poor instead of (currently) also paying additional taxes to subsidize the meat consumption of rich people.
It's a mistake to say that your food costs less right now because you pay taxes. It costs the same, you're just paying part of the price in your taxes. And part of the 'problem' is that the money you're paying to the government is going towards subsidizing everyone, including people who are more well off than you but that get to enjoy cheap meat prices anyway. That's not necessarily a very efficient way to help the poor.
There are lots of different schemes and complications here, it's not as simple as I'm making it out to be. But the very basic idea is that it would cost less money to subsidize just the poor, and then you could keep some of your tax money that's currently subsidizing rich people and you could spend it on meat instead.
> Why would people that pay taxes prefer that model?
Because they actually want to control (or, at least not encourage through subsidization) the externalities of meat consumption?
What economic group so you think that concern comes from?
> Good luck getting support for that.
If it wasn't possible to get something that didn't serve the immediate narrow financial interests of the wealthiest, the developed, democratic world would never have abandoned laissez-faire capitalism for the modern mixed economy.
What's wrong with poor people being unable to afford a luxury item based on animal exploitation and suffering?
Usually people respond to this pointing out some supposed nutrition advantages of meat as if the USA, with the cheapest meat in the world, is somehow the paragon of health and cuisine. Though I'd be down for a government sponsored, optional multivitamin.
The problem is that people in the US (and really most of the western world) have grown up eating meat, been told that they should desire meat, that meat is an essential part of their diet and, to a certain extent, that not eating meat is unmanly and weak.
Meat consumption is so ingrained that any attempt to curtail it is met with fierce opposition, because people feel as if it's an attack on their identity.
I don’t think that’s the case. Look around the world and you’ll see that as a country has become more prosperous that their meat consumption has increased. I don’t think it’s because people suddenly became more “manly”. It’s because of a simple fact: most humans love meat.
Food is more than a personal identity. It’s a major part of people’s culture globally and meat plays a primary role in many cultures. I think most people would eat more meat if they had the means to.
Only about 3.5% of Americans are vegetarian. Designing policy that favors this group would be ridiculous. Subsidizing meat and democratizing access to it is good policy since nearly everyone benefits from it.
Saying that I hope “plant meat” continues to improve and finds a market outside the novelty it mainly is today. But this can’t be forced on people.
>"Look around the world and you’ll see that as a country has become more prosperous that their meat consumption has increased. I don’t think it’s because people suddenly became more “manly”. It’s because of a simple fact: most humans love meat."
I think it's much more likely that people in countries with rising prosperity are seeing the high meat consumption in affluent parts of the world, and now that they themselves are becoming affluent, they want that diet/lifestyle themselves. It's aspirational, more than anything else.
There is certainly a biological appeal of eating cooked meat, just as there is with fatty (and sugary) foods in general: It signifies high caloric density, which is hugely important for a hunter/gatherer/subsistence community. That base desire is still there, leading to overeating and health issues, since excess calories are often abundant and easily affordable.
Modern Americans (and Europeans) eat a lot more meat than any other culture[1] past or present. The eating of meat every single day at every meal is a huge historical aberration and the clearest possible proof of our destructive overconsumption.
Just as with many other things like candy, sugary drinks, tobacco and alcohol, it would be wise to reduce consumption significantly. Rather than simply indulging base desires, we can choose to cut back and introduce some moderation, a wiser and more enlightened choice, not least because lifestock farming is an ongoing massive environmental disaster.
Currently the US is heavily subsidizing the meat industry, including by massively subsidizing corn. The wise move would be to cut that back and subsidize environmentally sound farming practices and ending the practice of feeding human food to animals. Farm what animals can be sustainably farmed on grass, hay and other plants unfit for human consumption, use the corn and soy and grains for food directly.
We in the western world have to realize that our wildly luxurious eating habits are completely unsustainable, and accept that meat will again be a once a week, maybe twice a week treat.
[1] Save a rare few very specific outliers, such as the Inuit, who in some areas subsist almost entirely on meat.
That depends. Do you plan to start breeding them relentlessly until 60% of all mammals on the earth are deer? As long as you promise not to do that, we won't have a problem.
More to the point, this seems like a misreading of GP's comment. Wyre specifically says that they don't want to impose taxes, that they want to very slowly cut or redirect subsidies instead. So I guess a followup question is, is the government currently giving you money to let deer fart in your pasture? Because if not, you'll also probably be OK.
> That depends. Do you plan to start breeding them relentlessly until 60% of all mammals on the earth are deer? As long as you promise not to do that, we won't have a problem.
The number of cows in the world is immaterial to the stated concerns though, since it's not the number of cows that determines the amount of methane produced — it's the amount of biomass they are digesting. So if the number of cows is reduced but the amount of biomass consumed stays the same (being digested by deer, rotting in the field, etc.) there's no net impact to the methane produced.
A) different animals produce different amounts of methane. Even among cattle animals, there are efforts to decrease the amount of methane they produce[0]. And nobody is laughing at those scientists and saying, "this is silly, they're still going to eat the same amount of feed so this can't possibly work." It's not just what's digested, it's how it gets digested.
B) if we have fewer cows, we don't need to replace them with the same number of another animal -- the point is we could have fewer grazing animals entirely, because our agricultural industry does not exist in order to feed wolves. We don't need to increase the number of deer by however many thousand times to sustain that ecosystem.
That was kind of my point. If you are planning on keeping the total number of grazing animals constant by massively scaling up the amount of deer, then maybe we have a problem. But why are you doing that?
If you're proposing that the current volume of cows/biomass consumption we have is a natural constant, and that other animals would just move in and take their place -- that's just not the case, we are artificially boosting the number of edible animals in the world, and by extension, we are also artificially boosting the amount of feed produced and consumed. Before the agriculture industry scaled up, we didn't have the volume of corn we currently produce lying around and being mass-consumed by deer. We started producing a lot more corn/grain and then breeding a lot more herding animals that we then fed it to.
What!? By this logic would we then give subsidies to the land where a pack of coyotes prays on the deer? This is just silly. Wild deer should be close to carbon neutral in a healthy ecosystem, as it gets prayed on as much as it pastures. Don’t be silly.
The goal is to fix the current phenomenon where human activity dumps enough co2 (and other greenhouse gases like methane) into the atmosphere to significantly alter the global climate and cause massive problems.
By the way, deer are not a meaningful contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gas levels.
If you’re raising the deer, then you’re responsible for the externalities produced by your economic pursuit. If you’re not raising the deer, then they’re the responsibility of humankind as a whole, who is already paying for those externalities (by having to suffer from climate change). The point of a carbon (or methane) tax is to ensure that you pay for your externalities, both to disincentivize you from having them and to repay everyone else for the cost that they’ve been dealt by you.
Suppose you set up a polluting machine that solely emitted carbon, perhaps for art. That goal may be reasonable, but by engaging in it you’re hurting others. A carbon tax makes them whole (by either paying for carbon capture or by direct compensation) and disincentives you from doing it in the first place. If instead it was a naturally occurring polluting machine (a herd of deer, say) then we’d either want to remove it or do something to counteract it, and that cost is paid by everyone. In this case, we’d probably choose to plant trees, rather than killing the deer. (Although the deer population in North America is out of control, so perhaps killing them might be the right choice.)
You know, I wonder if a meat-based production system is a hedge against catastrophic/extinction events.
For example, let's say we have another potato-famine style event. Even a bio-engineered attack that takes out a crop or crops.
We could scale back meat production and use the crop capacity we use to support the "meat pyramid" to feed people directly until the crisis has passed.
Subsidizing crop capacity might make strategic sense. Sort of like how the just-in-time production pipeline ran into a wall with respect to mask shortages at the start of the pandemic.
This seems to suggest that you think our meat comes from animals who kinda exist and compete mutually with crops when actually we feed most of our crops to animals.
If there was an ecological disaster that killed crop production, we wouldn't waste it by feeding it to animals for a grossly inefficient luxury item.
It's like when people try to make a "pro-meat" claim by pointing out how much water it takes to grow a pound of almonds, only possible because they never looked up how much water it took to grow a pound of beef.
> If there was an ecological disaster that killed crop production, we wouldn't waste it by feeding it to animals for a grossly inefficient luxury item.
This is what I interpreted the parent comment as saying.
Most animals can feed on wild grasses which we can't digest. They can serve us with a lot of resources and stay alive too (milk, wool, eggs). But if the event is so severe that even grass is gone, then rats are left and canibalism.
There's also strong logic in having hay as part of crop rotation, which as we know, is vital to reduce the need for fertilizer.
On top of this, there's loads of land useless for anything other than grazing. Too dry, with no irrigation (only usable for grazing in the spring). Too rocky, too much of a slope, soil quality not right (too much clay, etc, etc), yet still able to support grasses.
There's a lot of grazing done, in and outside of the US.
Lastly, and this was mentioned GP, it's vital to produce more than we eat each year. Extremely vital. Part of all the subsidies we have, is to ensure farmers DO grow more than required.
To ensure that the free market, doesn't bottom out pricing too much, because we have farmers over producing. If you want to start removing subsidies, then you should first ensure people have a year's worth of canned emergency food on hand.
If people get hungry, that's where the knives come out. If your kid is hungry, you're going to feed it.
Government encouraging overproduction of food makes absolute sense. It's this or to store backup because to run food production at an efficient "only as much as I needed" models a disaster waiting to happen.
Historically, governments would operate grains silos and be an intermediate purchaser, to control the cost of grain - keep it slightly higher in good years, and keep it stable in bad years by dipping into reserves.
IIRC a lot of countries were forced to abolish these price controls by the WTO, and then were screwed over when they got a bad harvest and poor people had no food.
That's an interesting question: how much would it cost to keep 3 years of food (let's assume the bare minimum - refined white flour) in reserve for the entire United States? What is the cost of food subsidies over the same period?
OTOH shifting away from meat consumption would probably force more species diversity in our food production. I think corn and soybeans account for most of the crops grown for livestock feed, but humans eat a more varied diet. I image that would improve robustness against blights or whatever.
I fully support this. I think it would result in a lot of good innovation - e.g. ways to raise meat while reducing carbon (including methane) emissions.
But ONLY if externalities are also fully priced & included for all other products - cars, plastic crap shipped from China, aircon, ... otherwise that kind of legislation is simply discrimination against meat-lovers.
> But ONLY if externalities are also fully priced & included for all other products - cars, plastic crap shipped from China, aircon, ... otherwise that kind of legislation is simply discrimination against meat-lovers.
Meat has a victim [1]. Respectably, how would you price in the cost of death?
Personally, I don’t consider the death of (most) animals any different to the death of plants. Only killing conscious entities (be they meat-based or potentially digital in the future) is immoral.
>Interestingly even in places where there's some form of carbon pricing - like the EU - this often doesn't cover a large share of emissions from meat production, as methane emissions are very relevant here - I'm not aware of any methane pricing scheme anywhere.
The problem is that most of the cows in the world live in India, Africa and South America, regions which have relatively low carbon intensity per capita. In the developed world, agriculture accounts for on average ~10% of carbon emissions, half of which is from cows. Targeting methane makes a small difference in rich countries and on a global scale places an unfair burden on the poorest countries, and politically, severely hurts the perception of climate protection advocacy among farmers, who are no doubt smart enough to know that fossil fuels are responsible for eight times as much greenhouse emissions as they are, and who are generally an extremely sympathetic constituency, cf. recent Indian protests.
In rich countries, transportation and thermal processes based on fuel burning account for the lion's share of greenhouse gas pollution and rightly deserve the spotlight. The outlier is China, which is rapidly expanding meat production along with its transition to a more industrialized economy. Purveyors of meat substitutes might consider taking the Chinese market more seriously, since they have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.
True, but I think it was focusing on things under the control of the producers of this product... of course, I suppose spending more on lobbying to try to reduce subsidies or tax externalities for meat is under their control. It seems like a kind of unwinnable battle though doesn't it?
The OP does touch on the subsidies by suggesting the producers rely more on soy and corn, which are heavily subsidized, and as are used as animal feed and thereby constitute a pretty major source of the meat subsidy. While not about externalities, I think they could have pointed out the reasons corn and soy are so cheap compared to other plant sources are in large part a result of government policy.
The externalized cost of carbon released into the atmosphere is an interesting problem in that we need to define where and when it should be paid. As an illustrated early sample of this, the burning of biomass is considered carbon neutral because all the carbon released was once absorbed by the plant when it grew.
In agricultural, we have added carbon which starts out as natural gas. It then get used to create synthetic fertilizer. The fertilizer is used to grow feed crops, which then the animals eat. The manure is then either dumped or kept for creating new bio gas or sold to organic farms that uses it as an alternative to synthetic fertilizer. The organic farms can then sell feed to more farms, but at lower and lower yields given the same input carbon from the first synthetic fertilizer, or crops that people eat.
One alternative is that each instance pay for carbon it handles, in which case we don't care if carbon is added or not. We could also tax the first instance where the carbon is introduced to the system. A different system could attempt to tax what we find to be the incentive for the system.
Personally I would tax the externalities of synthetic fertilizer because that is instance where extra carbon get added, and it solves part of the controversial issue of biomass production being labeled as carbon neutral when using fertilizer. It will also make animal feed more expensive for factory farms, while grazing animals farms in low population areas can benefit from being more ecological to the environment.
>> Interestingly it doesn't even discuss the obvious solution: Let people who buy real meat pay for the externalities.
Are we going to have people paying for the "externalities" of all the products they consume?
For example, the people who buy a new phone every year or half (this habit causes a significant amount of pollution, so-called "e-waste"). The people who drive their car everywhere. The people who fly a few times a year. The people who use computers (more e-waste). The people who wear clothes made of synthetic fibers and use plastic-based implements. The people who burn wood, coal or oil for central heating. The people who use electricity (the major producer of greenhouse gas emissions is power production). The people who read books printed in paper produced by felled trees. The people who consume plant-based products whose production is responsible for deforestation, soil depletion, acidification of soil, etc etc. The people who eat fish. The people who eat soy (major contributor to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest). etc etc.
Are we only going to make meat eaters pay for their "externalities"?
> Are we going to have people paying for the "externalities" of all the products they consume?
Well, yes, we should. Considering that notion is baked into every part of the economic models we're using to determine how we're structuring the rest of the economy, absolutely, the bare minimum we could do is make people actually pay for the damage they're causing. I'd go so far as to say a substantial part of the reason we seem unable to reasonably address things like pollution, climate change, and biodiversity is because people aren't paying the full cost of their actions.
One way or another, it's the only way we get a society that can live on the planet indefinitely without making it less and less fit for human habitation.
How you do that is not necessarily trivial, but we should start doing what we can figure out how to do now, yes. You don't have to do it for everything for it to be valuable to do it for what we can figure out how to do it for.
For meat, simply ending subsidies would be a good start.
Cell phones and other electronics as you point out are another obvious target, yes. Some have proposed that the cost of disposal/recycling should be built into the purchase price -- one practical way to do that, is require manufacturers to take back the products at end of life for recycling or disposal at no charge (and ban them from municipal waste stream).
I’m on my phone at the moment and can’t break down that list line-by-line, but in Canada you already do pay surcharges for many (not all) of those things. E-waste is nominally priced at the cost of recycling for various device types; electricity, natural gas, and gasoline, and aviation all have a (not insignificant!) carbon tax associated with them.
I'm an EU citizen. I don't know that I'm paying taxes for e.g. the e-waste produced by electronic devices. Can you point to relevant information please?
Well someone is paying for all those externalities. At least let's try and make it the person who benefits from it. Why not start from meat and go from there.
Of course people should pay the true cost of what they buy or use. I can’t see how anyone could argue against that on moral grounds. You might disagree for financial reasons, but hardly out of principle.
Should people who eat vegetables also pay for externalities, like ground water pollution with pesticides, decreasing number of insects and bee colonies collapse because of insecticides, destroying natural diversity with huge monocrop cultures, destroying top soil, diverting rivers for irrigation and so on?
Would that really make a huge difference though? I’m all for people paying for their externalities but I wonder how significant it would be, are there any calculations?
It also would be worth at least studying the subsidized production of insects for food.
I would think it’s more efficient to get protein from bugs than to go through all the complicated manufacturing process to get “fake” meat, which is very far from being a raw/natural product.
Like the average EU citizen, I don't remember ever voting for anybody who represents me in the EU and I don't know any of the structures of power of the EU or how they work.
I learned the political structure of the European Union in school, several times, once in middle school, once in high shool, with many repetitions in between. If you haven't learned you might either be older than me (I'm near thirty) or the education system in your country has worse issues than mine, or just not interested in Wikipedia ?
This is an absurd big lie which is so often repeated. Germany has great influence because it pays so much for the EU but all member states have the veto...
Turnout in Spain for the 2019 election was pretty high at 60%, compared to average of 50%. Counter to your (somewhat xenophobic) remarks about France and Germany, the most engaged countries by this measure are Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta and Denmark.
In most European countries, people don't elect the national government directly as well; it's formed taking into account parliament elections. It is true that in the EU the appointment of the commission is a bit more removed, with the national governments involved in the choice of the President and the commissioners, but in any case the European Parliament must still approve the commission.
EU Comissioners are proposed by the Council of the European Union, a body composed of EU member state ministers, themselves directly elected by the citizens of their respective states in national elections. Appointment of Comissioners follows the suggestions of national governments.
I don't know of any EU country in which ministers are elected as ministers. Many are elected as MPs and then appointed ministers, but this is typically not a requirement, and you can easily have unelected ministers. Even if 100% of all ministers were always elected as MPs, you couldn't just argue "was elected for position X, must therefore automatically be considered democratically legitimized for position Y".
>> Many are elected as MPs and then appointed ministers, but this is typically not a requirement, and you can easily have unelected ministers.
OK, I don't know that. Is that the case in EU countries? If so, which ones?
Anyway I didn't say that ministers are elected as ministers, but to my knowledge for someone to be appointed a minister they must be elected into parliament. Again, if that's not the case please explain.
> Anyway I didn't say that ministers are elected as ministers, but to my knowledge for someone to be appointed a minister they must be elected into parliament.
That might be the case in certain countries, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_the_United_Kingdom says: "In the United Kingdom's parliamentary system, the executive is not separate from the legislature, since Cabinet members are drawn from Parliament."
It's not the case in other countries. Recent examples from Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monti_Cabinet and Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierlein_government. Admittedly these are interim governments formed entirely from non-politicians, so a special case. But there are also examples of individual non-party people being ministers in "normal" governments. Again Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kern_government (the "Independent"s were never MPs). Of course this is rare, since usually there is an expectation of party members to get the posts.
Are you sure this is the case, about the Austrian Independents? It's not very clear from the wikipedia articles on the persons and on the institutions.
In any case, it looks like the Austrian ministers are figurheads without real political power, or so I gather from the relevant artice on wikipedia:
Austrian presidents gladly accept that their role is that of figureheads.
You misread "president" as "minister" and ignored the fact that (at least) Italy often has expert cabinets, and this whole discussion is pointless anyway since at most what we would be able to establish is that the EU Commission's democratic legitimacy, if any, is through three levels of indirection, which is not a lot of legitimacy.
I did indeed misread "president" as "minister", but I don't agree with you that "indirection" (i.e. appointment of officials by elected officials) is "not a lot of legitimacy". It may not be "a lot of directness", but I'm not concerned about this any more than I'm concerned that, e.g. police officers or judges are appointed, rather than elected (certainly in the places I've lived).
Edit: I don't agree that there is as much indirection as you say, either. You brought up two examples of interim governments where ministers were not elected. You haven't given any examples where this happens in er, ordinary? governments and I don't believe there are any in the EU. But I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
There are plenty of very healthy meat-avoiding people in the world. Malnutrition is also a problem in the world. Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem.
Good point. I'm not sure expensive meat is that healthy either. We'd probably eat more cheap meat than expensive meat though, so if it's all unhealthy then we might want to think of cheap meat as more-unhealthy.
Vegetarian food that isn't straight up dried commodities like beans either costs a lot of money or takes a lot of time to prepare in comparison to meat, and the working poor of this country have neither.
It takes exactly the same amount of effort to make vegetarian food as it takes to make a dish with meat, cooking some lentils with vegetables and cottage cheese takes literally twenty minutes for example. And we're currently discussing why meat substitutes are expensive and how to lower the prices.
I can make a complete surf-n-turf meal for a shorter amount of time than that, on top of the fact many people hate things like lentils and cottage cheese. When discussing meat replacements, you have to not just look at cost, but what people are actually willing to eat and take time making when given any choice whatsoever (and most people will choose things that take less time and do not taste like lentils and cottage cheese).
Many people hate surf and turf. How about we don't start a pointless discussion about individual foods when there are endless variations at all levels of preparation complexity both with and without meat?
The question is how feasible it is? Is it a trivial change in lifestyle? Is it more expensive or cheaper? Can you make it work with the basic fare that you find everywhere, or do you need to shop around for plant products that are more exotic?
I’ve been vegan for 5 years. I was raised vegetarian, but I also cooked a chicken the night before I went vegan. It is feasible and as time goes on it gets easier and easier.
Only recently have I started spending more than $200 a month on groceries and that’s because I’ve started weightlifting. I can get by on much less.
Is any change in lifestyle trivial?
I’m able to go to my local grocery store for everything I need. I go to my local Asian market because I like the noodles and spices though, but that isn’t necessary at all.
Food deserts exist but that is a bigger problem with general accessibility to food, and is not a good argument to a plant-based diet, imo.
a poster addressed that, and now you have 4 more questions, none related to nutrition - and, hilariously, prefaced by the common but ridiculous "the question is" (implying there's one) rhetorical device.
All the questions are related. I am aware that some people can make it work, but if you remove cheap meat, who do you affect? Poor people. My question is, can poor people also eat a plant based diet with minimal malnutrition risk? All the questions are in reference to that.
All I see about plant based diets say the same shit without answering the though questions. They always say, "it's possible to be a health vegan if you watch your nutrition". Well that says precisely nothing. It is a carefully crafted message to not upset militant vegans.
The impression I get from that message is that it is far easier to be healthy if you don't avoid meat. You don't have to watch your nutrition much. You just have to use common sense.
It’s very easy to eat healthily and cheaply on a vegetarian or vegan diet. In the UK I used Quorn or lentils as a major protein in a lot of my cooking, now I’m in Berlin I’m alternating between soy chunks, seitan (both of which I have to flavour myself), lentils, tofu, four types of preprepared tinned beans, soy milk, and cheese.
Most of these options have cheap subtypes. The most expensive part of my cooking is the fancy stuff that isn’t strictly necessary, like fresh basil or pre-made pastry, and even those are not hugely expensive.
> The impression I get from that message is that it is far easier to be healthy if you don't avoid meat. You don't have to watch your nutrition much.
The obesity crisis in the developed world, combined with the low rate of no-meat diets, rather contradicts that.
> You just have to use common sense.
How do you define “common sense” such that this sentence differentiates between the effectiveness of meat and non-meat diets?
The idea that meat needs to eaten in the quantity and frequency that it’s currently eaten in the west to maintain a healthy diet is a recent idea. For my grandparents growing up most meat, especially things like chicken was a luxury reserved for special occasions. It’s also always interesting to me that when this argument comes up people are suddenly very interested in standing up for “the poor”, there are a whole host of other, more important ways inequality can be addressed at it’s root.
Historical diets were nothing like modern vegetarianism. They also were not super heathy, oftentimes missing nutricients and causing diseases from the lack of them.
In my experience (omnivore -> vegetarian -> vegan), going vegetarian is not too difficult. Going something like pescatarian, or even just eliminating red meat -- that's downright easy. I am not a particularly great cook, but my grocery bill dropped noticeably when I went vegetarian because I was buying more vegetables for the first time in my life. Even when eating out I had to make very few adjustments. Most restaurants around me have great vegetarian menus. I feel like it's not a particularly difficult transition to make.
On the other hand, going vegan was harder. Part of this is how good you are at cooking. Part of it is that you have to research a bit more. I take supplements (D3, K2, B12) as a vegan. I never worried for a second about my nutritional input when I went vegetarian. And again, if you're going pescetarian and still eating a fair bit of cheese/eggs, I just really doubt nutrition is a concern for most people. But after going vegan, suddenly I had to actually think about some of these nutritional questions that I was able to ignore before because I just ate a lot of eggs and cheese.
You can make veganism a lot cheaper (and plenty of people do), but I'm lazy and bad at cooking, so I buy more specialty vegan products, which are expensive. I put up with it, it's fine, it's doable, but being vegan is annoying sometimes, and it requires more work.
Again, it's doable. It's fine, lots of people make it work, I make it work. You can be vegan and healthy. But in terms of effort/work to be healthy and to keep costs down, I think that veganism and vegetarianism are in separate categories.
But importantly, you don't need to go vegan to see improvements here. If you're talking about "meat-avoiding" in general, just getting rid of red meat from your diet will have a positive environmental impact, and will probably be both healthier and cheaper as long as you put at least a tiny bit of effort into not just eating only Impossible burgers and mac&cheese. You can already in many places get raw tofu significantly cheaper than red meat, and after that it's really just learning how to make stir fries and figuring out 'new' foods like mushrooms and beans.
Part of the benefits here are that in general, most people who aren't following a specific diet probably shouldn't eat as much meat as they do anyway. So if the end result is that you eat one serving of plant-based meat alongside some eggs/veggies/beans, instead of three servings of steak, that's very likely to be both healthier and cheaper.
>> Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem.
Because there aren't that many. For people eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, keeping well-fed is a real concern and not everyone is pulling it off. For example, the following article is about infant nutrition but some of its comments apply to adults:
Vegetarian diets in childhood and adolescence : Position paper of the nutrition committee, German Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ)
In Western countries, vegetarian diets are associated with lower intakes of energy, saturated fatty acids and animal protein and higher intakes of fibre and phytochemicals, compared to omnivorous diets. Whether the corresponding health benefits in vegetarians outweigh the risks of nutrient deficiencies has not been fully clarified. It should be noted that vegetarians often have a higher socioeconomic status, follow a more health-conscious lifestyle with higher physical activity, and refrain from smoking more often than non-vegetarians. The nutritional needs of growing children and adolescents can generally be met through a balanced, vegetable-based diet; however, due to their higher nutrient requirements per kilogramme of body weight, vegetarian children have a higher risk for developing nutrient deficiencies than adults. With a vegetarian diet, the mean intakes of some nutrients, such as the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are lower than in omnivores or those eating fish. For other nutrients, such as iron and zinc, the bioavailability from vegetable foodstuffs is reduced when the intake of phytates and fibre is high; thus, the prevalence of iron deficiency can be increased despite high vitamin C intake. In addition, vitamin B12 is only found in animal-source foods. Vitamin B12 should be supplemented in people of all age groups who follow a strict vegan diet without consuming animal products. A vegetarian diet in childhood and adolescence requires good information and supervision by a paediatrician, if necessary, in cooperation with an appropriately trained dietary specialist.
Vegetarian diets during pregnancy: effects on the mother's health. A systematic review
Note well: Data are scarce, often inconsistent and not homogeneous for many of the topics we considered, mainly because only a few studies have been performed in developed countries, _whereas other studies have derived from developing countries, where vegetarianism can be a proxy indicator of malnutrition._ (my underlining)
Vitamin B12 Deficiency Is Prevalent Among Czech Vegans Who Do Not Use Vitamin B12 Supplements
B12 and vegan supply of omega 3 fat is still a concern, especially for children and infants.
For example, if you use plant sources for your fat supply of DHA, you'd have to ingest enough ALA to make most people sick. So supplements are necessary for health, especially in children (vegan algae based supplements do exist).
Another question is soy reliance. Last I checked, we can reasonably assume that a "normal" amount of soy in a diet is a non issue. However, results during pregnancy and childhood are apparently lacking, and studies in rats show potential problems [1].
"Further investigation is needed before a firm conclusion can be drawn. In the meantime, caution would suggest that perinatal phyto-oestrogen exposure, such as that found in infants feeding on soy-based formula, should be avoided." [2]
Just to be clear here: I am a vegetarian. However, I never went full vegan because I think it does require a very mindful and conscious handling of nutrition - and a lot more research [3]
By extension, I do not think it is appropriate as a recommendation for the general public at this stage.
So we need research and educational efforts into plant based nutrition instead of pumping all tax money into marketing and subsidies for the meat and dairy industry. Big surprise.
I’m raising two perfectly healthy vegan kids. They are above average on most factors that matter and continue to amaze people around us when we tell them they are vegan.
There is so much misinformation out there, and extrapolating from cases where parents fuck up isn’t helpful. All kinds of people fuck up, vegans or not, be it due to ignorance, incompetence or negligence.
Indeed, my understanding of the scientific consensus is that a healthy vegan or vegetarian diet is perfectly possible. However the question is what happens when such a diet is forced on a large fraction of some population, either because meat becomes too expensive, or because plant-based alterantives become much cheaper. Are most people who can scarecely afford good nutritious food right now going to be able to maintain a healthy diet when they have even fewer alternatives than currently?
Edit: just to clarify in case I'm misunderstood, I'm talking about poor people because I don't worry that I won't be able to afford to eat as much meat as I like (which isn't that much anyway- I'm Greek, so Mediterrannean diet and all that. Like, ~60% of our cuisine is vegan or vegetarian only we call it "food").
There absolutely isn't a scientific consensus. If anything, several cases have come up recently to counter the wild acceptance that anyone can live vegan just fine, and further investigation is still necessary. Just recently, the carnivore diet has taken off for multiple people, and even just significantly reducing plant-based foods in favor of animal-based foods is showing to help many people. There's also the theory of anti-nutrients and the importance of genetics which we still don't understand.
If there is one field that's an absolute mess, its nutritional sciences. The only thing one can trust is their own experience with any particular diet, their overall well-being and regular health check-ups. What works for one person can be absolutely disastrous for another.
Our livestock is given chemically manufactured b12 supplements because the soil is being depleted of the microbiology that produces and leaves it on plant material which is the natural way to get it. So everyone, including meat eaters are consumers of b12 supplements, unless they live in regions where modern agriculture does not have a strong foothold.
Similarly, modern western foods is full of supplements via “fortification” so to say that vegan diet is unnatural because of the need for supplements is a mute argument, so long as those supplements are part of everyone’s diet, and meat is just a carrier.
My point is still that the debate over plant based diets are too simplistic and based on anecdotes (on both sides). If we spent all the tax money we now spend on meat and dairy subsidies instead on unbiased research and education on general nutrition, I am convinced a lot of people would be surprised at the outcome.
The only supplements in our household are b12 and vitamin D. B12 is a supplement in everyone’s diet in the western world already, as I have argued, and vitamin D is universally recommended supplement in the northern region anyway due to lack of sun exposure in winter. Instead of getting it through fortified milk or fish oil, we take a pill, and we feel a lot better about it.
>> There absolutely isn't a scientific consensus. If anything, several cases have come up recently to counter the wild acceptance that anyone can live vegan just fine, and further investigation is still necessary.
Please note I didn't comment that "anyone can live vegan just fine".
Well to address the point you are making about poor people. Looking at the current poor population of North America, the cheap meat based diet is nothing short of a disaster to general public health ridden with all sorts of dietary caused diseases such as obesity, diabetes, coronary diseases and so on. Surely, a shift towards plant based diets for this demographic couldn’t make things any worse than it already is.
My understanding about the problem with the diet of "the current poor population of North America" is not so much that they don't eat enough plant food, but that they eat all kinds of over-processed food, full of saturated fats, sugars and salt, and that any kind of food they get, meat or plant-based is of poor quality. Removing meat from that diet, even the poor quality meats they can afford right now, sounds like it would hurt their diet even more, not improve it.
Yeah I was raised (American) vegetarian from birth, and my parents did not consider the nutrition I needed when they cooked and I had anemia, underweight, etc. I was healthier after starting to eat meat at age 14
It shouldn't have been, because many plant-based dishes do not include the same amount of nutrients if they are cooked as opposed to consuming the raw vegetable ingredients, and people are either unaware of this entirely or completely neglect taking it into account in regards to actual nutritional value. That's before we even address nutrient bio-availability of ingredients pre-and-post preparation. You will always see tons of people crow about how many vitamins and other nutrients certain foods have, but they rarely if ever mention that with many of them you'd have to eat a dump truck full of it to even approach your daily recommended value because your body simply refuses to process much of it and passes it on as waste.
A tangential topic - I really think that in general calling plant-based things "meat", a terrible idea. It does not promote plant-base diet or meat consumption reduction. It is trying to be what is not.
I think it pushes away those who are on the cusp of moving towards plant-base foods. Why? Because the consumer is told it is "meat", so they will compare it to meat.
They will compare these patties to a real, prime Angus burger.
If we could be honest and declare them what they are, plant-based patties (come up with new name or whatever, plenty of plant-based names in non-English languages) I think it would improve the general image and consumption of these products.
Suddenly we would not be locked in the "meat" category. We can have all kinds of flavors for these products, instead of "meat" flavor, not having to "live up to" the meat taste, and mouth feel. We can live up to great flavors vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
> I think it pushes away those who are on the cusp of moving towards plant-base foods.
I think you are completely wrong.
People eat meat because they like the taste and the texture, but at the same time everyone knows that meat is produced by killing animals, and that it's much less sustainable than vegetarian food.
If you want to get people to switch to meat alternatives, you have to keep everything that's great about meat (taste, texture, proteins), while removing everything that's bad about meat (slaughter, livestock industry).
And that is exactly what this new generation of plant-based alternatives are focusing on, and given their popularity compared to earlier attempts, I think they're on the right track.
Quick question: Are you yourself a vegetarian or vegan?
Agreed. So many non vegetarian/vegan people say stuff like this and it’s just wrong. Or they’ll say “why have a fake burger, can’t you just enjoy vegetarian food, why does it have to be a burger? If you want burger just eat one and stop trying to copy meat, innovate on your own”.
It’s just people completely missing the point. If you get fake meat close enough in taste/texture/price you’ll move a large amount of product. The high high majority of meat consumption is not high quality product, but the absolutely lowest quality possible. It’s so easy to swap out they meh hamburger patty you have at a bbq with a plant based one, be healthier, and have less impact on the environment.
> Or they’ll say “why have a fake burger, can’t you just enjoy vegetarian food, why does it have to be a burger? If you want burger just eat one and stop trying to copy meat, innovate on your own”.
It's hilarious, because there's one comment just like that below yours now.
> The high high majority of meat consumption is not high quality product, but the absolutely lowest quality possible.
Yes, this. A lot of people, myself included, eat a lot of meat dishes simply out of habit. Switching those dishes to vegetarian dishes is simply not going to happen, because the force of habit is so strong. If I want a spaghetti bolognese, a spaghetti marinara isn't the same thing! But if I can make my bolognese with a plant-based meat alternative so that it gets the same taste and texture as the real thing, that's a win, and that's something I, and a lot of people, will be willing to do.
I suspect that all the people arguing for vegetarian dishes are people who would always choose the marinara over the bolognese, and therefore don't see the big deal.
> It’s so easy to swap out they meh hamburger patty you have at a bbq with a plant based one, be healthier, and have less impact on the environment.
Even better, have McDonalds and Burger King and every other fast food joint swap out their meat! The Impossible Whopper is almost there now. It just needs to get a couple of notches better, and be the same price as a meat Whopper and there'd zero reason to choose the meat Whopper anymore. And if you can get the Impossible one cheaper than the meat one, it will be the default choice, and you'd have eliminated an absolutely massive amount of habitual meat consumption. Win-win-win.
> The Impossible Whopper is almost there now. It just needs to get a couple of notches better, and be the same price as a meat Whopper and there'd zero reason to choose the meat Whopper anymore. And if you can get the Impossible one cheaper than the meat one, it will be the default choice,
I'm not sure about cheaper, I think that might have some of effects - perceived inferiority, etc.
So much of the population have to eat the cheapest thing possible it'll certainly have an effect. Make it $1 extra for meat, some will take it but many will save the dollar for something else.
I feel it’s not “cheapest” but “easiest” - though the two are inextricably linked: easy leads to cheap.
I wonder if a hole-in-the-wall franchise based on serving Soylent-based food might work - like a Boba Tea or Pho place, but serving insulated mugs of hot Soylent?
I would argue that being cheaper would be a positive selling point, rather than a negative one.
Consumers know that producing meat takes a lot of time and effort, and is therefore expensive. They also know that vegetables are much cheaper than meat.
Personally, I'm not going to try an Impossible Whopper if it costs more than a normal, meat-based one, because in my mind it should be cheaper, and I'd feel like I was getting ripped off by excessive margins.
I enjoy eating meat... the texture, the savory nature of its flavor.
Back when I lived in the bay, my brother and I found a vegan restaurant - Golden Era. He had taken me to other vegetarian restaurants and they always felt lacking for something. Golden Era... the 'chicken' drumsticks - ok, they were on a wooden stick, but the texture of whatever it was was right. Then Mongolian 'chicken' had a texture to it too and the sauce provided a nice savory to it.
Since then, some others suggested that the texture may have been from jackfruit (some day I'll hunt up some around here and see if I can make a reasonable BBQ Jackfruit sandwich.
But yea - the thing that had me not pass on my brother asking if I wanted to head to Golden Era was that it felt right when it was being chewed.
Golden Era are (were? I do hope they are still around) doing something with tofu and wheat gluten.
The preparation is more involved than your basic 'throw it in a blender' seitan steak, but the result is totally worth it. You can get really fulfilling textures and flavours, and quite a variety, to boot.
Likewise, the "Spicy Mongolian Delight" is now listed as "slices of soy protein, bell peppers, & onion in a spicy sweet sauce" (which has gone from $7.95 to $12.50)
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In other vegan... the Fisch Stix and "Chicken" Fingers from https://cheezefactoryrestaurant.com/menu are good (though I'm a bit wary of trying to get the fish flavor and texture right).
My "it might have been jackfruit" - look at https://www.loveandlemons.com/bbq-jackfruit-recipes/ and the way that its nearly indistinguishable from pulled pork in appearance and apparently unripe jackfruit has a pork like savory taste when cooked.
...unlike the animal industry which is just full of fluffy, happy, loved cows who proudly line themselves up to be turned into tasty beef for your pleasure...
Have you seen the animal industry? It's absolutely disgusting. Getting rid of that would be an enormous net win, both ethical and environmental.
Ethics aside, I think the parent comment was referring to weird additives and oils in things like the Impossible Burger.
That being said, I think it's only fair to compare that to all the antibiotics, hormones, and fertilizers that your average low-grade ground beef has been exposed to or fed.
Both. This pursuit of tasting "kinda like meat" has incurred a lot of odd ingredients most people would normally eschew if they knew the extent of study in human consumption. Plain meat has a much better track record. I don't blame any meat eater for rolling their eyes at this stuff.
And the decisions are sometimes odd. Like beet juice being added not for flavor but so it looks like the patty is bleeding. Meat eaters aren't sold because the veggie burger looks rare.
The truth is meat eaters aren't, en massé, abandoning meat for a plant based alternative that provides little to no health benefit and costs just as much or more.
Will we get there? Probably. But we're in a weird limbo area that is barely appealing to either side of the fence other than as a novelty.
Sure. Humans have been eating meat for tens of thousands of years. That's a track record. The idea that something that's been consumed by humans since there have been himself having a better track record than something that historically hasn't isn't even controversial.
Your turn. Basically all cardiovascular diseases are caused by meat, right?
I've spent most of my life as a vegetation but dishonest histrionics like this do a disservice to the aim of convincing meat eaters to eat less meat.
It's about the amount of meat and dairy we ate... Next to nothing compared to today. Today's rates of cardiovascular diseases don't exist in mostly plant eating cohorts, nor do they in other largely plant based apes.
Its not that complicated, I fail to see how this qualifies as histrionics.
Please recognize that the caution around new food science advances is based in experience. I’m sure most of us are old enough to remember when most crunchy fried snacks were on the shelf with oils that had no known health risk but turned out to produce widespread uncontrollable diarrhea because the oils were indigestible.
I’m not suggesting these new meat substitutes have that effect but it’s reasonable for people to be cautious. Yeah heart disease and global emissions but... also soiling yourself without warning in public.
The best thing proponents of these new foods could do is genuinely and honestly recognize and address those worries.
people should be cautious and imho more importantly, people should be informed and adding processed soy, oils, sodium etc to meat alternatives in hope of reducing price is a horrible solution. If that's the only way we're going to get people offsetting meat consumption its a sad state of affair.
Fair point. I do feel the responsibility is on the shoulders of those making claims of the dangers of meat alternatives though. Its easy to paint it as frankenfood, but if you look at the ingredients they are boringly normal
This is actually a pretty simple burden of proof question. The burden of proof is on whoever wishes to persuade the other.
As in any other case, to persuade another person is to assert a claim. It doesn’t matter that you already have done the requisite learning to understand what you’re certain is the baseline set of facts. What matters is you want to change someone else’s beliefs.
As an example:
It would be preposterous for me to say “I am certain that biological sex is a spectrum, and binary sex is a simplification useful as a tool for some applications but inadequate for others” and just expect anyone who doesn’t know that to crack open a book or start googling my hypothesis credulously. Even though I’m certain it’s true.
I understand that while there’s sound scientific basis for the claim, it’s not a shared understanding of reality.
I also understand that it’s a claim that may be questioned, even though I’m certain it’s correct, and it’s my choice whether to give it more weight when challenged (attempt to persuade someone who doesn’t accept the claim l) or to carry on certain I’m right. But if I take the latter path, I have to accept that it’s really very unlikely the other party will learn what I’ve learned, unless they become curious and open to the possibility.
In other words, you can be right until the end of time and it wouldn’t ever matter to some people unless you give them a reason to want to be right too.
Maybe if you are used to eating processed food, but as someone who almost always cooks meals from scratch, this list of ingredients doesn't look appealing. If I was buying a chicken breast, there wouldn't even be a list of ingredients.
"textured wheat protein" - no idea what it, but it sounds disgusting, and very highly processed. I'd presume it also contains gluten?
"potato protein" - again, it sounds like something highly processed.
"natural flavors" - it doesn't specify exactly what they are, so I don't even know what I'm eating - I don't like it.
"leghemoglobin" - you mentioned what this is, but otherwise it sounds like a lab-produced chemical.
"yeast extract" - makes me think of marmite, which is one of the most revolting substances on earth! Aside from that, I think of the smell of yeast; I... don't think I want to eat that.
"konjac gum" - never heard of it.
"xanthan gum" - I think it's some kind of thickening agent?
"soy protein isolate" - no idea what this is. The wheat and potato proteins don't have "isolate" in their names, so I assume this is even more highly processed. For some reason it makes me think of processes like "hydrogenation" - ways we mess around with foods to make them as cheap as possible, sometimes with negative health consequences.
"vitamin E..." - makes me think the raw ingredients on their own are so unhealthy that they had to add a few crushed multivitamins.
Overall: it sounds highly processed and devoid of nutrition. blech!
Of course not (tho when baking bread I do find the smell of the yeast on it's own to be quite unpalatable). My point is that I don't expect to find yeast in the ingredients list for "meat", and that was simply my initial reaction.
I know it wasn't your point, but as an aside: isn't the "used" yeast slurry removed from most commercially produced beer? (depending on the style, obv)
Your comments read as contrarian and determined to find fault with this product. If your instinct is to dislike it so much, the answer is simple: don't eat it.
Each of the ingredients bar "natural flavors" (which usually means a proprietary spice blend or msg) can be found with a simple Google search - as someone else said, konjac is an Asian vegetable, textured wheat protein has been a staple of vegan cooking for decades and can be bought in any health food shop, and so on.
This is a really unkind interpretation of my comments - I am certainly not trying to find fault, merely sharing my initial reaction to a list of seemingly strange ingredients.
You may be familiar with these ingredients, but that doesn't mean anyone who isn't used to highly processed food is "wrong" for not knowing what they even are.
> I can buy organic, grass-fed, no-GMO, sustainably pasture-raised beef.
No, actually you probably can't [1]:
> Is there such a thing as a climatically-guilt-free steak? Are grazing livestock climate villains or climate saviours? A new report by an international research collaboration led by the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), part of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, provides an authoritative answer to these questions.
> The new report Grazed and confused? helps add clarity to the debate around livestock farming and meat and dairy consumption.
> 14.5% of all human made greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock sector as a whole. There is however some confusion and disagreement in the debate about the climate impacts of grazing livestock (and particularly grass-fed beef).
> Some commentators have argued that well-managed grazing can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in soils, and that these removals can substantially compensate for, or even exceed, all other emissions from the livestock that are doing the grazing. In this way, grass-fed beef has been offered by some as a climate solution, rather than a problem.
> Written by FCRN’s Dr Tara Garnett in collaboration with Cécile Godde of CSIRO and a team of international experts, this report dissects claims made by different stakeholders in the debate, and evaluates them against the best available science. This report finds that better management of grass-fed livestock do not hold a solution to climate change as only under very specific conditions can they help sequester carbon. This sequestering of carbon is even then small, time-limited, reversible and substantially outweighed by the greenhouse gas emissions these grazing animals generate. Dr Garnett explains the key takeaways from this report:
> “This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use. Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.”
Any food transported to your plate by a car has an environmental cost. As does modern life in general. I believe we will eventually solve the problem (via carbon-capture & sustainable energy production) but I see that mostly orthogonal to eating meat.
>Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
>Have you seen the animal industry? It's absolutely disgusting.
Yes I have. My job as an electrician brought me to farms, slaughterhouses, and food factories. Denmark has rigorously enforced standards for ethical treatment of animals, as well as strict hygiene standards for industrial food preparation. Not disgusting at all.
That’s what’s so gross about it. We take a governance problem (bad practices in meat and dairy industry), hijack fringe movements like veganism, and turn it into way to undermine sustainable agriculture. The MBAs running big companies don’t care if burgers are from beef or ground up sawdust. It’s just cash.
Along the way, we’re tricking people into thinking that some palm oil smoothie is healthier than meat, and that sugared water filtered through oats is better than dairy.
For the vast majority of those ingredients, the answer sure looks like "yes." A few are literally standard home cooking ingredients, and nearly all the rest (dextrose, yeast extract, vitamin mixes, etc.) are pretty common in any processed food, which -- let's be honest here -- a lot of us buy pretty regularly. I'm not sure there's anything there that's unique to the Impossible Burger other than the "soy leghemoglobin".
Yeast extract is Marmite! And dextrose is a derivative of corn syrup. And enriched flour is characterized by having vitamins added to it. So they’re not that uncommon either.
I don't know what on earth you cook at home, but "salt" and maybe "sunflower oil" are about the only things on that long list that sound like a "standard home cooking ingredient".
Yes and no. All of these are common ingredients in commercial food production. You’ll see these in all sorts of stuff at your local grocery store. Not so common in your kitchen though.
So is the animal industry in the USA, with ammonia-washed meat, wide-scale deployment of antibiotics (which has the knock-on effect of helping create antibiotic resistance), and the use of growth hormones in cattle to increase production.
I'm not defending the plant-based industry here, but the way meat is produced in the USA is also a nightmare.
I basically avoid American meat for these reasons, and typically source my beef from Australia , Japan or other countries ( which is easier since I live in Taiwan ).
But honestly I’m not 100% sure how much better aussy and Japanese meats are.
Not to mention they still don't taste like meat. The Impossible Burger comes closest and i think it's fine for getting a meat eater to give it a shot but I'd rather eat a black bean burger with just a few ingredients at a fraction of the cost.
I tried the A&W fake meat burger (I think theirs is Beyond brand) and I have to say in the context of a burger with toppings, it was quite good. Probably 95% as enjoyable as an A&W beef burger.
Is that kinda like how mass produced meat is literally an industrialized nightmare? Or are you just saying that having more than a handful of ingredients is bad?
I agree. I've been eating vegan a while, and I've hated certain foods such as onions for my whole life. A ton of fake meat is pre-seasoned with onions and other stuff. Hard to find things I even want to try among it. Typically a beef hotdog would come unseasoned, so it's a bit unfortunate.
There's still plenty good food to eat, but the fake meat is not the most exciting stuff to me.
I think that’s why fake meat is so popular in the US, where all food is very processed, and the concept of natural food is something only the rich care about. The average person already eats ultra processed low industrial food, so the switch is easy, and since it will make a few companies a ton of money, it’s being heavily promoted everywhere.
> If you get fake meat close enough in taste/texture/price you’ll move a large amount of product.
But you are not getting them close enough for that. They taste different. They also have different nutritional composition, so if you will just replace meat by then brainlessly you are setting yourself up to failure.
Vegetarians who did not eate meat for years claim the taste is similar, but nobody else. And these could be good, if someone did not raised expectations up to "like meet" to sell it and then failed to execute.
> But you are not getting them close enough for that. They taste different. They also have different nutritional composition, so if you will just replace meat by then brainlessly you are setting yourself up to failure.
Have you actually tried Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger? If you haven't please do. Just go to your nearest Burger King and order an Impossible Whopper and a regular Whopper and compare them.
They're very close to the taste and texture of real ground beef now, and I think they'll get even better with time, and that they can become as tasty as the real deal, as nutritious as the real deal, and cheaper.
> People eat meat because they like the taste and the texture, but at the same time everyone knows that meat is produced by killing animals, and that it's much less sustainable than vegetarian food.
I think this is too generous. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the implicit message here is that people actually care about the animals and sustainability of meat farming.
My spouse is vegetarian and I'm whatever. I don't buy meat but if it finds itself in front of me I'll eat it. I have had the conversation of the horrors of meat production many times at the dinner table with a spectrum of people, and nobody changed their habits. Yes, this is anecdotal, and I'm willing to read a source and change my opinion if there is some evidence that people actually give a shit about the animals. As far as I can tell, it is all just virtue signaling at best.
I agree with OP. I think we would be better served in the long run creating good consumables that have the caloric density and amino acid profiles found in meats and encourage people to eat those instead of trying to replicate something we should be horrified about.
> I have had the conversation of the horrors of meat production many times at the dinner table with a spectrum of people, and nobody changed their habits.
This doesn't mean that people don't care about the horrors of the animal industry. It just means that they don't care enough to change their habits. Huge difference.
Which is why meat alternatives are so important, because they allow people to stop eating meat without changing their habits!
Neither you nor the GP really eat meat, which means that neither of you belong to the target group for this product! You are not the consumer! You clearly do not understand the whole point of these plant-based meat alternatives! Your thoughts and opinions on the product development and marketing of these are 100% irrelevant, because they're not competing for your dollars! This product is not for you.
This product is for people who want meat, who love meat, people who wants to eat greasy, tasty, juicy, meaty burgers, and who don't want to substitute that for a "delicious" salad.
> and encourage people to eat those instead
No!
First you need to develop meat alternatives so that everyone can replace most of the meat in their diets without hassle, without sacrificing anything, without changing their diet. Then you can encourage people to branch out into other vegetarian dishes, since they're actually already practically vegetarians.
Your "they care but don't care enough to change habits" take is highly entlightening. This is going to help my perspective on a range of issues where binary thinking invites itselve. Thanks!
As an avid meat-eater (because nature almost by definition is living things eating other living things and humans evolved to be omnivorous for various nutritional reasons), my answer to the animal cruelty argument is just to buy the top-shelf, pasture-raised meats. It's better for my health and much better for the animals. Obviously I have no control over where restaurants source their food from, but I try to preference those who claim ethical/sustainable practices.
As for sustainability, the answer to that is to develop systems that price in environmental externalities. The issue isn't going to be solved through a meat boycott. Farm raised fish is also quite sustainable.
I'm personally looking forward to economically viable lab-grown meat. Once perfected it'll likely be the most sustainable option with none of the nutritional deficits and none of the ethical concerns. Plus we'll be able to engineer meat with tastes that don't exist in nature, endless variety!
> because nature almost by definition is living things eating other living things and humans evolved to be omnivorous for various nutritional reasons
This is such a non-argument, and I'm saying this as a(n occasional) meat-eater.
> nature almost by definition is living things eating other living things
The default state for most living beings is scarcity. I think we all intuitively judge the morality of people's actions depending on scarcity. If two people were on an uninhabited island with no chance to escape, and the island only produces enough food to sustain one person, then I don't think it's immoral for them to fight to the death over the scarce resources, neither of them has the duty to sacrifice their life for the other. But if the island produces enough for two people, then killing the other so you can have more food is clearly murder.
Humans evolved the ability to eat meat because it increased their chances of survival in a hostile environment with scarce resources. In this dog eat dog world, I don't think eating meat was immoral. But the scarcity that justified it has disappeared for many (but sadly not nearly all) of us.
> humans evolved to be omnivorous for various nutritional reasons
There is no evidence that vegetarian diets are less healthy than those that incorporate meat. Again, eating meat no doubt increased the chances of survival for ancient hunter-gatherers living in harsh conditions, but that's no longer our environment, so it is irrelevant.
To be clear, I'm not offended by the fact that you eat meat; I am irritated by the weak justification though, which is worse than no justification at all. Just have the honesty to admit that you are merely putting your comfort above the well-being of the animals you eat. Comfort is the only reason why healthy people eat meat.
>Humans evolved the ability to eat meat because it increased their chances of survival in a hostile environment with scarce resources.
It doesn't stop there. Humans have subsequently evolved to thrive on fatty foods. Our understanding of nutritional evolution is incredibly weak. Despite agriculture predominantly giving us access to carbohydrates, human brains are mostly fat-adapted. Many of today's health epidemics are linked to a lack of fat and an excess of carbohydrates. Try finding fatty fruits and veggies: they were incredibly scarce for most the human population until the last 100 years. Several people have noticed significant improvements going predominantly meat. There's more going on here than just the scarcity argument, the scarcity argument is a gross simplification.
>Comfort is the only reason why healthy people eat meat
No. Plenty of people are eating meat to be healthy. People are, in fact, getting frustrated by listening to the advice of the average western diet, listening to dietitians when they get fat, and unable to get in shape despite putting in an insane amount of effort listening to their dietitians putting their hormones out of whack, making them hungry and agitated 24/7, while they keep saying "just keep going". We don't process meat-based products the same way we do plant-based products.
This is not to moralize meat. Rather, this is to indicate people jump on the "meat is bad / lazy / immoral" bandwagon way too quickly, being spoonfed the common narrative without doing an ounce of research and frequently without experience. Just like the average person doesn't eat meat for any other reason than their own comfort, so does the average person stop eating meat because everyone and their mother claims eating plants will save the world. It's becoming a story of "my propaganda is better than yours".
>Many of today's health epidemics are linked to a lack of fat and an excess of carbohydrates.
I'm genuinely curious as to what you're getting at. When you say "excess of carbohydrates", are you referring specifically to processed foods or refined sugars?
>Try finding fatty fruits and veggies: they were incredibly scarce for most the human population until the last 100 years.
Maybe fatty fruits and veggies were scarce for most humans 100+ years ago, but I highly doubt nuts and seeds were. But that doesn't really matter if we're talking about what we can do today. Things like avocados, olives, coconuts, and the above-mentioned large categories of nuts and seeds, are readily available for most people making these sorts of arguments. Plus, if you're vegetarian and not vegan, then you have access to cheese, yogurt, milk, and eggs. It's easy to eat high fat and low carb while avoiding meat, so the argument for eating meat to be healthy on these grounds seems quite weak to me.
> I'm genuinely curious as to what you're getting at. When you say "excess of carbohydrates", are you referring specifically to processed foods or refined sugars?
Long story short: many diseases are insulin linked. Insulin spikes highest by repeatedly eating carbohydrates throughout the day. Fiber decreases those spikes somewhat, but still doesn't compare at all to a fat-based diet or protein-based diet. There are ways to cope with an excess in carbohydrates (heavy exercise is one, fasting is another), but there is no way to cope with a lack of fat. Additionally, mitigation strategies can cause their own problems (many joggers, especially vegetarian and vegan ones, start developing iron deficiencies). The whole "it is just processed sugar" thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
>I highly doubt nuts and seeds were.
Put in perspective: foraging for nuts and seeds is a lot more difficult and intensive than hunting a giant mammal. Plus, the former is a lot more seasonal than the latter.
>But that doesn't really matter if we're talking about what we can do today.
It does. Human evolution and mutation is slow. By looking at what our primary diet was up until recently, we can understand the macronutritional and micronutritional needs of our body and how a vegetarian/vegan diet may or may not influence that.
>Things like avocados, olives, coconuts, and the above-mentioned large categories of nuts and seeds, are readily available for most people making these sorts of arguments. Plus, if you're vegetarian and not vegan, then you have access to cheese, yogurt, milk. It's easy to eat high fat and low carb while avoiding meat, so the argument for eating meat to be healthy on these grounds seems quite weak to me.
The main thing currently under scrutiny is the bioavailability and toxins (for lack of better term) of plant-based foods compared to meat. Turns out a lot of plants don't want to be eaten, and when you can't move, you start developing ways to protect yourself without requiring locomotion. Not only are various of these toxins decreasing bioavailability (zinc is a big one, eating beans with oysters is a terrible way to decrease bioavaialability of zinc), these toxins are actively causing harm and inflammation, whereas a meat-based diet is seen as the "ultimate restriction diet". Avocados, coconuts, olives and nuts stand out here, being more fat heavy, but as most of the population does not have a history with these compared to animal products, it is difficult to say its all good. Beyond that, it is very difficult to get all your minerals and vitamins just on those alone, which isn't the case for meat and seafood, which results in either tapping into the remainder of the veggies and fruit, or tapping into animal products.
Obviously, the argument is more than macros. If macros were all that mattered, you could just stuff your face with whey protein and vegetable oil and call it a day. The argument in favor of meat is a lot more nuanced and without that nuance, will be ruthlessly picked apart by the pro-vegan gang who tend to be a lot more zealous than their carnivorous counterparts (the carnivores have nothing to lose if vegan diets prove to be better, they are already on the moral low). To explain this in its entirety would take far more than a HN comment.
What's concerning is just how much meat-eaters have to play the defense. We don't know that much about vegan and vegetarian diets compared to an ancestry and entire tribes of carnivores. We put forward theoretical models devoid of animal products, using obscure plants to fill in some deficiency, but never test whether it will work on the larger scale. The ecology argument is thrown about as if people don't understand how carbon cycles work. It's humans going vegetarian and vegan which deviates from the status quo, not the other way around. We should be questioning the long term (multi-generational) effects of it as long as we haven't put hoards of people on a vegan or vegetarian diet that didn't include some shady 10 ingredient meat-replacement containing added sugar. We should also be questioning our current understanding of the "cows bad beans good" narrative, and what truly is the cause of the problem (human greed).
Thanks for the response. I won't respond to every point because (1) that would be long and (2) I don't disagree with everything.
> Human evolution and mutation is slow. By looking at what our primary diet was up until recently, we can understand the macronutritional and micronutritional needs of our body and how a vegetarian/vegan diet may or may not influence that.
What was "our" primary diet though? Depending on where a group of humans lived, presumably the diet varied greatly. It seems to me that humans can successfully adapt to a wide variety of foods. I'm sure early humans ate meat, but vegetarianism and pescetarianism date back at least to antiquity. And just because a diet kept us alive doesn't mean it's "good" for us in the modern sense. Say, hypothetically, that a meat-heavy diet increases the risk of early death. That would be irrelevant in the context of natural selection if that age is much older than that of typical reproduction. Our "goals" are different now, too. Does a person sitting at a desk all day require the same nutritional profile as a hunter?
> The main thing currently under scrutiny is the bioavailability and toxins (for lack of better term) of plant-based foods compared to meat.
This is interesting to me and something I've been researching too. It does seem that a lot of the "toxins" can be mitigated by using very old cooking techniques: soaking beans/lentils, cooking vegetables (rather than eating raw), sprouting, fermenting. These techniques can weaken the plants' defense systems, so to speak.
> Avocados, coconuts, olives and nuts stand out here, being more fat heavy, but as most of the population does not have a history with these compared to animal products, it is difficult to say its all good. Beyond that, it is very difficult to get all your minerals and vitamins just on those alone, which isn't the case for meat and seafood, which results in either tapping into the remainder of the veggies and fruit, or tapping into animal products.
To be pedantic: meat doesn't really have a lot of vitamins, right? If you want a complete mix of vitamins and minerals, you would need to eat the kidney, liver, brain, heart, etc, which for whatever reason we don't really do anymore (in the US at least). For the average person (again in the US), this means you will need to step into non-meat sources for e.g. vitamin A or vitamin C. I only bring this up because the topic at hand is specifically about meat, not necessarily eschewing all animal products, so they are presumably allowed in this context.
Sure, you can find subsets of the population whose health depends on incorporating meat in their diet (that's what I meant with "healthy people", although I misworded it; people who need meat in their diet aren't necessarily unhealthy, their health is conditional on consuming meat). I accept that much.
This argument is not very powerful though. For one, it only justifies eating meat for those who have tried to cut meat from their diet and noticed adverse health effects (which should be safe for most people who don't already suffer from some risk factor, like anemia, to try); in my anecdotal experience a tiny minority of the people who make health-based arguments. And secondly, it only justifies the minimal meat consumption necessary to be healthy, and no more.
From a strict evidence-based medicine standpoint we don't have clear evidence for or against vegetarian diets. But if you look at elite athletes whose livelihoods depend on keeping their bodies in peak condition the vast majority consume at least some animal products. So empirically that should tell us something.
There could be a lot of reasons for that. I doubt the reason is that meat is the healthiest option for them; meat contains a lot of saturated fat, which athletes try to avoid too much of. It's more likely that meat is healthy enough for athletes who enjoy eating meat. This wouldn't mean they need meat, and they most certainly don't as there are a lot of successful vegan bodybuilders.
There is no evidence that saturated fat inhibits athletic performance. Vegan bodybuilders are a small fraction of the total, and that's just one sport. What percentage of elite athletes across all sports are vegan?
The overall portion of athletes are vegetarian or vegan is low, but the ones who are can still perform very well. This suggests that the difference is based, at least in part, on preference.
There have also been many athletes who tried vegan diets and found that their performance declined, or they had more difficulty recovering from injuries. So preference is only one factor.
After doing some more research, I've found meat isn't as cruel as most think it is, and even vegetable farming isn't as animal injury / cruelty free as people would think.
Often many, many small animals get basically wood chipped by agricultural machinery or poisoned by pest traps and pesticides. If you go by pure numbers of "non-insect brains" made to feel pain or die in horrible ways from human agricultural activity, vegetable farming would actually far outpace meat farming.
Also a lot of meat ranching can use land that is plain unusable for vegetables, but cows, chickens, sheep and pigs can use just fine. That will not go away. Also meat such as cows especially are not subject to the 'cows living in shit up to their knees' type of reality everyone thinks most cheap cow meat lives in, which is actually a small minority of badly run farms. All cow meat lives in a pasture for at least %70 of their lives. That last %30 is the difference between 'grass fed' and conventional beef.
All food has blood on its hands, and in the end, that is the way of life in human and non-human reality. I think a big part of the push to be vegetarian or vegan comes from a disconnect on how food is made. Societies used to be +%90 agricultural workers and processed their food in far more raw forms than the typical "abstract shapes of meat" that we typically deal with today, so a lot of the rhetoric did not connect, because it conflicted with their lived experience.
> my answer to the animal cruelty argument is just to buy the top-shelf, pasture-raised meats. It's better for my health and much better for the animals.
Sample size of one, but I eventually changed my habits because I care about trying to reduce unnecessary suffering.
For years I knew I was inconsistent - I thought it was wrong to eat meat, but I did so anyway because I like hamburgers and chicken (and was focusing will power on other things). The pandemic gave me the opportunity to make the change.
The impossible burger is perfect for me because it’s close enough to satisfy the fix. I hope more meat substitutes trend in this direction (or even more so with lab grown meat).
Most people believe crazy things and hold wildly inconsistent views so it’s not a surprise that people don’t change their behavior. Having consistent views that are tied to reality is hard. Changing behavior is hard too.
In the extreme cases (particularly with true unknowns) perfect consistency isn’t even necessarily achievable or desirable. That said, trying to understand the world as it truly is and be pragmatic is still good. In the animal case, I think trying to reduce unnecessary suffering is a worthwhile goal.
People's tastes are largely driven by the foods they ate when they were young, which with notable exceptions, will prominently feature meat dishes. People on sites like this are likely to underestimate this effect, we are likely to be embedded in subcultures that are unusually high in openness to experience.
All else being equal, many people prefer doing the more ethical thing (or if you want to be cynical about it, the thing that makes them feel more ethical). Many people believe that plant based meat is more ethical.
Currently, all else isn't equal. Plant-based meat is more expensive to the consumer, and most find it to be less enjoyable to eat. Recent trends have been closing those gaps, producing more enjoyable plant-based meats at high but dropping prices.
As plant-based meat's quality/price ratio improves it will be increasingly common, and will displace a large amount of meat consumption that would be difficult to displace by other vegetarian dishes.
FWIW, I enjoy eating meats, and do not feel very concerned about the moral aspects. However, I still tried some Impossible foods just because of the novelty, and found that it would be a fine substitute in many cases.
Many people who drive electric cars now do so because they are “cool.” A large part of that is thanks to Tesla, making electric cars that are comparable and maybe even simply superior to gas cars, depending on how you look at it. The hype behind impossible foods may be largely unwarranted, as great plant-based foods are already available. However, the thing that is great about impossible foods and similar ventures is that it doesn’t ask you to compromise, and it’s cool and trendy. Someone may not care about the moral side of things and yet will probably still feel enticed to try it just to see, and if it’s good enough they could legitimately switch on a whim. This is not the same as asking someone who has eaten a diet involving one thing for decades and asking them to replace it with totally different things.
Many people have more strongly held convictions about having to change their diet in ways that impact their eating experience than they have convictions against the actual concept of plant-based diets. These meat alternatives could be very useful if a plant-based diet is to be the future (perhaps alongside lab grown meats?)
> have had the conversation of the horrors of meat production many times at the dinner table with a spectrum of people, and nobody changed their habits.
You’re conclusion is faulty. There can be many reasons for these people to keep eating meet, from they don’t believe you, they don’t like your argument, they still think it worth the animals pain, they don’t think they have a choice, or they’ve always done it.
For someone to conclude from their own argument at a dinner table anything substantive is very strange.
> I have had the conversation of the horrors of meat production many times at the dinner table with a spectrum of people, and nobody changed their habits.
For what it's worth. I had a conversation at the dinner table about the ethics of eating meat with another meat eater. We both decided there and then stop, this was almost a decade ago and neither of us have eaten meat since. It does happen.
> Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the implicit message here is that people actually care about the animals and sustainability of meat farming.
Given what I see people saying and doing - in person and online - seems that too many people don't even care about other people. People don't want to raise minimum wage because a burger would cost a few cents more. I have a hard time imagining them giving up their burgers because of the animals.
I think you and OP are talking about different things.
For most products, and virtually all that aren't particularly modern, they suffer from being set up as direct replacements for meat. Take fake deli meats, for example. There are options that make a good sandwich. But they don't make a good $specific-meat sandwich. If they found a way to position themselves more in the vein of ham vs turkey vs plant-based sandwich they would do far, far better. Instead they position themselves as fake-ham or something, and then some unsuspecting person trying out plant-based alternatives goes in expecting a ham sandwich and ends up with their expectations rather violated. People don't like that, particularly with food. But they went in just expecting some kind of sandwich, I think they very well might enjoy it.
I've been vegetarian-tending-towards-vegan for over a decade and I still occasionally fall into that trap if I'm not careful.
Products like Impossible are the exception. They are so notable because they are getting into the realm where a direct comparison with meat actually works in their favor. I think that's great. I think you are right that this is the key for convincing many people to move away from meat. It's so much easier to market something as another version of meat, rather than a whole new thing. But I also think it's worth keeping in mind that they are exceptional products, and what works for them may not be the best for others.
I agree with you. I know more than one person who would turn up their nose at a 'veggie meat' sandwich, but would happily tuck in to a falafel wrap. Marketing matters!
Yes, but those people are usually already vegetarians. ”Fake meat” is meant for people who still do it meat, not for someone who has completely banished it from their lives.
That's not true. I know very few meat eaters who don't like falafel (and many of those who don't are picky eaters and hate anything that isn't mac and cheese). I get falafel and meat about equally; falafel doesn't leave me with that "I just ate 3/4 of a pound of greasy meat" feeling that shawarma can.
I will honestly say that I typically prefer vegetarian food that isn't fake meat. Indian food with paneer is really good, black bean burgers are fantastic, pad thai with tofu is really good.
I am somewhat partial to the vegetarian spiced meats, though. Vegetarian chorizo is remarkably close. I think because the spices are an overwhelming part of the flavor, all it's really missing is a little more chewiness.
>Yes, but those people are usually already vegetarians.
I realize I didn't clarify this with my original statement, but I meant 'folks I know who are avowed meat-eaters, and not vegetarians'.
To be honest, this surprised me a little, too. But I've come to realize a lot of 'meat>*' people really love the veggie dishes I share with them, as long as it's an upfront, honest vegetable dish, and not trying to pretend it's something else.
Is it? I find it hard to believe that. If that was true, the market for these products would be vanishingly small. Every potential customer would be merely in the process of transitioning out of the market.
I'm certainly a counter-example, and know a few others. Though I also do know one person that has no desire for them, but they also tend to avoid more prepared or processed foods entirely.
This. In conversations about vegetarianism, it's pretty common for people to give their distaste of fake meat as their primary reason for not reducing their meat consumption. I really wish that wasn't the default counter-argument, but there seem to be a lot of people who truly believe vegetarians need soymeat to survive.
I've noticed the vegan foods I enjoy most are the ones that aren't trying to be something else. They just use tasty vegan ingredients like potatoes or avocados. I think more people would consider reductarian diets if they were aware of this.
I agree. The marketing innovation that has made plant meat successful (at least where I am) has been marketing it to meat eaters in the meat aisle, stripping away the vegetarian identity association
Not OP, but as someone who is not vegetarian/vegan and is from a country with a cuisine that revolves heavily around meat (Mexican) I have to agree with OP.
> If you want to get people to switch to meat alternatives, you have to keep everything that's great about meat (taste, texture, proteins), while removing everything that's bad about meat (slaughter, livestock industry).
I think one thing is making sure it's great, and another thing is making sure it's the same, and you can have something that's great and heavily impacts the market without having it be the same.
Just thinking of a random example where this worked; MDF is very much not wood, but it's pretty great for most things. People still buy a lot of wooden furniture, surfaces, etc but for a lot of use-cases MDF does just fine. MDF isn't trying to have the same weight, the exact same texture, or be as solid as wood. It's another material and it's marketed as another material, not as "replacement wood" or something along those lines.
Thinking of an example where this hasn't worked; Stadia. Google is very much trying to replace consoles and is focusing on AAA games, but the thing is, as it stands today, Stadia is not a console replacement. The way google is positioning Stadia though puts it in the eyes of hardcore gamers who care about the details: the latency, the streaming resolution, etc. Perhaps if they weren't trying to sell it as your next AAA-game console, they would attract a section of the population that just wants to play games easily, and don't care so much about the specifics.
The goal here is to not fully replace the market, but shrink it.
Another point worth making is that it's hard to imagine we can reverse the trend in global warming keeping excessive consumer habits— people need to change too. Sure, electric cars will consume less CO2 and they are an easy short-term solution in a car-centric society, but cities need to be planned better so car use in general decreases. Sure, recycled plastics can reduce or plastic waste, but we shouldn't be producing so many water bottles in the first place. Plant-based "meat" are likewise a step in the right direction, but it's also the case meant consumption is just very high. Trying to offer solutions that don't tackle the underlying problem make hard to guarantee long-term sustainability.
> Trying to offer solutions that don't tackle the underlying problem make hard to guarantee long-term sustainability.
Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place. Asceticism doesn't work. Asking people to do the right thing only has a tiny marginal effect.
The only solution to get long-term sustainability is to offer people a better, greener, more sustainable alternative, that doesn't inconvenience people. To overcome the force of habit, your alternative has to be both better and cheaper if you want to see mass adoption. Otherwise you'll just get niche adoption, which is pretty much useless on the grand scale of things.
Since when was eating meat in almost every meal in the human nature? AFAIK this level of meat eating is limited a minority population in a very short period of the history of our species.
What you say might be true of the wolf nature—hence you shouldn’t feed your dog with vegetarian diet. But humans are not dogs, and only insular population of us living in harsh climates such as the arctic have historically eaten meat as our primary diet. And even then, plant based food is brought to these populations, people there very much consume it. If there is any human nature that rules our eating habits it is the fact that we are omnivores and eat what is available.
Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates”.
I doubt that hunter gatherers in temperate climate ate 100 kg of meat per year. This kind of meat consumption only existed were plant based diet wasn’t available at all. To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is around 150 grams per meal (given 14 meals per week). I would say that qualifies as meat in almost every meal.
>Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates”.
Which is almost everywhere on the planet beside tropics and subtropics before agriculture came to existence. It was natural for humans to live on a predominantly meat diet for a lot longer than it became fashionable to live from plants only.
>To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is around 150 grams per meal (given 14 meals per week). I would say that qualifies as meat in almost every meal.
The population of the USA is only 4% of world population and Americans probably eat more than 2 two meals a day. So no, on average we do not eat meat almost every meal.
Are you an expert in this field? I’m not so honestly you don’t have to know a lot to know more then me, but here are my guesses:
a) You underestimate how forested the temperate regions were before humans started significantly altering them well after the agricultural revolution.
b) You underestimate how well humans can gather and store non meat foods without agriculture. I bet an average group of humans knew where there were fruitful nut trees, know when they were ripe, know how to store the nuts, and know how to sprout and grow knew once in a favorable location. I bet roots have the same story. See you don’t need agriculture to grow things, and I bet humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years.
c) You underestimate how hard it is to hunt with stone and bone tools. Apart from fishing, game is mostly seasonal in the temperate regions, so there would always be seasons where meat was scarce. It takes a ton of effort and coordination to hunt a single animal, you are not always succesful, and when you are, then storing the meat becomes an issue. So your best bet is to share the meat with the whole group, and probably leave some for other scavengers.
As I said, I’m not an expert, but realistically I don’t see how pre neolithic humans could have eaten even close to 100 kg a meat per year.
A quote from an article[1] about the latest research about a "vegetarian gene":
"Furthermore, before the advent of farming, pre-Neolithic hunter–gatherers throughout Europe had been subsisting on animal-based diets with a substantial aquatic contribution, in contrast to the plant-heavy diets of recent European farmers."
Temperate climate means 4 distinct seasons and plants rest from autumn to spring. Which makes it impossible find and eat fruits of plants for 6 months. Sure you could store some nuts, but that will not cover you dietary needs for long.
I don’t know if upper paleolithic Europe had temperate climate. Given that there was a pretty deep ice age at the time I would definitely consider that insular population in a harsh climate. Also like I said above game is seasonal, and winter is exactly when hunting becomes easier as game is more vulnerable in the absence of foliage and takes greater risks as their own food source is scarce. If I were to guess, winter is when most pre-neolithic societies did most of their hunting in temperate regions, and consequently ate most of their meat. I would also guess that in late summer and early autumn months went by without any meat what so ever (except fish, some birds, and scavenged meat) as roots and nuts are plentiful and game is the hardest to hunt.
EDIT: I would also like to add, that the original claim was that it is in human nature to eat meat. If that were true, people wouldn’t have stopped doing it after the neolithic revolution as farming spread and plant based food became even easier. I mean we kept feeding meat to our dogs as it is definitely in the wolfs nature to eat meat.
> Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place.
I disagree on two fundamental points. Firstly, current levels of meat consumption, I'd argue, are very much not "human nature". It's more to do with advertisement, and cultural trends which are artificial. Secondly, I'd argue "human nature" has been _modified_ or _overcome_ plenty of times before.
In short-term thinking, yeah, finding a replacement is the straightforward solution. In the long term, the only certain and the most sustainable solution is to address the consumption problem.
I think it's a function of the quality of the imitation by vegetarian options. Years back I said the same think as the person you're responding to, because the "meat" was in no way a reasonable substitute. It wasn't at all similar to actual meat, so why bother calling it "meat"?
Now that they're getting close, I agree with you and it makes more sense to call it "meat" because it's very close to being indistinguishable.
I love a good hamburger or steak, but I'll happily give it up when there's something not-animal-based that's as good.
I eat meat because I like the taste, but I don't give a hoot about the slaughter/animals. I don't want a replacement for my steak that is a bad steak, and I don't want to ruin great vegetables by making them into something that is not.
Tofu and wheat gluten have been used for centuries as meat analogues in many cultures (especially those that mostly eat vegetarian). It’s not a silly concept at all, and opens up a world of delicious culinary options to those of us who don’t eat animal flesh.
I don’t think parent was ever saying that tofu was (nor should) be similar to meat in taste nor texture. That is not the point.
You can still prepare and spice tofu just like you would do with meat, and get a complete meal that replaces meat with something else that adds to the quality of the meal just like meat would, regardless of whether the substitute replicates the texture or taste at all.
That is much closer to my standpoint then. I think it’s silly to imitate meat, when there are plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes. For example tofu dishes.
How is that different from saying: "It's silly to eat Indian food [prepared by Americans] when there are plenty delicious American dishes"? No one is forced to eat fake meat, but as vegetarian who likes burgers, how am I silly for eating fake meat burgers? I also eat tofu, vegetables, Indian, Italian, and Vietnamese food, and I think variety is a nice thing to have. Silly me.
I honestly think that meat eaters are missing out when they eat these fake meat burgers (or beef burgers for that matter). You can put so many things between these buns some of these are really delicious. The variety of the veggie patties is amazing. When I order a veggie burger at a new restaurant, experiencing a new kind of patty is part of what makes burgers such a great food.
Yes, I bet meat eaters say the same about beef burgers, there is difference in texture and flavor of each patty. Difference in quality of the meat, the coarseness of the ground, etc. But knowing that, makes me thing that meat eaters don’t actually like the meat part in their diet, and trying to replicate the meat part of a beef burger when making veggie patties just seems like a lack of imagination and an unnecessary limitation.
> I honestly think that meat eaters are missing out when they eat these fake meat burgers
Have you considered the possibility that it is you who are missing out on experiences by refusing to eat these vegetarian alternatives that taste like meat?
"Oh, but real vegetarian food is so much better bla bla bla"
Ignoring your knee-jerk reaction, have you actually tried the Impossible Burger or the Beyond Meat burger?
But nobody claims the experience the of eating ultra processed fake meat is BETTER than the real thing, do they? So how could us haters be “missing out”?
Because it has the taste and texture of meat, which you don't eat. So eating these would be a way for you to experience this taste and this texture, and that should at least have some novelty value for you.
Backing up to the meta discussion, I love how these meat alternatives, and near-future things like cultured meat or synthetic milk test everyone's convictions and prejudices. Why do we eat the things we eat? Habit? Ethics? Preference? Virtue signaling? It's a good way to examine your principles.
You seem to have landed in that these meat alternatives are bad because they're "processed", and everything "processed" is bad. Alright. But would you eat clean cultured meat? Muscle tissue that has never been inside a living animal, and yet is indistinguishable from meat that's been cut out of a slaughtered animal?
And going further out, would you eat cultured human meat?
Since I eat normal meat, I’m not missing out by not eating fake meat.
I’m generally against fake and highly processed things, I don’t want them in my life, and definitely not on my plate. That would definitely include lab meat. So I’ll keep eating regular meat until the fake meat industrial complex gets it outlawed, and then I can just eat vegetarian food.
During my life as a vegetarian/vegan I regularly consume “fake meat” products because they are simple to prepare and allow me to use recipes that are not vegetarian. For example, it’s extremely hard to find a good vegetarian burger — the beyond burger was a revelation the first time I tried it. I still like burgers, even though there are many wonderful vegetarian dishes. I didn’t stop eating meat because I don’t like the taste of meat.
Imagine that many of your favourite dishes, those you grew up with, were suddenly unavailable to you because some ingredient no longer existed. If a new ingredient hit the market that was not quite the same but was a convincing substitute in taste and texture, would you consider it silly and avoid it?
Maybe in that dystopian future where bacon doesn’t exist and I get very nostalgic for the carbonara of my childhood, sure.
But that’s not quite what we’re discussing. Meat exists but some people want to go vegetarian without sacrificing anything. I suppose it’s pretty similar to the logic of people who want to lose weight without giving up sweets or soda, so they switch to aspartame versions.
> Meat exists but some people want to go vegetarian without sacrificing anything.
Yes, how dare they?!? How can you call yourself a vegetarian without sacrificing anything? If anyone could be a vegetarian, there wouldn't be any moral superiority for the real vegetarians! Oh the horror!
I’m not vegetarian and it’s not about feeling superior.
I just happen to think fake meat and fake sweeteners are some of the most absurd things in modern society. I prefer food to be natural and unprocessed.
> My point is that you shouldn’t expect the taste pr texture of meat if you’re not eating meat.
This is completely ridiculous.
From your comments, and from other obvious vegetarians/vegans in this thread, there's a weird sense of "sour grapes" combined with some sort of martyr complex.
You're angry, because you've sacrificed to be vegetarian, and now terrible horrible meat-eating people like me can just swoop in, eat stuff that tastes like meat, and be vegetarian without any sacrifice! Without any hassle! Without any virtue signaling possibilities whatsoever! THE HORROR!
Look at this subthread. It's full of people who like meat and eat meat who are singing the praises of these new meat alternatives. And then there's you, and people like you, contrarians who complain that people "shouldn't" like these meat alternatives because "we're missing out on real delicious vegetarian food".
I'm not going to stop you from eating and enjoying your little salads, so why the hell do you have an opinion on what I should and should not eat? Other than the fact that you're losing your moral superiority that you're currently enjoying?
Why else would you encourage people who like meat to eat more meat? Because you want to keep feeling superior. That's what this is really about.
I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t think it’s wrong to eat meat. I think animal welfare in meat plants is horrendous but I don’t have the slightest issue with eating game.
I’m not encouraging people to eat more meat, in fact I think people eat way more meat than is healthy or reasonable.
The thing I have against fake meat is that it’s fake. And of course that it’s ultra processed. I prefer authentic, natural things, especially food.
I've spent a fair bit of time in India, mostly with work, over the past 15 years or so.
Despite being a meat eater at home, any time I'm in India, I don't eat meat - none at all, for up to 4 weeks at a time. And I don't miss it one bit! Fact is that India veg food is much more common, but also IMO much more tasty.
> People eat meat because they like the taste and the texture
AFAIK people usually don’t like the flavor nor texture of meat. If that was the case, you would see more people boiling the meat and not spice it. But AFAIK meat eaters tend to spice their meat a lot, to an extent where there it is the spice is the primary taste. They then oil the meat and prefer it fried or grilled which alters the texture as well.
With plant based food you have all these options and more.
> AFAIK people usually don’t like the flavor nor texture of meat. If that was the case, you would see more people boiling the meat and not spice it.
If that was true, steaks would not be a thing. A good steak has some coarse salt and pepper for seasoning, but not much else.
Boiling meat is pretty much the worst way to prepare any cut of meat, and will ensure that it has a tough and unpleasant texture, strip all of the fats making it dry, and overall ruin a perfectly good cut of meat.
> But AFAIK meat eaters tend to spice their meat a lot, to an extent where there it is the spice is the primary taste.
That's just like saying "if people liked the taste of vegetables they wouldn't put salt or pepper on them."
Most people wouldn't eat plain tofu either, but it doesn't mean that it's bad, just means that it needs to be prepared as part of a dish, just like any other ingredient.
> Boiling meat is pretty much the worst way to prepare any cut of meat, and will ensure that it has a tough and unpleasant texture, strip all of the fats making it dry, and overall ruin a perfectly good cut of meat.
However, sous vide is an absolutely marvelous way to prepare meat. It keeps it tender and juicy and then you can just sear it in a skillet or with a kitchen torch to get that nice Maillard reaction taste.
That it is. It's also pretty awesome with salmon [0], 43°C for an hour then take it out, pat the skin dry, and crisp the skin in a cast iron skillet with some oil, serve immediately. Crispy skin and buttery soft salmon makes for a great texture contrast and tastes absolutely delicious.
> Boiling meat is pretty much the worst way to prepare any cut of meat
Pulled chicken and pork would like to have a word. The trick is to let the meat cool down in the water after boiling so that it reabsorbs the fluid it lost. You get wonderfully tender and juicy pulled meat, plus a good stock. And the world of braising is a deep and delicious one. Not to mention meat-based stews, soups, and chowders. I’d suggest that if you hate meat that’s been boiled, it’s been from someone who doesn’t know how to do it. Which I mean not as a dig, but as a way of saying that there’s a lot of good cooking out there waiting to be discovered!
You are just reiterating my point exactly. People like to alter the taste and texture of the food we eat. We do it with our plant based food, and—to a much greater extent—we do it to our meat based food.
So what you mean is that people don't like the taste and texture of raw meat, and they're only pretending to like it because it's cooked? If you like steak cooked with some salt on it, that doesn't mean that you don't like steak.
I honestly don't get the point you're even trying to make here... because people do less to prepare vegetables they're somehow superior?
No, sorry I must not have made my point clear enough (this is what I get for trying to be snarky):
GP is saying that people like the taste and texture of meat. I’m saying that they only do after they have altered the taste and the texture of if. My point is that there is nothing inherent about meat that people like.
This is relevant to OP as the above claim is that there is no need to replicate the texture and taste of meat as you you have infinitely many ways to structure the taste and structure of plant based food, including ways that are superior in both taste and texture to how people prepare meat.
> GP is saying that people like the taste and texture of meat.
Why are you interpreting what I wrote as if I claimed that people like the taste and texture of *raw* meat? That's probably the most uncharitable possible interpretation of my argument. Stop being ridiculous.
> there is no need to replicate the texture and taste of meat as you have infinitely many ways to structure the taste and structure of plant based food, including ways that are superior in both taste and texture to how people prepare meat.
This is so absurd I don't even know where to start.
The whole point of the article and the plant-based meat alternatives it talks about is that finally there's something that's close enough to ground beef in taste and texture that it can be substituted, but it still needs to come down in price to be a viable everyday alternative. Every alternative that came before simply wasn't good enough, and only really appealed to people who were already vegetarian. And the success of Beyond and Impossible shows that there is clearly a market for products that replicate meat, because a lot of people want to buy stuff that tastes like meat.
When it comes to actual beef, there's absolutely nothing like it yet, in neither taste nor texture, and texture is the part that is hardest to get right. If there was something even remotely comparable, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because everyone would already be happily eating that alternative.
I'm sure you're happy eating your little salads, thinking they're superior to every other dish in existence. But you clearly don't understand why people like meat, and what they like about it, which is why you appear bewildered by these products and claim that there is "no need" for them.
These products will be a cornerstone of future environmental policy and ensure we can meet our sustainability goals for the entire planet.
> Why are you interpreting what I wrote as if I claimed that people like the taste and texture of raw meat? That's probably the most uncharitable possible interpretation of my argument. Stop being ridiculous.
Sorry, you—and GPs—are putting words in my mouth. I never stated such a thing. People think they like meat, but they don’t. They only like meat after the taste and texture has been altered. Even then they probably mostly like it from force of habit.
> When it comes to actual beef, there's absolutely nothing like it yet, in neither taste nor texture, and texture is the part that is hardest to get right
This is actually the point of the debate, and it is highly opinionated so I don’t think we can see each others point of view here. But in Europe there is a trademark soy based alternative called Oumph! which is not trying to replicate meat in any way, but it is simply delicious. In my opinion the impossible meat we have here in America is simply disgusting next to it. There are so many ways to make good food with plant based food and trying to mimic one type of food that people only like after it has been prepared and spiced, just seems a little short sighted.
> My point is that there is nothing inherent about meat that people like.
There is actually, otherwise people wouldn't try to make a plant based version of it. It's savory (as in umami), has a higher fat content than plants, and also can have a variety of textures depending on the cut and cooking method, among other things.
Steak tartare is delicious, and it's only cooked for the bare minimum to reduce the risk of food born illness. It turns out that raw meat is a delicacy. Also there's this thing called sashimi you may have heard of.
> We do it with our plant based food, and—to a much greater extent—we do it to our meat based food.
I'd disagree with that, I don't think plant based foods are seasoned or prepared that differently. Maybe you're thinking of barbecue where meat can be rubbed, smoked, then slathered in barbecue sauce, but most people don't eat that on a daily basis. Besides, it's not as if vegetarian and vegan dishes don't have any spices, a curry or a chili will have just as many spices as a rack of ribs or a brisket, if not more.
A plant based burger is prepped just as a meat based one, fried chicken isn't that far removed from tempura vegetables, cream of celery isn't that different from cream of chicken, and so on. Honestly, I can't think of a plant based dish that wouldn't have a meat based equivalent, other than salad.
> Also, salt is a very powerful spice.
Depends on how you want to look at it. It's not really a spice in the sense that it's not aromatic or pungent, it's in the category of ingredients that enhance taste, like monosodium glutamate.
In short: There is nothing inherent about meat that people like. People only like meat after they have altered the taste and texture of it. People can do the same (and more) with plant based food. In conclusion: Striving for the taste and texture of meat in particular is a poor goal for plant based food, as superior options exist.
Even if you only count the taste of a spiced meat, it’s still something you can’t get with vegetarian food. The taste and texture of meat, spiced or not, is something you can’t (so far) achieve with plant-based alternatives.
This is such a silly subject, I wonder what I said in the above comment that started this. I can just as easily say that it is completely impossible to recreate the experience of chocolate brownie with meat.
But that is not the point. I bet you only love seared medium rare centercut piece of beef tenderloin because you have learned to appreciate it. I on the other hand haven’t. The mere thought of eating beef gives bad taste in my mouth.
I bet there are million things that exists that you could learn to love even more then seared medium rare centercut beef tenderloin and I bet more then 95% of these are plant or mushroom based. Things like seared medium rare centercut matsutake mushrooms, or lightly baked eggplant paste, or raw kelp, or whatever.
> I wonder what I said in the above comment that started this.
You don't like meat, eating meat disgusts you, you don't understand how people can like meat, and yet you butted into this discussion with your completely unfounded opinion on whether or not other people actually like meat or not.
You also seem to think that people liking cooked meat somehow means they actually don't like meat, as if liking raw meat is the only thing that counts, for some weird made-up reason?
Are you so bad at understanding other people that you can't fathom that they actually, genuinely, like things you don't like?
...and to tie this back to the article we're discussing: If you don't eat meat or don't like meat, then Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are not products for you! You are not the target group! And that also means that the marketing of those products won't be appealing to you. That's fine! They're not trying to get you as a customer anyway! They're trying to get me as a customer!
> I bet you only love seared medium rare centercut piece of beef tenderloin because you have learned to appreciate it.
Nope, it's just fantastic, no taste acquiring needed.
I am trying to debunk the idea that “[p]eople eat meat because they like the taste and the texture” which you commented after a parent said that “calling plant-based things "meat" [is] a terrible idea”. To quite:
> We can have all kinds of flavors for these products, instead of "meat" flavor, not having to "live up to" the meat taste, and mouth feel. We can live up to great flavors vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
You started this debate by stating as a matter of fact that people “like the taste and the texture [of meat]”. I am trying—albeit really poorly—to say that that simply isn’t true. My choice of attack was perhaps poor, since I cannot seem to get my point across, but I chose to use that fact the people alter the both the taste and texture of meat a lot before they consume it. And for some reason people seem to think what I mean here is that they shouldn’t. As if I’m trying to invoke a No True Scotsman in favor raw meat.
> If you don't eat meat or don't like meat, then Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are not products for you!
Sure, they are not. But I really doubt that the people who these are for like it because of the meat part. I honestly don’t know why they like it (I bet there are a million reasons), but I doubt that more than a few of these is because it reminds of meat actually. Because—as I’m trying (poorly) to convey—there is nothing inherent about the meat part they like.
I won’t be eating the Beyond or Impossible products because, honestly, they suck compared to the alternatives. Although I haven’t found anything that comes close to a good Oumph! here in America (if this is this how a meat eater feels when they can’t access meat, then I honestly don’t see the big deal here, just eat something else).
> You started this debate by stating as a matter of fact that people “like the taste and the texture [of meat]”. I am trying—albeit really poorly—to say that that simply isn’t true.
The popularity of these products, compared to the multitudes of veggie patties that came before, proves you wrong.
The market for these meat-tasting meat-textured vegetarian alternatives is much bigger than the market for veggie-tasting bean patties, because there are a lot more people who like the taste and texture of meat than people who like the taste and texture of bean patties.
If it were not so, these new products would have failed as horribly as the ones that came before. But they're not, because the closer they get to the taste and texture of meat, the more popular they become! Why? Because people like the taste and texture of meat!
I understand that you are sad and angry and upset that people like the wrong food, and that people should like the right food, just like you do! But you're in the minority opinion on this one, so suck it up, buttercup.
> I won’t be eating the Beyond or Impossible products because, honestly, they suck compared to the alternatives.
The one thing that comes through in this discussion, which I also laid out in another subtree, is your intense food snobbery.
These new meat alternatives technically make people vegetarian, but they're doing it "wrong", so they're not "real" vegetarians, they're not yet enlightened to the glorious "infinite" tastes and textures of real vegetarian food. So if these horrible lowbrow troglodytes could just go back to eating real dead cow meat, people like you can go back to feeling smug and morally superior again, and then everything is right in the world and you don't have to descend from your ivory tower to scold the masses again.
Not completely wrong, You mentioned earlier attemps failing and as a person who opened their mind and wallet, I ate at a vegan restaurant in the 90s and can say it ruined tofu and taro root for me.
Also the livestock industry is not all bad, many industrial livestock operations could be considered "bad" but there are still ethical people that raise animals for food just like I'm sure there are unethical vegans out there...some sell drugs. Some commit crime. Some are rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
I started trying to google for research on this, but didn't find much.
But I'm pretty sure you're wrong -- I doubt that these companies would be selling these premium meat-replacement products with the word meat if they didn't have lots of market research on it.
It tells you what you can use the things for -- the impossible and beyond products can be used to replace ground beef in pretty much any recipe, and will do the job. People can use it immediately with the recipes and cooking techniques they are familiar with, it makes the product comfortable and familiar instead of a new thing that requires them to adjust their palettes and learn new cooking techniques.
I think you're right that someone who has committed to a meat-free diet doesn't want or need the label meat. (but they'll buy the stuff anyway if they like it and can afford it, they are kind of a captive market). But when you say "meat consumption reduction" -- if every meat eater replaces say 20% of their meat consumption with this stuff, it would be a gigantic reduction in animals killed (for those who care about that). Assuming there is less greenhouse gas and other ecological damage from these meat replacements, a gigantic reduction in that too.
I dont think you can lump together committed vegetarians with ominivores who may replace a portion of their consumption with these products. Perhaps an ever-increasing portion, perhaps eventually they will become vegetarians. But calling the non-animal-based stuff "meat" is squarely aimed at current omnivores -- and it seems hard to argue that it won't work when it is literally working, as the OP outlines in talking about market share and grocery space. Burger king is selling impossible burgers because they can sell them as burgers; and if they tried instead introducing some new product that isn't meant to resemble a beef burger but is just some kind of "vegetarian food", I guarantee it would sell less not more.
The place you’re right is in the “slab of meat” category: the only thing that’ll replace steak is lab-grown meat, and then only partially. And I agree that, eg bean burgers do well to market themselves as different. It’s a legit point.
But this new fake meat stuff reduced my meat intake significantly. It’s is FANTASTIC for replacing low-quality meat in a lot of cases. I have no need for ground beef/turkey/pork if I have beyond meat ground “beef” in a lot of cases. It’s a straight substitute, and I wouldn’t have thought about it that way if it was posed more narrowly.
I remember trying a Beyond Burger for the first time.
Overall impression was that had some fastfood chains replaced their patties with this, not only nobody would notice that what they're eating isn't actually meat, but also they would be happy with how the quality improved.
There's of course the question of price, but I'm sure with adequate scale it can be brought down.
I’m not sure “nobody” would notice. I’ve had impossible meat burger and beyond meat burger. The beyond meat was disgusting. It wasn’t even slightly convincing. Impossible was more convincing texture wise but taste wise it makes you look at what you’re eating cos it’s like “huh it feels like meat but doesn’t taste like it...”
In my experience, how they're prepared matters a lot. Strangely, I think Impossible Burgers (the ones I'm more familiar with) do worse when they're overcooked than actual meat does. The very first Impossible Burger I ever had was thick and cooked medium-rare, and it was terrific, pink on the inside and genuinely juicy. If I didn't know it was plant-based meat, I wouldn't have been able to tell you; it didn't taste quite like beef, but I might have guessed there was a little sausage or something else mixed in there. When I've had Impossible Burgers cooked fully through so they're more medium-well or above, though, the pea/grain flavor starts amping up quickly.
Yeah, the first Impossible Burger I had was prepared extremely well, and it was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. Not true for many other times I’ve had it.
a: FOOD especially : solid food as distinguished from drink
b: the edible part of something as distinguished from its covering (such as a husk or shell)
The same as with milk. Nobody had problems with coconut milk until dairy lobby started fearing plant milk competition. And when one buys oat yogurt they know exactly what they'll get and what to compare it with. Or do you think fat free or lactose free cow milk yogurt shouldn't be called as such, since it's its own thing?
How we name things is important and naming things by their appearance and function is completely fine and useful and has been done since ever. Things like turkey ham or turkey bacon aren't new inventions.
This is THE original definition. Language later evolved and people started using the word meat to mostly mean animal flash. But that's just proof that language evolves over time and now it's evolving again to include broader range of food.
But in any case, I'm sure you've heard of meat of a fruit or nut.
Yes I have, but it's normally obvious from the context that a fruit or nut is being referred to, usually by qualifing the workd with either 'fruit' or 'nut', or the person holding either.
If someone asked me to buy some meat and I returned with a few apples I'd receive a Merriam-Webster dictionary to the head!
I really think that in general calling plant-based things "meat", a terrible idea.
The US meat industry is fighting that battle.[1] So far, they're not winning. In the EU, dirt farmers have been able to prevent the use of the term "organic" for hydroponic farms, though.
We can live up to great flavors vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
There's a bright future ahead for new classes of junk foods. Plant-based bacon flavored chips, coming soon to a convenience store near you.
> Plant-based bacon flavored chips, coming soon to a convenience store near you.
I'm probably misunderstanding something, but my potato chips have hopefully always been plant-based (even if bacon-flavored - no idea if that requires animal ingredients)?
I agree. Back when I was young, my mom was talking to a friend about food and tofu came up. They had never heard of it and asked what it was like. My mom said it was kinda like cheese. Fast forward to the next time the friend was over, and they related that they had tried buying some tofu and hated it. Why? Because they figured to try to use it like they use cheese, and tried to put slices of tofu in a sandwich...
Can you imagine trying to market tofu as a cottage cheese alternative? In hindsight, it makes way more sense to market tofu as its own thing, and there's a lot of dishes that only work with tofu.
After I got married, my chinese wife related some of her experience with food growing up. In China, they have these veggie cakes that are somewhat similar in texture and seasoning to meatballs, but no one was ever under any impression that they were anything but veggie cakes. They are not marketed as meatballs, nobody thinks of them as meatballs, and yet they are still great.
This idea of trying to market veggie patties as something they are not is very puzzling. It's also a bit sad that it feels like BigFood is trying to tell westerners that they shouldn't get creative with culinary. "Burgers are all you need" is what the messaging sounds like.
My disagreement with your comment is based on the words “veggie patties”, which I don’t think really capture what’s going on with “fake meat”. These are not boca burgers, mushroom burgers, or black bean burger (which I eat a lot of), but something that actually (afaict) tastes like meat.
I think there's definitely a gradient in terms of how "meat"-like veggie patties can be. What I take issue with is that instead of offering products for what they are and letting people build their culture around them, it feels like the food industry is essentially operating in tunnel-vision mode and perpetuating what IMHO is a pretty mediocre culinary culture.
So while you may get spicy veggie cake hotpots elsewhere in the world, in the US you get... air quotes burgers? To really understand what I mean, it would likely be eye opening to see what american fast food chains look like in Asia: they have an insane amount of variety that makes their counterparts in the US look like bad jokes. It took ages for McD to wake up to breakfast culture, and likewise for Lays to pick up on mexicans' taste for spicy snacks and now these are huge segments for them. I'm still dumbfounded that food company execs don't see the lost opportunity of not introducing more variety rather than trying to make everything conform to pre-establish molds.
I sympathize with your viewpoint, having experienced McDonald's in India. My guess is that it doesn't pay to experiment and build a food culture - all the big companies can do is wait for a local success and then try to import it.
Food tastes vary a lot from person and place, so I do think it's very risky. To give you a successful example, poke bowls became popular in the urban US in the early 2010s, and reached my college town around 2015 or so? But my guess is that the locals don't eat there much, just the students. I think it's because people are less adventurous in aggregate than you might think, and the economics don't work out.
See McDonald's international menu, which is in my opinion kind of terrible. There must be something holding them back.
Yeah, the point about local tastes is very true. But consider delivery food: pizza and chinese are both very popular in the US, not because they're authentic or even good, but because some companies figured out a way to market themselves effectively. So, while tastes might not change overnight, it's certainly possible to create culture w/ clever marketing and pricing. That might potentially be a better bet for a food industry upstart than trying to negotiate w/ big chains and end up getting shut out because "economies of scale didn't pan out".
Even without creating culture, I think there are food items that big food companies could conceivably offer in a market like the US and still be relatively well accepted: chicken pot pie, pastas/lasagnas, crepes, fish and chips, are all things that americans are warm to and don't necessarily involve a huge slab of red meat as the core of the dish. One of those can even be made in a McD restaurant with existing ingredients today.
It's a weird meat taste, though, in this uncanny valley of meat like flavor. Something is a bit off about the impossible burger and others, and it tastes like they tried to hide it with grease. Cooking this sort of fake meat makes it evident why that is. You won't see high amounts of grease on the box, but you need it to cook, and fake meat absorbs grease like a god damned sponge. I have to use a massive amount of olive oil to brown fake ground meat. And it makes sense because there is nothing in there to render out, so stuff has to work its way in instead like osmosis.
If it’s a patty made with black beans then you will see descriptions such as plant based patty but if it’s a beyond burger then you’ll see descriptions like plant based meat; see if they are trying to make it look like meat and taste like meat then the description is applicable.
A common stigma with vegan or vegetarian diets is that of the food not being as good or limited and having something that compares to meat is a plus because it brings light to the endless possibilities in food and texture that a vegan diet without animal meat really has...
not only this, but to turn plants into "meat" you end up with horrible processed vegetables with added oils, sugars and unnatural flavourings. most of which are then breadcrumbed in bleached flour and deep fried. by this point, the thing that might once have been a plant is now as bad as meat, if not worse, and resembles a dog turd in taste and health benefits
People looking for direct meat replacements arent always doing it to be healthier though, so they might be okay with it being just as unhealthy as meat.
Few people completely stop eating meat for health reasons these days. Even reducing red meat consumption is no longer considered particularly important for your health. It's almost always about the environmental and/or ethical issues surrounding the production of meat.
I love the taste of meat, so even though I want to reduce my carbon footprint I also want to keep eating burgers. Impossible burgers and other highly processed foods give me the best balance of those two competing desires.
I think that varies from person to person. People from largely vegetarian cultures probably don’t crave vegetarian hamburgers.
And not all people from meat cultures do either. When I was vegetarian for a few years I simply ate vegetarian dishes. It probably depends on why you became vegetarian in the first place.
I do think veggie burgers are kind of silly, but this is much sillier.
It’s fake, that’s what’s silly. A piece of pretend meat. And it’s especially silly to contort yourself to make a fake hamburger when you can just have a real arrabbiata. Or a delicious margherita.
Going to figure if the EU track record with soy/almond and other "milks" I would expect a challenge to force the issue there. [0]. However as you note, would it be a bad thing if they could not or would not reference it as meat?
I think the main reason for assigning the name to these plant based substitutes is to give the public a better understand of it uses and that its a valid substitute. To me, both meat and milk are generic names and its just a matter of time before expanding the definition becomes a non issue
If it says plant-based meat, I am going to try it since it aims to simulate a taste/texture I know I like. If it says "vegetarian" I assume it will taste bad, because historically that has been the case.
That's an anecdote, but I don't think I am an edge case, many people have tried an Impossible Burger who had little to no interest in trying a vegetarian burger.
Some of my favorite food is vegetarian. None of it is in burger form though: paneer curry, falafel, tofu, beans, etc. I think this imitating meat thing kinda swings and whiffs; they could have gone down any delicious not meat tasting route and put it into easy to prepare burger form and ground chuck, but opted to just make something vaguely reminiscent of meat instead.
I mean, why isn't there any falafel fast food (outside the guys selling out of carts in front of bars), just a crispy delicious falafel patty on a burger bun and fixings? Some of the most delicious vegetarian food there is stays siloed into ethnic restaurants that the median American either lacks access to get it or interest to try it.
Funny that we have to resort to baiting and switching your big mac instead to get some to try vegetarian food.
The reason that I will be buying plant-based meat things is because they smell, look, and taste like meat.
>We can live up to great flavors vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
But that's a whole thing altogether. That's like completely missing the point. You aren't going to get meat eaters to switch to plant-based meat patties if they taste like vegetables or fruits.
It seems like an easy, quick win for people who aren't strongly inclined to fully transition to a vegetarian diet. I've replaced ground beef with vegan meat crumbles in all my recipes, and it _just works_. I brown them at a little lower temperature, I pay a little more for the crumbles, and otherwise I can completely replace that portion of my meat consumption with other materials.
Vegetarian patties, mushroom-based recipes, etc can be good and stand up on their own without comparing them to meat, but meat substitutes are good too.
As someone who got forced into a vegan diet for health reasons, I really appreciate fake meat and I'm stoked on fake hamburgers and hotdogs and whatever. They famously have a reputation for mystery ingredients anyway. Nobody gives a fuck.
>If we could be honest and declare them what they are, plant-based patties
The problem, really, is to increase the textural variety of plant-based proteins. Currently you have bean products on a spectrum from soft tofu to faux-chorizo, which taste essentially like beans at varying levels of chewiness. (Generally, the two ends of this spectrum are my favorites.) The interest in meats depends at least somewhat on there being a variety of textures (fish, chicken, pulled pork, ground beef); producing just one texture only gets you so far.
A reasonably cheap plant-based mimic of bone broth, Greek yogurt, egg white (protein-based), or parmesan cheese could probably have as much impact as a single meat substiute. A few of these have been made with starches (aquafaba for eggs; various gums for yogurt), but not proteins.
Agree. I have never had beef or any meat egg in my life. My coworker, american, suggested me that the new restaurant in town as Almost Meat burger, made of soy, but texture/taste almost like beef.
I love soy, tofu, cheese, but I do not want to taste or feel the texture of any meat. So I don't think I will ever be eating anything which resembles meat, taste/content/texture wise.
I used to say this. My experience of substitute meat was basically "What the, why does this cafeteria burger taste like garbage? Dammit, I grabbed the fake tofu one by accident.". The key recent difference, for me, is that this experience doesn't happen with the new veggie burgers (like the beyond burger). They just taste like a decent burger. You can prepare them in the same way as a meat burger. You can store them in the same was as a meat burger. They are a decent burger substitute.
Well, the term "meat" is what clicks and pull most of the customers towards these products. I would say the marketing people have done a good job keeping that name.
On the other hand, however, I think that keeping things like "chicken", "beef", etc in the names is what is confusing and misleading. I'm a vegetarian but everytime I pickup plant meat and see the words "chicken", etc. on the labels, I freak out.
As a meat eater, these recreations are a joke. They can just about compete with chicken nuggets. I don’t like nuggets. So I’ve come to regard them as inedible. Same goes for vegan “cheese”. Bleurgh.
And the thing is, I love falafel. There’s bound to be plenty more plant-based patty things. Veggie dishes that don’t pretend to be something they’re not are delicious. Give me baked onions, baba ghanoush, and celery all day.
It could be. I eat meat, and my guess is that manufacturers label things as "meat", "milk", and so on, is to imply they can be used as replacements for those in certain circumstances.
I can also see why some people wouldn't like them. Take almond milk. To me, it's pretty good as a milk replacement in most cereal, but there are some where it kinda tastes off and dairy milk tastes great. I imagine veggie meat is similar.
Also a meat eater, and the impossible burger is great - certainly way better than many cheap meat burgers I've eaten. Not as good as a premium or homemade burger though, I agree.
However, it's early days. These products have only just started to be made in the last couple of years. It's hardly surprising they are not yet perfect.
Agreed. I described benevolent bacon to someone as “you’re not going to eat it and think “oh wow I just ate bacon” but you will think “oh wow who needs bacon?””
That's one of my pet peeves. I wish I could find good vegetarian restaurants that don't use any of the plant based meat ersatz. There's so much that can be done with vegetarian food, fake meat limits the creativity and is a lazy way to cooking. It leads to a rise of restaurants making mediocre food using plant based fake meat that is a pale comparison to the original.
So far my favorite restaurant experience ever was going to Fu He Hui in Shanghai. It's a michelin star vegetarian restaurant, there was no fake meat, but it was extremely flavorful and I keep wishing I could go back.
the best veggie burgers are the ones that don't try to imitate meat. my local burger place does a falafel burger that i'd honestly take over beef pretty much any day of the week.
Impossible is great in burgers, pretty much can’t tell a difference. Beyond I don’t like as much, something about it being a bit soft and veggie tasting
I don't get this at all. Why? So long as it's labeled appropriately (ingredients, possibly some disclaimer if required but I think that would be absurd) why not call it whatever we want? Meat is already a somewhat ambiguous term in English, so giving it legal protection seems odd to me.
Personally I think we shouldn't sell juice that's from concentrate as 100% juice, but I can easily find out by reading the ingredients so I don't care. And for those who don't already specifically buy juice that isn't from concentrate, enjoy discovering that almost all juice is from concentrate (and hopefully realize how much better it tastes when it's not). It's like ice cream that's been melted and refrozen. It may have the same ingredients but it doesn't have the same taste.
Juice from concentrate is still the juice of its original source - no one is taking the juice of an orange and calling it apple juice. The water has been removed somewhat for ease of storage and packaging and probably also as a side-effect of pasteurization.
While we do informally refer to the edible portion of certain vegetables as meat, that is absolutely not the same thing as meat from animal sources and I doubt there are few who would confuse that in an informal setting.
But do the plant-based meat replacements contain enough material from those same “meaty” vegetable sources to justify calling them meat more formally in the same manner that we would call animal protein meat?
Given that food is one of the things we have to have to survive, along with air and water, it seems disingenuous to argue that manufacturers and marketers should be able to so blatantly lie about the source materials of that food. Using a formal term, other than meat, would help to reduce confusion about the source material and set it apart from animal proteins, allowing the consumer to make a more informed choice.
From what I’ve read, plant-based meat isn’t much healthier than normal meat, it’s benefits are primarily environmental and ethical. True plant-based food should have a health benefit at least, especially over meat.
Almond and Oat “milk” industry would disagree with you. They completely disrupted the milk industry by getting away with being a “milk” even though they are not.
I think if Fake meats aren’t classified as meat they wont get the mind share required to shift people’s habits.
First, I think that the right choice is to pick the right protein for the job, and not choose wheat and soy because of price. Mung beans, for example, are expensive because people aren't growing them. If quantity demanded grows, so will supply and supply chains, which will lower the price. It is possible that mung beans (as an example) are marginally more expensive to grow for some reason other than scale, but I would be surprised.
Second, I think they are getting cause and effect mixed up. They are saying to go downmarket because it will be cheaper, but it is much harder to beat Tyson at its own game with chicken nuggets than it is to provide a product at a higher perceived quality, then use profits to provide scale to go downmarket.
Plant-based versions already suffer from a perception of lower quality - it makes sense to compete on taste before cost because failing at both will never scale.
The thing that I found incredibly strange about this analysis is that it is saying how older plant-based products from Morningstar and Gardein show it can be done cheaper.
What??? I don't even consider those older veggie products in the same category as Impossible and Beyond, mainly because I think they taste like shit. Well, not shit exactly, but for me an Impossible Burger can completely satiate my hunger for meat. Morningstar-type burgers do absolutely none of that for me.
100 percent agree. I'm almost entirely vegetarian but would occasionally allow myself a burger as a treat as it is one of my favorite meals when I have a real hankering. A Beyond or Impossible patty now completely satisfied that craving. They really have done a great job of it. Note I am not saying they are indistinguishable from real beef, but they are meaty enough in a way that scratches the itch which previous products never did.
Morningstar is pretty good with their sausage patties and hot dogs. Some of the best in those categories.
The gap between the 1.0 veggie meats and the current ones ( especially impossible) is insane though. Juiciness and flavor are completely on a different level. I love that it doesn’t feel like eating a fake burger to somewhat satisfy my craving anymore, but like I ate a burger.
I can't get over the oilyness. These things are like sponges for whatever they are cooked in. I wish they cooked more like a falafel patty, where the outside forms a crust and acts as a grease barrier for the inside.
> Chickens are very good reactors for turning carbohydrates into protein.
The remnant wiring from my chemistry and biology classes tells me this is impossible. Did a little digging and no animal seems capable of this feat.[1] Chickens are fed a mix of cheap grains, like wheat and corn that are ~16% protein.[2] What they are is efficient at turning this protein into body mass/eggs.
In the UK a popular plant based "meat" is Quorn. I believe that is grown by an organism that is fed glucose. The glucose is predigested maize starch. So perhaps not a single organism but two to make it.
I'm not sure I agree with your wording, ie use "glucose energy to turn nitrogen into protein". Proteins are made up of amino acids which are made from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The glucose not only provides energy to the process but also carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. In fact, this is a very common process in plants.
Note: The comment I originally responded to appears to have changed their wording from "living organism" to animal. Although curiously this might not be correct either. For example, humans synthesize some “nonessential amino acids” from glucose (eg glucose → pyruvate → alanine). It's possible similar amino acid pathways can be combined into a protein completely synthesized by the human body. It also seems very likely that this happens in other animals.
>The protein yield per acre for soybeans vs mung beans is 6x.
While this is probably not too unfair for mung vs. soy, it's important to remember that yield per acre can't always be compared directly across crops that grow in different climates. Tropical climates can average well over 50" of rain per year while cold climates are wet if they hit 25", and the conservation of mass already affects cold-climate growth before taking into account any other factors.
The optimal crop certainly depends on weather. In northern Brazil they double crop corn for insane yields of 22M calories per acre. In Wisconsin they grow wheat for 4m calories per acre. Farmers in the Midwest split between soybean (oil/protein 6m calories per acre) and corn (carbs 11m calories per acre).
Optimizing yield per acre, adjusting for the value of oil/protein/carbs and weather is the best explanation for the current state of what gets planted.
If you have a desert with access to cheap labor, water, and transportation, then the best thing to do is sell organic strawberries to rich people. Rich people don’t like spots on their fruit.
I am a believer that the invisible hand is what drives farm decisions. As soon as someone invents a robot that can pick blueberries and deliver them to a store, I’ll never eat another banana.
Another factor is the amount of protein that each contains: Google says soy beans are 36g per 100g, whereas it's 24g for mung beans, so you'd need less quantity of soy to yield a given amount of protein.
As a separate comment: wow, I had no idea mung beans contained that much protein!
Is that because soy has been engineered that way and mung beans have not? I pose the question because I remember my grand uncle who has been a soy farmer his whole life telling me that when they switched to Monsanto seeds they got some huge multiple of crop yield, 3x? 4x? I can’t remember the exact multiple I just remember it seeming like a lot.
Generally when people refer to Monsanto seeds, they mean Roundup ready soy. The glyphosate resistant gene actually reduces yield by 5%. The upside is you either have huge labor savings from not having to deal with weeds manually, or you get yield increases compared to co-cropping with weeds.
True, it's done great things for EVs. It has yet to turn that into a business that's more than nominally profitable, so you should be cautious in using its playbook.
> [Tesla] has yet to turn that into a business that's more than nominally profitable, so you should be cautious in using its playbook.
And all their profits come from selling carbon credits to competitors, not from selling cars. Not to mention non-refundable presales for FSD functionality.
That's not to say Tesla shouldn't be doing those things. They are trying to run a company after all. But it's important to remember that when judging them on the viability of their business and how profitable it is. One of my favorite automobile companies, Porsche, has a very long complicated history with more than one moment of nearly going bankrupt, and their greatest savior was the VW squeeze so I'm not necessarily opposed to this sort of thing.
Decent article but misses a bunch. Those cheap staple crops are only cheap because they are massively subsidized, and also grown as huge, environmentally damaging monocrops. So while yes, it may be cheaper to use corn, it’s only really solving the ethical problems of meat by hedging on the environmental axis.
In general, it seems there needs to be something deeper done. Something is deeply wrong when cutting out the inefficient middle-man (the animal that converts plants to meat) somehow ends up with a product that’s MORE expensive.
This is often repeated nonsense. The reason corn is a popular crop is because it yields the most calories per acre of any crop. Places without crop subsidies grow lots of corn. See Argentina, Brazil, Africa, etc.
It really shouldn't be called "meat". It should be called plant-based protein or meat-substitute. The definition of "meat" shouldn't change because you press some soy to look like a chicken leg.
To be honest, this sounds like the same controversy as people complaining about almond "milk". I just don't see a lot of evidence that people are regularly accidentally buying vegan food.
Meat has been used to refer to non-animal products for a long time, particularly around nuts. I don't think that the definition has changed as much as people are using a commonly understood term to refer to a category of food that's all used in similar situations and for similar purposes.
In my experience I think so, as I wrote on this thread.
I work with some inner city folk and yes, they are convinced it is meat, just really bad meat. As with almond milk, they think it is milk with almond added to it (even when I pull out the container from the fridge and show the ingredient list).
I don't really understand this. I've never seen a package of plant-based meat and found myself confused, much in the same way I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy. What's the concern here?
I don’t know about the meat issue, but I’ve seen women in mother’s groups ask “what kind of milk” people were going to be giving their babies after they were done giving breast milk or formula. Some people seemed to genuinely think that something called almond milk is actually a type of milk in some meaningful sense just because of the name.
I’m fine with them having non-dairy beverages, but they aren’t “substitutes” nutritionally just because they have milk in the name. If your 1 year old is drinking almond milk (30cal and 1g protein per 8oz) instead of whole milk (150 cal and 8 gr protein per 8 oz), you need to adjust what you’re feeding, just like you would if you were giving any other drink.
The issue is some people seem to assume liquids that are labeled milks are actually like each other in some way that goes beyond flavor and texture.
Yes, the problem is not dairy vs. non-dairy, it is with feeding kids who have been weaned a vegetarian or vegan diet in general. For instance, the following is a recent study (July 2020):
Vegetarian and Vegan Weaning of the Infant: How Common and How Evidence-Based? A Population-Based Survey and Narrative Review
Background: Vegetarian and vegan weaning have increasing popularity among parents and families. However, if not correctly managed, they may lead to wrong feeding regimens, causing severe nutritional deficiencies requiring specific nutritional support or even the need for hospitalization. Aim: To assess the prevalence of vegetarian and vegan weaning among Italian families and to provide an up-to-date narrative review of supporting evidence. Materials and methods: We investigated 360 Italian families using a 40-item questionnaire. The narrative review was conducted searching scientific databases for articles reporting on vegetarian and vegan weaning. Results: 8.6% of mothers follow an alternative feeding regimen and 9.2% of infants were weaned according to a vegetarian or vegan diet. The breastfeeding duration was longer in vegetarian/vegan infants (15.8 vs. 9.7 months; p < 0.0001). Almost half of parents (45.2%) claim that their pediatrician was unable to provide sufficient information and adequate indications regarding unconventional weaning and 77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician’s resistance towards alternative weaning methods. Nine studies were suitable for the review process. The vast majority of authors agree on the fact that vegetarian and vegan weaning may cause severe nutritional deficiencies, whose detrimental effects are particularly significant in the early stages of life. Discussion and conclusion: Our results show that alternative weaning methods are followed by a significant number of families; in half of the cases, the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide in this delicate process. To date, consistent findings to support both the safety and feasibility of alternative weaning methods are still lacking. Since the risk of nutritional deficiencies in the early stages of life is high, pediatricians have a pivotal role in guiding parents and advising them on the most appropriate and complete diet regimen during childhood. Efforts should be made to enhance nutritional understanding among pediatricians as an unsupervised vegetarian or vegan diet can cause severe nutritional deficiencies with possible detrimental long-term effects.
That's certainly an interpretation of that study. Here's another one.
> Almost half of parents (45.2%) claim that their pediatrician was unable to provide sufficient information and adequate indications regarding unconventional weaning and 77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician’s resistance towards alternative weaning methods.
> Our results show that alternative weaning methods are followed by a significant number of families; in half of the cases, the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide in this delicate process.
In other words, nearly half of parents who try vegetarian weaning report that their pediatricians stop helping them or are unable to give them adequate/informed nutritional advice, and unsurprisingly, parents who no longer have adequate access to health resources and information struggle to raise healthy kids.
This isn't an argument against vegetarian weaning, it's an argument for educating pediatricians so they're not shrugging their shoulders when people ask them how to keep their kids healthy.
----
It's also really important here to distinguish between vegan and vegetarian weaning. You're lumping them together when the paper doesn't. Its take is:
> Vegetarian weaning with appropriate guidance from family pediatricians or nutritional experts is possible and it should not be opposed.
> Vegan weaning should be discouraged because serious damages (slow growth, rickets, irreversible cognitive deficits, cerebral atrophy, and also death) have been demonstrated.
This is something that kind of annoys me when it comes up in these conversations. The health risks of veganism and vegetarianism are very different. Being vegan requires paying attention to your food intake, it requires doing some research, because the United States food system is not built around that concept. The risks aren't common knowledge and fewer foods are fortified to deal with problems that vegans face. But being vegetarian is comparatively much, much easier to do, and you're much less likely to make a mistake and end up with a deficiency if you go down that route. They really shouldn't be talked about as if they have the same levels of risk.
>> In other words, nearly half of parents who try vegetarian weaning report that their pediatricians stop helping them or are unable to give them adequate/informed nutritional advice, and unsurprisingly, parents who no longer have adequate access to health resources and information struggle to raise healthy kids.
I think your "other words" are deviating very significantly from the letter of the article and you're adding your own interpretation to what's actually written. As actually written, the article says that "the family pediatrician was not perceived as an appropriate guide" by the families Note the "perceived". This may be because the families have different ideas about a healthy diet than the pediatrician, for example "77.4% of parents reported the pediatrician's resistance towards alterantive weaning methods". Since those "alternative weaning methods" may include anything from a vegan weaning to feeding one's child beneficial moon rays (while simultaneously protecting her from the evil dark rays of death), I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.
There are plenty of articles in the mainstream press by doctors who lament the fact that their patients will trust charlatans who sell them energy therapies and other such snake oil treatments, instead of the doctors themselves. Those doctors are usually specialists (for example, oncologists) but their patients still think the charlatans know best.
You have to be pretty selective in this article to look at one word, "perceived", and conclude that the issue here is that people aren't trusting their pediatricians. If the paper meant to say that that vegetarian weaning was a snake oil treatment, it would have said that a lot more directly.
Instead, it literally says: "Vegetarian weaning with appropriate guidance from family pediatricians or nutritional experts is possible and it should not be opposed."
If the paper meant to say that pediatricians were fully up-to-date on how to give advice, and the problem was that nobody was listening to them, then it would have said that a lot more directly. Instead, it literally says: "Efforts should be made to enhance nutritional understanding among pediatricians as an unsupervised vegetarian or vegan diet can cause severe nutritional deficiencies with possible detrimental long-term effects."
I don't think a full reading of the entire paper supports the conclusion that pediatricians are perfectly informed and that vegetarian weaning is a snake oil con. It supports the conclusion that research is underdeveloped and that many pediatricians are not qualified to guide parents through that process. It does discourage vegan weaning because it's difficult to do correctly, because it can go very wrong if not done correctly, because we're still getting research about the best ways to handle those diets, and because, again, pediatricians and health experts have not studied these diets enough to be confident giving advice about them. This is not necessarily the same thing as saying that vegan weaning is impossible to do well -- it's acknowledging that we live in a world where it hasn't been scientifically studied enough to know the potential downsides, and where guiding resources are extremely scarce.
I think you're projecting a conclusion onto this that the authors explicitly reject. A paper that was trying to warn about the troubling trend of parents rejecting their pediatricians' advice would not look like this. It would be talking about things like combating disinformation, it wouldn't be spending half the paper talking about the best B12/iron/etc vegetarian food sources.
But it never goes to topics like misinformation. Instead, it lays out nutritional advice, warns against unsupervised weaning and the risk of naively eliminating meat, and then ends by reinforcing again the need for proper professional guidance: "alternative weaning as a self-decision should be generally discouraged. Pediatricians should guide families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen, providing all nutritional requirements."
That doesn't line up with the narrative you have about this paper. Nowhere does it say, "pediatricians should figure out how to convince families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen that they're being scammed/deluded."
> There are plenty of articles in the mainstream press by doctors who lament the fact that their patients will trust charlatans who sell them energy therapies and other such snake oil treatments, instead of the doctors themselves.
I'm sure there are. It's just, this paper isn't one of them and shouldn't be lumped into that category. If you're writing about energy therapies, you don't spend half the paper describing how to do energy therapy well and how we need more resources to guide parents through energy therapy, because it's not a real thing that can be done well.
>> That doesn't line up with the narrative you have about this paper. Nowhere does it say, "pediatricians should figure out how to convince families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen that they're being scammed/deluded."
> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.
I don't think the paper supports that conclusion. The paper doesn't suggest that vegetarian weaning is itself a problem or a scam, it suggests that we don't have the educational resources available to support people who are doing it.
Maybe I don't understand your argument. If vegetarian weaning isn't a problem, then what do you mean by:
> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.
The way I heard that was, "the problem is that parents aren't listening to pediatricians when they tell them less-common weaning methods are a bad idea." Did you mean something else?
I'm thinking about that in conjunction with your original statement, which to me sounds more directly like it's making that argument:
> Yes, the problem is not dairy vs. non-dairy, it is with feeding kids who have been weaned a vegetarian or vegan diet in general.
Is that statement not saying that vegetarian weaning is a problem?
But if we're arguing past each other, I apologize. I guess I'm not sure what your claim is. Do you mean that pediatricians are informed, and they are giving adequate advice about how to do successful vegetarian weaning, and they aren't hostile to the practice, but that parents are just ignoring it anyway and trying to do weaning on their own? But this paper still spends zero time trying to talk about how to convince the public to trust their pediatricians, so that also doesn't seem like it's the conclusion that the author is going for.
Again, apologies for misinterpreting you, but if that's not what you're trying to say then I'm missing what you are trying to say.
> This isn't an argument against vegetarian weaning, it's an argument for educating pediatricians so they're not shrugging their shoulders when people ask them how to keep their kids healthy.
No, it’s an argument that people should probably listen more to their pediatrician.
This study does not conclude that a vegetarian diet is unhealthy for weaned children -- in fact, it concludes the opposite, that vegetarian diets are fine for weaning if parents are properly guided through the process.
If pediatricians are not properly equipped to guide through that process, then yes, it is a problem with educating pediatricians.
Health professionals need to be educated about what a healthy vegetarian diet looks like for children, because they are going to meet vegetarians who (very reasonably) are not going to accept an answer of "this is totally possible to do well, but I don't personally know how to do it, so nobody should do it." I think it's reasonable for the public to expect that those people learn how to address the health issues that the people under their care are facing.
> I've never seen a carton of oat milk and thought it contained dairy
I have no issues with "<plant> milk" products and labeling them like that, but people do get confused about their nutritional profiles, thinking they're substitutes for milk. They're not, and they're chemically different enough that they're not good substitutes for cooking. About the only thing they're good substitutes for is liquid milk, though I hear oat milk foams up well for a cappuccino.
> but people do get confused about their nutritional profiles
By that logic, should 2% milk be allowed to be called milk? What about chocolate milk? Nutritional profiles can vary wildly between different brands and products, especially when we're talking about meat -- so where do you draw the line?
Look, you're raising an interesting point but this is not about meat vs. not meat (or "what kind of meat"). For instance, I was recently made aware that about 80% of the milk sold in Greek supermarkets (I'm Greek) is UHT ("long-life"). That goes for the milk displayed in refrigerated isles. OK? Supermarkets put UHT milk in the fridge - so people will think it's fresh. Most likely it's the dairy companies that direct them to do so. Some brands even put UHT milk in clear plastic bottles, like the ones used for fresh milk. Last time I checked there were maybe three brands of pasteurised (i.e. "fresh", not long-life) milk in the refrigerated isle in the three supermarkets I visit frequently.
And yet, I remember reading (and could perhaps dig up again with a bit of effort) a study claiming that Greeks don't like to drink UHT milk and prefer fresh milk. Well, perhaps that's what they think but in practice most of the milk on sale (and so, very likely, most of what is consumed) is UHT.
Note: "fresh milk" is not raw milk; "fresh" milk means milk that's been pasteurised, but not ultra-pasteurised, and that's been knocking about the dairy industry's plants and refrigerated trucks and the like for about a week. "Fresh" is a misnomer. Even if it wasn't, people don't seem capable of distinguishing it from UHT milk anyway.
Bottom line: people don't know what they're consuming. Like, they really have no idea. Myself I hadn't noticed all that but it was pointed out to me by a friend who is a dairy scientist. In fact, I'd been drinking a UHT milk and thinking "hey, that tastes kinda sweet". I even kinda liked it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with drinking UHT milk! Don't get me wrong- it's just as nutritious as "fresh" milk. Except, I had no idea. This is disturbing. It makes me wonder- what else am I missing? What else is sold to me as one kind of food but is really something else than what I expect?
Okay, but you're arguing for better labeling in general about food production, ingredients, and storage -- not that people shouldn't be able to use the word "meat" on a Morningstar package.
I mean, I would love if every product was clearly labeled whether it contained animal by-products, it would save me from having to read ingredients on everything. It's annoying to have to check to see whether a loaf of bread in the supermarket contains milk or not, or to have to search online whether some obscure ingredient is an animal gelatin. And additionally, yeah, there is a lot of confusion around buzzwords like "free-range" or "organic" which basically mean very little. You're right about that stuff.
But the words "milk" and "meat" are not part of the problem. It's fine if almond milk is in the milk isle and labeled as milk. Calling it almond milk-substitute would not have solved your problem with accidentally buying UHT milk, because "milk" itself is not a specific enough word to solve your problem on its own.
And to jump back to the original comment I was responding to -- "milk" is also not specific enough of a word to communicate what the nutritional profile is of the food you're consuming. Yes, there are concerns about people not knowing what is and isn't healthy and not being able to identify how food was produced and sourced. No, forcing plant-based substitutes to drop the words "milk" or "meat" won't fix that.
I agree about the world "milk", for example in Greece we call fig sap "fig milk". But calling nut paste or beans "meat" grates.
Anyway my ocncern is that most consumers are at the point where they don't understand the difference between animal milk and plant milk, or even animal meat and plant-based meat substitutes, because they're used to so much over-processed food that they don't recognise the tastes of ordinary foodstfufs anymore.
I find it more likely that 16 million Americans decided to take the piss when answering that particular question, perhaps offended that such an obviously dumb question would be asked of them with a straight face. I would be.
16 million Americans have, by definition of the scoring mechanism, IQ 70 or lower. I suspect the only reason the number thinking it’s from brown cows isn’t higher is all the people who don’t think milk comes from anywhere but the supermarket selling it.
I don't see that the OP said anything about there being any kind of confusion. I think you're responding to a different concern than the one they expressed.
In the EU, you can't sell a concoction of palm oil, whey protein, fillers, flavors and colorings as "cheese" - you need to label it as "breakfast spread" or something like that.
There are different words you are allowed to use for fruit-based drinks depending on how removed they are from actual fruit.
Why not apply similar standards to the ersatz meat?
Yes, as long as this isn't going down the route of "consumers will get confused" by terms like "oat milk".
People aren't that stupid and the arguments against using the word milk annoy me. I think it's a sign that people are changing their diet and the dairy industry is worried.
>> People aren't that stupid and the arguments against using the word milk annoy me. I think it's a sign that people are changing their diet and the dairy industry is worried.
Well, calling plant mince patties "burgers" annoys me and I'm not the dairy industry, nor affiliated with it.
Can we leave the annoyance aside and have a reasonable conversation about it? Here's my concern: it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that everyone should eat less meat than they eat (or rather, not everyone; just the people in cough, certain regions of the world where "meat" is synonymous with "food"; that is really not the case everywhere in the world). But in that case, let's promote plant-based cuisines, like Indian or Mediterrannean, with dishes that can be cooked at home with cheap and healthy ingredients and that do not rely on the production lines of the same large agribuisenesses that are responsible for destroying the environment with industrial farming (which includes mass-produced meat- and plant-based foods).
Yup, very true. Just recently German chocolate producer "RitterSport" made a new chocolate product but were disallowed to call it chocolate because it doesn't contain any sugar (they used some substitute), which according to the definition a chocolate product has to contain to be called chocolate.
Likewise, but the issue there is slightly different — if they had ruled that “burgers” had to contain meat, there would be a similar but stronger argument to force “hamburgers” to only refer to those made of ham.
Hamburgers are named after the place they were invented (the city of Hamburg), itself named after a big castle which in German is “Burg”.
And before anyone suggests one could also argue that “they’re only allowed to be called hamburgers if they’re from Hamburg and otherwise are just sparkling fried meat patties”, I apologise for spoiling the obvious joke by having looked up the EU rules for when something can be protected with a geographical designation (feta cheese, champagne, etc.) and discovered none of that sort of thing would apply.
I'm not sure I'd consider regulatory capture and artificial barriers to entry by existing industries to be a good outcome, which is what this is; they rules aren't implemented to protect customers.
I agree. Why call something that is not meat "meat"? It seems that the only valid arguments is that the term is used as a marketing strategy to confuse consumers or appeal to their subconscious.
It's because it's meant as a meat substitute. As far as I'm concerned it's very much conscious, if you want to make the veggie version of, say, a chicken dish you'll buy "veggie chicken" which is meant to have similar characteristics (usually in terms of flavor, appearance and consistence, not necessarily nutritional).
It's hard for me not to dismiss these concerns are pure pearl clutching (or is it concern trolling? I'm not up to date on my internet debate lingo). If people really don't pay attention to the meat products they buy and they end up with veggie meat by mistake, there's a very good chance that they would've very easily ended up with some crappy ultra-processed low quality "technically meat" product instead. They might actually be better off with the plant option, quality-wise.
Are we even that there yet, seems like wide marketing died off after innovation in the space churned out one ground beef patty mcnugget meat product after another.
I don't mind deceptive labelling if for mass appeal. I do want meat substitutes that actually behave and taste like meat in more than ground form. It's not viable substitute for vast majority of cuisine from around the world, that's before even getting into delicacies like offal.
Meat == food, not just flesh. This is a very old definition for the word. It's also still used to describe the bits of nuts that we eat ("coconut meat").
meat, n.
1. a. Food in general; anything used as nourishment for men or animals; usually, solid food, in contradistinction to drink. Now arch. and dial. green meat: grass or green vegetables used for food or fodder (see green a. 4). See also hard meat, horsemeat, whitemeat. meal of meat, meal's meat: see meal n. 2 1e.
a900: tr. Bæda's Hist. v. iv. (Schipper) 568 “He eode on his hus & þær mete [v.r. mæte] þyᵹede.”
c975: Rushw. Gosp. Luke xii. 23 “Sawel mara is ðonne mett.”
a1050: Liber Scintill. xlvii. (1889) 153 “Nys rice godes meta & drinc.”
c1200: Ormin 3213 “Hiss drinnch wass waterr aȝȝ occ aȝȝ, Hiss mete wilde rotess.”
a1240: Lofsong in Cott. Hom. 205 “Ich habbe i-suneged ine mete and ine drunche.”
a1300: Cursor M. 898 “Mold sal be þi mete for nede.”
c1380: Wyclif Wks. (1880) 206 “Alas, þat so gret cost & bisynesse is sette abouten þe roten body, þat is wormes mete.”
c1440: Pol. Rel. & L. Poems (1903) 185 “Thy mete shall be mylk, honye, & wyne.”
1477: Norton Ord. Alch. v. in Ashm. (1652) 76 “Without Liquor no Meate is good.”
1578: Lyte Dodoens ii. xlvi. 205 “These kindes of lillies are neither used in meate nor medicine.”
1623: Cockeram ii, “Meate of the Gods, Ambrosia, Manna.”
meat, n.
e. The edible part of fruits, nuts, eggs, etc.: the pulp, kernel, yolk and white, etc. in contradistinction to the rind, peel, or shell. ?Now only U.S. exc. in proverbial phrase (see quot. 1592). Also, the animal substance of a shell-fish.
c1420: Pallad. on Husb. iii. 708 “A stanry pere is seyd to chaunge his mete In esy lond ygraffed yf he be.”
1530: Palsgr. 245/1 “Meate of any frute, le bon.”
a1562: G. Cavendish Wolsey (1893) 30 “A very fayer orrynge wherof the mete or substaunce within was taken owt.”
1592: Shakes. Rom. & Jul. iii. i. 25 “Thy head is as full of quarrels, as an egge is full of meat.”
1613: Purchas Pilgrimage (1614) 506 “Of the meat of the Nut dried, they make oyle.”
1679: J. Skeat Art Cookery 30 “First take all the meat out of the lobster.”
1766: Museum Rust. I. lxxxiii. 370 “Low or swampy grounds don't answer well for potatoes,..the meat being generally scabby, close, wet and heavy.”
1802: Paley Nat. Theol. xx. (1819) 313 note, “The meat of a plum.”
1900: Boston Even. Transcr. 29 Mar. 7/3 “Force through a meat chopper with one-half pound nut-meats, using English walnut meats, pecan-nut meats.”
I guess that explains “mince pies” in the UK. For non-Brits: they are a traditional Christmas sweet pastry the size and shape of a cupcake, filled with “mincemeat”, which is meat-free and not to be confused with “minced meat”.
Yep. That goes to show what I've said often in comments here: "meat" means food in certain parts of the world. That is to say English speaking parts of the world.
For instance, I'm Greek and in the Greek language bread is synonymous with "food". A few expressions in Greek characteristic of this synonymity of bread with food are: "δεν έχουμε ψωμί να φάμε" - "we have no bread to eat", meaning "we shall go hungry"; "βγάζω το ψωμί μου", "deriving one's bread", meaning "making a living" (analogous to "bring the bacon home"); and of course "πάτερ ημών ο εν τοις ουρανοίς δωσ' ημίν σήμερον τον άρτον ημών τον επιούσιον", or "our father who art in heaven give us our daily bread".
This is one reason why debates like the ones in this HN thread frustrate me. Yes, some people should definitely eat less meat. Much less meat! But that's by far not everyone in the world and some people have been eating very reasonable amounts, very sustainable amounts of meat (and very sustainable kinds of meat) for many generations. Of course those are the same people whose national cuisines are already teeming with vegetarian and vegan dishes, except of course those are simply called "food" in the local languages. I find it an affront, having grown up in such a culture, to hear that I have to reduce my meat consumption even further or switch to repulsive-sounding "plant-based meat alternatives" because some people half a world over can't sit down to eat without a big fat beef stake in front of them.
Bottom line: we haven't all fucked up the planet to the same degree. We shouldn't all have to change our way of life and the way we eat to the same degree.
Do I really have to find another source that somehow « counter » your post and give a « definition » of what meat is or how it is generally employed for?
I mean, we really are there?
If you make a barbecue party, do you discuss the new meaning of « meat » by the « I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about website »?
The modern definition of meat meaning animal flash evolved from the old more broad definition. And now it's evolving again to again include plant based meats.
It's how the language works and I'm not sure why would anyone be against using the broader definition when it's useful.
I don't see anyone complaining about coconut milk and peanut butter.
Funny enough, this is the original definition. You are the one using the new "fancy" definitions.
Wiki:
The word meat comes from the Old English word mete, which referred to food in general. The term is related to mad in Danish, mat in Swedish and Norwegian, and matur in Icelandic and Faroese, which also mean 'food'. The word mete also exists in Old Frisian (and to a lesser extent, modern West Frisian) to denote important food, differentiating it from swiets (sweets) and dierfied (animal feed).
This is at best dishonest, if you really referred to that definition, you would use "meat", not "imitation meat"/"fake meat"/"plant based meat". Everything in the marketing of that stuff is made to mimic meat-as-in-animal-muscle meat.
If you want a burger, go eat a freaking slaughtered cow patty burger, don't be all fancy with that highly process crap.
You really don't have to defend your masculinity to me.
I promise that I, or anyone else, won't think anything less of you if you'll replace steak with quinoa burger from time to time. It will be good for you and the environment!
Sure it is. It’s right there on the label. Things are called what they are called not because they have properties which match a platonic ideal and those properties are inextricably linked with the phonetic and orthographic representations of a language. No, things are called what they are called because lots of people make those sounds or write those symbols and associate it with that thing, which people receive as information and then use themselves.
In other words, you’ve already lost this battle, and you’ve lost it in many languages and countries at once.
Whatever world you wish to preserve in which, for whatever reasons of comfort you insist that plant-based meat isn’t meat, no longer exists.
By the amount of words I’m sure I’ve lost indeed. In « many many » languages and countries, everywhere around the world, and particularly in our very small new extremism world.
I have one question: why do people trying to eat only vegetables (is « vegetables » still ok?) insist so much to call that « plant-based » food « meat »?
> I have one question: why do people trying to eat only vegetables (is « vegetables » still ok?) insist so much to call that « plant-based » food « meat »?
That don’t. They just read what’s on the label and call it that. It’s preservationists who see a war here: everyone else has moved on.
If you’re into vegetables, as-in you’re against meat, you just eat vegetables and you don’t eat meat anymore. You don’t need that to be called « plant-based meat ».
Only the people who are actually so nostalgic of the good meat they had want something called « plant-based meat ».
A worthy goal. I'd love to lower the price of plants too. It never fails to amaze me how expensive some vegetables are compared to meat for some rough equivalent measure like calories. The subsidies for meat and dairy are ridiculous by comparison.
That said, I think there is room for both. In the hamburger/chicken nugget space, I think plant based is going to keep beating cultured for the next decade - if cultured wins, it needs to figure out fat (afaik it still hasn't.)
Same. I'm highly sceptical of plant-based meat substitutes from a health perspective. There's so much we don't know about micronutrients, bioavailability, and the human body, I don't believe that these highly processed alternatives are fully known to be healthy replacements for real meat, even if they tick the macronutrient boxes of sufficient protein and B-complex. It strikes me as something akin to a tasty multivitamin at best.
We're already so far removed from the way out ancestors ate meat (various organs, connective tissue) and this is yet another step away from that.
Cultured meat seems to be a way to get the real thing without the negative side effects of environment damage and animal cruelty.
Are there any commercial products and has anyone tried it? I do recall some video somewhere of a US restaurant and people said it was reasonable but that could have been plant based.
I'm intrigued and want to read more about this, but that site is crazy. Takes >10 seconds on my phone to load the 'experience' which is a long-form scrolljacking narrative that starts with the history of the chicken.
Their FAQ page is really interesting, but I can't find a way to link directly to it.
I tried the impossible burger at Burger King. I could not tell a difference personally from any typical fast food burger. Would buy it again to satisfy a craving.
Ah I misread his wording. I thought he was just asking for someone's opinion on restaurants that had served any meat alternative product, not specifically lab grown meat.
Impossible burger is still created from plants. "Clean" or lab grown meat isn't commercially available anywhere, it only exists is some labs AFAIK. It's sadly very expensive to make today.
There are a few startups working on this, Mosa meat and meatable are some examples.
It's interesting to note the names of the companies in the article:
>> In China, Beyond Meat signed five major new partnerships, with Starbucks,
retailers Alibaba and Metro, distributor Sinodis, and Yum China (owner of KFC,
Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell).
>> In the rest of Asia, Thailand’s largest meat company, CP Foods (...)
>> In Latin America, Brazilian agribusiness giant Marfrig (...)
>> In Europe, the UK’s largest retailer, Tesco (...)
>> Dairy giant Danone (...)
>> Unilever shared that a third of its products are now plant-based. (...)
>> Danone declared its ambition to more than double its plant-based sales
>> worldwide (...)
>> In the US, Starbucks started selling Impossible breakfast sandwiches, as did
>> Burger King, while KFC began a new trial of Beyond Fried Chicken (...)
These are all the very same agribusiness colossi that are responsible for the
despoiling of land and the destruction of the environment by the most brutal
intensive agriculture and farming methods.
And it's these companies that are expected to solve the problem of mass food
production (plant- or meat-based) in a way that does not destroy the environment
even more and that respects the health and the nutrition needs of their
customers? I find that extremely naive.
Such companies simply want to sell the cheapest, lowest-quality food products for
the highest possible profit (Taco Bell! KFC! Burger King!). If they can claim to
protect the enviroment, even as they further brutalise it, then all the better
for their bottom line.
If you're trying to bring a new product to market don't you want to rely on the infrastructure that already exists? What's the alternative if you want to make an impact quickly?
Sure, KFC, PizzaHut, etc. have contributed significantly to increases in meat consumption, but isn't that exactly the place to start?
Just like BP, Shell, etc. are diversifying away from fossil fuels, the companies you mentioned likely see the writing on the wall. Considering the fact that they already have supply chains in place to support a significant portion of the population, using them as a proxy to get alternative meats to people at a reasonable cost seems like the path of least resistance.
Agreed, these companies in many ways have despoiled the land as you said but their real motivation is generating profit, they don't necessarily care about the food being low quality, they care that it's good enough for people to buy it and cheap enough to sell it.
If alternative meats drive the same demand, or more, as regular meats and can be sold at similar margins, and as a byproduct the companies can say they're on the alternative meats train, I think you'll see them come onboard.
My parents, who are as far from alternative meat fans as you can find, are in complete alignment that eating meat isn't going to be nearly as commonplace in 30 years as it is today and are interested in investing in alternative meat producers just due to the fact that society is trending in that direction.
Of course you've got the rise of countries coming out of poverty whose populace is going to expect to eat a bunch of meat which is why it's critical that we get economies of scale, distribution, etc. nailed down now before they acquire a real taste of beef grown on an industrial farm, instead we need options for them to buy alternative, or potentially lab grown, meats.
Doing so would have the benefit of generating massive amounts of innovation in how food is produced while, hopefully, reducing relative and absolute greenhouse gas emissions.
Is the problem meat diets? Or capitalism and the food industry? Locavorism seems to be a much better idea than vegetarianism - in terms of human ethics and of benefits for the planet at least.
One method not mentioned is the usage of bio-processing to produce proteins identical to those coming from animal products using only genetically modified microbes.
The advantage here is that you're getting as close to the real thing as you can.. Actually there's no difference from the real thing at the protein level- though fats and things need to be added back from imitation sources to re-assemble to thing you're imitating.
This probably isn't overall cheaper today (vs soy, wheat, etc), but the processes is very inefficient and has a TON of room to be improved upon. At a large scale your inputs are glucose and some microbes. Fermentation does the rest.
It just so happens that's what we're working on at at Culture Biosciences. Shoot me an email if this kind of stuff fascinates you. We're hiring software and hardware engineers. satshabad@culturebiosciences.com
For the large-scale tonnage using bioscience to create protein is incredibly capital, energy and water-intensive.
If you could do it anaerobically, that would help on the energy front, but there's big limit on volumetric efficiency (cell density/tankturn) of anaerobic.
For aerobics, maintaining lab-scale OTRs in 200m and larger reactors is very very power-intensive. kLa is a power-law relationship with power-input
Fresh fruit and veg prices have practically quadrupled in the last 10 years here (Florida). Beef is significantly up.
On the other hand, chicken is ridiculously inexpensive. For under $7, a tray of 8 oversized chicken thighs. Following a Keto regimen for a bit over a year now, I'm very keen on trying a different approach to high-protein, low-carb intake.
The novel proteins the article discusses (mung beans, potatoes, fava beans, chickpeas, lentils, oats, lupine, and faba) give me a wider array to try, but I can see how difficult plant-based meat pricing will be when the crops are so much more expensive than the corn/wheat/soy tri-fecta.
What keeps the novel crops pricing so high? (looks like 15 to 160 times higher than corn/wheat/soy at the extremes)
From an athletic or 'health' perspective, these plant-based meat substitutes have way too high fat content. You can get 93+% lean beef with 3-4 grams of fat per 20~ grams of protein, or even higher with game meat. None of the plant proteins appeal to a healthy eater, with the high coconut/canola/sunflower oil content.
> From an athletic or 'health' perspective, these plant-based meat substitutes have way too high fat content. You can get 93+% lean beef with 3-4 grams of fat per 20~ grams of protein, or even higher with game meat. None of the plant proteins appeal to a healthy eater, with the high coconut/canola/sunflower oil content.
Agreed — but it's an apples to oranges comparison you're making. Highly processed foods of all sorts have added oil.
A more productive line of questioning would compare game meat with whole food plant based alternatives like raw soybeans and lentils. I say this because my hangup with veganism used to be exactly yours here. I used to think there was no way to get adequate macros with vegan food, but it's definitely possible to hit your target macros with determination. Key to turning the corner in my understanding was realizing the fiber content (in grams) must be subtracted — at least in part — from the total carbohydrate content.
Most legumes are essentially a 1:2 ratio between protein:carbs, with negligible amounts of fat. Assuming a target intake of 1.4-1.6g of protein per kg bodyweight, you can readily hit your macros even on a calorie restricted diet (~1600 kcal).
> From an athletic or 'health' perspective, [...] You can get 93+% lean beef with 3-4 grams of fat per 20~ grams of protein
Well, from a health perspective, what you really want as your main drive is high, low omega 6 vs omega 3, high quality fat, relatively low protein and the least carb you can do. Carb is not evil per se, a carb+protein based is, it leads to type 2 diabetes, and pave the way to cancer and cognitive dysfunctions, the key thing in those disease being recurrent and close insulin spikes.
A beef with <5% of fat is a nutritional non-sense, this whole 'eat the least fat possible' fable needs to die.
But otherwise I agree with you: plant-based meat-like patty is the worst you can eat (referring to their current recipes that are loaded with omega 6).
I see it as them trying to compete with meat. Impossible has higher cholesterol content than beef right now, but I have a feeling this will change as the industry matures.
Umm, just eat the plants instead? I don't get fake meat. It is a solution to the wrong problem. Make a small amount of meat sustainable and respectful of animal wellness. Then make the rest of your diet plant based. Done.
Just eat broccoli instead? I don't get other foods. Make a small amount of other things sustainable and respectful, then make the rest of your diet broccoli. Done.
Almost the entire point of cultivating different foods is to enjoy different flavors and textures. If something is tasty but expensive, in terms of money or the environment, we should encourage the people that try to make it cheaper. There's no reason to want things to be expensive and rare treats.
I think the point is that we have tried making meat cheap and it created a lot of problems. Until we fix those problems the grandparent comments strategy seems sound.
How is that strategy sound in the least? What's your plan to convert billions of people to stop eating meat?
The objective here isn't to convert a few people on hacker news, it's to convert billions. "Hey dummies, just eat plants! They were here the whole time!" isn't gonna happen.
I'm replying late but...By "strategy" here I'm referring to the strategy for humans to eat less meat to achieve environmental goals — not any particular strategy to achieve a reduction in meat eating. I agree that achieving that outcome is going to be hard.
Well I'm talking about both money and environmental costs, and we haven't done very much toward reducing the latter. I'd rather put a bunch of effort into reducing environmental impact than "just" eat traditional vegetables.
When you say "until we fix those problems" you're suggesting a very different strategy from "just" working around it with no notable effort to do anything else.
A lot of people's preference of food comes from its culture that adapted to its immediate natural environment.
For America, the fast food industry was really born out of corporate interests and it is unnatural. It's not that eating meat is wrong but the fast food industry that is responsible for our over consumption and maltreatment of bovine stock to meet the demands.
In countries like Japan, France, Vietnam, fast food hasn't caught on as much as locals prefer their traditional diet. Unfortunately some South American countries have completely given way to American fast food lobby groups, in particular Brazil which comes with a huge cost to public health.
You have poorly educated population, corporate greed and unlimited lobbying powers, with limited public healthcare and you are in a man made ticking bomb.
Which is still meat. It might be prepared differently but it's still meat. Which tells you exactly that - meat consumption is not only about forced customs, it's about people legitimately enjoying eating eat. I know a lot of people that do this too, and it's not about being uneducated either.
yeah the whole sustainability issue arises because of our excessive consumption. Just limit your intake by at least 50% or more and then slowly raise it by eating more vegetables.
The whole narrative around sustainability of meat has been completely hijacked by corporate interests who wants to push non-meat as meat.
Their whole goal is to enmesh it at a cultural level so that they can increase sales, not really concerned about the real problem which is cruelty, indifference to the treatment of animals by the bovine industrial complex.
We are simply seeing the usurpation of the latter group by a new commerce-first-pseudo-sustainability industrial complex. It's even more dangerous now because of the misinformation and groupthink by self appointed morality police.
There is no animal cruelty in its production, so that solves the problem of "making this kind of thing is cruel to animals".
To be more specific, I mean the whole scenario of people buying it "as meat" removes all animal cruelty from their meat-motivated food purchases. Not that the product will stop people from kicking puppies somehow.
> do you realize the paradox of this sentence?
No, what is it? I said "amoral", not "immoral", and I said "very much".
It's a little worrying that companies are amoral, but that applies to every company ever. If a company is doing a good thing, then I give it a thumbs up.
> wait what? so everybody is eating grass but being tricked into thinking its meat today?
No, some people are eating grass and then not eating meat. And I'm not talking about today specifically but in general. 100 calories of A replace 100 calories of B.
> It's going to cause the government to kill subsidies therefore jobs and not get their votes from bovine states?
If people don't buy meat, then meat isn't made, subsidies or not.
> Ignorant of their commercial interests and completely brainwashed by their cultural narrative.
Whose interests? I'm not sure what you think I'm missing.
> You know not everybody shares your dull sense of taste right? You know people can taste the difference and they have no plans of accepting the future you fantasize right?
But... you were suggesting people eat less meat and more vegetables!
Being able to tell the difference doesn't mean you can't swap one for the other.
Interesting how all the Silicon Valley brainiacs here on HN are far more interested in discussing the semantics of “meat” than the technology or economics.
Very disappointing. I'm not at all clear on the concern over semantics except in the case of lobbying groups and large companies on the animal ag side.
It's their cognitive dissonance at work. People, especially the type of folks here, will find anything to say that pushes the discussion away from the mass-slaughter of animals, because they know it's not justifiable, healthy, or sustainable.
I know how it is, I ate meat at one point too. I had thought that as an elite athlete it was necessary to do so, but now five years without any meat I am stronger than ever. I have never had one of these weird "meat" burgers though.
Americans... eat tofu, tempe, soybeans, long beans, mushrooms, seitan, nuts, kale, seeds, and more for protein and otherwise consume a lot of fruits and vegetables. American food culture is broken and if you live there you need to do everything possible to break away from it, otherwise you'll end up fat and sick like most Americans are.
And that is part of the reason we need to be precise with our language. Last time I checked, we use a dead language in medicine precisely because it is not evolving, and we don't want to have to fight a battle on two fronts.
A similar thing can be observed in programming languages like Python, where it's important to know which version is used, or even in law, as legal English is entirely different than the constantly evolving language of common parlance.
To think definitions that directly relate to the product are irrelevant to a wholistic view of the article is naïve and petulant. If you have a novel insight, add it. If you want to criticize others, enjoy your downvotes.
If you want a truly awesome plant based meat experience for taste and mouth feel try "tartex" which is a nutritional yeast derived pate, and I eat it as itself, no fakery needed but revel in its foie like texture. Sold in tubes, invented more than 70 years ago. Perhaps a little too greasy afterward (I suspect it's palm oil) but heaps of umami.
Combining a few points into one since they are related, but plant-based meat is a misnomer. Plant-based protein, or meat-substitute are better terms and meat should not have it's definition muddied.
Lab grown meat from cultured cells, however, fair game. Trying to force companies to call it anything other than meat would be intentionally seeking to stifle innovation.
Referring to milk changing meaning, not the fact that approximately 30 gallons of nut milk can be readily purchased in stores. Just because it happened once doesn't mean a ship has sailed for a general principle.
He didn't word it as "likely", or "may be". This reads to me as it will definitely happen. While I am not completely against the idea and certainly feel the real possibility of happening. It doesn't give a hint as to why.
What would the price of meat be if producers had to pay for the impact on nature and actually care about animal welfare?
I admit I love meat but I am increasingly trying out plant based alternatives and I must say that I am increasingly impressed by what I taste. Availability is a problem for me. Most stores don’t have all these new products.
It is also one of the downsides and benefits of living inside the Norwegian agricultural bubble. We rely a lot on our own products which is limits variation given how small the Norwegian market is. On the positive side it means better animal welfare and meat safety. When you don’t directly compete with foreign meat producers government is not pressured to lower standards to be competitive.
Vegetarian evangelism ignores the huge culture around food and meat eating... its not something that can be changed easily. This is underapreciated in all debates about vegetarianism. There are food cultures around the world that survive on primarily meat, where the animal is worshiped as sacred for its significance to the survival of the society. There are regions known for meat recipes that go way back throughout history. People arguing against eating meat ignore all of this. Food is nostalgia, food is heritage and tradition, food is culture.
It’s interesting that the prices for meat quoted in the article are far lower than what I see in my major American city, with meat typically going for triple the quoted prices. Vegan alternatives are quite attractive because there’s not much of a price difference here.
Ultimately these plant-based alternatives will be enhanced or replaced with insects, once people have been largely weaned off of meat. Most people won't notice or care. We aren't squeamish about blue food dye after all, we're just used to it.
Yep. But lurking underneath is health, and mouth-feel and taste. Cultured cell lines will possibly get past health because instead of plant based vitamins and nutrients it will be animal protein and fat soluble versions which are sometimes more bioavailable.
Mouth feel is heavily dominated by fat, but also texture. I don't know if the cell culture meat lays down muscle fibre the same way actually being a leg of a grazing animal does. Tvp tried to emulate this with spun fibre complexes, I never found it very compelling.
It's not really surprising meat substitution targets ground beef, ground chicken and the like.
I know it's maybe not a very sophisticated position to take in the current year, but I will not eat the fake meat, I will not eat the bugs, I will not live in a pod, I will not own nothing.
I’m with you on everything but the cultured meat. If it’s real cells grown in an environment with no antibiotics or hormones that’s a huge win over growing an entire animal that stands in its own crap all day and is pumped full of growth chemicals and antibiotics so it doesn’t die.
I’d love to buy my own self contained steak 3D printer for $10k
I doubt the venture capitalists and financiers backing those companies want to eat this kind of gruel either. It's peasant food.
They'll keep eating BBQ wagyu beef, don't worry. But if that's indeed the future they want for us, in the words of Tucker Carlson (PBUH), "I am totally happy to set your system on fire and blow it up".
First of all, I’m pretty sure animals live there, in the « environment ». And animals eat animals, in this « environment ». As far as tv documentaries present this to me (sorry I’ve never been in the real nature in the real life), it’s not « induced ».
The question then is more about how much we eat, what do we consider « ok » to eat, how many are we, and how do we farm to sustain all this.
In itself it's neither good nor bad for the environment. In fact some ecosystems depend on the vegetation being kept in check by herbivores so arguably keeping at least some cattle in those ecosystems is 'good' for the environment.
The problem is the scale, which is also a problem with the industrial growing of crops and industrial fishing.
In rich countries we probably eat too much meat both for our health and for the impact on the environment, but the bottom line is that feeding 8 billion people and counting, who are getting richer globally, is going to hit the environment hard.
IMHO, the best way to reduce meat consumption is to ban subsidies and to increase regulatory quality standards, which would make prices go up significantly. But that's politically unpalatable.
What do you think the meat machines / cows are fed with? Even more of the same crops but with a high percentage of loss of calories since they only transform a small part of it into edible meat
7 billions homo sapiens sapiens is not good for the environment either, so you should welcome war, genocides, pandemic and anything reducing its population.
The ever growing demand for meat is a leading cause of deforestation. Forests remove far more CO2 than grasslands (think 3 dimensions vs 2 dimensions).
Cows require orders of magnitude more land to be devoted to them than plant based food, simply due to the inefficiencies of the sunlight -> plant -> meat -> food production process. If you cut the middle-man out (meat), then the process becomes orders of magnitude more efficient.
This reminds me that if by "better farms with better practices" you mean free-range type farms, then they are actually far worse for the environment because they are less efficient. Eg, you need more land per pound of meat produced.
Cows also produce vast quantities of methane, which is a leading greenhouse gas. The quickest way to slow down global warming would be to cease livestock farming entirely.
There is no way to satisfy the growing demand for meat in a way that is not damaging to the environment. And that's leaving aside any questions of ethics for the animals themselves.
What about pricing in all externalities and letting the price equilibrium find a natural state be removing subsidies? People will only buy what they can afford.
I became a vegan 15 years ago because I couldn't morally justify the unnecessary raising and killing other individuals. You may not agree, but writing that decision off as "trendy" is more than a bit condescending.
Every study I've seen on the Earth's carrying capacity came to the conclusion that we could support at least a few more billion humans. So why you believe it's more correct to say we have a population problem than a consumption problem?
I’m sorry for being condescending but I wasn’t referring to you in particular. It is indeed currently very trendy to be vegan.
I chose the other direction which is to eat very very good meat, but way way less, because that’s goddamn expensive and because we can’t produce it that much. Just like good wine.
The very big issue with meat is that you have a shit ton of farm raising some thousands animals in very precarious conditions for people eating garbage. That’s harsh, but that’s the sad truth.
The conclusion to this should not be to stop meat but to stop garbage. Just like everything in food by the way, you can eat 100% vegan 100% garbage 100% detrimental for the environment.
The issue with studies is that it’s basically impossible to just prove that we « could support at least a few more billion humans ». It’s just too big of a study. I’m actually pretty sure that with the way we live (independently of the question of meat) we should already be way less than we are. It’s quite obvious but I don’t have any « studies » at end, because it’s way easier for everywhere to just « prove » we can continue as we do (if we all become vegan of course, because that’s really the heart of our issue).
I’m not saying it’s a population problem and not a consumption problem. I think it’s both. And I think the vegan trend is absolutely part of the consumption problem because it’s hiding the source of the issue. You just have to look at how it’s so easier for people to tackle The source of the issue is that we should seek good instead of quantity or easiness.
We have replaced the supposedly old problem of meat by the new supposedly non-problem of food in a plastic bag with a vegan sticker on it.
Agreed. Some vegans/vegetarians don't want their food labelled meat either.
However please don't compare the modern industrial meat production with anything like farming from, say, 500 years ago, or with ancient hunting. Modern meat production is brutal (for necessary cost reasons) and hugely destructive to the environment.
Sure there are, but we don't have enough surface area on this planet to replace industrial meat production with sustainable farms without a vast decrease in output.
The way we create meat today has nothing to do with natural are you serious? Dosing cows with hormones and antibiotics to make them grow at multiples of their natural rate and feeding them with soy and grains while they live in small concrete and metal cages.
Isn't it funny that the same country is both promoting vegetarianism and the death penalty - and features the biggest military force in the world? Just to say.
Aside from personal preference, I would think there are two main reasons to consider replacing animal meat protein with plant protein. Because it could be healthier for the planet, and because it could be healthier for human consumption.
I’m not sure we’ve proven either one is definitely true. I think the evidence leans towards plant farming being less impactful to the planet on a fundamental conservation of energy basis, but farming at scale the ways that humans tend to do it causes a lot of problems with soil erosion and pesticide contamination which are yet to be overcome, but likely easier to solve than a similar problem of growing enough grass and corn for the cows.
On the other hand, I’m a lot less convinced that eating these highly processed plant proteins (to get them into a desirable form for mass consumption) is necessarily a de facto healthier way for humans to get their protein.
I just tend to be wary of IPO-scale manufacturing of hyped/trendy processed foods.
So, to recap, feeding plant crops to animals is the current best way to produce plant based meat. Seems like the best way to feed our crops is also with animal products. I don’t really understand why we want to work so hard to drive a technological wedge into this process. Is it to get rid of other animals on the planet?
That’s one product of animals... not the one I was referencing though. You might consider doing a search for “primary sources of fertilizer” before down voting me.
> A typical diet for a dairy cow could include about 30 to 35 pounds of baled hay (26-30 pounds DM) and 25 pounds of grain mix (22 pounds DM). Grain includes corn, soybean meal, minerals, and vitamins.
Cows don’t just graze, in fact mostly they’re raised on the same staple crops which humans eat.
