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Comment by jjjensen90 | Hacker News Reader

The tone and content of your post are both unhelpful and needlessly dismissive.

American has a rich, diverse, and passionate food culture that includes many whole foods and innovations created there. A lot of processed food is eaten, but so are a huge variety of unprocessed foods.

Replacing animal products with plant protein (beyond burger, impossible burger, many others) is an excellent trend for many reasons, with the potential environmental impact being the foremost benefit in my opinion. I look forward to the day where lab grown and/or plant protein sources are much more mainstream.

And lastly, "Monsanto soy and chemistry" is a ludicrous implication that plant based protein sources are somehow inherently scary or even that they're worse than mass-agriculture raised animal products.

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I never intended to imply that there is no rich american food culture there certainly is.

The point still stands. Why would you replace a meal made out of plants with basically the same plants run through a blender and their ingredients extracted by some odd process? Especially if there are concerns regarding the health implications this might entail.

An yes those genetically modified plants are somewhat scary not only for the plants themselves but the awful business practices of the companies producing them. I never said that antibiotics laden mass animal production is any better.

I hope that the eating habits would change towards less animal products. Which would make much more sense then replacing those with artificial products for basically no reason other than habit.

Artifical products are not bad in general. Everything we eat is chemical, the only difference is that somethings are created over a thousand years and some things are done in a few months/years in a lab. Extracting ingredients and creating new flavors or products is not a bad idea, especially if you can replace a hard to make product(meat). Of course, there should and will be testing if it is for safe consumption.

The word 'artificial' is, well, basically bullshit. There's no such thing as 'artificial' (or 'natural'). It all boils down to molecules and atoms, in the end.

What matters is (lack of) toxicity, harmful, LD50, food safety. 'Artificial' however does not and should not imply any of that.

As for

> Is it only me or is this whole preprocessed food stuff the most American thing ever?

I wouldn't say so. There's innovation regarding this throughout the world.

On top of that, cutting down on meat saves the environment. Is saving the environment an American thing...?

I'd wager that fast food is mostly an American invention, but it got picked up throughout the rest of the world. Like preprocessed food it isn't good or bad per definition.

The difference between natural and artificial is the difference between substances we've been exposed to, and thus evolved to deal with, for millions of years, and ones which are completely new to us, and we are essentially beta-testing on our bodies.

Of course, the official meaning of the world "natural", as it relates to the list of ingredients on a package, has been diluted to be meaningless, as you say.

> Of course, the official meaning of the world "natural", as it relates to the list of ingredients on a package, has been diluted to be meaningless, as you say.

It's been restricted to be meaningless, IMO. If we go by your definition of artificial, then a lot of what doesn't qualify as "natural" on food labels isn't artificial either. Many "chemicals" added to food are substances that we've evolved to deal with. GMOs in particular aren't artificial by this definition, as they're mostly about making some food contain stuff that was previously found in other food.

Basically, everything man-made which did not previously exist in nature is artificial. As for naturally occuring substances, everything that is synthesized is artificial as well.

> Why would you replace a meal made out of plants with basically the same plants run through a blender and their ingredients extracted by some odd process?

Convenience. I use my blender twice a day. I need 3000 calories a day to maintain a BMI of 22 and to get that from all plants would be lots of work. I’ve eaten 2000 calories of lentils in a day - not pretty.

> Why would you replace a meal made out of plants with basically the same plants run through a blender and their ingredients extracted by some odd process?

Doesn’t that basically apply to any sort of cooking process at all? It’s all an artificial transformation of food.

Mass production.

> yes those genetically modified plants are somewhat scary

I have a question about this. Aren't all vegetables that we eat now are 'genetically modified' by humans. There were no ancient tomatoes or ancient okra.

Is there implication that GMO's that were made in lab are more scary?

I think it's intellectually dishonest to compare artificial selection through selective breeding to genetic modification. You simply can't insert an anti-freeze gene from a fish into a tomato through artificial selection.

I don't even really have an issue with GMO, but I find the arguments promoting it are often conflating different issues which just seems to muddy the debate and in my opinion seems to create more distrust.

sorry it wasn't a gotcha point. I've heard ppl say that but I could never get a good answer what exactly makes 'genetic modification' more dangerous method vs 'breeding' method.

> Why would you replace a meal made out of plants with basically the same plants run through a blender and their ingredients extracted by some odd process?

Well I first heard of pea protein from vegan bodybuilders. Bodybuilders need extra protein. Protein without the carbs is useful. I think whey is probably a better idea, since it's been around long enough Galen recommends it for weak constitutions, but I'm not a vegan.

I have no idea what the "food industry" uses it for; presumably a replacement for soy meal, which really shouldn't be fed to people. Then again, pea protein soaked in glophosate probably shouldn't be either.

I would say that at least as American as processed food, are our various peculiar forms of "low religion" surrounding food. Sugar is bad for you, salt is bad for you, meat is bad for you, wheat is bad for you. Last week coffee was bad for you; today it's great for you. Every few days do a juice cleanse to flush out all the toxins inside you. Check out this new superfood from the swamps of Elbonia, loaded with antioxidants and a guaranteed cancer fighter! Et cetera.

A Native American friend put it thus: Veganism is a choice we can afford to make in modern society. If you were a Lakota living on the plains 500 or 1000 years ago, your choices were to eat buffalo or starve.

The USA is, indeed, one of the most prosperous countries in the history of ever, and one of the boons of that is we get a smörgåsbord laid out before us every day, a veritable cornucopia of foods from different sources of varying quality. It has turned us into picky eaters indeed, a luxury virtually unaffordable for most of human history.

> plant based protein sources are [...] worse than mass-agriculture raised animal products.

Plant-based protein is no better, from the health and nutrition context, than animal-based protein. They can even be worse; for example, plant nutrients often suffer from low “bioavailability”—which means that they are hard for us to extract, absorb, and utilize[1].

More on animal protein: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/food/meats/

[1] https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/micronutrients-mental-health/

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