Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat's plant-based burgers aren't healthier | Hacker News Reader

Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat's plant-based burgers aren't healthier

businessinsider.com

73 pointsSirLJ103 comments

Speaking as somebody who does enjoy a vegan boiger - 'health' and 'nutrition' are not things I'm looking at when I want a burger.

This whole debate is one big straw-man. I'm a vegan. I don't need burgers. I might want burgers, but they don't form a part of a standard diet just in the same way any kind of burger probably shouldn't form part of anybody's regular diet.

If you're eating processed food - there's a considerable chance that whatever it is you're eating - vegan or otherwise - is neither nutritious nor healthy. It probably tastes good though, which is why you want it in the first place.

Ultimately it boils down to this: if I'm eating a burger, then nutrition and health are more or less irrelevant - I'm after taste. I think the lives of animals are more important than my taste-buds, so I eat plant-based burgers. It's not really any more complicated than that.

Precisely.

And if you have enough veggies and vegans around you, you know that they can eat as much junk food as everyone else.

Sugar is vegan, after all.

I'm guilty myself - my city has exploded with vegan stuff over the last couple of years and my waistline has expanded in-line with it :P

Some sugar is vegan. Most isn’t, though most vegans I know conveniently ignore that: [1]

[1] https://www.peta.org/living/food/is-sugar-vegan/

Considering sugar to be non vegan just because it has possibly been filtered using animal derived coal is not far away from considering products made by workers who consumed meat to also be non-vegan.

The definition of vegan changes depending on who you ask.

A good sugar and salt dry rub is excellent on a rack of ribs.

Um. Is PETA considered a reliable source?

Considering they are one of the most extremist and hypocritical organizations I can think of I would certainly vote a strong no on that

I don't know many skinny vegetarians. Eating nothing but carbs and butter is vegetarian and extremely unhealthy.

There are plenty of super high protein vegetatian and vegan options available. Many nuts, and pulses are in the same ballpark as even red meat.

Consider that most people aren't strictly carnivorous, and are usually pairing a burger with 600 calories of fries, and a 400 calorie bun, which is all carb.

Not by any chance, when I eat nut they tend to deplete my minerals, requiring constants supplementation. Plus, I think some aminoacids are difficult to source from vegetarian sources. I personally do great on glycine (skin, eyes, hair, overall inflammation, sleep) and have not found a veggie source.

Nothing is in the same ballpark as red meat in terms of nutrition density and bioavailability.

A beef steak is about 270 calories for 30g of protein, cooked lentils are about 22g for the same number of calories. I'm not researched enough in bioavailability to comment on that part.

For an 80kg man, the "recommended" protein intake is about 64g, the difference in calories is fairly minute (assuming you compare 100% meat vs 100% lentils). If you're training/weightlifting and following the advice of 2-3g per kg of bodyweight, you're almost certainly going to supplement your protein intake anyway. Protein supplements are 2-3x the density of red meat, and available in vegan options if that's your thing.

The bioavailability of protein from lentils is about 60%. So your cherrypicked comparison has about 50% of the useful protein content of beef.

Macronutrients are not the entire picture. If you look into micronutrients you’ll find all of the essentials in beef, some are not found at all in plant sources.

Be careful about all fda recommendations, they were heavily influenced by lobbying from the sugar / grain / cereal industry and are not being updated in step with science.

Maybe you just run in extremely unhealthy circles.

In India, we vegetarians eat main courses made of vegetables and pulses, with grain-based bread or white /brown rice. Thus, we don't eat only carbs and butter, but lots of (in fact, mainly) vegetables too.

I do not know about the availability of vegetables in mainly meat-eating countries. I do know that vegetables may not often come to mind, and indeed I'm amused at various powdered vegetable drinks :)

India has the highest rates of depression and one of the highest rates of heart disease, I posit this is because their exceptionally low intake of nutrition from animals.

Hong Kong, with the highest consumption of meat per capita, has the highest life expectancy in the world.

Do you think vegans eat 'nothing but carbs and butter'?

Sure vegan burgers have their target market, but if they were healthy in addition to being vegan they would appeal to a larger market.

This is true of non-vegan burgers too, surely?

No. Vegan burgers have a small target market, and are not very appealing for most of the people. Non vegans would consider buying vegan burger if it had some advantage. Most of vegans would not consider buying normal burger even if it was better for their health. (I have a friend who keeps vegan diet even though she has to take vitamin suplements).

Why would 'health' be a contributing factor for sales of vegan burgers but not non-vegan burgers?

Market for vegan burgers that have the same health effect as non-vegan burgers is vegans (including people who try to become vegans). Because if it tastes the same or worse as meat costs about the same (usually more), what is the reason to buy them instead of normal burger or something like falafel.

Market for vegan burgers with better health effect than non-vegan burgers is vegans+health concerned non-vegans which is much larger than vegans alone.

Market for non-vegan burgers is always non-vegans. Being more healthy can affect the standing of particular non-vegan burger among other non-vegan burgers, but is unlikely to attract many vegans (which is an order of magnitude smaller market anyway and couldn't have high impact on the larger non-vegan market).

I think you're overestimating the number of people who are vegan for health reasons. People who are health conscious don't choose burgers - whether they're vegan or not, and most vegans who choose burgers are looking for taste, not nutrition.

It's a false equivalence. Burgers are not healthy - and very, very few people are looking for 'healthy burgers'. People are looking for 'tasty burgers', which is why so much effort is put into replicating the flavour and texture of meat.

I never talked about people who are vegan for health reasons (†). I was talking about people who are not vegan, and would like to eat less meat if it is healthy. The reasons you describe is exactly why vegan burgers are not appealing to the larger market of non-vegans.

(†) I believe if they were health conscious, they would it less meat, but would not be vegan.

There are vegetarian/vegan burgers available with fewer calories, often containing more beans or vegetables. They've been available for longer than the Impossible or Beyond burgers without gaining nearly as much public mindshare. A random example sold at my local grocery store:

http://drpraegers.com/our-food/california-veggie-burgers/ Ingredients: Carrots, Onions, String Beans, Oat Bran, Soybeans, Zucchini, Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Peas, Broccoli, Corn, Soy Flour, Spinach, Red Peppers, Arrowroot Powder, Corn Starch, Garlic, Corn Meal, Sea Salt, Spices

They don't taste or feel like burgers, though. It seems that the products that taste like burgers (which require more fat and won't accommodate stuff like carrots and broccoli) are the ones that appeal to a larger market.

„In a related study, the same authors found that electric cars on average are not any faster than petrol based cars.“

On average, in cities like London, driving is more or less the same speed as walking.

I feel like you missed the point of the analogy you were responding to, or you just wanted to shift the discussion to be about cars in cities. Either way I'm confused what your point is.

It's possible I missed the point - but I'll leave it to the OP to correct me. My point was that 'vegan vs non-vegan' is not a choice people make based on factors like those they might use to make a decision between petrol vs electric.

I eat burgers for my health. Often with no bun or fries. The more of my calories come from beef, the better I feel.

Feels != facts

Your original comment was 100% feels so it's interesting that this is your response.

My original comment was clearly anecdotal, which is not the same thing as being '100% feels'.

My wife and I really enjoy both IF and BM burgers - just be sure to not overlook them!

They do contain a lot of fat from vegetable oil but they are very low in cholesterol. I will trade more sodium for the advantages for me of reducing cholesterol.

They really taste good. We like them on good rolls, purple onion, tomato, lettuce, and whatever sauce we feel like. Fantastic tasting burgers.

There is also the advantages of not killing animals. My wife and I have just spent two years living in Illinois (returning home to Sedona Arizona next week) and our rented home is beside a pasteur and let me tell you that cows run around like dogs, playing together, and generally have different personalities - we notice which ones tend to start the running around playing/games and which ones join in after the game starts. I think most people in order to make themselves feel better imagine cows and steers as being dumb animals with no soul or consciousness. Not so. I am not a strict vegetarian, but personally I feel better about reducing my meat intake.

I didn't do any history research on the subject but my own conspiracy theory suggests that the whole "humans have soul, animals don't" thing was invented to justify the natural world destruction.

Human-centric worldview and “only humans have souls” goes back to the dawn of recorded history. We often lived in closer confines with animals, often sleeping together for warmth, protection and to watch for predators.

However killing animals for food was the way humans stayed alive when food was scarce as we pushed further into habitats that weren’t temperate.

If anything I guess that the “only humans have souls” story arose as a necessary psychological protection mechanism for people who raised and got to know their animals and then had to slaughter and eat them. Same way people also try to dehumanize the enemy in war in order to not be crushed by the knowledge of killing another human being.

Then once we stopped spending so much time with animals it was easy to continue the narrative since we don’t spend time observing them close up anymore and getting to know them personally.

People don't have to dehumanise animals to slaughter them.

American Indians thanked the spirit of the animal that just killed. Kobe husbandsmen massage, wine and dine their prized cattle. A guy in a Reader's Digest joke was surprised his daughter was delighted the cow with big blue eyes she fed through the fence ended up on her plate.

Greek-Roman traditions allowed a soul to animals. Humans have a God-given part that allow them to determine right and wrong for themselves. This passage by Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor upto 180 AD and Stoic philosopher assumes it.

> The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remainunstirred by agitations of the flesh—gentle and violent onesalike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make theirway into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link betweenmind and body, don’t try to resist the sensation. Thesensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in withjudgments, calling it “good” or “bad.”

Animals have killed other animals for food since the dawn of life. You can't get more"natural" than that. Eating meat is hardly a human invention.

The problem is not eating meat. The problem is the horrors of factory farming, which is as “unnatural” as it gets.

FWIW, the Greek philosophy of Aristotle adopted by Christians later on said that souls existed in vegetables, animals, and in humans.

Christians added to that the idea that the human soul was immortal and could survive the destruction of the body.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm#article3

I think any philosophizing about souls probably came long after humans began hunting for meat to survive.

There is no indication dietary cholesterol impacts blood cholesterol. Watch Dr. Robert Lustig's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" for more on the subject.

Doesn't diatary cholesterol not matter for most people?

1. Surely there are other chemical compounds that are present in the fast food meats and not the plant based meats, and vice versa, but that aren’t listed in the article’s table.

2. The plant-based meats are intended to imitate real meat as much as possible, and I would imagine an intuitive way to do this is to include the same amount of ingredients as on the table presented.

3. “Healthiness” is probably unfortunately best measured through a large and well intentioned study, and not objectively by comparing a limited list of ingredients.

I know for a fact that McDonald's beef burgers, at least in North America, have a single ingredient: beef. They go directly from source grind to patty maker to freezer, nothing is added.

Sorry, I meant that the chemical makeup of beef is distinct from that of plants. I wasn't referring to additives. I meant the proteins/enzymes, etc.

I didn't even realize that the companies mission was to create a product that was "healthier." I always assumed that it was to create something that was more sustainable...

Their goal was to make a 100% plant-based alternative to meat that tastes like meat.

Plenty of other reasons to not eat meat. Humaneness toward animals? climate change?

Also, regardless of above, not 100% onboard with the premise. I'll be interested in long-term studies. Impossible has been around less than 10 years.

Veganism is not a health choice for most vegans, it’s an ethical one. Plant-based foods use fewer resources per calorie and do not require cruel treatment of animals.

> Plant-based foods use fewer resources per calorie and do not require cruel treatment of animals.

They kind of have to at some point, otherwise you're using artificial nitrogen to top up the soil and that's not just bad for the soil but is also depleting a limited resource (The nitrogen comes from what IIRC is, a single mine).

I remember reading about some farmers that managed to buck the usual statistics by getting around half a thousand chickens to an acre of farmland -- the chickens acted as a natural form of pest-control for the farmland, and their shit and corpses (when they died) provided a natural source for the NPK needed to feed the soil.

The thing is, vegans forget that plants, etc. have all evolved with death as part of the equation. Animal death is required in some form, to supply the micro-organisms in the soil with the proper nutrients. Anyone who has studied farming and agriculture knows that the ideal isn't to eliminate animal death (something that is pretty much impossible unless you want to destabilize the ecosystem and starve your plants), but try to minimize it and ensure that the death is not wasted.

I think this mistake in understanding goes back to school, where children are taught that if you give plants soil, water and sunlight, they will grow. They could take that opportunity to talk about the NPK cycle, the billions of micro-organisms in the soil that need to be fed to provide the plants with nutrients, the fact that dead animals help feed the plants and the micro-organisms, etc. Not teaching children about this when children are capable of understanding it is a disservice given that for many people that is the only schooling that they will ever have on farming and agriculture.

You realize most of the atmosphere is Nitrogen, right? I would not call it a limited resource. Clovers and other cover crops also fix hydrogen.

Atmospheric nitrogen is very common. Nitrogen that is in a form that's usable by plants is not so common.

Many plants in the Fabaceae family, of which clover is a member, fix nitrogen, not hydrogen. I think that's what you probably meant.

Yeah I meant to say nitrogen but said hydrogen

Are you implying that nitrogen depletion in the soil is a non-issue?

Is fertilizer runoff a non-issue? I guess if I'm putting my point together I'm trying to say "we can figure out how to grow crops without this much cow waste". If in 30 years meat consumption goes down dramatically, I'm very skeptical that we'll be growing feed corn to feed cows we dont eat, then use their waste to grow other plants.

I’m not sure that replacing corn fields with pea and canola fields is going to make a difference wrt farming practices.

You don't mine nitrogen, you mine phosphorus.

I had never heard that animal corpses were used in a large scale industrial farming fertilizer so I just looked through the most common soil fertilizers, at least in the U.S. I don't believe a single one of them uses animal corpses.

It seems that the common types of fertilizer[1] are:

- anhydrous ammonia (Nitrogen pulled from the air[2])

- urea ammonium nitrate (Nitrogen pulled from natural gas and plants[3])

- granular urea (Nitrogen pulled from natural gas and plants[3])

- ammonium nitrate (Nitrogen from mixing ammonia [5] and and synthesized nitric acid [4])

- diammonium phosphate (Nitrogen from ammonia and phosphoric acid [6])

You may be correct that small farmers use animal corpses, and you may be correct that using artificial nitrogen is bad for the soil, but 97-99% of the plant foods grown in the U.S. appear to use non-animal based fertilizers. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about the science of this.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-explosion-ammonia/fac...

[2] http://www.greenvalleychemical.com/Green_Valley_Chemical/Anh...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea#Production

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate#Production

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia_production

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diammonium_phosphate

> you may be correct that using artificial nitrogen is bad for the soil > but 97-99% of the plant foods grown in the U.S. appear to use non-animal based fertilizers.

Congratulations. You managed to ignore the entire point of my argument by hyper-focusing on one small part of it and posting something that literally means nothing (The fact that the majority of the US agricultural industry does something does not inherently prove that that is beneficial to the consumer, to the soil, or to the planet).

    it is true that fruits and vegetables grown decades ago
    were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the
    varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in
    this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion:
    Modern intensive agricultural methods have stripped
    increasing amounts of nutrients from the soil in which
    the food we eat grows. Sadly, each successive generation
    of fast-growing, pest-resistant carrot is truly less
    good for you than the one before
    [...]
    What can be done? The key to healthier produce is
    healthier soil. Alternating fields between growing
    seasons to give land time to restore would be one
    important step. Also, foregoing pesticides and fertilizers
    in favor of organic growing methods is good for the
    soil, the produce and its consumers. Those who want to
    get the most nutritious fruits and vegetables should buy
    regularly from local organic farmers.

(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...)

https://www.environment.co.za/environmental-issues/how-do-fe...

Vegans aren't stupid -- but the difference in animal suffering from a meat heavy diet and a meat free diet is massive. Just because something can't be done 100% today, doesn't mean it isn't worth achieving 95% success.

Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in:

at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein

more environmental damage, and

a great deal more animal cruelty than does farming red meat.

http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-ther...

But you can mitigate that over time, for example with "smart" farming systems and managed use of land as usage stabilizes. You can't mitigate it in the meat industry.

Wheat is not a sensible method of getting protein. Comparing against wheat on a protein basis is a worst case comparison. Also lots of cheap meat protein is created by feeding things like wheat and soy to animals, rather than grass fed (although maybe most meat in Australia is meat fed, I don't know about it).

The point is that people act as if eating meat is categorically more harmful to animals than eating a vegetarian or even vegan diet. That's demonstrably false.

Joel Salatin, perhaps?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin

It used to be mined, now essentially 100 percent of the ammonium nitrate used in fertilizer and explosives is synthetic. It's made by reacting ammonia with nitric acid.

If you let ruminant livestock graze in a carefully managed pattern instead of feeding them grain (grown and transported from miles away), it improves the land and reduces the amount of pollution:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

Cattle are not very efficient at converting grain to protein. It’s about 7:1. Pork is 2:1, in comparison. Poultry is close to 1:1.

If all livestock were raised in this way there would be nowhere near enough of them to feed current demand for meat (not saying that's a bad thing).

Allan Savory holds a very fringe view not supported by scientists in this field, which you wouldn't know from his TED talk.

Don't forget that not all lands are good carbon sinks. The Swedish department of agriculture claimed in a report (nr 25:2010 iirc. In Swedish ) that the vast majority of Swedish grazeland would not meaningfully decrease carbon emissions regardless of grazing systems

"Barclays concluded that when it comes to plant-based citizens, many are "thinking that they are healthier than what they really are.""

I'm assuming this was retranslated --from burger to citizen

Spell checks for fat fingers seem more likely if you compare the first 3 letters of each word: C and B - one key away, I abd U - neighbours, T and R - neighbours, I and G - far away.

To me this conclusion does not fit with a few points: quality of fats, overall quantity of fat, protein quantity, and fiber.

I'm not making any overarching conclusion about what is healthier, but I do think the article's conclusion is pretty weak.

I mean this is obvious, right? Salads on fast-food menus have more fat and other "bad stuff" than burgers thanks to cheese, dressing etc. Your FF faux burger is still fried, cheesed, sauced etc. Next please.

I’m pretty sure this was already known and talked about.

I think the reason it’s reiterated is many people do associate “no meat” with “more healthy”, whether it’s in error or not. (There’s even a big fad here in TO of fatty deep fried vegan foods!)

The article is likely not tuned or intended for the audience of HN, but for people who don’t pay attention to the details of nutrition more.

On a side note, I tried the Beyond Meat patty when they showed up at my grocery out of curiosity. It caused me terrible GI problems for about 3 days. Never again for me (sparing any details). Only suggestion I could find as to why was potentially the high amount of canola oil. That and I rarely eat processed foods, so I’m not sure how much that was a factor.

> Nutrition is a major reason that people are giving plant-based burger a try

Not really sure about that. Current meat "production" involves destroying the planet at an accelerated pace while treating animals in the most horrible way imaginable (and even beyond imagination).

I think saying “a major reason” is fair and accurate, but I agree that the it seems people are, in general, much more concerned about the ethics of industrial farming as it relates to animal cruelty, as well as beef being such a large contributor to co2.

While I think that's true for many people, I would like to have actual data about whether the wide public is more swayed by environmental/ethical or health concerns. Many companies are marketing this from a health angle, and they may know more than you and me. (Another possibility, which I'm not discounting, is that they think everyone is as cynical as they are.)

According to this survey, 68.1% of people's main reason for going vegan was "for the animals" while "health" was only 17.4%.

https://vomadlife.com/blogs/news/why-people-go-vegan-2019-gl...

That being said, the question was "What is the main reason" so people who said "for the animals" might also care a lot about health.

Going vegan (which I understand as deciding to only eat vegan from now on) is a much larger decision than just giving a plant-based burger a try in order to reduce your meat consumption somewhat.

Excellent example of strawman click-bait:

1 take a newsy subject involving something many people like 2 choose an aspect of it about which to adopt the "sober skeptic" stance 3 write the article as though this aspect is the only part of the newsy subject that's worth discussing

The move made in 3 is the trick. It's at least disingenuous, and may even be cynically mercenary.

There's more to "healthy" than calories and cholesterol. What a trash article.

Yeah, I was quite disappointed. Dietary cholesterol doesn't cause arterial cholesterol. "Fat" is a necessary nutrient, and there are different kinds -- polyunsaturated vegetable fats are different than saturated fat (found in beef); and even though saturated fat is considered "unhealthy", the actual scientific evidence for that designation is pretty shaky.

And then, what about fiber? What about the mix of proteins and amino acids? Vitamins and minerals -- in particular B vitamins, which are difficult to get from non-animal sources?

So much potential just to say, "It's got fat and salt, so it's just as bad."

Why is this post even listed here? Business Insider is not a credible news source. They are a corrupt media organization owned by the shady Axel Springer SE. They have strong ties to powerful short sellers.

Link?

Then please flag it and move on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Perhaps, but I think you might be going a bit overboard. However, I would like to see the original study data, and who commissioned it.

That said, perhaps it does make sense that there is too much sodium. This sort of thing should be listed on ingredients, but I don't know what laws there are in the U.S. about this sort of thing.

Currently plant-based burgers are not healthier but are nearing taste-equivalency, but surely it is easier to modify a plant-based burger recipe to increase "healthiness" than to modify a beef burger (make a healthier cow...?). [even mentioned at the end of this article]

So if they are health-equivalent, now compare the next variables: impact on climate, impact on animal welfare, etc.

> Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are continuing to tweak their recipes. The Impossible Burger 2.0, for example, launched earlier this year and was designed to be substantially healthier (and tastier) than the original, with less fat and sodium.

The last sentence cancels the whole purpose of the article. Sodium is the main concern and new recipe use less sodium. Problem solved.

Just like people don’t eat burgers for health (with a side of fries or a supersized portion), these aren’t primarily meant for health either. They could be a lot healthier than conventional burgers, and they certainly are when you look at the comparison chart.

> When it comes to calories, fat, and protein, the two options are pretty similar. Plant-based burgers have less cholesterol...However, the plant-based burgers tend to have more sodium...

Seriously, sodium is one thing that these brands could easily reduce, compared to other aspects, without compromising much on the taste. This article is a big nitpick on one tiny part.

Are these being marketed as being way healthier? I thought the main selling point of these alternatives is against climate change and the disastrous effect that current animal agriculture has on it (then come animal cruelty and health). We’d probably be better off if people like the author adopt these alternatives and cut their sodium intake from other foods.

This article makes a false equivalence between being low calorie and being healthy. The challenge for many vegans (and vegetarians) is getting enough energy each day, so it’s actually healthy for plant based options to be highly caloric.

I agree with the first sentence, but the second one makes no sense to me.

Loads of energy in pasta/noodels, rice, potato, plant based oils etc etc. Getting all amino acids and various nutrients in sufficient amount sure, that is a problem. Energy is not.

The issue is not that high calorie vegan and vegetarian foods don’t exist, it’s an issue of convenience. Fast food restaurants, for all the hate they get, are really important sources of food for people who are too busy to cook. Unlike normal people, vegans can’t just stop at a chain restaurant and order a filling meal. Most vegans I know have to be exceedingly deliberate to make sure they eat enough because it’s so hard to find affordable vegan food unless you cook it yourself.

And they're really great with swiss and mushrooms with a side of garlic fries.

Speaking as somebody who isn't even the slightest bit vegetarian, at near enough the same price as a regular low-end-to-average burger, I'll order it instead because they taste better and have slightly better mouth feel to me.

It doesn't beat a really high-end burger yet, but those are usually more expensive than even an IF or BM choice.

To be honest though, I support them because I want to support the general concept of high-end science being applied to food. After all, if we ever get off this rock and up into the stars, this is likely to become the direction our food comes from.

Whether intentionally or no, Kate Taylor is doing the meat industry's work for them. Pretty much nobody seems to think that plant-based burgers are interesting primarily because they're healthier. See any other top-level comment for examples. Who benefits from a story putting plant-based burgers in a bad light by "refuting" a claim nobody made or cared about? There are many answers, but "the public in general" is not one. Even if the effect is not deliberate, this kind of click-bait seems a bit irresponsible.

Per the article, most consumers are interested in plant burgers specifically for health concerns. I don't understand why you'd dismiss that as irrelevant. And unless this article is factually incorrect, the reporting is entirely fair. You can't get mad because you don't like it.

Per the article, which cites one highly dubious data point to support that claim.

The article provides no source for the “most consumers” claim. Journalists aren’t immune to making stuff up. Why would you blindly trust it?

Reasons I’d eat (more) vegetarian

1. Climate

2. Ethics

...

10. Nutrition/Health

I'm not a vegan, never had IF or BM, but I believe that if they taste as good as the real thing, they will be healthier for mother earth. It takes a lot of resources to raise beef.

They weren't meant to be and never claimed to be. You aren't going to replicate a beef patty without a ton of fat.

I hate to attack the messenger but businessinsider is an affiliate based site that generates revenue with clickbait titles.

Oh. They have some extra salt.

Well I'm sure glad this make it to the front page to stimulate my intellectual curiosity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com