The Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat aren't healthier
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
However, if you consider that fake meat doesn't create new superbugs from antibiotics overuse, and that the environment is important to your health, you could make a real case that it _is_ healthier.
Beyond Meat is marketed as being healthier. Go to Beyond Meat's website https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/ and it begins "Imagine your favorite meaty dishes like burgers and tacos delivering the juicy, delicious taste you know and love, while being better for you..."
The constant daily reminder from the media that Impossible Burgers aren’t any healthier than real burgers are an irrelevant distraction from the point. Animals don’t have to be slaughtered to enjoy a hamburger if it’s an Impossible burger. The only way to dispute that is if you claim that Impossible Burgers aren’t as good as a real one, and dammit if Impossible hasn’t done an incredible job at making a tasty burger out of freakin plants.
I realize this is a bit extreme of a characterization, but this argument doesn't sit right with me at all.
It sounds like 'I'm only willing to change my habits to reduce animal cruelty and help the environment if an alternative that tastes exactly like meat exists. Otherwise, what can possibly be done?!'
If you are really concerned about those things, whether the Impossible Burger exists or not should not make a difference. There are plenty of delicious vegetable burgers that already exist. They just taste like the ingredients they are made of (beans, mushrooms, etc.) and not a faux replica of meat.
I like to think of them as a gateway drug to meat for vegetarians. Once they get hooked on the taste, they'll soon start craving for the rich texture of the real meat. And there's still no plant-based bacon, which is the "killer app" of meat.
There are certainly benefits to eating a plant-based burger over a beef based one.
“Better for you and the planet” IS a health proposition.
If only the planet part is true, then half of their benefit proposition goes away. Half the value proposition of any product is a big deal for that product.
For example, it says it's solving issues attributed to production of livestock...it doesn't outright claim the "meat" itself is healthier for you in terms of nutritional content.
Drive by any factory farm that stretches for hundreds of acres and the stench alone would convince you that reducing things like that would have a positive impact on human health, both directly and indirectly [runoff of feces and chemicals into the environment, use of antibiotics and hormones, climate change, etc]
WHY BUILD MEAT DIRECTLY FROM PLANTS?
PLANT-BASED MEATS:
IMPROVING HUMAN HEALTH
ANIMAL-BASED MEATS:
16% INCREASED CANCER RISK
21% INCREASED HEART DISEASE RISK
1. “Risks associated with processed meats.” Archives of Internal Medicine.I don't know that this is true. This is an NBC News article, written for an extremely wide audience. Consumers are generally pretty uninformed, nutritional science isn't always super straightforward, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case that a substantial number of people assume that meat alternatives are healthier for you.
The article does mention the real impact of meat replacements (though it's not great at this, phrasing it as "As always, it's only about helping a corporation's bottom line" due to the PR from increased sensitivity to climate change et al).
Abuse of the concept of a strawman is really rife here these days. Strawmen are relative to context, and you don't get to project whatever random conversation you feel like onto an article and then claim that it's not sticking to points relevant to that conversation. The article, for all its problems, is not making the argument that meat alternatives have no value.
For me - first and foremost is climate impact of livestock, particularly cows. Second is the ethics of current meat production and animal cruelty - the "one bad day" approach to livestock is far more ethical and not at all compatible with current meat consumption and prices. Third is the non-climate impact of livestock like antibiotic overuse and massive monetary and unpriced land use subsidies given to the industry.
I’m not convinced those credentials add up to a position of authority on ecology or internal medicine - or HN-worthy content for that matter...
I believe it's sincere.
Sincere in the interest of the multibillion dollar meat industry agenda.
I don’t believe there are any healthy or unhealthy individual food items. Rather, it’s the individuals diet that is healthy or unhealthy.
> By shifting from animal, to plant-based meat, we are creating one savory solution that solves four growing issues attributed to livestock production:
> human health
> climate change
> constraints on natural resources
> animal welfare.
You and article are both correct that the 1st of those four is a weak reason.
(FYI, Impossible Foods marketing promotes environment impact exclusively, no human health or animal rights.)
I know people who do eat fake meat to be healthier
I know people that drink fruit juice (sugar) all the time thinking they'll get healthier but end up getting fat.
Point is? People are dumb. It's not the product's fault.
Do you have any data to support this claim? Does any of that data specifically compare the two?
> it's not injected with antibiotics.
You can buy meat that hasn't been
The article is not particularly well-written or informative, but I don't think they're making a straw man argument.
Fast food companies will try to market this stuff as in some way healthier, because that's what will sell.
Unfortunately, opposition to animal cruelty and anthropogenic climate change just aren't great motivators of consumer behavior.
Yet. I wouldn't be surprised if consumer preferences shift and it becomes profitable to market meatless meats as more humane and better for the environment.
If you eliminate those meats then red meat alone is perfectly fine.
Impossible Foods is pretty similar, although they do claim they looked for ingredients that are "better for people" which implies being healthier but isn't even that specific. https://www.whitecastle.com/pdfs/New_Impossible_Slider_FAQ.p...
https://www.beyondmeat.com/about/
Plant based meat is "Improving Human Health", vs Animal based meat which according to them has "16% Increased cancer risk", and "21% Increased Heart Disease Risk.
I guess it could be read either way, though.
edit: although looking at the actual pdf, it says "better for people and the environment", which hurts my interpretation of the wording.
There are much clearer ways to state that, like "better for the environment".
"Eat recycled food for a happier healthier life, be kind and peaceful to each other, eat recycled food. Recycled food is good for the environment, and ok for you."
First of all, as others have mentioned, the main reason people go vegan or vegetarian is ethical concerns with animal cruelty, not health:
https://vomadlife.com/blogs/news/why-most-people-go-vegan-20...
https://faunalytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fundament...
And this is a worthless criticism of plant-based meat:
has comparable caloric and fat levels as its meat-based counterpart ... more calories, more fat and more sodium than the meaty original
Different fats vary wildly in how unhealthy they are. "In fact, some fats actually help promote good health." [1] Saturated fats (mainly found naturally in meat) is much less healthy than unsaturated fats (mainly found naturally in plants) and Omega-3 fats (mainly found naturally in fish) [1].
This doesn't mean it's as simple as meat fats = unhealthy and plant fats = healthy: trans fats are mainly made synthetically from unsaturated plant fats, but are widely considered as unhealthy or worse than saturated meat fats [1]. Coconut oil, even though it comes from a plant, is actually a saturated fat, and the evidence we have suggests it is less healthy for you than other, unsaturated plant fats, although the same evidence also suggests that it's healthier than typical meat fats like butter and lard [2].
[1]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h... [2]: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/coconut-oil
In the end I think that beef is healthier than pea protein isolate and canola oil. In fact I avoid both legumes and polyunsaturated oils, so this isn't a tough choice for me. The fat and protein profiles of beef are better, it has a lower carbohydrate load which helps to control diabetes, and is better tolerated by people with IBS.
I may be wrong, but don't pretend that people who disagree with you are trivializing this choice. It has a direct effect on how many healthy years we have left.
I'm confused. Every source I can find says that with diabetes, saturated fats are worse for you and unsaturated fats are better for you (same as without diabetes):
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/diabetes-understanding-fat
https://ucdintegrativemedicine.com/2016/09/diet-diabetes-sat...
https://www.joslin.org/info/5-common-food-myths-for-people-w...
https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/eat...
https://consumer.healthday.com/encyclopedia/diabetes-13/diab...
Why do you believe that because of your diabetes, the saturated fat in beef is better for you than unsaturated oils?
I particularly recommend "The Big Fat Surprise" by Teicholz on the subject of the health of various fats. Her research goes flat against a wide variety of authorities ... and I find it very convincing. It sure changed what's on my plate.
as well as "The Big Fat Surprise" by Nina Teicholz as mentioned.
Each of these paints a fully researched rebuttal to the mainline nutrition science sources you cite. Roughly "All of modern nutrition science is woefully corrupted, since about 1940".
I mean, I know that humanity will survive climate change, I have every hope & belief, but the earlier that we work on it, both individually and collectively, the better off we'll be. This whole thing about "individual health" is just more tragedy of the commons, especially when the quality of health of the food is so similar - both will get you equally obese.
If we are talking about health and human welfare, there exists a lot of lower hanging fruit than concern about the miniscule differences between beyond meat and that which comes from cattle, but the ecological arguments that can be made are undeniable - impossible and beyond blow beef out of the water.
Not if from McD ;)
The propane can easily be replaced with a different cooking method.
Are there any numbers that support that?
Given that propane is about 5% of US home's primary heating fuel whereas electricity and natural gas together are 80%, that seems likely: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=18131
But the reality is that barbecueing a burger is a common way to cook them and I maintain that it is an interesting question to contrast the barbecueing impact to the growing impact..
You can cook a burger with electric heat, which can be generated with solar or wind power.
Your comments is like saying "we don't have to do fracking!", when the answer is, yes, you do, to satisfy the ever-growing demand for oil.
I have always thought of "health food" as a marketing term selling a lifestyle to people who can afford to pay for premium branded packaged stuff in a grocery store.
If you get past the headline (I peaked), the next thing you see is a KFC bucket. Do people walk into a fast food restaurant thinking they are going to get anything healthy?
I'm actively trying to cut sugar (and carbohydrates in general, but especially sugar), and have already noticed I feel a lot better. I don't know if it's actually contributing to weight loss, but not feeling completely worn out after eating a big meal is a benefit in and of itself.
One thing that makes it difficult is how much sugar is in everything (even in things that you'd think shouldn't need it, like jerky). Pork rinds have been a godsend for properly-carb-free snacking.
The one group who really seem to take it personally are the long-time vegetarians/vegan advocates who would prefer that everyone switch to a completely unprocessed fat-free salt-free diet. Yeah, sure, wonderful, ain't gonna happen. It's almost like they feel they'll lose their identity if they allow these mere "vege-tourists" to enjoy their Beyond/Impossible burgers, so they do everything they can to maintain some separation and the "it's not really healthier" schtick is just a means to an end.
So, on the one hand, removing red meat reduces your succeptibility to cancer. But adding in all that oil will increase inflammation and thus expose you to other health risks.
It’s scarcely news that marketing and PR exist, nor that the world of pop nutrition is an indescribable mess of self-contradiction and snake oil sales. The author (scratch that — “ personal trainer and certified nutritionist behind a popular weight loss blog”) doesn’t mention the fibre content, lipid profile or nitrate content, all of which are relevant risk factors for significant disease.
The only actual nutrition claims seem to be Fat Bad and Salt Also Bad, which are 1980s nutrition touchstones, but don’t reflect the current state of research.
1) The article does acknowledge that being "healthier" is not meant to be the goal of meat-replacements like Impossible/Beyond
2) The article serves as clarification for those who erroneously conflate "not made of meat" with "healthy"
3) At least one of the companies (Beyond Meat) does claim on its website that its products are meant to "improve human health" - ergo, are healthier than eating meat: https://www.beyondmeat.com/about/
At least that seems to be happening.
That said. Yeah, I'm not eating a burger for a healthy lifestyle, but I do like alternatives.
In other news, LED lightbulbs still run on fossil fuels!
I'm eating burgers because they taste good. I'll order the Impossible Burger every chance I get because it really does taste close enough to beef that I can't tell the difference, and it has a much more acceptable environmental and ethical footprint.
"You'll have to stop in for Green Market's light and healthy menu, with treasures like the Impossible Burger Bowl and Avocado Caprese"
and
"A healthy, vegetarian plant based patty grilled and served on our brioche bun, lettuce and tomato."
Also saw this from a country club's website: "A new interest in using meatless foods for this season was sparked by our health-conscious Members and expanded offerings by some popular meatless food companies. We will begin using a vegan brand called Beyond Meat in some menu items.[...] We are excited to include a variety of healthy options for our Members and are looking forward to a great season!"
If menus and restaurants are calling it healthy it's a fair question to ask.
1. Require less energy input
2. Healthier than animal meat
3. Animal welfare (but this is less important for most people)
Imitation meat so far accomplished no 1 and no 3. It so far has not addressed no 2. It may be of equivalent health impact. We don’t know, but they are heavily (ultra as people like to say) processed foods... with additives and such. But some people get tripped up by looking mostly at no 1.
Unlike these burgers, which aren't aiming to be healthier, LED lightbulbs aim (and succeed) at using less energy than their competition and thus contribute less to climate change. If the burgers both were healthier and similar to beef then they'd be like LED bulbs!
LED bulbs have the same effect (same brightness), while using 85% less energy. But in spite of that it's like still complaining that they run on fossil fuels as if that invalidates the efficiency gains.
Impossible burgers have the same effect (having a fatty, juicy burger) while ultimately being much less destructive to the environment. (They actually use something like 85% less water). But complaining about the fact that they aren't healthier is an attempt to take away from the other amazing advances involved.
I've had "lab-grown meat" (as I've called it) on my future-world wishlist for at least a decade. It seems like we could get rid of a host of problems (inefficiency, suffering, potential for bacteria and diseases like mad cow from meat, etc), by engineering our meat.
I suspect the health aspects will follow, as the next frontier, now that this stuff tastes close enough to meat, will be to reduce cholesterol and other effects.
After all, if you really think about it, 99% of the sensations related to eating food are before we swallow it. If we can replicate all those things (the touch, the smell, the taste, the sight) and start to engineer the internal effects, we could have our (artificial) cake and eat it too, correct?
I say this as someone who LOVES hamburgers, who is a big foodie. Apart from lack of food poisoning, there is fundamentally no difference in feeling in your stomach between fine dining food and a homemade sandwich. And the same goes for the effects on your health. So we should absolutely try to engineer these things for their effects on our bodies. But first you have to convince people to want to even put this stuff in their bodies. And that's what the appeal to the other 4 senses is.
You should {eat plants, use LEDs} because they use less energy.
That's just not true, the supposed health benefits are touted everywhere. Beyond Meat literally claims their products are 'better for you' at the top of their website.
In the case of the Impossible burger, they add coconut oil which is high in saturated fat. Some argue that the Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs), lauric acid and caprylic acid, in coconut oil isn't as bad as other saturated fats, but the evidence is still unclear. Probably not worse than the fat in non-grass fed beef though.
Beyond Meat literally does on their website.
> And an excessive amount of salt in one's diet has been linked in several different ways to
There are so many massive food myths in here. Sugar, carbohydrates and the resulting inflammation are what leads to excessive weight gain, not fat. If we ate similar levels of fat and way fewer carbs, we would be healthier. That's what the diet use to be in many western nations before the obesity trend that started just a few decades ago.
I think what this article highlights more than anything is that people still have no idea what is and isn't healthy in America and the west. It's so difficult to find food in groceries stores in America that isn't loaded down with sugar, starch or high fructose corn syrup.
Weight gain comes from excess calories. Fat has 9kcal/gram, carbs have 4kcal/gram. There are arguments to be made about physiological reactions to certain foods re: gut microbiome, ghrelin, dopamine, etc. but saying "carbs bad, eat fat!" is the kind of over-simplification that marketers love and keeps fat people fat because they want so badly to believe they don't have to suffer to lose weight.
Source: lost and kept off over 150lbs, no thanks to fad diet bullshit.
It's not hard, you just go to the fruit/veg/meat/fish sections.
I care more about the sourcing (eg palm oil), kind of fats, kind of carbs, nutritional content. Bonus points for mixing in misc kinds of fiber.
I was heading vegan for a while. Veggie burgers and meat substitutes are (can be) delicious. More please!
Sadly, I didn't understand anything about nutrition. And my health suffered for it. So I eventually resumed eating meat, esp. organ meat.
I'm looking forward to future engineered foods, like vat grown meat, that cover the nutritional basics. Versus these offerings, which appear to be just savory (vs sweet) treats.
There's a huge difference between red meat and processed meats.
We're just pilling on here. I think we have learned by now that the value of these sorts of articles are somewhere below the bar required for reading them. Why do we care about an article about "food health" coming from a reporter?
I don't think these companies ever marketed them as healthier though. They marketed them as more sustainable by not using animals. I feel like a better argument/study is to see how much fuel is used to generate the plant biomatter for this stuff and compare it to the energy/water needed for beef. That's be a more compelling article.
Nope. Sugar and protein are 4kcal per gram, fat is 9kcal per gram. So fat is over twice the energy density of sugar. It's just not absorbed as easily, and it does not cause insulin spikes.
It really is unfortunate. Also, you to digest it faster causing 1) blood sugar and insulin spikes, and 2) causing you to feel hungry again soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy#Nutrition_labels
Food component kJ/g kcal/g
Fat 37 9
Carbohydrates 17 4