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!
You should {eat plants, use LEDs} because they use less energy.
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.
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.