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Comment by diziet | Hacker News Reader

With the majority (>50%) of the calories in these meat replacements coming from Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Canola Oil and possibly other... not so great high fat ingredients, I worry about these products from a health perspective.

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If you're worrying about the health aspects, look more at the sodium (500% as much as real pork). It's true that the jury is still out on how bad sodium is for you, but it's definitely not great to have 5x as much sodium as the real thing.

I would probably try to counteract this with lower-sodium pasta sauce, or less soy sauce.

What about for the pig?

The pig won't exist at all if it's not raised for food.

Some will say that's preferable (for multiple reasons). That's partially opinion though. We'll need to get the pig's input on existence to be certain.

Maybe we'll get our shot at that question in a hundred years when AI is ruling over us: better to live in the service of the AI's ends, or better to not exist at all.

The jury is out on sodium? There's convincing evidence high sodium intake can cause stomach cancer.

Stomach cancer is the most adverse. Increased sodium is proven to drastically increase blood pressure, which in turn increases many cardio vascular and renal diseases.

Edit: surprised by the downvotes on what are well established facts [1]

[1]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/salt-and-sodium...

The link uses much less extreme language and acknowledges that some studies don’t fully support the conclusion.

Good link though.

Research shows that the relationship between sodium intake and high blood pressure is much more complex than just saying that increased sodium increases blood pressure (let alone claiming it does so "drastically").

Too much sodium in the bloodstream causes the body to retain extra water to dilute it. This can cause swelling of the blood vessels, which can cause them to harden over time. That hardening raises blood pressure and makes the heart work harder. When this has happened, reducing sodium intake will help reduce blood pressure by reducing the volume of fluid the heart has to circulate.

But if your blood vessels haven't hardened, there are other ways of helping to regulate your salt levels in addition to, or instead of, decreasing sodium intake. Drinking more liquids will help your kidneys process more sodium, and regular exercise will also help.

There's currently a difference of opinion between the WHO who say that healthy people consuming reasonable amounts of salt don't need to worry about reducing it, and the US who say that they do.

The traditional criticism of salt was that it raised blood pressure and was related to heart disease. I think that line of thinking is being questioned - but nutritional science seems to be a mess and guidelines changes as often as the JavaScript ecosystem.

And thw WHO stated that processed meat causes cancer

> If you're worrying about the health aspects, look more at the sodium (500% as much as real pork)

People probably add salt when they cook pork, though.

It is much closer to a finished product than raw pork though. You generally add a decent amount of salt to pork while cooking/preparing it. For Impossible Pork you don't add any(?). Looks like the stats are decent for Impossible. Higher iron, less saturated fat, less total fat, more fiber.

What makes you say this? If this were true, I would think the company would be mentioning it in order to improve the optics around the sodium content (which is about 25% of the RDA). Have they (or anyone else) made any claims about the need to add seasonings?

They have approximately the same fat content as animal products. But not cholesterol.

You probably wouldn't eat an animal burger everyday, so you probably shouldn't eat one of these daily.

That's assuming dietary cholesterol is bad. Or assuming that cholesterol is causal in heart disease.

“Fat” is an umbrella term; there are many different fats, with distinct effects on metabolism and health. (Lookup n6 vs n3 fats to start to get an idea.)

The particular fats in these plant replacements are not too similar to what you would find in real meat.

(Though to be fair even real american pork is pretty different to what it was traditionally, because of modern pork feed.)

I thought it was more fairly well accepted that dietary cholesterol is just shat straight back out, and that blood cholesterol comes from converted saturated fat?

Cholesterol is an energy-intensive molecule to produce, and as such, your body recycles it as much as possible. Your liver produces cholesterol to be released with bile into your digestive track (to aid with fat absorption), but your body re-absorbs that cholesterol, along with any additional dietary cholesterol, back into your bloodstream in the intestines.

If you want to pass the cholesterol out (dietary or otherwise), then eat more fiber, which sticks to cholesterol and prevents your body from reabsorbing it.

Interesting, thanks!

What's wrong with fat? It's my understanding sugars are worse

It's my understanding that it's sugar combined with fat that's the real problem.

I think it boils down to - everything in moderation, including moderation.

I've never heard anything like this. Are you suggesting there's evidence that sugar and fat have some kind of synergistic effect when eaten together?

Yes. Although the only study I can find right now links a high sugar and high fat diet to depression rather than weight gain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28724468

As a rule of thumb, sugars trip the insulin absorption endocrine pathways (weight gain) in the body more readily than the other macros. Fats are energy-rich, so combining sugars with fats means you're tripping the weight gain mechanisms with extra chemical energy present.

It's also why honey glazed bacon tastes amazing.

That seemed to be the conclusion of this BBC Horizon documentary.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01qmgrx

That's a documentary. Can you provide actual source?

There are some studies which show that fat and sugar combined lead to more consumption [1]. The food industry calls this the "Bliss point" [2] and that's why many processed foods combine have a high amounts of fat and carbs.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180614213837.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

somehow this comment finally made me realize my issue with "everything in moderation".

There's clearly a pretty big public health crisis when it comes to food. So saying "in moderation" is very hard to judge! Clearly the status quo isn't great.

So what's a moderate amount of fat to consume?

It could be half of what people tend to consume. it could be 10%. It could be double!

Given that if you follow "eat what you like" you end up in a bad place, it's kind of hard to lend credence to stuff like paleo.

So you're back to square 1 of having not much of a great idea. My bet is that the moderate amount of stuff that would be healthy vastly differs from what the "average minus 15%" or something would be.

can you elaborate more? I thought eating fat and sugar together actually lowers the glycemic index in the food? (Lower glycemic index than you would without the fat)

I wouldn't put coconut oil in the same category as the rest of those, but I agree with your point. These new meat alternatives are probably not that healthy overall right now compared to the absolute healthiest hamburger patty. But more often this would replace a McDonald's level beef patty, so the standard for "not worse for you than what it's replacing" is easy to meet.

Why do you think Mc burgers are any better or worse than expensive burgers?

My friend often recounts the story of passing a McDonalds during delivery day, and spotting crates of meat being carried in with the label "GRADE D, STILL EDIBLE" written on them.

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't accurate, but the problem is knowing McDonalds, I would also not be surprised if it were.

Your friend lied as there is no such grading scheme or designation. He was merely passing off a common lie as a personal anecdote to seem interesting.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/grade-d-meat/

Your average $20 burger is probably tastier but no better for you. This is pretty simple logic.

Presume you mean coconut oil is worse?

(See https://youtu.be/vCHPhIzOUOw for a reasonable review.)

The fat content tends to be comparable to meat. These oils tend to be looked at favorably for their fat makeup - coconut praised for MCTs, etc.

I think there are health concerns here but not so much as a meat replacement.

I don't think there's a health concern in eating any kind of burger infrequently.

I figure these are still in development. In 5 years they will have iterated a fair bit more and the patties should really taste good and be healthy (maaaaaybe).

I hope they use fewer oils and more Whole Foods eventually. I’ve had “chocolates” made out of diced dates and nuts which were great. Because they’re made of diced dates instead of extracted sugars the product contains the nutrients and fibers of the original plants. Much easier through the system.

There's no saturated animal fat which has been shown to raise LDL cholesterol, dietary cholesterol, or trans fat. The absence of those three things alone helps it be monumentally more healthy in the long run.

That being said, yeah, it's definitely a treat. Coconut oil is not the best thing for you.

Coconut oil and palm oil are high in saturated fat. I believe they are still thought to raise LDL cholesterol.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concern_troll

A bit of a "meta-question" here: is there an comprehensive source about the approval process for this kind of products (or is it considered "as safe as anything else" since it's basically processed plants ?)

Would there be a different process for "lab-grown" meat ?

Does anyone know if such approval processes are substantially different on different sides of the Atlantic ?

(Not trying to spread FUD at all, just curious.)

In the US legal system something or some act is considered legal until a law makes it illegal. They’re selling a good as food so it’d come under whatever regulations are in place for food. Their products don’t contain any ingredients requiring any other regulation. There’s maybe some approval process to show that what they say is in the product is actually there through some regulation somewhere, but they’re not like certifying a drug with drug trials.

Coconut oil is a good thing but I would really be worried about frying sunflower seed and canola oil. Especially in high temperature.

How do you justify saying that? Coconut oil is largely saturated fats.

Yes, which makes it great. The bigger thing is a high smoke point, so safe to fry on.

Sunflower is high on omega 6 but apart from that having calories coming from fat is healthy (as compared to carbs).

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