Have you seen the animal industry? It's absolutely disgusting. Getting rid of that would be an enormous net win, both ethical and environmental.
That being said, I think it's only fair to compare that to all the antibiotics, hormones, and fertilizers that your average low-grade ground beef has been exposed to or fed.
Weird, how?
Weird, because they have funny names that are hard to pronounce, and are therefore magically "unnatural" and bad for you?
Or weird, because their effects on nutrition, digestion, and human health hasn't been widely studied yet?
And the decisions are sometimes odd. Like beet juice being added not for flavor but so it looks like the patty is bleeding. Meat eaters aren't sold because the veggie burger looks rare.
The truth is meat eaters aren't, en massé, abandoning meat for a plant based alternative that provides little to no health benefit and costs just as much or more.
Will we get there? Probably. But we're in a weird limbo area that is barely appealing to either side of the fence other than as a novelty.
Those 'odd ingredients' don't seem so odd to me. Go through the list of a meat alternative one by one, you'll be surprised how mundane they are
[ citation needed ]
I'm a long-time vegetarian but this kind of specious pseudo science doesn't sit right with me.
Your turn. Basically all cardiovascular diseases are caused by meat, right?
I've spent most of my life as a vegetation but dishonest histrionics like this do a disservice to the aim of convincing meat eaters to eat less meat.
Its not that complicated, I fail to see how this qualifies as histrionics.
Again, citation needed.
I’m not suggesting these new meat substitutes have that effect but it’s reasonable for people to be cautious. Yeah heart disease and global emissions but... also soiling yourself without warning in public.
The best thing proponents of these new foods could do is genuinely and honestly recognize and address those worries.
Caution not needed. Nothing new here
As in any other case, to persuade another person is to assert a claim. It doesn’t matter that you already have done the requisite learning to understand what you’re certain is the baseline set of facts. What matters is you want to change someone else’s beliefs.
As an example:
It would be preposterous for me to say “I am certain that biological sex is a spectrum, and binary sex is a simplification useful as a tool for some applications but inadequate for others” and just expect anyone who doesn’t know that to crack open a book or start googling my hypothesis credulously. Even though I’m certain it’s true.
I understand that while there’s sound scientific basis for the claim, it’s not a shared understanding of reality.
I also understand that it’s a claim that may be questioned, even though I’m certain it’s correct, and it’s my choice whether to give it more weight when challenged (attempt to persuade someone who doesn’t accept the claim l) or to carry on certain I’m right. But if I take the latter path, I have to accept that it’s really very unlikely the other party will learn what I’ve learned, unless they become curious and open to the possibility.
In other words, you can be right until the end of time and it wouldn’t ever matter to some people unless you give them a reason to want to be right too.
Here's the ingredients list for the impossible burger:
Water, textured wheat protein, coconut oil, potato protein, natural flavors, 2% or less of leghemoglobin (soy), yeast extract, salt, konjac gum, xanthan gum, soy protein isolate, vitamin E, vitamin C, thiamine (vitamin B1), zinc, niacin, vitamin B6, riboflavin (vitamin B2), and vitamin B12.
The only thing unusual is leghemoglobin, which is fermented soy protein.
"textured wheat protein" - no idea what it, but it sounds disgusting, and very highly processed. I'd presume it also contains gluten?
"potato protein" - again, it sounds like something highly processed.
"natural flavors" - it doesn't specify exactly what they are, so I don't even know what I'm eating - I don't like it.
"leghemoglobin" - you mentioned what this is, but otherwise it sounds like a lab-produced chemical.
"yeast extract" - makes me think of marmite, which is one of the most revolting substances on earth! Aside from that, I think of the smell of yeast; I... don't think I want to eat that.
"konjac gum" - never heard of it.
"xanthan gum" - I think it's some kind of thickening agent?
"soy protein isolate" - no idea what this is. The wheat and potato proteins don't have "isolate" in their names, so I assume this is even more highly processed. For some reason it makes me think of processes like "hydrogenation" - ways we mess around with foods to make them as cheap as possible, sometimes with negative health consequences.
"vitamin E..." - makes me think the raw ingredients on their own are so unhealthy that they had to add a few crushed multivitamins.
Overall: it sounds highly processed and devoid of nutrition. blech!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konjac
And if you find yeast "revolting", I take it you don't like bread or beer either?
I know it wasn't your point, but as an aside: isn't the "used" yeast slurry removed from most commercially produced beer? (depending on the style, obv)
Each of the ingredients bar "natural flavors" (which usually means a proprietary spice blend or msg) can be found with a simple Google search - as someone else said, konjac is an Asian vegetable, textured wheat protein has been a staple of vegan cooking for decades and can be bought in any health food shop, and so on.
> isn't the "used" yeast slurry removed
From beer, partially. From bread, no.
You may be familiar with these ingredients, but that doesn't mean anyone who isn't used to highly processed food is "wrong" for not knowing what they even are.
No, actually you probably can't [1]:
> Is there such a thing as a climatically-guilt-free steak? Are grazing livestock climate villains or climate saviours? A new report by an international research collaboration led by the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), part of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, provides an authoritative answer to these questions.
> The new report Grazed and confused? helps add clarity to the debate around livestock farming and meat and dairy consumption.
> 14.5% of all human made greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock sector as a whole. There is however some confusion and disagreement in the debate about the climate impacts of grazing livestock (and particularly grass-fed beef).
> Some commentators have argued that well-managed grazing can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in soils, and that these removals can substantially compensate for, or even exceed, all other emissions from the livestock that are doing the grazing. In this way, grass-fed beef has been offered by some as a climate solution, rather than a problem.
> Written by FCRN’s Dr Tara Garnett in collaboration with Cécile Godde of CSIRO and a team of international experts, this report dissects claims made by different stakeholders in the debate, and evaluates them against the best available science. This report finds that better management of grass-fed livestock do not hold a solution to climate change as only under very specific conditions can they help sequester carbon. This sequestering of carbon is even then small, time-limited, reversible and substantially outweighed by the greenhouse gas emissions these grazing animals generate. Dr Garnett explains the key takeaways from this report:
> “This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use. Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.”
[1]: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-news-grazed-and-...
>Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
Yes I have. My job as an electrician brought me to farms, slaughterhouses, and food factories. Denmark has rigorously enforced standards for ethical treatment of animals, as well as strict hygiene standards for industrial food preparation. Not disgusting at all.
Along the way, we’re tricking people into thinking that some palm oil smoothie is healthier than meat, and that sugared water filtered through oats is better than dairy.