Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

Plant based meat is a rounding error until it gets good enough (at an equivalent or better price to ground beef) that McDonalds and Walmart can cut their low end products without anyone noticing or caring. People don't understand just much low end beef sells compared to the mid range products people might replace with plants (at present). In my experience at the foodservice level it's easily 50:1, maybe even 100:1.

Some people seem to consider meat a necessary part of every meal. But that number of a relatively small percentage in my experience.

If there are more meat substitutes out there that taste good and aren't exorbitantly priced I'll absolutely eat more of them.

I believe a big part of it has to do with the feedlot diet— when they're eating a high-calorie diet of mostly corn/grain instead of their natural diet of grass, it puts their digestive system into overdrive.

EDIT: I looked into it a bit more after posting this, and it looks like it's not clear-cut— for example, it takes a cow a lot longer to reach slaughter weight eating grass, so even if they're belching less during that time, it's a long enough time that it may be a wash, or even worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/climate/beef-cattle-metha...

EDIT 2: Here's a piece which makes the original case, acknowledging greater direct emissions but claiming a savings that makes up for it from soil sequestration due to grazing: http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-gre...

I suppose we could argue about the source but livestock is the most obvious candidate.

Edit: Okay turns out fossil fuels are also responsible fro some non-negligible part of the methane emissions, and it's not just livestock but all agriculture and the resulting waste.

I has also been shown that under the right conditions grazing lands can actually sequester carbon [1].

So there is no a priori argument against meat from the point of view of climate effects, though there are obviously better and worse practices.

[1] http://www.fao.org/3/i1880e/i1880e00.htm

It's more that this wasn't so much a problem until we added the 80%+ other emissions on top (and the deforestation/water use/transportation/diversion of food crops/human population).

If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon that raising cows removes from the air. You're only going to mention the carbon that gets put back in the atmosphere. That way, the problem seems like a bigger deal. This is not a slight on environmentalists -- its just politics.

It might be that allocating all of these grazing animals for just one species destroys most other parts of ecosystems which would otherwise have adjusted for the greenhouse gasses emitted by them.

Or who knows, maybe we fluctuate between warm periods in our ice ages because enough grazing animals have farted enough to start a runaway global warming effects... though I doubt it.

So we should outlaw factory farming and clearing rainforest for cattle, which will drastically cut the supply and allow prices to settle much higher so it's more of a luxury than an every day thing.

> One item worth noting is that the decline in U.S. inventory since 2008 – 3.1 million beef cows – has been met with an opposite expansion in Brazil of almost 4 million beef cows during the same period.

[1] https://www.progressivecattle.com/topics/management/what-us-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle

You might want to read this https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#whe... and maybe this too https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#food-producti...

Highlights:

> there are massive differences in the GHG emissions of different foods: producing a kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gases (CO2-equivalents). While peas emits just 1 kilogram per kg.

> For most foods – and particularly the largest emitters – most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green), and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers – both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods.

> Food is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions.

> Livestock & fisheries account for 31% of food emissions ... This 31% of emissions relates to on-farm ‘production’ emissions only: it does not include land use change or supply chain emissions from the production of crops for animal feed: these figures are included separately in the other categories.

> 21% of food’s emissions comes from crop production for direct human consumption, and 6% comes from the production of animal feed.

> Land use accounts for 24% of food emissions. Twice as many emissions result from land use for livestock (16%) as for crops for human consumption (8%).

So including land use and crops production, livestock and fisheries account for ~15% of GHG emmissions

You can of course still find cow meat that comes from farming that sequester enough co2 to mitigate or offset the emissions, but that kind of production would not sustain current consumption levels.

In my home country, very few areas are suitable for intensive grazing from a sequesterin POW. Only about 10% of the current land used for grazing animals sequester any meaningful amount of CO2.

oh, and I saw someone posted the xkcd comic as a reply to you. That one is pretty telling.

This paper shows that humans are evolutionary carnivores. There are 25 points ranging from various fields in science. Our increased brain sizes and large fat stores in comparison to other primates are just some of the clues. We have different colon/intestine ratios because we spend less time fermenting plants and simply digest meats better. Our higher pH in our stomachs also points to it.

Yes, we can eat plants. But it's not optimal. And we're worse at doing it than our evolutionary cousins.

This idea would lose the interest of anybody with influence over cattle production right here. It's almost impossible to make people simply want less, but it's more feasible to make them want something different than what they want today.

Due to increasing demand for meat, we have people burning the forest and releasing all the carbon sequestered in the trees, and reducing the efficiency of the land as a carbon sink going forward.

Does this continue storing more carbon, or does it just store a constant amount of carbon? It reads to me like it's a one-off reduction in carbon that's already cancelled out after a couple of years.

"The WOP system effectively captures soil carbon, offsetting a majority of the emissions related to beef production. The largest emission sources — from cattle digestion and manure — are highly uncertain. We believe the results shown here are on the conservative side. Accounting for soil carbon capture is not yet standard practice and the results may meet with challenges, such as on ensuring long-term storage. In the best case, the WOP beef production may have a net positive effect on climate. The results show great potential."

It looks like their beef production does produce carbon (and methane) emissions, they just pair that with the carbon sequestration due to their land use. I appreciate that they did this research and published the results. It's an interesting argument.

But I'm unsure how well it scales at a societal level. For one thing there's the opportunity cost of using so much land for a single pound of beef. More significantly it seems like one could use their logic to pair any activity with enough soil-based carbon capture to argue that it's now a carbon neutral activity.

For example, one could argue that dirt biking has "net negative carbon emissions" if you subtract their tailpipe emissions from the carbon capture from thousands of acres of forested trails.

Many of these traditions include "new world" ingredients such as tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, corn, squash, some beans, &c that wouldn't become common in europe or asia until the 16th or 17th century. While still older than the founding of the united states, they're still "newer" than many people realize. These new ingredients were incorporated into older traditions just as new ingredients will be. Noöne will force it on anyone, but people will experiment and find culinary and economic reasons to use new ingredients.

You're also likely in a privileged class of Americans. Unfortunately the US government indirectly subsidizes meat. Hamburgers and fried meat of sorts are staples of the low-income class. The meat consumption in that class is off the charts, and at extremely unhealthy levels for both the body and the planet.

Ideally, the government should be subsidizing a variety of healthy vegetables for human consumption, not corn (which indirectly subsidizes both meat and HFCS). That policy change alone would fix a lot of nutritional deficiencies, heart disease, obesity, and numerous other problems.

I'm sorry but who ever says anything about replacing all meat? It's more about having a readily available alternative and starting to think of meat as a luxury instead of it being a part of every meal.

I think the reason why burgers and other processed foods are the first to be tackled by fake meat start-ups, is that processed foods are easier to imitate, and quite likely burgers have the largest consumption of any processed food on the market. From both a profitability and environmental standpoint, any small win here, has an outsized impact.

So more or less, "burgers, pizza, and fried chicken" is not that far off.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Food-Beverage/Chinese-start...

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Japan-s-pla...

Meat substitutes are a transitionary item - for those used to eating meat. I've been vegan for 35 years and rarely cook with them (tempeh and tofu are the only things that come close). I get plenty of protein from vegetables, beans etc. and the thought of eating a mock meat just doesn't appeal to me (I'll occasionally eat a burger when out but I find Beyond burgers taste like the burgers sold in cheap fast food joints smell like.

We buy a 1/4 a cow from a local farmer once every six months. It's a pretty low impact way eat meat.

100% can be split in so many small sums. Each percent is worth taking.

The problem is not only rising emissions in the Last decade, our emissions in 2010 was already way over the climate budgets.

Even if Beyond Meat will have a bigger impact in the US to begin with, this will have a worldwide impact.

[1] https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/using-global-emission-s...

If we cut our use of animal products to just the dishes that really demand it then we're already way better off. Use milk for your baking, not your cereal. Don't feel bad about having a steak but maybe try the veggie chicken nuggets when you get fast food.

This seems to presume two things:

1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment.

2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math.

To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is really quite new. Vegetarianism has historically been about animal rights/welfare and/or a commitment to non-violence. The environmental benefits are simply the cherry on the cake.

To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Nutrition is one of those weird fields in science where there's not a whole lot of agreement about anything. However, the vast majority of nutritionists and doctors are far more concerned with the lack of fruits in vegetables in the popular diet than they are with the lack of meat.

The environmental benefits have probably been exaggerated, but growing, distributing, and consuming vegetables is obviously less resource-intensive and less wasteful than meat. I'm somewhat shocked that this could be a controversial statement. I'm NOT saying the benefits are so high as to, say, "save the world" by going veg. There are plenty of people who make this claim, and I'm very suspicious of it.

But that's very different from thinking the entire movement is misguided. EVERY movement exaggerates their claims. That doesn't make them misguided, simply prone to hyperbole.

(On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are.)

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1

Methane (molecule for molecule) contributes far more to the greenhouse effect than CO2 so without knowing how much of those gases are from transportation versus digestion, it's hard to tell how much actual impact it has. Focusing on the GHG statistic also ignores the many other ecological effects of animal agriculture like runoff and forest clearing that has significant effects on our carbon stores and oxygen producers like plankton and trees.

At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].

Cows need more essential amino acids from their diets than humans do and the overlap between the two needs is almost 100%. They can't synthesize atomic minerals so they're just a delivery device for nutrients we'd get from other sources anyway. Obviously I'm not suggesting we all switch to a diet of alfa alfa but the whole point of the climate crisis is that our way of life is unsustainable; something has to change and I think most people rather it be diet, even if we lean more on synthetic alternatives, than the total population. This argument made sense a hundred years ago when overwintering was a real concern and transportation wasn't fast enough to deliver unspoiled fresh food so people had to convert inedible plants to edible food.

(I'm ignoring the difficulty of getting a large group of people to switch away from culturally important or locally available staples, which is what that nutrition argument hinges on, because that seems to be the weakest link in the face of an existential threat)

Bullshit, the kind of lies that the meat industry loves to spin.

Nutritional value is not one single measurable thing. And even protein contents (meat's most common nutrient) when measured per gram can be higher in soy and derivatives than in some meats (e.g: pork but and shoulder). When measured by calories other legumes (beans, chickpeas, lupini) beat most meats.

The only nutrient not often found in plants is B12 vitamin. But it can be bought cheap as a nutritional supplement.

https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/#agriculture...

And ag is ~10% of US emissions

https://cfpub.epa.gov/ghgdata/inventoryexplorer/#allsectors/...

So eliminating livestock would reduce emissions by 4%.

With that said, 4% is still low, but it doesn't account for all the GHG emissions needed to grow feed for livestock, nor does it account for other things like transportation of that feed, energy used in processing by the industrial sector, and so on.

Meat provides far less nutritional value than was collectively contained in the plants used to produce it.

Where's the evidence that meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant?

And there have been a lot of studies showing that high consumption of red meat and processed meats are not helpful to health.

I'm a meat eater and I'd love to feel better about my love of steak and burgers, but sadly I just don't see the evidence.

> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided.

The only "popular crusade" is the universal dietary guidance against the excessively high consumption of red meat in the western diet. There are mountains of evidence showing links between higher red meat consumption and increased risk of the top killers in many western societies (heart disease, colon cancer, etc.). [1] [2] [3]

There's a quick summary from the Harvard School of Public Health for those who don't want to pour through the published studies: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...

You cite many studies here about the environmental effects of meat production and exactly 0 citing the nutritional or health aspects of meat consumption. Meat can contain valuable nutrients but hundreds of millions eat vegetarian diets around the world and many other sources (nuts, legumes, fish, etc.) can provide these nutrients in better forms. All major health organizations recommend limiting red and processed meat consumption below what the average American diets currently consist of.

Replacing fast foods with plant based alternatives doesn't seem like a bad thing at all when you consider that meats and grains are the only things Americans are consuming over and above the dietary guidelines – at 140% of the recommendations [4]. Given that Heart Disease is the number one leading cause of death in the United States, shouldn't we be prioritizing alternatives which reduce the intake of high-glycemic carbohydrates? There have been many studies covering plant-based alternatives which back this up. [5]

[1] Battaglia Richi E, Baumer B, Conrad B, Darioli R, Schmid A, Keller U. Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies. Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2015;85(1-2):70-8. doi: 10.1024/0300-9831/a000224. PMID: 26780279.

[2] Salter AM. The effects of meat consumption on global health. Rev Sci Tech. 2018 Apr;37(1):47-55. doi: 10.20506/rst.37.1.2739. PMID: 30209430.

[3] Abete I, Romaguera D, Vieira AR, Lopez de Munain A, Norat T. Association between total, processed, red and white meat consumption and all-cause, CVD and IHD mortality: a meta-analysis of cohort studies. Br J Nutr. 2014 Sep 14;112(5):762-75. doi: 10.1017/S000711451400124X. Epub 2014 Jun 16. PMID: 24932617.

[4] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

[5] Vatanparast H, Islam N, Shafiee M, Ramdath DD. Increasing Plant-Based Meat Alternatives and Decreasing Red and Processed Meat in the Diet Differentially Affect the Diet Quality and Nutrient Intakes of Canadians. Nutrients. 2020 Jul 9;12(7):2034. doi: 10.3390/nu12072034. PMID: 32659917; PMCID: PMC7400918.

Edit: Vote it down all you want. The statement isn’t getting any less idiotic

> Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant...

...is pure nonsense. Vitamins, minerals, fiber. Considering you can't get any fiber from meat is just the start of how biased some have been influenced by misinformation.

McDonald's signed an agreement making BM their preferred supplier of fake beef, so Impossible is put at a disadvantage. Absolutely none of this replaces any real beef with fake beef, or even results in less real beef eaten or sold.

I find it amazing how well avoiding eating meat aligns good things:

- less animal suffering

- less pollution of air, water, and land

- less waste (inefficient way to get calories)

- better health (assuming you substitute meat with vegetables and not highly-processed food)

* Not counting livestock contribution to GHG, but rather an estimate of how much removing it would reduce GHG (which is room for a lot of speculation that is very hard to support).

* Preferring a figure taken from a single paper by two individual researchers over the United Nations' official FAO statistic, which is 14.5% of emissions due to livestock lifecycle.

* Focusing on how forestation is challenging, while the source acknowledge that the de-forestation is very damaging.

* Ignoring the huge amounts of land necessary for growing livestock (Example: ~55 times the area for peas for same amount of protein [1])

* Ignoring the question of the distribution of meat consumption among people in the world today, and the feasibility of a meat-rich diet for everyone.

I'm sure there's more, but this is enough not to be very receptive to the claim of misguidedness.

PS - Due disclosure: I eat poultry and occasionally other meat. But I am still worried about the environmental impact of its production, with the foremost aspect being de-forestation.

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=15588468

ONLY? That's a pretty damn big percentage for such a small piece of the economy.

It feels a bit like saying "removal of Ford vehicles from the road would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6%" .. or whatever it'd be. Of course you can make it sound small if you compere a portion (livestock) of a portion (farming) of the national economy, to all emissions from the entire nation.

Plant alternatives would have their own emissions of course, but I think there's a more realistic path to zero emissions. There's some interesting work on reducing methane emissions from livestock themselves (additives to the feed and such), but the path is more challenging.

There's no getting around that.

A similar texture, colour and presentation does not the same thing make.

It may have been due to the spelling, but I found it utterly fascinating that a dead comment below stated even their toddler was able to differentiate!

I didn’t throw it out. I donated it to a friend. I have a basically never throw food out policy.

Wink wink. What’s the ratio of non industrially farmed beef vs industrially farmed beef anecdotes non withstanding?

It's not like the cows are eating exclusively grass clippings which were just going to be left to rot otherwise.

Methane is produced by decomposition in oxygen deprived anerobic environments. Like a cows gut or a tidal bog. Grass rotting in a field will not produce the same levels of methane as grass digested by cows.

And that's not even touching on the rate at which it's released. Are you going to say burning the field is just as bad as letting it decompose because they both release CO2?

> The methane produced by cows is not going to be significantly more than the equivalent produced by the same amount of plant material left to rot/decompose.

This is also not true, but even in a world where cows don't produce more methane, it's just inaccurate for people to look at the current feed production in America and to say that we'd be producing that much food if we weren't raising an outsized amount of cattle.

Sure, cattle can be raised on otherwise unusable land. But that is just not the direction that factory farming in the US is going.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26056871

The only reason I came to this thread was to see if someone would pull the Allan Savory card, and here it is.

There is no reputable, working scientist in the relevant field who cites Savory as a reliable source.

> According to a 2016 study published by the University of Uppsala, the actual rate at which improved grazing management could contribute to carbon sequestration is seven times lower than the claims made by Savory. The study concludes that Holistic Management cannot reverse climate change. A study by the Food and Climate Research Network in 2017 has concluded that Savory's claims about carbon sequestration are "unrealistic" and very different from those issued by peer-reviewed studies.

This seems like a reasonable prior, if you had no evidence about the specific harms of meat production vs. Beyond Meat. But given the widely documented harms of beef production (devastation of the Amazon for soy feedstock/grazing, GHG emissions, water usage, etc) and the lack of evidence of similar levels of harm from potential replacements like Beyond, I'm curious as to why you're indifferent to potential improvements in the worst parts of the food supply chain.

It seems like a non-sequitur; "McDonalds' current practices do harm, McDonalds is considering a new product, therefore new product must do equal harm."

It sounds like you do care about the harms; do you have specific evidence/comparisons that indicate Beyond actually is as bad as beef for the environment?

My model here is that companies like McDonalds are completely indifferent to the negative externalities they impose on the environment, except inasmuch as they become financial/reputational liabilities. I see no reason to assume that a plant-based alternative must, a priori, be bad, just because McDonalds are rolling them out.

As a thought experiment, consider if they had vat-grown beef, produced in each store. This might have the side-effect of halting environmental devastation and reducing CO2 emissions from transportation. Would McDonalds pay extra for this? Probably not. But if it's significantly cheaper than farmed beef, then I think obviously yes, they would use it. I don't think you could make the generic statement "switching to vat-grown alternatives will simply change where the damage is done" without providing a more rigorous analysis of the specific processes involved.

Unused land should not be a problem, it was not always used for grazing after all.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29853680/

What's the propaganda angle?

This is working the problem from a different end. Yes, we need to increase quality and reduce the amount of steroids/antibiotics used in meat production. Yes, we should stop subsidizing it and let the prices go up. But at the same time, lots of people love meat, so providing a similarly tasting alternative will reduce the demand for meat without forcing people to alter their tastes too much.

Mid-term, it helps mitigate a climate problem. Meat production is very energy-inefficient and emission-intensive to such a large degree, that it is a good problem to attack early.

Long-term, it also solves an ethical problem. Ever since homo sapiens started to settle down and domesticate animals, we've been very cruel to farm animals[0]. I don't want to push any moralizing propaganda here - it's a touchy topic for everyone now, as way too many groups use it as a weapon, but I think everyone knows there's something to it. It's uncomfortable to touch. But! If we can develop enough meat substitutes, we can just sidestep this problem entirely, and eventually stop farming animals[1].

> There are much more efficient ways to curb down emissions than fighting holy war against meat(coal anyone? trans oceanic shipping).

I think a better way than fighting a holy war is to make options available. Which is what Beyond Meat is doing. They're not telling you, "stop eating meat!" - they're saying, "if you'd like to stop eating meat but can't because it's so tasty, try our alternative, maybe you'll like it enough".

--

[0] - Factory farming is just extreme end of it, but even the old-school small farms are just animal abuse and torture.

[1] - At least for meat. I'm not sure what the story for milk and eggs are, both of which are crucial ingredient to a wide range of foods and chemistry.

The EU are actively trying to make it more difficult for consumers to identify vegan alternatives (amendment 171). Governments are not going to make laws that significantly increase meat prices, we are nowhere near that kind of policymaking.

In fact, one thing they have made me appreciate is how good some of the "traditional" meat substitutes are. I actually quite like Boca and Garden Burgers et al!

Still, the once or twice a year I go to a steakhouse and get a nice medium rare steak - we're a long, long way off from that.

A large portion of animal by-products, almost certainly. I doubt that a lot of what fast-food joints use, would be considered "meat" before it was processed.

Nobody is asking their local butcher for the Cows eyeballs and asshole.

I grew up in a culture that is completely meat-centric (Brazil) and I moved to Sweden some 5-6 years ago, vegetarian and vegan options here are plenty and somewhat tasty. It's been pretty easy to cut down my meat consumption to zero on a day-to-day basis and save meat for special occasions.

ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, AND FOLIC ACID), WATER, LOW-MOISTURE PART-SKIM MOZZARELLA CHEESE (CULTURED PART-SKIM MILK, SALT, ENZYMES), TOMATO PASTE, COOKED SEASONED PIZZA TOPPING MADE WITH PORK AND CHICKEN, BHA, BHT AND CITRIC ACID ADDED TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR (PORK, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, WATER, TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SPICES, SALT, SUGAR, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, PAPRIKA, NATURAL PORK FLAVOR [MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, PORK FAT, NATURAL FLAVORS, PORK STOCK, GELATIN, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, THIAMINE HYDROCHLORIDE, SUNFLOWER OIL, PROPYL GALLATE], SPICE EXTRACTIVES, BHA, BHT, CITRIC ACID), PEPPERONI MADE WITH PORK, CHICKEN AND BEEF (PORK, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, BEEF, SALT, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SPICES, DEXTROSE, PORK STOCK, LACTIC ACID STARTER CULTURE, OLEORESIN OF PAPRIKA, FLAVORING, SODIUM NITRITE, SODIUM ASCORBATE, PAPRIKA, PROCESSED WITH NATURAL SMOKE FLAVOR, BHA, BHT, CITRIC ACID TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR), COOKED BEEF PIZZA TOPPING (BEEF, WATER, TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, DEHYDRATED POTATOES WITH SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF SALT, HYDROLYZED CORN PROTEIN, SOY PROTEIN AND WHEAT PROTEIN, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, MALTODEXTRIN, SPICE, NATURAL GRILL FLAVOR [FROM SUNFLOWER OIL], GARLIC POWDER, COOKED IN PORK FAT OR BEEF FAT OR VEGETABLE OIL), SUGAR, WHEAT GLUTEN, 2% OR LESS OF VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN OIL AND/OR CORN OIL), DEGERMINATED WHITE CORN MEAL, YEAST, SALT, DEGERMINATED YELLOW CORN MEAL, DATEM, BAKING SODA, SPICES, WHEAT FLOUR, ENZYMES, DRIED GARLIC, ASCORBIC ACID (DOUGH CONDITIONER).

The oekotest.de link also discusses methylcellulose as a cause of indigestion (a symptom mentioned in this thread), and the presence of genetically modified soy. GM crops are a concern because of their tolerance to high pesticide levels.

https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken/11-gemischte-Hackfleis...

No mineral oil AFAICT, but instead you’re dealing with germ issues.

That reminds me of a certain college campus food service that signed an exclusive contract with Coke.

Coke brand milk.

Coke brand grade D but edible meat (we found the box in the dumpster).

Hell, they even f———ed up the soft drinks because they had hyper-optimized machines that mixed corn syrup, citric acid, flavor, co2 and water on site. The mix, and therefore PH, was frequently so far off that students would fall ill for 4-8 hours with convulsive stomach cramps and miss class about once a week. In fairness, it was still better than the milk.

So. Much. Food. Poisoning.

Decades later, I’m still boycotting those ^{+$&@! $@&&}^+# &@$@&s!

Yes.

But the farms and ranches I grew up around, and that I buy most of my meat from, never seem that brutal when I’ve visited them, and the animals seem well cared for and mostly doing their own thing on the pasture most of the time.

I wanted to take more responsibility for my consumption, so I’ve been increasingly substituting in meat that I hunt for that which I buy from farmers. The North American model of wildlife management maintains an abundance of wildlife compared to other continents, and the hunting community pours billions of dollars into land conservation and re-establishing extirpated species into their natural ranges. There’s a paradox in hunting—killing an individual animal but pouring resources and votes into maintaining populations, and the existence of that species in the face of industrial exploitation of the land. The system is set up so that the populations don’t decline year over year, the number of animals harvested by hunters is often simply subtracted from the total number of animals that would have died from starvation over winter.

The damage done to the natural environment by the sort of soy and legume monoculture that makes industrial meat substitutes profitable has its own issues, and anyone who’s lived near a farm and seen the vultures and raptors circling a freshly combined field knows that the number of rodents killed to produce a cows worth of veggie burgers is significant. I’m not arguing that we should, or could, go one way or the other, but I hope that a hundred years from now the moral certitude that you’re describing has not been adopted. We’ve been eating other animals for as long as we’ve been a species, and hunting just as long, and farming for 12,000 years. Long term, the species and environment would probable be best served by some diversity in approaches.

“Taco Bell ground beef” rather than “taco meat”; this is very much not true of taco meat generally, including the non-ground-beef options at Taco Bell or other similar fast-food taco restaurants.

Cheap fast food is a perfect application, There are plenty of higher quality tacos in the world.

On the other hand, Impossible + ground turkey makes a great chili.

It's been more than two decades since I've had hamburger so I can't comment on authenticity.

That is sufficient of a bar to for a meat replacement I'd say.

Affordability almost doesn't matter. Staple foods like rice, grains, and beans are staple foods for a reason.

At best a drop in demand will reduce the population size of future generations of cows. It doesn't fundamentally change how they'll be raised or treated.

We're seeing rising prices for food but the quality is in decline. Even if nutritious food was available to everyone, people are over worked, and have to little time or energy to prepare nutritious meals. They're opting for the fast/easy option every time.

This is just furthering our race to the bottom while we pat ourselves on the back and say we're the best.

Nobody is going to think that "almond milk" is actually the same as cows milk and accidentally buy it instead of the dairy product, so what's the problem?

(Also, almond and soy milk are not new products, they've been consumed for hundreds of years in Europe and Asia respectively)

To be clear, it is not an ingredient, and it is Generally Recognized as Safe in multiple applications (https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/food-addit...) and it's pretty obvious from the product this is food equipment lubrication.

There is a great deal of misinformation about hunter-gather diets: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers... or https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-ha... (I didn't invest much effort in finding illustrative links, there are many more, and academic research).

Walking around constantly and digging up/harvesting edible plants, insects, fungi, possibly carrion, and the occasional meat (including organs) is much more likely.

Most of our ancestors' calories didn't come from hunting in most areas. Those that did had lifestyles so different from a modern one that it makes no sense to compare them.

I would agree, strongly, with your assessment of PUFAs. They are even harder to eliminate from ones diet than sugar. They are in most of what one eats that they aren't making from base ingredients.

People are probably so sick right now that they can't taste the difference, nor is their mind healthy enough to comprehend how ludicrous the proposition is.