A new vertical farm will grow 3M pounds of mycelium a year for fungi-based bacon | Hacker News Reader

A new vertical farm will grow 3M pounds of mycelium a year for fungi-based bacon

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108 pointsserverlessmom157 comments

> The strips get salt, sugar, coconut oil, beet juice, and liquid smoke added to them, and presto—they’re ready to be packaged and sold as MyBacon.

Unfortunately, that's my impression of most meat replacement products I've come across so far - they're what I would consider mostly junk food. Highly processed, low in naturally occurring nutrients and rich in salt and additives (liquid smoke??).

I'd much rather have plain mushrooms, even over normal bacon, which I find super easy to cook and delicious even with very little seasoning.

Luckily that is readily available! The idea of these products is to prompt people to switch from bacon, not from mushrooms. I'm quite confident this is better for you (and the world, and certainly the poor tortured animals) than regular bacon.

> I'd much rather have plain mushrooms, even over normal bacon

That's great for you, but it's not true for a huge number of people. For those people, who aren't happy to choose plain mushrooms over bacon, a mushroom-based product just has to be as (un)healthy and as tasty as real bacon to already be a big improvement in reducing animals farmed and (hopefully, depending on the tech used, but almost certainly especially as these production methods scale up and get improved upon) also be much more eco friendly than eating animals.

If they can go a step further and make something as tasty as bacon (again, subjectively, in the eyes of people who don't choose mushrooms over bacon) that's also healthier than real bacon, great! It's just not as simple as only looking at healthiness vs ideals.

That's true, typical smoky bacon is quite processed as well, I guess that's what I don't like about it.

I get a pork belly, salt cure with regular salt, then cold smoke and slice. There is more process in chopping the wood than making the bacon. Where do you guys get this stuff?

That's not the process used for a package of bacon from the supermarket, which is the relevant comparison.

Salting and cold smoking is processing it, "processing" doesn't require some fancy high-tech voodoo.

And it's possible (I'm not particularly up to date on the science - but for example search for "cold smoked meat carcinogens" and you'll find plenty of reading material) that by salting & cold smoking it you're already making it as unhealthy as much-more-processed (for higher shelf life, product consistency, etc.) supermarket bacon.

No, processing is pink-salt processing, which is where the nitrates come from. This is not my process.

Pork belly is very disappointing if you are looking for bacon. It has all the fat but very little flavor. It’s usually bulkier and doesn’t cook down to an acceptable texture. Just a flabby kind of a disgusting mess. I don’t really know why people often suggest it as an alternative to bacon. Not the same product at all.

That farmer should take better care of their hogs, it sounds like they don't get much activity. What you describe is very atypical, I'd say comparable to a factory farmed animal.

Well this product is probably already healthier than actual bacon though not nearly as nutritious.

> they're what I would consider mostly junk food. Highly processed, low in naturally occurring nutrients and rich in salt and additives

This is my main issue with most modern "meat alternative" products too - they're basically a high GI mashup of wheat flour, potatoes, sugar and other low-cost carbs, with a load of flavourings and salt added. And of course, they're often coated in breadcrumbs or batter. Basically any old shite with breadcrumbs. Even the macros aren't close to those of actual meat.

Yeah, from personal experience and a few friends who are vegetarian, meat replacements are more about texture and flavor than actual nutrition. It's often the case that people who are vegetarian/vegan aren't so out of dislike for meat so much as other reasons, and these products exist to serve that craving. That said, most people I know obtain their nutrition elsewhere, the meat substitutes are far more expensive than the real thing and mostly just an occasional treat.

Though, for greasy products like bacon and chorizo, it doesn't seem hard for ultraprocessed plant-based look-alikes to be healthier.

Most fake meats I eat like impossible have macros very close to real meat. And for the junkier cuts like nuggets often slightly better. They are salty though so I try to avoid adding extra salt to other parts of the dish

I didn't mean the few expensive products that are meant to be half decent, like Impossible; my comment was more about the bulk of the market, which is frozen aisle nuggets and the like, mainly made of high-GI cheap shite and pea protein.

There's nothing scary about liquid smoke: https://www.seriouseats.com/pantry-essentials-liquid-smoke

If you don't want salt and processing you aren't the target market for bacon, meat based or otherwise.

FYI, liquid smoke is literally what it sounds like. It's condensation of smoke from burning wood. It can imbue the same flavor that actual smoking can, but it doesn't have the soot and ash that usually comes from smoking, so it's safer. A lot of "smoked" foods might actually be made with liquid smoke these days.

In my experience the flavor is not especially close to a real smoking - which is a cooking/preservation technique - not just a flavoring.

Many tall mushrooms can be pulled into strips that, with a marinade and good marketing, could probably be sold as mushroom-based bacon. I love cooking tall mushrooms with just lots of olive oil and S&P. Crispy and bacony—great with sunny side up eggs.

Cheese also makes great vegetarian bacon. Just put grated cheddar in a pan and cook thin like a pancake and flip. It cools hard and crispy.

Those can be tasty but are nothing like bacon.

My problem as well. All the impossible burger or beyond meat stuff appears worse for you (nutritionally) than a real burger. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.

That's an empirical question and I am not sure we know the answer to that yet. Impossible Burger definitely sound worse for cardiovascular health than broccoli or beans, but is it worse than meat? I am still agnostic.

Liquid smoke is an interesting one. It seems like most of the really harmful compounds in smoke are fat soluble. Since liquid smoke is water-based, a lot of those compounds don't make it into the mix once everything is filtered.

It does contain small amounts of known carcinogens, but if you compare a teaspoon of your average liquid smoke product to say, smoked salmon, the liquid will be a tiny fraction of the safe limit while the salmon will tend to greatly exceed safe limits.

I'm not suggesting everyone should consume liquid smoke, and I agree, this is essentially junk food. You just put two question marks beside something I happen to know a bit about.

The main takeaway with smoked products is that they can be remarkably harmful to your health, with the exception of proper usage of liquid smoke. That can be hard to hear because good god, smoked food is delicious.

Smoked plant foods (i.e. tofu or tempeh) don't seem to carry nearly as much risk as smoked animal foods. I'm not sure why, but I think it is known.

This study is 30 years old, but offers some insight into risk factors for meats vs liquid smoke: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8224319/

Since very small amounts of the liquid are used, one would end up ingesting ~1/40th or less of the carcinogenic compounds compares to if they, for example, ate a grilled pork chop.

> Total PAH concentrations in smoked meat products ranged from 2.6 micrograms/kg in a cooked ham sample to 29.8 micrograms/kg in grilled pork chops, while those in fish products ranged from 9.3 micrograms/kg in smoked shrimp to 86.6 micrograms/kg in smoked salmon.

Of course smoked salmon is the tastiest one on the list

Interesting thanks. Yeah, I had smoked products down as something unusually unhealthy compared to the taste benefits. Interesting to learn about liquid smoke.

What about my beloved islay whisky?

Seems like it should be similar to liquid smoke in that it's in water and alcohol after being filtered, so, it should contain much less of the bad stuff than the barrel initially contained. These compounds can sometimes dissolve into water or alcohol, but it seems rare and the larger, filterable compounds are only soluble in lipids (according to wikipedia).

That's not to say the whisky is good for you (great podcast on alcohol and health): https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain...

> Total PAH concentrations ... 86.6 micrograms/kg in smoked salmon

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

I was a happier person, approximately seven minutes ago.

Also fwiw a teaspoon of liquid smoke would absolutely overwhelm whatever you were putting it on, in most recipes a few drops are more than sufficient.

Something is off here though, grilled pork chops wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to smoke, just maybe the PAH coming from charred areas which could happen to any meat. Using bad or wet charcoal you get what BBQ people refer to as a “creosote” taste, ie bitter unpleasant white smoke.

Still if a 10 min pork chop could be that bad I can only imagine that a 5 hour smoked brisket would be absolutely off the chart.

I think you’re right - foods like this seem like they should be once per year indulgences rather than weekly or biweekly.

And yes, it is an odd discrepancy but smoked and grilled foods are combined in a few of the studies I came across. I suppose they both contain the same carcinogens, and the goal was only to measure those carcinogens and not so much to evaluate specific foods.

> I'd much rather have plain mushrooms

I'd much rather have mushrooms with real bacon (and some onions).

I do agree with your broader point though. "meat replacements" are a fundamentally flawed concept, if you want to eat meat, you should eat meat. If you don't want to, there are plenty of great other options. The best is a combination of both however, absolutism in either direction is a fatal flaw.

What if I don't want to eat meat, but still miss the flavor of meat?

Why should companies not try to cater to that market that is trying to make the ethical choice yet may miss the flavor of meat based products?

Most "normal bacon" is actually a tortured pig, fattened on the cheapest feed available and shoved full of antibiotics and antifungals so they don't spread disease in dense living quarters.

By comparison, "liquid smoke" is a natural byproduct of burning wood.

> Highly processed

By that standard every meat product is highly processed too. Since you cut it, add salt and pepper and sear it in oil. It’s literally just mushrooms with seasoning and cooked in oil. I doubt your enjoying your mushrooms raw all the time? Ever add a bit of salt and fry them in butter? Wham, highly processed!

Their post referred to "most meat replacements", not specifically the myco bacon. When comparing plant based proteins (the overwhelming segment of meat alternatives), there is certainly a difference in processing. In a lot of the newest food science literature, scholars are even differentiating some of these foods as "ultra processed".

Plant based proteins doesn't have to be processed... a lot of the newer "meat alternatives" on the market are trying to bring the same flavor profiles that meat eaters are already used to to the market.

Beans themselves have plenty of protein in them, breads also have protein, tofu has protein, nuts have protein... none of those are "ultra processed", and those are already consumed by meat eaters too.

Again, I'm referencing the original comment to which you replied to. And again, the terminology they used is important as it is the basis of what I'm trying to convey. I'm an agricultural researcher and am well aware of the protein content and amino acid profile of various crops. To that end, we are talking about "meat alternatives". Consider a recipe that calls for sausage or ground beef. Sure, you can create a black bean burger at home. I've done it. It's ok. But if you scan various plant-based communities ie blogs and forums, there is an overwhelming sentiment that it is very difficult to reproduce meat-centered recipes with plant-based inputs. When you look at "meat alternatives" in a grocery store and look at the label, they are mostly highly processed. I'm just stating facts here. I'm not arguing a stance either way.

Sure, you can point out that lentils, beans, etc are technically plant based proteins. But I'm referencing the widely accepted food industry jargon. Semantics are annoying.

There's also still the issue of the environmental impact, which is not always as pristine as the PR would suggest.

For instance, 'coconut oil'. So they now need to ship coconut oil across the world. Indonesia is one of the main exporters of coconut oil and the rainforest (and orangutans) over there might not like that too much.

There's a charity, ALLFED, that I donate too that investigates techniques for keeping as many people alive as possible if we can't have agriculture for a few years due to supervolcano or comet strike or nuclear winter. One of the promising approaches is to turn our now dead forests into calories via fungus. So it's good to see people investigating the wood chip to fungus route at an industrial scale.

Very interesting! https://allfed.info/

thank you for this! I'm saving this link to check out later!

> Mushroom roots are technically called mycelium...

I think it's a better model to think of the mycelium as the entire tree, including roots, trunk, and leaves, and the mushrooms are just the fruit. After all the mushroom is just a reproductive organ for the fungus.

I agree with this too, I think that the point of the article was to make it as easy to understand for people who aren't as familiar with our fungal friends.

Big mushroom fan. But isn’t all the sodium and crap they add to it to make it taste like bacon, mostly what makes bacon unhealthy to begin with? The saturated fat aspect is debatable or at least not completely settled.

I don’t eat bacon much anyway so I definitely wouldn’t eat this on a consistent basis due to all the sodium but I’d try it for the novelty.

Whether it's any healthier doesn't really matter to me. I'm excited to be able to enjoy bacon without paying for the inefficiency of raising animals.

Sadly fake meat is just as expensive if not more expensive than meat.

All fake meat products that I can find here in Bulgaria are considerably more expensive than meat. I an not saying impossible burger is more expensive than kobe stakes, though.

It's mostly speculation, imho, as people are willing to spend more on these products. Some of these things are just as bad, if not worse, than cheap real meat. Back in the before going full veggies, I've tasted some horrible things that should be illegal. I am baffled people are willing to eat factory chicken, pork, etc. Shit is disgusting even if you don't care about the horrible lives of all the animals

Fortunately, in fact. This protects the rights of the majority that want bacon and not fakesomething silently replacing their food overnight.

If the product is not meat, shouldn't be tagged as meat.

Fungus != meat

Don't really think that's going to happen. Pork is one of the cheapest meats you can raise.

Just the spore costs to produce a lb of mushrooms can rival the total cost to raise a lb of pork (commercial pork can be as cheap as $64/CWT carcass weight - so $0.64/lb. Mushroom spore can be as high as $1.00 in spore costs to generate 1lb of mushroom). Processing the meat will raise costs, but it's hardly like mushrooms have low care/processing costs (If you don't know, they often require clean room levels of care to ensure proper spores without contamination).

There's a reason white mushrooms (unsliced) goes for $4.49/lb at my local Kroger, and the boneless pork goes for $1.99/lb.

I don't see this ever being cheaper.

What do you mean by spore costs? Wouldn't most large scale farming operations work with liquid cultures based on live mycelium? Liquid cultures are easy to multiply and inject into pasteurized substrate with needles. Once the mycelium has taken over the growing medium, it also no longer needs to be kept in a fully sterile environment.

I'm not at all convinced a pound of mushrooms is worth that much more than pork. Are you sure it's not the meat industry subsidies that are keeping the price down?

There don't seem to be subsidies for Pork. There was a "Small Hog Operation Payment" last century that paid $10 per hog for the first 500 hogs sold by a farm, according to wikipedia, but they got rid of that a long time ago. That is well under 10% the sale price of a hog.

The problem mushrooms have is scale, much like spices. We can grow 20K acres of mechanized corn, but mushrooms are a little less mechanized. So its to be expected for mushrooms to cost as much as basil or cilantro per pound.

It's the exact opposite where I'm at in the EU. I picked up 400 grams of king oysters from the market for 2 euros yesterday.

I think their target demographic is vegetarians/vegans who are trying to reduce their footprint or use of animal products.

> consumers will likely be willing to give it a shot—especially knowing that it’s easier on animals and on the planet.

The ultra-health-conscious will still probably avoid it. Oreos are also vegan and not very healthy.

> I think their target demographic is vegetarians/vegans who are trying to reduce their footprint or use of animal products.

Presumably that was a typo and you meant non vegetarians/vegans?

I think it was more describing the rationale of the specific vegetarians/vegans; some do it more for health reasons, some for environmental/ethical reasons.

Seems a lot cheaper to grow mushrooms than raise pigs.

not sure man, mushrooms need food too. Pigs can eat waste, can mushroom eat waste?

The entire reason the kingdom funga exists is to eat waste. You may have heard that dead trees piled up for millions of years before fungi came along, whereafter they carved a new niche for themselves in the ecosystem and consumed the detritus. Life finds a way ;)

Fungi, not funga - it’s masculine not neuter.

funga is the name of the kingdom, a recent change to align with the now-accepted designations flora and fauna (and of course bacteria and protista). Fungi is the plural when referring to organisms (i.e., instances), I am rather referring to the kingdom (i.e., the category).

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

Seems like it has no historical usage[0] and is not a valid form of fungus[1], from what I can tell. Kind of a weird choice.

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/funga [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fungus#Declension

Thanks for the clarification. It’s still sounding ugly, like if someone decided that the kingdom of mugroomz would include multiple mushrooms, but I guess it’s too late to complain

Pretty much by definition, that is what mushrooms and other fungi do.

Oyster mushrooms grow on wood chips and old coffee grounds. Not exactly expensive.

Possibly - but pigs are fairly hardy, and have very few dietary limitations, so you can often buy very cheap feed, or just let them forage.

Basically - outside of the cost of the land, pork is really cheap to raise, even for small farmers. As low as $0.64/lb for commercial production, and around $2.50/lb for small farmers and families.

Current mushroom production methods are FAR more expensive (just the spore cost can be $0.50 to $1.00 per lb).

This might scale to make it cheaper, but I'd be pretty surprised. Mushrooms require much more intensive care and handling.

Creating more spores from mushrooms is incredibly easy and cost effective, so is creating liquid culture which is a process that allows you to create huge amounts of mycelial growing base you can then introduce to more growth medium(corn syrup and water that's been sterilized).

Depending on the species used mushrooms can be cultivated very, very, very cheaply. You only have to look at the average cost of agaricus mushroom per lb ($1.5 - $2) wholesale vs processed whole pork per lb ($6- $7) wholesale to see that. Mushrooms also have a much shorter supply chain in terms of inputs and much less water input.

I agree with your two points. It does seem to be targeted at a subset of folks and not the normies.

https://myforestfoods.com/myblog

They rebranded from Atlast Food Inc in that blog section. They also mention going after the "alt-meat market".

Nothing wrong with more choices. However, nothing will ever really replace bacon.

Begs another question of how well a food start up does vs tech ones.

Bacon is pretty unsaturated fat and thus quite unhealthy.

lipid hypothesis was disproven a long time ago.

Doesn't seem like it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis#Consensus

Stop spreading misinformation with that old myth.

https://peterattiamd.com/how-did-we-come-to-believe-saturate...

Funnily enough the HN comment actually demonized unsaturated fat, not saturated fat.

But that link doesn't seem to contain any information.

I don’t understand why vegans try to mimic things. I have no problem eating vegetables and mushrooms but I would never eat bacon made of mushrooms. The devil deals in deception.

Probably most vegans are converts, raised by meat-eating families, that later decided to adhere to a meat-free diet. The problem is, once your taste-sense and food preferences are conditioned in childhood, it's hard to change them as a adult. So people seek alternatives compatible with what they are used to.

Actually, I have found this difficulty is exaggerated. I moved country twice and maried from another still: all involved significant changes to my diet. Yes, there is a mental hurdle, but like learning languages, by doing it repeatedly, it gets easier. Also, the rewards are exploring tasty new food universes!

Food is more than just nutrition; it’s culture and art and probably more. Substitutes are important for these reasons as they allow people to enjoy without violating their diet/ethics concerns/whatever.

They’re not harming anyone by existing so I frankly don’t see why this complaint comes up in every thread on the internet. Just don’t eat it if you don’t want it, meat isn’t going away.

It’s also really hard for most people to think of what to cook at the end of a long day. Meatballs and potatoes is the first thing that pops to my head and turning that into brussel sprouts and potatoes sounds unappetizing but impossible meatballs and potatoes is quite close especially if I add a sauce. I guess that’s the cultural imprint.

I do also care about the animals and the environmental impact and it’s just extremely naive to think that a large part of humanity would switch from meat-based diets to tofu and steamed veggies. People are lazy and like tasty easy things.

Me either. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian or anything. I do know some vegetarians who are also pretty confused about the imitation meat stuff. It is these companies coming up with these products, not the potential customers -- clearly the companies have customers, but their products aren't necessarily universally beloved, right? Maybe they just assume that creating a good replica of a popular meat product will result in a popular vegan product?

I wonder to what extent the customer base of these products is mostly curious people who are just dipping their toes in, not quite ready to take the plunge into veganism/vegetarianism. Or well-intentioned parents/friends who want to include vegans in things like cookouts?

I dunno. I'll observe that people who've successfully been vegan for a long time (the kind of recurring customers you'd presumably want) have been following their dietary restrictions that whole time, I guess they don't have an overwhelming hankering for bacon or whatever. But then I guess they are hard to address, if they are already happy!

A lot of my vegan friends really enjoy the meat substitutes- I am a meat eater and the meat substitutes tend to make me pretty nauseous.

My observations are based on pretty limited anecdotes, I certainly don't have enough info to make a robust argument.

These companies are marketing to the largest segment of vegetarians: the temporary ones.

It seems straightforward that someone who enjoys the taste of bacon but does not eat it (for ethical or health reasons) may still want to partake in the experience.

It's not vegans who are the ones building this - I'm pretty sure its corporations who are looking to make money on veganism and the changing dietary habits of the populations.

Most vegetarians/vegans don't try and mimic food like this. Just want you to target your statement to the right people --> companies trying to make money on niche/high margin items.

Well, you could say the same about all of the foods at the supermarket from Red Baron experimenting with new frozen pizza toppings to Big Apple coming up with new apple specimens to HEB trying out a new flavor of fizzy water.

With the growth of veganism in the west, it's not surprising that we will see more companies targeting them with novel food products.

It doesn't seem like there's any more conspiracy when it comes to alt-meat products than what underlies all of the products in the supermarket, especially all of the packaged goods.

Meat substitutes are not really targetting vegans. The are aimed at meat eaters who what something healthier and / or reducing meat consumption. I am very much a meat eater but often have days where I eat vegan or days when I eat meat substitutes. The aim is to reduce climate impact and reduce dependence on animals while I am not will to completely eliminate meat.

We have completely eliminated ground beef from our diet and choose Beyond Beef instead as it tastes better. I have tried lots of bacon alternatives and most of them are disgusting.

Even the sodium in bacon isn't necessarily unhealthy. The issues with sodium causing hypertension and metabolic disorders are due to complex interactions involving genetics as well as intake of water, fructose, and other nutrients. So we can't say that "sodium = bad", or even that people should limit themselves to a particular maximum level of sodium intake (within reason).

https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson2/

With healthy kidneys the half life of salt in the body is about half a day, maybe less. Even with destroyed kidneys, excess will be emitted in sweat, assuming the patient exercises enough to sweat... The chronic high blood pressure problem comes from destroyed kidneys being unable to excrete the salt fast enough. Bacon being a rather low carb food (as long as you don't maple glaze it or whatever, which admittedly is delicious...) the problem kind of takes care of itself in that lower carb foods tend to be higher sodium but the lower carb levels result in less damage to the kidneys, and healthy kidneys are not bothered by sodium ...

The worst case scenario would be "foods" that are both salty and high carb, which is mostly junk food and fast food.

The sodium isn't a problem. It's the saturated fat + the nitrates.

Why do we need bacon? I just want the mushrooms without paying an arm and a leg!

For context, I live in the city and don't have a reliable way (or space) to grow them myself, or else I would.

I'll be honest, these kinds of skeuomorphic alt-meats never make sense to me. That said, I'm someone who eats healthy by default and doesn't consume a lot of meat, so I understand that I'm not the target audience.

But if you think someone living in rural America and eating bacon regularly is going to convert to this stuff, you're kidding yourself.

If they can actually capture the taste, smell, and texture of bacon I would be highly interested. I'm mostly plant based at this point (except for awkward situations like family events...), but the other day I oversmelt some bacon and boy did those cravings kick in. Nothing like it.

I doubt mushrooms can really capture the bacon experience, though.

Non-meat eaters are behind skeumorphic meat alternatives for the same reason car detractors are generally in favour of electric cars.

Moving people away from the old sources weakens the entrenched power of those who benefit from the old way (factory farms and fossil fuel companies, respectively), massively helping with one first-order problem (animal cruelty and carbon emissions, respectively) and opening the way towards further improvements that would have been blockaded by those entrenched powers.

The point of not eating meat is that meat is not that healthy in our modern lifestyle. replacing real meat with mycelium meat won't make a difference as fat is fat and protein is protein

That might be your understanding of "the point of not eating meat", but other people have plenty of other views.

Clearly bacon tastes good and there are lots of people who would love to eat it but are against killing animals for food. This gives them an alternative that hopefully tastes good like bacon but without the ethical implications.

You can grow mushrooms in a shoebox sized tub in your closet if you wanted to

Why is the clear paid marketing spam on hn

We like mushies

I mean the source is a press release:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220725005271/en/MyF...

which is advertising in its nature. But I think there's decent conversation happening here which is basically the threshold for posting something on HN

Scrolling down shows that it's not available that widely yet. Damn.

https://myforestfoods.com/mybacon

Morally, I am 100% behind this. If we can reduce the carbon footprint of food, we should.

However, everyone's morals have a limit, and mine is eating mushrooms. Nothing against people who like them, I just can't stand them.

I used to be like you; then I learned that I was badly trained in their preparation (cultural background). Now I know how to deal with them, I love 'em.

I have previously made an effort to acquire a taste for them, partially because I'm aware how important they will be in the future (at least, if all the sci-fi I've read is to be believed!).

But nope, it's not the preparation, it's the ingredient.

Has anyone tried this? How close is the taste to real/meat bacon?

For me, I'd be happy with it if it can fulfill the same role in recipes even if it doesn't taste quite the same. Beyond Burger doesn't taste exactly the same as hamburger but if I didn't know it was plant based I'd have thought it was some sort of ground ruminant and it still results in good chili.

I'm not sure you'd be able to render out much tasty fat from fake bacon like you can real bacon that has a ton of fat content

Yeah, the critical test is whether they can get the umami from the mushrooms and the smoke flavor into the coconut oil they're adding. It might be that the flavor doesn't travel with it in which case the product won't be any good in a lot of use cases I care about.

This is going to put a lot of pigs out of work

Baquon?

> fungi-based bacon

No.

Love mushrooms. Love bacon. This is making my mouth water.

Dunno what the problem could be, guess it just sounds yukky? If small amounts aren't bad for ya, I'll try it for sure.

I am not eating bugs, fungus and highly processed fake "meat" in the future. I will literally move to a rural farmland to get real food before I buy into this ridiculous movement.

Start shopping now!

I watch a lot of survival/catch/clean/cook videos on youtube just in case.

Who cares? You're a single person and no one is forcing you to eat bugs, fungi, or fake meat.

These products are for the many millions of people who prefer an inexpensive alternative to meat.

> These products are for the many millions of people who prefer an inexpensive alternative to meat.

Millions? Beyond Meat is tanking right now.

Also, the substitutes are more expensive, not less, especially for products like pork.

Stock price is tanking, probably because they started a movement and now they have 100 competitors and own brand labels competing… there’s more choice than ever. “Price” is a premium because vegetarians will pay a premium for something by unique. Not because it costs more to make.

There are more than a billion vegetarians worldwide. There are many millions even in non-Hindu countries.

Oh, but they will. They've already started:

https://thecountersignal.com/uk-school-children-to-be-fed-bu...

This is pretty off-topic, but reading more about Christopher Bear and the research group, the children aren't forced to eat it.

For obvious reasons, I don’t think this is a reliable source for such a claim by any means.

It's not obvious. What do you mean?

They will find out the truth soon enough. I'm glad some on HN still have some sense.

Totally not true. They are going to drive up the cost of real meat and other livestock in the name of "climate change" and force regular people to opt for cheaper sources of food such as algae proteins, fake "meat", cricket flour, etc. Why do you think Bill Gates has invested heavily in this field? He is a monopolist first and technologist after.

> They are going to drive up the cost of real meat and other livestock

How will they do this, exactly?

Also, isn't the cost of real meat too low as it is? It hasn't priced in climate externalities that other people (including non-meat-eaters) have to pay for. Shouldn't meat include all of its costs, not just the ones paid by the farmers?

> How will they do this, exactly?

Easy. Heavily regulate the farmers with climate regulations including carbon taxes. Or pass emissions laws like they have in the Netherlands which would force ranchers to downsize their herds. This would drive up cost to produce and scarcity of the product.

As for the second part of your comment I truly am not sure what you're talking about? It seems like your sentiment confirms the first part of my answer.

Would you consider lobster or crab, bugs?

Crustaceans aren't insects.

What about lab-grown meat?

It's been more than e decade since the first cultured meat stake was served in London.

If I have to wait for much longer, my body wouldn't even want it anymore

Repulsive.

Mushrooms aren’t “real food”?

Yes it’s processed with some additions, but so is a meat sausage.

Talking more broadly, not about OP. It seems a lot of people have this cognitive dissonance (I don’t know what to call it exactly) about what food is, maybe from their upbringing or religious beliefs or just society.

I’ve spoken to people that are like “I don’t like any vegetarian food”… and I’m like… so you don’t eat fries? (Oh uh I guess 90% of what I eat is already vegetarian… mmhmm)

Then if you dare get on to the topic of animal protein people are EXTREMELY conflicted in their views… if you eat a cow why not eat a horse? why not eat a dog, why not eat a monkey… oh hang on this is getting a bit close to eating humans… hang on are animals real feeling thinking creatures that while tasty also have some other properties maybe I haven’t considered before?

Hmm

Then they don’t want to continue this conversation because they don’t want to internalise what they’re feeling and REALLY actually think about their choices because if I think I might have to change, and then comes the very human feeling of “I don’t want to change” or “that’s not who I am” as if it’s bad to grow and change as a person.

I have to say I don't want to continue the conversation because your reply is incomprehensible. This isn't about touchy feely internal reflection.

All heavily marketed "trends" are predetermined to forward an ultimate agenda from the permanent elite class. Bill Gates doesn't want you eating beef and pork. He wants you eating his fake "meat" so they can shut down the livestock industry to save Mother Gaia from global warming.

The AMA recommends against red meat because it's high in saturated fats. It's never been proven that saturated fats are the cause of atherosclerosis.

Is this a conspiracy? Yes. But it's not a theory, the evidence is all around.

> I’ve spoken to people that are like “I don’t like any vegetarian food”… and I’m like… so you don’t eat fries? (Oh uh I guess 90% of what I eat is already vegetarian… mmhmm)

You can't (or shouldn't) live of fries. A complete vegetarian / vegan diet is not that enjoyable to eat, albeit all the processed vegetarian food make things way easier.

I started brainwashing my parents at 16 with vegetarianism because I trusted the scienc struggled for 15 years to gain any muscle because vegetable based proteins are less bioavailable and eating a lot of proteins is hard. Got kidney stones because of the vegetarian protein shakes.

After 15 years of eating a 95% low fat, high carb vegetarian diet (at least striving for it!) I started having serious health issues. Constant diarrhoea, stomach ulcers, anal bleeding. Took some meds to fix the symptoms and kind of live.

2 years of suffering and wanting to kill myself. The doctors were telling me I had high cholesterol (from what?) and needed to be put on statins and that I had to avoid eating the little meat I had. And anyway, it was probably stress related.

After 2 years, I decided to do exactly the opposite of what the doctors told me and dropped first all the processed carbs (bread, pasta, pizza - pretty hard considering I love baking bread and pizza), then after not seeing much improvements I dropped vegetables and fruit and started eating just eggs, meat and dairy.

All the symptoms disappeared in a week and I started losing weight. I eat very little calories (which is one of the best things for longevity), no hunger, my protein needs are met and I can still lift similar amount of weight.

So, right now I'm on a carnivore diet, mainly for health reasons.

From a moral point of view, I absolutely don't care, I would eat people if it were healthy (there are some deadly diseases you can get with cannibalism) and if other people wouldn't kill me (or eat me?) for it.

Anecdata where the data set is N=1.

Similarly, from my circle I have a complete reverse example.

Multitude of health problems that went away after going to raw vegan diet. IMHO a very extreme diet, but if it's the only (discovered) thing that helps, then why not.

At the end of the day no matter what you eat, life consumes life. Even for photosynthetic organisms, often times they perform behaviors that preclude other life forms from having abundance after the first are established (e.g. black walnut trees poison the ground around them). If you eat nothing but plants there's no reason to act all high and mighty, your life still depends on the sacrifice of other life. All farmland destroys local environments. You are removing biodiversity and introducing a mono culture by definition. Then there's also this idea of the human bias towards consciousness. We are conscious individuals and we are biased towards other forms of conscious life; only Jain monks or other highly spiritual people seem to care about not stepping on insects anywhere they walk.

All you can ask at the end of the day is that all life is treated with humane respect. It doesn't really matter then whether your protein comes from a chicken or a bean if both are grown in such a way to limit harm to these life forms and to the wider environment. Short of living in the woods and homesteading, its hard to avoid widespread environmental damage to produce the things you need for modern life.

Yeah completely agree, we all do harm and benefits to the world/society.

I’m not making a moral judgement at all. I wanted to comment on the process of how people think (or don’t think) about the reasons they do or don’t eat things (like mushroom derived products or monkeys) saying mushroom based products are not “food” but eg cookies are food sounds silly to me. They’re both just ingredients mashed together.

> why not eat a dog, why not eat a monkey…

Eating carnivores is not a good idea because they have higher concentrations of poison etc.

> if you eat a cow why not eat a horse?

Sure, that's a valid point. Where can I buy it?

> Eating carnivores is not a good idea because they have higher concentrations of poison etc.

Presumably you would control their diet to avoid food chain toxin accumulation if you were to farm them. Tuna is carnivorous but that doesn't stop us from farming it much less catching it in the wild.

I would wager dog meat/slaughter is almost exclusively banned in the places it's banned due to cultural "ick" factors and nothing more.

horse meat IS eaten in many parts of the world but AFAIK is banned in the USA

Yeah I know. I was just being facetious.

you're not eating mushrooms??

I tried the Beyond Meat ground beef substitute once to see if it would work in tacos. Stunk up my house with a weird smell, tasted off even with all the spices, and made us all feel a bit sick after. No wonder their stock is tanking. Humans are meant to eat real meat, we evolved this way.

Genuine question.. how did you go from “Personally I don’t like a thing” therefore “humans evolved to eat meat”

Personally I don’t like peaches… does that mean humans evolved to eat meat?

Honestly it sounds like you tried 1 product, didn’t like it and used that to reinforce a totally separate worldview that you already wanted to believe and reinforce.

I don’t like beyond meat either, I agree it tastes funny, but personally that doesn’t make me feel like the only other alternative is to eat a cow.. I can just eat something else.

Meat is nutritionally superior to plants. Humans do not process cellulose easily. It takes far more plants to equal the nutritional content of meat. I tried Beyond Meat as an experiment but it tastes awful. Real meat is better.

All of that can be true (I’m not saying it is) yet it still doesn’t matter.

I am perfectly healthy guy who doesn’t eat meat and doesn’t need to.

Of course we evolved to eat meat. Just look at your teeth.

On the topic: There is a good metabolic theory which hypothesise that our improved brain abilities come from adapting from a mostly vegetarian diet to a meat based fat rich diet.

https://www.nasw.org/article/eating-meat-drove-evolution-our...

Humans can eat a lot of different things, we don't need meat at all.

But we also don't need meat substitutes, and I agree with you that most of them taste like shit.

I absolutely agree with you. It seems like HN was once full of thoughtful people grounded in good sense. Now I can see there's a lot more "embrace the future" in support of The Next Thing thrown at us plebes from the authoritarian establishment.

Fake meat made of hyper-processed plant materials are NOT meat and who knows what long term health effects would result from someone subsisting solely on that kind of food.

Human beings evolved to eat whole plants and meat. We generally find eating insects repulsive for a reason, just as we don't generally like hearing the sound of someone vomiting because it means illness is nearby. In my case I am listening to my gut and I will resist all efforts to get me to eat crickets for my protein while driving up the cost of beef so high it can only be afforded by the rich.

A free man with any dignity does not prefer crickets over meat or pretend fungus is bacon.

Are you opting out of all future cultural and technological changes, or just these very specific ones?

I'm opting out of sneaky ways to lower the standard of living for the population of the free world. Steak > Beyond Meat junk. Bacon > fungus. Chicken/Fish > crickets.

Ok, gotcha, just some insecure MAGA crap.

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