How sustainable are fake meats? | Hacker News Reader

How sustainable are fake meats?

knowablemagazine.org

17 pointssohkamyung11 comments

Of course, all the to-do about alternative meats overlooks another dietary option, one with the lowest environmental footprint of all: Simply eat less meat and more beans, grains and vegetables. The additional processing involved in plant-based meats means that they generate 4.6 times more greenhouse gas than beans, and seven times more than peas, per unit of protein

It's sad to me that "western" cooking is so focused on meat as the centerpiece to cooking. When I first went vegan, trying to replicate meat centric dishes I grew up on with plant-based substitutions always lead to a disappointing meal.

The key to good plant-based cooking is exploring the space of possible dishes that never included meat or animals products to begin with. Instead focusing on distinct flavors and textures provided by plants and exploring there instead.

I've found fake chicken is pretty good for curries, etc.

However, I mostly just care about environmental footprint, and chicken is already pretty good on that front.

Curry and fake chicken sounds very good right now. Have been big on seitan/tofu katsu plate lunches recently

> It's sad to me that "western" cooking is so focused on meat as the centerpiece to cooking.

I wonder if that's for historical reasons. I'd assume that in previous centuries, only wealthy people would have the means to afford getting a cook that would be able to pass on their recipes in written form. As such, the recipes that survived would be the ones that would have access to expensive ingredients like meat and spices.

At least on the French side of things, Carême and Escoffier are very influential in classical French cuisine, and their audience was wealthy people, not commoners.

You are supposing that recipes were passed down through books which is totally false. They were passed down in families and communities and were based to what was available at the time. Meat is more prevalent in recipes coming from regions where it was more available. Some other places have instead a fish based diet. In any way animal based food has always been preferred by every culture that didn't avoid it for religious reasons. Most cultures who have a plant based diet come from a recent past of extreme poverty and food deprivation.

EDIT: Of course as soon as meat got available, recipes that were before only affordable by a small circle, got picked up by a larger share of the population.

Environment is one of the factors for my preference for fake meats, but the much bigger factor is the ethical one. Both at the fundamental level of “killing an animal for food is bad” and the larger “modern animal farming is monstrous and inflicts incalculable suffering”.

I still enjoy a burger and I can do that relatively guilt free. Totally worth it for me.

Also, this space is still very young so I expect it to improve dramatically over the coming years. Which is a great aspect about fake meats. They are a technology that can evolve and improve a great deal. Technological development with regular meat appears to result in worse treatment for animals, not a direction I want to support.

My wife and I went vegetarian just over two years ago. Cold turkey, so to speak. I was very surprised to not miss the sensory experience of eating meat. Texture, color, and to a lesser extent smell and flavor. For a while I think I chased it a bit out of habit, but as I began to incorporate other sources of protein in to my diet, the desire for those meat-like qualities quickly faded.

Tofu is probably what most omnivores know as a common vegetarian protein replacement (at least this was the case for me). Tofu is okay. Not my favorite, but very flexible and easy to come by. Seitan is my current go-to protein, composed primarily of vital wheat gluten, and it’s proving more versatile than tofu. Kind of expensive to buy off-the-shelf, but extraordinarily cheap to make yourself, and you can season and prepare it to your liking. Unfortunately not an option for someone with celiac disease. Plenty of tutorials/recipes on youtube.

Textured vegetable protein, commonly known as TVP, is next on my list to start experimenting with. I’m sure there even more options I haven’t explored. Honestly, since removing meat from my diet the variety of foods I eat has exploded and I’m kind of excited about being in the kitchen again trying new things.

I'd recommend giving tempeh a try. I like that it has a more substantial texture than tofu and it soaks up flavor really nicely.

Plant-based meat substitutes are getting pretty good days, but it will be interesting to see how soon we can sustainably produce lab-grown meat at scale. I've been a vegetarian for about two years now for both environmental and ethical reasons, but I would be perfectly alright with eating meat again if that tech matures enough to enter the market at a reasonable price.

Interesting. On most environmental metrics other than land use, ground turkey is competitive with beyond/impossible.

(And pork isn't much worse.)

I've tried a variety of the newer fake meats like impossible and beyond. They were pretty good and novel at the beginning but think I ultimately prefer tofu, seitan, and black bean/traditional Boca style meat substitutes. Not sure what it is about Beyond meats but I now find them a bit nauseating and just very highly processed.

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