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Comment by boppo1 | Hacker News Reader

> If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption.

Habitual meat eater here. I will never ever trust these products to be right for my body the way meat is. Humans haven’t nailed it in the past with heavily processed foods, why would it suddenly work now? I understand the noble dream, I really do. But the fact is, unless I find myself in near poverty or poverty and (no added sugar) peanut butter is unavailable, imitation meat will never be a go-to for me.

Hell, not to mention the disgust I’d feel eating it while knowing my betters are certainly dining on the real thing.

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It's not like meat is free from controversy, to play devil's advocate a little. We had beef that turned out to be horse for a moment in the UK.

Not to mention mad cow disease and similar issues.

What risks are you thinking of with plant based or lab grown? If anything it seems the lab environment would catch anything significant before it got out of the building.

I'm not arguing with you, honestly curious. I've not thought about this much.

The concern is that lab grown food will have similar health risks to ultra processed foods — which are correlated with a number of illnesses.

You’re asking people to trust a process (food science) that we’ve spent the last decade finding out has poisoned us for generations.

"Last decade" is too generous.

HFCS wasn't last decade. Trans-fats wasn't last decade. We've known they were bad more than a decade ago.

Many more decades ago they marketed these artificial food alternatives without any evidence of long term health effects, and the process of "proving" them bad took many years (funny how the onus lies on the potential victims), and only recently we've been able to mostly contain the damage of HFCS and trans fats.

It seems every once a while this process restarts again. Americans sure love to play with their food. (I'm not American)

Thought: If your beef is horse meat from a bad supply chain, your vegetarian burger may also be horse meat.

> right for my body the way meat is

Where did you get that idea? Meat consumption in developer contries is excessive and far from healthy.

When I don't eat meat I perform poorly in the gym and generally feel worse.

This seems like a bonkers thing to claim. You're suggesting that if someone gave you two burgers that tasted identical, one that was real meat and costs £5, and the other that was fake and costs £2, if they were other than that TOTALLY IDENTICAL (other than the fake one being better for the planet), you'd still feel the need to eat the real one? For some sense of perceived...offence?

Not that person, but…

Yes, absolutely.

The history of processed foods is that they’re really bad for us, compared to natural foods, even when ostensibly of similar nutrition.

Why would I trust a process that has failed for decades to work this time?

100% Have we forgotten trans fats in margarine? By all accounts, it was butter but cheaper and "healthier". 70 years later, we realized it was worse for us that natural fats.

I would. I try to only eat fresh things that I could prepare at home. Why would I willingly eat 100 grams of refined coconut oil with yeast, potassium chloride, methylcellulose (a laxative) and a whole bunch of other stuff?

I'd rather eat less meat than replace it with this crap.

Depends how you market them. Tons of people opt for organic without having much clue what is means. It’s almost default in most shops.

Tons are buying sunscreen that doesn’t even work all while thinking they are better than everyone else.

Honestly making it cheaper is probably an error. Less cash for developer to improve it and has negative aspect of it.

I wish I could get $5 fake meat that tasted real for $2. Right now the options are real $10, fake and substantially not as a good, $10 or $12.

No added sugar peanut butter is not really a high quality protein source that can substitute for meat, not to mention there are doubts about the health of seed oils (peanuts may or may not be included here) and high omega 6.

You're right, but I can put up with eating a lot of it for long periods on end and it gets me through. I'm open to other suggestions of similar price/effort/tastiness with a better protein & nutrition profile. As long as it's not crazy processed.

Beans and rice, or tofu.

Buy whole chicken when it’s on sale, if you have a freezer you can stock up and break it down into pieces in advance.

A 4oz piece of chicken probably gives a better combination of amino acids than many servings of peanut butter.

Edit: actually I looked it up and peanuts are a decent source of protein, the issues are possibly omega6 and getting peanut butter without added sugar or oil, you should be able to find peanut butter with just peanuts and salt as ingredients.

Humans weren't originally growing meat to eat, either. We were catching it - which puts an upper limit on both the amount of the meat eaten, and on how fatty that meat it.

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