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Comment by kfk | Hacker News Reader

I am getting a bit deeper into the food industry since I started investing in a startup that plans to produce animal feed with insects. Animal feeds are prepared with specific properties, for instance, fish feed at 60% protein. The impact of different percentages of compounds is measured closely on animal well being, growth, weight… I am quite bothered that we don’t do the same for human foods. We lighlty compare real milk with plant based milk without being honest about the completely different properties of the two. I suspect the difficult conversation we need to be having would be about proteins and how to produce them sustainabily and ethically. Many plant based vegan alternatives hide from the real problem, I think.

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It's funny you are worried about the impact of vegan alternatives and not, say, sugars, alcohol, overly fatty or salty foods, too much bad quality meat raised with hormones etc. It's almost like you have a bias against the vegan alternative..

Edit: ok so I was not terribly constructive with this comment, so happy to elaborate. I'm pretty tired of this argument against vegan meat. The nutritional values of vegan meat are not that bad even in the worst case in relation to everything else that is in the market - it's a non issue at best. What I believe the commenters parroting this line really want to say is that they like meat and need a reason not to eat/support the alternatives.

Arguments against eating meat are orders of magnitude heavier than against vegan meat.

Or maybe it's ok to worry about one bad thing without having to worry about all bad things.

Don't assume things about people.

He is probably also concerned about those things and many other things, like climate change, the Ukrainian War, the Sudanese Civil War, AI... you don't have to mention every little thing you are concerned about in each post.

Whataboutism: check.

Please don't bring your nonsense strawman arguments to HN. It's perfectly fine to bring up one angle about something you want to discuss without listing all the other angles every single time, that doesn't downplay them in any way. If you always insist on listing every possible problem associated with every possible discussion point you'll never get anywhere.

> overly fatty or salty food

Hard to understand one can promote cheese versus « vegan cheese » for nutritional reasons ! The vegan cheese may contain very few nutriments while the vast majority of our « real » cheeses are absolute disasters.

I don't disagree with what you're saying, but there can be nutritional benefits hiding in certain cheeses. Vitamin K2 can be tricky to find in plant sources - natto being the only one I can think of and it's tricky to find here in the UK. Roquefort has been hailed as the important part of the "French paradox" (French cardiovascular health tends to be much better than their high fat diet would suggest). I do like my fermented foods, with kimchi being my most frequently consumed.

Thanks, didn’t know the k2 can be sourced in kimchi ! Totally agree with not throwing the baby with the water. As for most poisons, just a bit has a good effect, think red wine.

Microdosing hemlock the next big thing?

I thought the benefits of red wine came from stuff like the tannin and could be gotten otherwise from non poisonous sources.

> bad quality meat raised with hormones

Luckily, these are pretty much illegal in all of European Union.

Traceability regulations and the regulators being pretty on the ball with checking (even more so since the horsemeat issue years ago) mean we don't get such garbage in our market.

"Undercover footage that appears to show extremely sick cows being smuggled into a Polish slaughterhouse and sold on with little or no veterinary inspection has raised alarm about standards in one of the EU’s largest meat exporters."

Are they really that on the ball? Sounds like nothing changed after the horsemeat scandal.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/27/secret-f...

They have lifted restrictions on feeding animal remains to livestock, in the name of competition. Those restrictions were there for good reason in the wake of the BSE crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/22/eu-to-lift-its...

I don't personally know any vegetarian or vegan who thinks of alternatives as some kind of healthy choice by default. Many of them also don't consider cow's milk to be inherently healthy, but that's neither here nor there.

Those who care about eating healthy make sure that non-healthy foods, animal product alternatives or otherwise, are not the only thing they consume. They get their protein (and other macro and micronutrients) from relevant plant-based sources or supplementation. The latter is especially common for gym-goers. I'd hope people who do consume meat and dairy and care about their health also don't assume that animal product consumption is equatable to a healthy holistic diet by default.

Hmm.

While you're obviously correct that such things matter, I don't have the impression that people sweat those things for meat or dairy even before the vegan alternatives.

I'm using substitutes where possible, but count myself as vegetarian rather than vegan, mainly due to cheese. Vegan cheese substitutes do exist, but I can't use one single thing in all places: smoked tofu can go in a sandwich but it doesn't melt right on a pizza, the ones which do melt have zero-to-minimal protein. Milk substitutes are easier, but I still keep the soy for cereal and the Hafermilch for drinks.

> We lighlty compare real milk with plant based milk without being honest about the completely different properties of the two

For sure, there are many differences between plant based and dairy milk. Besides the protein levels, for example, a large percentage of humans - between 10 and 90 percent depending on genetic background - are lactose intolerant and can't digest animal milk. Plant based milks don't have this problem - very few people can't digest oats, and for those few who do have a problem with oats, they can switch to almond, rice, soy, cashew or even peanut milk. Sure, these have less protein than dairy milk, but they more than make up for it in diversity and benefit to the environment, and it's easy to adapt your diet to get the protein elsewhere.

So when being more honest in our comparisons - a good thing, for sure - we must compare all of these things and not just the amount of protein. For me personally, being one of those lactose intolerant people, plant based milks definitely win. For another person they may not.

Mammal milk contains lactoferrin, a very powerful anti-viral/bacterial/fungal molecule that helps fighting invaders in your gut. Lactose-free milk would still work to avoid age-related digestion issues. By skipping it you are likely going to develop gut issues in a few years/decades. See the clinical section here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactoferrin

"Lactoferrin in sufficient strength acts on a wide range of human and animal viruses based on DNA and RNA genomes,[46] including the herpes simplex virus 1 and 2,[47][48][49] cytomegalovirus,[50] HIV,[48][51] hepatitis C virus,[52][53] hantaviruses, rotaviruses, poliovirus type 1,[54] human respiratory syncytial virus, murine leukemia viruses[43] and Mayaro virus.[55] Activity against COVID-19 has been speculated but not proven"

If that's something you feel that you need, you can get it as a supplement. Or also from cow tears, apparently.

Very few vegans know about it, even fewer supplement it.

The amount of sugars and carbs in fruit and veggies has risen a lot due to selection. The amount of sugar in products like cookies, yogurt, bread, sauces, sodas has been skyrocketing for decades. These changes often go unnoticed.

Meanwhile vegan, vegetarian and healthy products often clustered together, attract a health conscious crowd and get scrutinized a lot. For example alternative milks have to jump through hoops to prove that they aren't less healthy than milk.

> Many plant based vegan alternatives hide from the real problem, I think

If anything, it's the opposite.

We've also been aggressively selecting traits in animals, grains, vegetables and fruits at an accelerating pace.

I'm worried that modern carrots are lacking in nutrition due to being heavily selected for size and colour.

Vegetables you can buy at the supermarket are absolutely atrocious. Every time I go home to my parents' and have home-grown tomatoes I cry.

Yup, the tomatoes available to me (UK) in supermarkets have zero flavour. I just buy them out of habit. They look great but they’re crap.

Waitrose sell some very nice tomatoes, albeit at very premium prices.

Sainsbury’s often stock UK-grown Thanet Earth tomatoes (look for “jubilee vine tomatoes” etc) which are some of the best I have found at normal prices, especially out of season.

Tesco tomatoes are almost universally bad.

About tomatoes: I think it's also because they're harvested before they're really ripe so they're harder and will handle transport better.

The difference between supermarket produce (fruit/veg) and greengrocer produce is night and day IMO.

As for carrots specifically, I did notice that the greengrocer carrots often are individually smaller and more fucked up looking than the supermarket ones, and taste more intensely.

Interestingly the greengrocer is often cheaper on some things than even the discounter supermarkets, and is MUCH cheaper if you factor in spoilage, disposal of packaging waste, etc.

Same goes for meat products - buying them from a good butchers can often work out cheaper than the supermarket (precise control over cuts, etc), far less waste, professional advice on preparation, higher quality, etc.

Vegans are usually aware of nutritional values and know how to have a healthy diet without meat, it may include supplementation (vitamin B12 in particular). Probably better than the average meat eater who doesn't care.

Remember that humans are omnivores, we are less picky eaters than most animals.

B12 is often added to the like of oat milk directly.

> We lighlty compare real milk with plant based milk without being honest about the completely different properties of the two.

We’re talking about individual products. People who just vegan milk do so because they switched their diet (and this step requires you to think about proportions or else).

"the difficult conversation we need to be having would be about proteins and how to produce them sustainabily and ethically. This plant based vegan alternatives hide from the real problem, I think"

Huh? I thought the real problem are the vast ressources milk production needs and the cruel need to seperate the cow babies from their mothers so they produce more milk. And not even speaking about the meat production facalities.

Oatmilk on the other hand grows fast and does not require misstreating babies, so what is the real problem?

(apart from the fact, that many people, including me, also like milk and meat, despite alternatives?)

Meat and dairy are clearly not "vast" resource hogs in any way that currently matters, because they're cheap.

And while I personally share the belief that it's inherently cruel and should be changed, it's been obvious to me for most of my life that most people don't share those values and are not motivated by that.

But that's also a category error for the comment you're replying to, which is "is it healthy?" when you're answering "is it ethical?"

" But that's also a category error for the comment you're replying to, which is "is it healthy?" when you're answering "is it ethical?" "

I agree that those are two different categories, but the quote I used was about both:

"how to produce them sustainabily and ethically"

Mea culpa, I missed that :)

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