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Thoughts on Beyond Burger and other fake meat

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Replies

  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    Nope

    Care to share what your specific concern is?

    Sure. The 21 reasons in the ingredient list

    You avoid beet juice?

    I hate beet with a passion so yes, I do avoid it, but I'm more worried about all the vegetable seed oils, starches and sugars. Also, anything with more than 5 ingredients is a frankenfood. Have you ever used 21 ingredients in a recipe?

    Lots of times.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    sharonlemay1 wrote: »
    I'm here to improve my health, so fake burgers are a no go. I'm looking for real whole foods full of macro and micro nutrients, fiber etc. Those fake burgers will give a person a heart attack as easily as if that person ate beef burgers.

    All foods have macronutrients, so looking for foods full of them isn't a very hard thing.

    For micros, I think we have to analyze the products specifically and be clear on what it is being compared to.

    The heart attack thing seems extreme. Nutrition, for the most part, is about overall diet and what we do eat, as well as dosage. I noted above that my dad quit red meat other than for special occasional (same with dairy fat) since it helped control his cholesterol, but having a rare but occasional burger (or steak, which he would typically prefer) does not have any negative effects for him.

    There are arguments to be had about whether sat fat from plants have the same effects as sat fat from animal products for those who tend to have some negative responses to them -- I don't think the evidence is clear yet. But the idea that 21 ingredients = must be bad and unhealthy is, IMO, not a particularly sensible approach to nutrition.

    (I'm coming from this from the perspective that one can easily have a healthful, nutrient-dense diet that includes occasional beef, and that the same is true with occasional plant-based beef substitutes. Other factors are much more important in determining whether a diet is healthful, IMO (and from what I've read of the research and from experts in the field I consider trustworthy).)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    Nope

    Care to share what your specific concern is?

    Sure. The 21 reasons in the ingredient list

    You avoid beet juice?

    I hate beet with a passion so yes, I do avoid it, but I'm more worried about all the vegetable seed oils, starches and sugars. Also, anything with more than 5 ingredients is a frankenfood. Have you ever used 21 ingredients in a recipe?

    Yes.

    I don't see how the ingredient count is a rational criterion for anything, really.

    I think you and I might not be terribly far apart in what our actual practice is. I prefer to moderate my consumption of foods that are mainly extracts (or lab-created ingredients) intended to deliver some single nutrient or property; or that have had a lot of the natural components processed out of them.

    This is not a religious principal (using "religion" in a metaphorical sense here, BTW). I'll eat those things without fear of poisoning. My reasons have more to do with feeling there are end-cases where food-based nutrients seem to be more readily metabolized than supplements/extractives, plus the recognition that large numbers of essential or beneficial nutrients have been "discovered" in my lifetime, that were in foods all along. I don't think we're done with discoveries.

    Because of that, I think eating a pretty major fraction of my diet in the form close to how it came out of the ground (or critter, or whatever) is a reasonable bet-hedge. It's also the reason why I consider "highly processed" traditional foods that have been widely eaten for centuries to be a better bet than novelties.

    My personal taste-preference experience is that I usually enjoy these closer-to-origin or traditional foods more than the novel things, too; but I see that as personal idiosyncracy, kind of like some people liking asparagus when others don't.

    In giving advice to others here, I still think the biggest deal is that people in general ought to strive for overall good nutrition (macros, known micros, sensible calories), and that however they choose to do that is just fine.

    Beyond that, calling other people's food disparaging names doesn't seem to me very likely to be a great tactic for persuading them to avoid those foods. (I'm not at all interested in undertaking that persuasion; I'm just confused by the tactic when it seems to be used in service of advocacy. I'm not sure advocacy is what's intended by the quoted post, however, either.)

    I think the key difference here is that you choose to get most of your calories from certain foods because of a rational belief that food-based nutrients are better than us (an idea I also share, although I acknowledge it has not yet been fully proven). But if a specific food appealed to you in the moment, you would probably eat it (assuming it fit into your goals, etc) because you don't have the mistaken belief that one particular meal is going to cancel out the overall healthful pattern of your diet. That is, you don't believe the food will cause inherent harm.

    This, to me, is the difference between your position and the positions that strike me as more "religious."

    (Apologies if I'm not accurately describing your position).
  • poisonesse
    poisonesse Posts: 573 Member
    Personally... I don't want to eat a ton of synthesized chemicals, I have nothing against meat, so I'll stay within my comfort zone.
  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,374 Member
    edited February 2020
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    just_Tomek wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Sylphadora wrote: »
    Nope

    Care to share what your specific concern is?

    Sure. The 21 reasons in the ingredient list

    You avoid beet juice?

    I hate beet with a passion so yes, I do avoid it, but I'm more worried about all the vegetable seed oils, starches and sugars. Also, anything with more than 5 ingredients is a frankenfood. Have you ever used 21 ingredients in a recipe?

    Yeap. Many times.

    And have you ever used methylcellulose, succinic acid, maltodextrin or any of the other chemical-sounding ingredients in a recipe? I don't buy anything with ingredients my grandmother wouldn't recognize. I'm strongly anti-processed food. The fact that it's processed vegan food doesn't make it any healthier. It still seems that it came out of a lab instead of a kitchen

    succinic acid link (seems to be a very: useful compound)
    https://thechemco.com/chemical/succinic-acid/
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »

    (3) coconut oil (some treat it with skepticism because sat fat, but many claim it is a health food, and I'd be curious if all those bemoaning the BB product avoid coconut oil. For the record, I prefer olive and avocado on a routine basis, but also use coconut.)

    Even if there is an argument to be made against saturated fat, we're talking about a burger. It's been added specifically to more closely mirror the nutrients in a beef burger so this objection only makes sense from the pretty small group of people who avoid foods with saturated fat (unless the argument is that saturated fat from animals is good for you, saturated fat from plants is bad for you, but I don't know of any research that could even begin to verify that).
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »

    (3) coconut oil (some treat it with skepticism because sat fat, but many claim it is a health food, and I'd be curious if all those bemoaning the BB product avoid coconut oil. For the record, I prefer olive and avocado on a routine basis, but also use coconut.)

    Even if there is an argument to be made against saturated fat, we're talking about a burger. It's been added specifically to more closely mirror the nutrients in a beef burger so this objection only makes sense from the pretty small group of people who avoid foods with saturated fat (unless the argument is that saturated fat from animals is good for you, saturated fat from plants is bad for you, but I don't know of any research that could even begin to verify that).

    Yeah, totally agree, but I was trying to group in those who seemed anti burger also (the "it's going to give you a heart attack just like a burger would" crowd).

    I probably should have written "I'd be curious if all those bemoaning the BB product avoid coconut oil and all other sources of sat fat."
  • onward1
    onward1 Posts: 386 Member
    They look gross. Not much of a meat eater here, but if I wanted meat why would I eat something fake? Pretend meat,lol. And in my experience most fake stuff has alot of sodium, I wouldn't know about this product, as I walked past it in the store, like I said, it looked gross.
  • onward1
    onward1 Posts: 386 Member
    Yes, but blue cheese, tripe, haggis and oysters are real, there are no synthetic versions of these, at least that I know about. It's pretend food and that's okay for some folks, no judgement here.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    jm_1234 wrote: »
    Sidebar: From a fast food perspective I feel like there is a double standard when it comes to plant based burgers/sausages/etc. It seems like plant based is judged more harshly than meat based products.

    For one there seems to be more transparency with plant based ingredients and manufacturing. With meat based it seems to usually be a trade secret and only when the truth is revealed there is a major change (i.e., pink slime burgers at McDonald's).

    Is there more transparency across the board for the farming, harvesting, and processing/packaging/transporting of produce compared to meat? I'm tempted to say no. Outside of people/organizations talking about locally grown products aimed at a local market, in the US you only really hear about the production of produce in the context of migrant workers and immigration but rarely do we hear about the labor practices in any sort of detail nor do we hear about the risks for people working on these farms. Then there's things like the ways in which crops like almonds are grown in the US (more specifically California) and the amount of water and transportation of bees that that takes which isn't really talked about all that much. It's also pretty rare to hear about the effect that large farms are having on small ones (similar to the way Amazon has ended up decimating the independent bookstore industry)

    On the other hand, it isn't especially uncommon to hear about feedlots, antibiotics, free range chickens (as well as discussions about what that actually means), etc. Some of that information is coming from groups whose publications I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, like PETA, where as other information is coming from people like Michael Pollan

    I think where we do agree is that I think that things like these new engineered vegetarian (vegan?) meats do get a lot of scrutiny. I think there are a number of reasons for this - people expect it to taste like meat given the claims by the manufactures so if it doesn't there is much condemnation. People are intrigued about how these products are actually made (which I think is fair because it is a bit mindblowing).
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    jm_1234 wrote: »
    Sidebar: From a fast food perspective I feel like there is a double standard when it comes to plant based burgers/sausages/etc. It seems like plant based is judged more harshly than meat based products.

    For one there seems to be more transparency with plant based ingredients and manufacturing. With meat based it seems to usually be a trade secret and only when the truth is revealed there is a major change (i.e., pink slime burgers at McDonald's).

    Is there more transparency across the board for the farming, harvesting, and processing/packaging/transporting of produce compared to meat? I'm tempted to say no. Outside of people/organizations talking about locally grown products aimed at a local market, in the US you only really hear about the production of produce in the context of migrant workers and immigration but rarely do we hear about the labor practices in any sort of detail nor do we hear about the risks for people working on these farms. Then there's things like the ways in which crops like almonds are grown in the US (more specifically California) and the amount of water and transportation of bees that that takes which isn't really talked about all that much. It's also pretty rare to hear about the effect that large farms are having on small ones (similar to the way Amazon has ended up decimating the independent bookstore industry)

    On the other hand, it isn't especially uncommon to hear about feedlots, antibiotics, free range chickens (as well as discussions about what that actually means), etc. Some of that information is coming from groups whose publications I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, like PETA, where as other information is coming from people like Michael Pollan

    I think where we do agree is that I think that things like these new engineered vegetarian (vegan?) meats do get a lot of scrutiny. I think there are a number of reasons for this - people expect it to taste like meat given the claims by the manufactures so if it doesn't there is much condemnation. People are intrigued about how these products are actually made (which I think is fair because it is a bit mindblowing).

    It's almost as if all foods might turn out to be made of chemicals.

    ( ;):lol: )

    Chemicals...everywhere! >:)
  • autumnblade75
    autumnblade75 Posts: 1,661 Member
    MikePTY wrote: »
    I buy Beyond Burger a lot and really enjoy it. If I go to a restaurant, I'd rather a beef burger, but when I cook at home, I find it a lot easier to work with. I was never very good at cooking beef burgers so my Beyond Burgers end up coming out better.

    I also find the "it's heavily processed" attack to be amusing because:

    1. Of course it's processed. It's plant based products made to mimic the taste, appearance, and nutritional profile of ground beef. Of course it's gonna be processed. It doesn't grow on the beef fruit tree plant.
    2. If people want to scare about "processed" or "funny sounding ingredients", they should look at what gets fed to commercially produced beef. Cows don't magically appear in the slaughterhouse. They are raised and fed antibiotics and all sorts of other things ingredients (I've heard people try to scare about soy being in meat replacements not realizing that it is one of the primary ingredients fed to cows). I am not much one for ingredient scaring, but if you are, it's easy to do with beef too.

    I know I'm late to the party, but scare tactics about what cows eat reminded me of the Skittles story a few years back, and I googled it, and Here Ya Go: https://thecounter.org/alternative-feed-not-alternative-facts/

    I just meant to quip that the farmers only feed Soy when Skittles aren't available - but now I'm fairly horrified by some of the things that milk and meat cows are fed, regularly. It's definitely not the soy that bothers ME...
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