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Thoughts on Beyond Burger and other fake meat

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Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,722 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    There is already a chicken pizza crust being sold for the keto crowd, but no "sky is falling" racket around that one.

    The bacon crust one had tons of keto tags attached when I searched as well, but I left that out. :D

    I mean a real product, not a recipe.
    7_pepperoni_cb910cd1-ad01-491d-b56d-3d65a2ea9e68_1024x1024.png?v=1579014099


    So that's basically an unbreaded flattened chicken parmigiana with some pepperoni on top? B)

    Edited to add: LOL at the "Only minimally processed" on the box. I guess their definition of not processed is rather generous.

    I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of "minimally processed" pepperoni.

    Maybe I'm just wrong headed (as usual ;) ), but that actually seems like using the word more like I'd use it in daily life: "Minimally processed XYZ" would be XYZ made through the simplest possible (minimal) process.

    Foods like pepperoni are (IMO) traditional foods, and there's a traditional process for making them. I'm guessing it's a lot simpler than the modern mass-production methods. You grind up meats, mix them with spices and some minimal saltpeter (a mineral), stuff them in a casing, and dry/age them. It's not hyper-dramatically processed, in my view, i.e., not a lot of taking out chemical components, mixing in other extracted stuff, to the point where it's denatured.

    It doesn't seem a lot more processed, to me, than many cheeses, tofu, etc.

    That makes sense -- it's not so much arguing that pepperoni itself is minimally processed, but it's arguing that for pepperoni, it hasn't undergone additional processing.

    I would categorize things like pepperoni and cheese and tofu to be in the same ballpark when it comes to processing. They're all things that your average cook could make at home (although most of us don't, at least in the US). I don't personally consider them minimally processed, but that's the sort of subjectivity that often comes up in conversations like this.

    This is a cognitive space where I think my brain is kind of broken, when it comes to clear communication with others (either understanding or explaining).

    I think you (and many others) know that I think it's fine for people to eat whatever they want, but wise for them to combine that "whatever" in ways that add up to decent nutrition.

    For myself, I do prefer to keep certain "processed" foods in a relatively small role in my eating, but that's the processed foods that have a lot of the natural components processed out of them, or that have a lot of those extractive kinds of things added to them. An example of an extreme of that, to me, is some of the "meal replacement" drinks - the ones that are mostly protein isolates and a bunch of extracted or compounded vitamins and minerals. Things that are just ground up, heated, etc., don't seem like that big of a deal to me processing-wise, including foods that go through time-tested (millennia-tested) chemical transformations as in fermenting, aging, etc.

    In that sense, the whole spectrum of "unprocessed" to "ultra-processed", in the way it's often talked about as if it were a scale of "goodness", just doesn't make much sense to me. (There are what seem to me to be confusions in both directions, both that very-processed things that are "good for people", like protein powder, are sometimes taken to be somewhere toward the unprocessed end of the scale, whereas things that are not to my mind all that processed but seen as "bad" in some contexts (whole grain flour, say) are "processed foods".)
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    My main issue with the processing discussion as usually started on MFP (processed food is bad, and I will ignore that my diary is full of foods that are, in fact, processed) is that it's lazy. If you are using a term, or especially if you are asserting that that term encompasses "foods that should be avoided," I think it is worth being clear about the reasons for that and how such foods are identified. Often the answer is "well, processed foods are full of ingredients that are bad for you, like salt and sugar and corn and soy and other stuff that we know is bad because you cannot pronounce it." My response to that is, well, no -- I don't avoid processed foods, but I do tend to prefer a mostly whole food (or minimally processed food diet -- and to me that would exclude that pizza product although I might make something similar at home, but would not exclude all processed meats or tofu or cheese or olive oil). But I know it would be dishonest to claim I did not eat processed foods (as well as just bizarre), and the processed foods I eat don't happen to include ingredients that are inherently bad for me, while if your deal is salt and sugar many homemade foods include them.

    So why focus on processing, as if processing no matter what automatically lead to poor diets, vs the actual things that matter -- what one includes in one's diet.

    To me, it's also kind of like a dumbed down approach -- it's too hard to understand nutrition (which is not true), so just avoid processed foods. In that way it's like the absurd "shop only the perimeter of the grocery store," which, among other things, seems to suggest that people are too stupid to navigate a grocery store, of all things! And, finally, it is largely based on an assumption that most who need to lose weight need to lose weight because they don't understand nutrition and, also, based their diet mostly on low nutrient highly processed items, which is not true for many of us and I find a bit insulting.
  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,581 Member
    There is already a chicken pizza crust being sold for the keto crowd, but no "sky is falling" racket around that one.

    The bacon crust one had tons of keto tags attached when I searched as well, but I left that out. :D

    I mean a real product, not a recipe.
    7_pepperoni_cb910cd1-ad01-491d-b56d-3d65a2ea9e68_1024x1024.png?v=1579014099


    So that's basically an unbreaded flattened chicken parmigiana with some pepperoni on top? B)

    Edited to add: LOL at the "Only minimally processed" on the box. I guess their definition of not processed is rather generous.

    I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of "minimally processed" pepperoni.

    It says it's 'Uncured.' What does that actually mean? It's uncured pepperoni essentially raw? :#
  • magnusthenerd
    magnusthenerd Posts: 1,207 Member
    I suppose you might need to eat more of the beyond burger if you wanted the same effect on leucine concentration and therefore potentially muscle protein synthesis. Recent studies have shown that even at equal PDCAAS and leucine content, something like whey (not sure if this would extend to beef, so maybe I'm reaching) still had a better leucine concentration over time compared to any plant protein blend.
    https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/12/2987/htm
  • mbaker566
    mbaker566 Posts: 11,233 Member
    out of curiosity...
    if you don't want to eat meat for ethical concerns, why would you want to eat something that tastes like it? I've never really gotten the point of "fake" meat
  • mbaker566
    mbaker566 Posts: 11,233 Member
    mbaker566 wrote: »
    out of curiosity...
    if you don't want to eat meat for ethical concerns, why would you want to eat something that tastes like it? I've never really gotten the point of "fake" meat

    Because for an ethical vegan, the problem is the *process* that results in the meat, the impact to the individuals involved. There is no ethical problem with the taste or texture of meat. Some of us enjoyed it a great deal.

    It's kind of like how many people enjoy some interpersonal activities very much when everyone involved is enjoying them, but those same activities become repugnant if not everyone is a willing participant. A sensory experience (of any type,not just taste) can be great if nobody is being hurt, but objectionable if someone is suffering as a result.

    but it still tastes like something that is made objectionably. why eat it?
    if i objected to guns, i probably wouldn't play with fake ones...
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,926 Member
    nutmegoreo wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    There is already a chicken pizza crust being sold for the keto crowd, but no "sky is falling" racket around that one.

    The bacon crust one had tons of keto tags attached when I searched as well, but I left that out. :D

    I mean a real product, not a recipe.
    7_pepperoni_cb910cd1-ad01-491d-b56d-3d65a2ea9e68_1024x1024.png?v=1579014099


    So that's basically an unbreaded flattened chicken parmigiana with some pepperoni on top? B)

    Edited to add: LOL at the "Only minimally processed" on the box. I guess their definition of not processed is rather generous.

    I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of "minimally processed" pepperoni.

    Maybe I'm just wrong headed (as usual ;) ), but that actually seems like using the word more like I'd use it in daily life: "Minimally processed XYZ" would be XYZ made through the simplest possible (minimal) process.

    Foods like pepperoni are (IMO) traditional foods, and there's a traditional process for making them. I'm guessing it's a lot simpler than the modern mass-production methods. You grind up meats, mix them with spices and some minimal saltpeter (a mineral), stuff them in a casing, and dry/age them. It's not hyper-dramatically processed, in my view, i.e., not a lot of taking out chemical components, mixing in other extracted stuff, to the point where it's denatured.

    It doesn't seem a lot more processed, to me, than many cheeses, tofu, etc.

    Saltpeter is an ingredient in gunpowder!!!
    Do you really want to be eating gunpowder???

    ETA: Gunpowder is delicious on pizza.

    Adds some extra bang for your buck?

    oh very clever :D:D

  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,023 Member
    edited February 2020
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I really don't understand the "if you have an ethical objection to X, how can you like how it tastes" argument. Like I don't quite get why people think that.

    If you stop doing something you enjoyed because of ethical concerns and could get the enjoyment without any violation of your ethics, why wouldn't you consider that a possibility?

    My mom quit smoking 40 years ago because she didn't want to get lung cancer, but she loves the smell of cigarettes and says if they told her tomorrow smoking was actually healthy she'd jump in the car and run out to buy a pack.

    There are plenty of people out there who love the taste of meat but struggle with the ethics of modern food production and are trying to cut back or source better options, many with the goal of eventual vegetarianism or veganism. The reason they aren't there yet is often because they enjoy those foods and are struggling to replace them. I enjoy eating meat, but would jump at the chance to eat other foods with similar macros and taste that didn't require animals to be involved.

    Vegetarianism and veganism can come from different motivators. While for some people the thought of what meat is is disgusting and they've never had any desire to eat it, others are fine with the idea of humane or ethical use of animals but abstain due to a lack of a guarantee that any food or product they have access to was obtained humanely. Also, you can like the taste (or smell or sound or feel) of something and hate what it is. Some folks are great at compartmentalizing and are able to enjoy a taste without automatically attributing it to something that disturbs them, while other people can't naturally do that and struggle with immediately associating tastes or smells or sounds with negative associations.

    ETA: Perhaps it's tied into how you were raised. All I knew about the first foods I ate when I was little was they came from the grocery store, it didn't occur to me to think of a burger as cow meat or ham as a pig until a bit later. I was completely removed from the animal-foods industry. But I once found an abandoned bird's egg with little chick parts in the "yolk" and was never able to eat a runny yolk again.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    There is already a chicken pizza crust being sold for the keto crowd, but no "sky is falling" racket around that one.

    The bacon crust one had tons of keto tags attached when I searched as well, but I left that out. :D

    I mean a real product, not a recipe.
    7_pepperoni_cb910cd1-ad01-491d-b56d-3d65a2ea9e68_1024x1024.png?v=1579014099


    So that's basically an unbreaded flattened chicken parmigiana with some pepperoni on top? B)

    Edited to add: LOL at the "Only minimally processed" on the box. I guess their definition of not processed is rather generous.

    I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of "minimally processed" pepperoni.

    It says it's 'Uncured.' What does that actually mean? It's uncured pepperoni essentially raw? :#

    Uncured = still sick/diseased.

    Because it's the kind of thread where words play like that.

    (And ;););) because it may prove necessary.)

    Speaking of word play, my Honda Accord has a sticker that says "Partial Zero Emissions vehicle." Huh?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,722 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    There is already a chicken pizza crust being sold for the keto crowd, but no "sky is falling" racket around that one.

    The bacon crust one had tons of keto tags attached when I searched as well, but I left that out. :D

    I mean a real product, not a recipe.
    7_pepperoni_cb910cd1-ad01-491d-b56d-3d65a2ea9e68_1024x1024.png?v=1579014099


    So that's basically an unbreaded flattened chicken parmigiana with some pepperoni on top? B)

    Edited to add: LOL at the "Only minimally processed" on the box. I guess their definition of not processed is rather generous.

    I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of "minimally processed" pepperoni.

    It says it's 'Uncured.' What does that actually mean? It's uncured pepperoni essentially raw? :#

    Uncured = still sick/diseased.

    Because it's the kind of thread where words play like that.

    (And ;););) because it may prove necessary.)

    Speaking of word play, my Honda Accord has a sticker that says "Partial Zero Emissions vehicle." Huh?

    :lol::lol::lol: