As someone who would want to be a vegan but struggles not to eat meat, I've been very interested in Impossible since it started. The idea that you might make synthetic meat that tastes as good as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring -- seemingly, you could eliminate most meat consumption globally.
At the same time, over the past few years, I've explored more of the world's cuisines and generally become a better cook. What I've learned (which surely is obvious to many but was not obvious to me) is that the typical US diet is unnecessarily meat centric, and that being a vegetarian is much easier, healthier, and tastier when one basically stops eating typical American meals. Being a vegetarian is much easier when eating Indian food for instance, and it's laughably easy when eating Ethiopian.
I'm still rooting heavily for Impossible, because factory farming is a global atrocity. And, it would be really cool if one day, I could eat an Impossible burger that was cheaper and healthier than a regular burger. But for now, and for the foreseeable future, I think that my attempts to be vegetarian will revolve around learning to better cook food from non-American cuisines, foods that are better suited to not having meat.
Something I’ve noticed about being vegan is the way the meals change. In a lot of American meat based meals, the meat is the center piece and everything else is peripheral. In a well made vegan meal, there is often no specific center piece. Instead, you get a multitude of flavors that all work together in complex ways. It can be really wonderful. I’d encourage anyone who eats meat every day to consider experimenting with periodic meat free days. I used to eat meat almost every meal but I’ve now quit entirely. I almost never eat meat substitutes but instead eat meals with a mixture of foods that all work together. It’s really lovely!
I’m not a fan of meat substitutes like impossible or beyond, but tofu, seitan, and (occasionally) tempeh are awesome and easy to cook up. I agree with you that a vegan meal generally doesn’t have a centerpiece food item, and that the complexity of flavor more than makes up for it.
The problem with meat substitutes and alternative meat dishes (i.e black bean or beet burgers, or tempeh
“bacon”, etc.) is that no matter what, it’s not going to taste like what you’re expecting. I’m often happier eating vegan recipes that make no attempt to replace meat.
I agree. The issue once you actually stop eating meat isn't "find something that tastes and feels like meat," it's "find something with the protein content of meat." I need concentrated blocks of protein so I can eat something besides lentils and still hit my targets.
I mostly eat plant based and tempeh, seitan, and tofu are great to keep my macros on point. I don't miss the "experience" of eating meat, but I do miss how cheap and easy it was to find a lot of protein. Now if I'm not eating home cooked meals, I mostly resign myself to supplementation with protein bars (like No Cow) or powder.
Where the stuff like Impossible and Beyond helps me is when eating out. I'd rather at least have the option for a veggie burger than not having anything but a side salad or a Portobello sandwich. I've thought it strange that more fast food joints don't sell them.
I have a vitamix blender and every day I make smoothies with carrots, oat milk, protein powder, PB2, ground flax seeds, and frozen fruit mix. Apart from that I really never think about protein. My understanding is that our meat-centric culture focuses too much on protein, and if you eat a good amount of veggies you will get a fair bit of protein as it is. But protein powder in a smoothie is great.
> In a well made vegan meal, there is often no specific center piece. Instead, you get a multitude of flavors that all work together in complex ways
Yep. That's what I have been finding out recently as well. The vegan 'meat alternatives' should be considered full-fledged dishes with their own excellent flavor themselves. Since its much easier to balance different flavors because the overriding flavor of the meat/protein is less in plant based protein.
None of the vegan 'meat alternatives' strike me as healthy though. It's all full of seed oils, corn/sugar, and soy protein. Meat is actually healthier.
> I’d encourage anyone who eats meat every day to consider experimenting with periodic meat free days.
I don't mind not having meat, but I'm not very good about eating vegetables. I'm a supertaster with a diet that learns towards childish. Most spices and bitter veggies are out, so it's difficult to find vegetarian or vegan dishes
I can tolerate. All the vegans and vegetarians I know love these crazy spicy foods and I'm over here avoiding certain brands of gum and toothpaste because they're too much for me.
Meat free days for me would likely end up being full of pasta, fruits, nuts, or even something like PB&J or French toast!
It's a shame people are downvoting you. I'm not here to tell everyone they have to be vegan. I think if you were raised in a vegan-friendly culture, you probably would have found foods you enjoy. And perhaps you could still do that now. But something I've learned is that some people I know were vegan for years and ultimately felt like their body couldn't really deal with it, and they had to go back to eating meat, eggs, and dairy. Between a doctor, a nutritionist, and a chef, could they figure out what that person needed to stay vegan? I think the answer is probably yes, though I don't know for sure. But can we expect every person to be able to do all that while dealing with all the complexities of everything else life throws at us? No I don't think so. I do have a lot of moral qualms with animal agriculture, but it's not on every person raised in a meat-centric culture to solve. If more and more people try veganism, eventually we will all have an easier time converting. And I don't blame anyone in the here and now who isn't in a good place to do it.
Animal agriculture bothers me too, so I'll keep trying new things and see if I can't expand my dietary horizons, but lab grown meat can't come fast enough. If fake meat gets as close to the real thing without cows as brave robot ice cream managed I think that'll be the end of the meat industry as we know it.
It’s also why it’s really hard to go vegan. You can’t substitute 1 ingredient you need to abandon the way you cooked before and take a completely new approach to your meals
It's true, it was pretty hard for me to go vegan. Those who do go vegan though do help pave the way for others, as knowledge of good plant based foods spreads through our culture. And meat substitutes are fantastic for fledgling vegans!
This is a good question, but I don't work well with cookbooks. They tend to sit on my shelf closed. I learned by experimentation. I do know of one cookbook because I heard an interview with the author on the radio, called "Decolonize your diet" about traditional indigenous recipes from Mexico before the Spanish arrived and made everything about meat. The authors deserve support but for the curious it is also on library genesis.
But I do a combination of looking online at vegan recipes and experimenting with stuff on my own. I make a lentil sweet potato curry that is really filling and delicious. Here is my recipe copied from a tweet I made about it:
Large onion, chopped. ‘Sautee’ in water until partially clear. Add minced garlic and ginger paste. Sauté 2 more mins. Add curry powder, turmeric, any other spices, salt, pepper. Add can chopped tomatoes, 2-3 cups oat milk, 1.5 cup washed lentils, Add chopped large sweet potato, add a can of garbanzo beans, add a small can of chopped mushrooms (drained). Serve with brown rice. Can add raisins and nutritional yeast. Can get a sweet crunch adding candied nuts.
You can also look for vegan or vegetarian restaurants in your area and try them, see what you like, and try to work with those foods. And look for different cultures like Indian food that focus on more vegetarian meals.
I'm not Vegan, but I do own The Veganomicon from which I've liked several dishes (I don't have it handy, but there are some great chickpea dishes in there).
Big fan of Dr. Michael Greger's "The How Not To Die Cookbook" and "The How Not To Diet Cookbook". His focus is much more on the health aspects and emphasize a balanced whole food plant-based diet. My partner got the latter because she wanted to lose some weight. I was skeptical but the recipes also happen to just be really good and not overly complicated or time-consuming. My only complaint is that he tends to go a bit light on the spices; if you like spicy food, don't be afraid to just double them.
Otherwise, we really like "Isa Does it". Not quite as health focused, but overall tasty and simple.
Then, I like "Dirty Vegan" by Matt Pritchard because you can't be healthy all the time.
Try Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi. He's known for complex, Middle eastern influenced cuisine, but this book has a lot of stripped down recipes that you can put together easily and quickly.
I will respectfully disagree, and at risk of downvotes, I think food science is a very difficult field due to difficulty getting good cohorts. Vegetarians and vegans tend to be very health conscience, but often studies lump "meat eaters" in with the same group who have a diet of highly processed foods and fast food.
I would also disagree most diets are "unnecessarily meat centric". Getting adequate amounts of protein is incredibly important and is very hard to get that as a vegan/vegetarian. It is of course possible, but would take conscious work most people would not take. I would bet most vegans have inadequate protein consumption.
Lastly, Impossible burgers are NOT good for you. They are highly processed junk food. Take a look at the ingredients. Full of seed oils and other things that are simply not good for you.
In summary, I don't claim to know all the answers, but I'm betting on a real food diet of meat, eggs, and vegetables. I shun processed foods 98% of the time and things with added sugar. I don't think it is terribly obvious what is the "best diet" and there are several conflicting studies, but eating a "real food" diet mostly avoiding "food product" strikes me as a reasonable bet.
People say "it's hard to get adequate amounts of protein" as a vegetarian/vegan, but really people don't need the hundreds of grams of protein a day a typical meat eater gets. Just 50-60 grams a day is fine even by the USDA (which if anything has been criticized as being beholden to the US meat and dairy industries and as such that estimate is if anything an overestimate). It's really not that hard to get 50-60 grams of protein from non-animal sources without even trying.
What are these meat eaters consuming that’s giving them hundreds of grams of protein per day? A 14oz ribeye is only 98 grams of protein and I hardly think typical meat eaters are consuming those for every meal.
Only? That is one meal. Many eat three meals and snacks. Very easy to hit 150g of protein in a day consuming meat. There is a good comment below on the breakdowns.
Everything. To start, the term "meat eater" is not only stupid, but also deliberately deceitful. People that eat meat eat also vegetables, legumes, fish, eggs, milk and a diet that is as much wider as they want.
There is not such thing as hypercarnivore humans that eat only meat and water.
The correct term is omnivore. If vegans want to be taken seriously, they must start talking seriously and don't rely on cheap tricks.
"Meat eater" just means "someone who eats meat". You really are reading too much into this expression. There's nothing in it that says that you eat meat exclusively. You are also a computer user, but that does not prevent you from using a knife, or any other tool.
You should not find the expression "meat eater" offensive, unless you somehow find that eating meat is wrong in some kind of way (in which case, do yourself a favor, do something to solve the discrepancy). There's nothing deceitful in "meat eater", it actually cannot get clearer. It also does not bear any judgement. Of course, that does not mean a vegetarian won't judge you, but this won't be conveyed by using this expression alone ("You damn meat eater" would of course be very different in this respect).
> The correct term is omnivore
"An omnivore is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter" [1]. Omnivore is not "eats meat and plant matters", it is "can eat meat and plant matters" (biologically speaking). Which applies to vegetarian.
"Omnivore" relates to a species and is not really adequate to qualify an individual / is ambiguous.
Also, on a personal note, I hope that you are not waiting for vegans to prepare you a professional presentation and "look serious" for you to think about the topic. I think they should make sure to give a good impression, but that's not their job. You do you. The topic is highly documented at this point in all the directions you could imagine.
Research papers use the term omnivorous diet. Language always has multiple aspect to it, including if an expression is neutral, negative or positive. If one wanted to use a slightly negative version of omnivorous diet they call it meat eater, and if they want a slightly negative version of a vegetarian diet they call it bunny food.
The title is: Comparison of nutritional quality of the vegan, vegetarian, semi-vegetarian, pesco-vegetarian and omnivorous diet.
The word vegetarian was created in 1847 by a British society club in order to promote a specific way of living, one with a strong connection to the temperance movement and a sect of the Christian church.
> one with a strong connection to the temperance movement and a sect of the Christian church.
Appeared in 1839 [1], popularized in 1847 by the Vegetarian Society [2] apparently. Do you have a source for the sect thing? Anyway, this would not reflect today's reality.
> There is not such thing as hypercarnivore humans that eat only meat and water.
Not true. Look up "lion diet", "carnivore diet", and the like. Tons of anecdotal reports that people with hard-to-treat autoimmune diseases are benefitting. Yes, I know "anecdotal"; I emphasized it already. Might be bunk. I don't care either way. But it is a growing movement.
Ok, not a common case, but far point. That would the real opposite then. When people talks about vegetarian versus "meat eaters" don't use it in this sense normally. Is often used by vegetarians as a synonym of fast food diet or "Mcdonalds diet" or "extreme obesity diet". They often flag this red-meat herring, and this is not really fair.
And then we are told that vegetarian diet is more healthy because X,Y and Z good stuff coming in plants A,B & C. But they forget to notice that omnivores receive exactly the same healthy benefits from exactly the same ingredients in their diets, because they also eat A,B and C. Plus the proven benefits that came from eating meat, fish or eggs.
> There is not such thing as hypercarnivore humans that eat only meat and water.
Rubbish. I'm not trying to be rude. This is an ignorant idea that needs to stop being parroted. Plenty of people can and do subsist on meat and water. Skeletal muscle from cattle alone has everything one needs to thrive. A normal and healthy human can eat nothing but meat (possibly not even water directly) and remain healthy.
Go talk to some "carnivores." Yes, there are crazies as there are with every single group of humans, including vegans. You will find that there are individuals who have eaten solely meat for years and have not suffered a single issue that most non-carnivores believe will happen.
> Skeletal muscle from cattle alone has everything one needs to thrive. A normal and healthy human can eat nothing but meat and remain healthy.
Red meat don't has two essential omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that we need to survive. If they are frying their meat in vegetable oil to avoid that, sorry, but they aren't eating just meat. They are eating plants also
I'd be happy to agree that I'm doubtful this is the best way to get your nutrients, but what omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are you talking about? Red meat definitely does contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids generally. This is one of the reasons to prefer grass vs grain fed beef - the former has a much better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.
> The error is to consider them as ESSENTIAL. Which obviously they arent.
Not, the error is dismissing all proven facts in nutrition and thinking that we know better.
When something is called an essential nutrient, we need to include it in our diet if we want to remain alive. Is a simple as this.
Lets forget about the special fatty acids that we need and go with an easier example. Your bold claim that "Skeletal muscle from cattle alone has everything one needs to thrive" would led us directly to die by scurvy.
Muscle is not a reliable source of ascorbic acid, and we need it to manage correctly our urea metabolism. So we need to add a source of Vitamin C, that comes typically in fruits. Yes, can be found also in liver of some animals, but liver is not skeletal muscle, so your previous claim is incorrect.
About the omega-3 and omega-6; a source of fatty acids on this types are needed to avoid:
stunted grow
damage in the nervous system and mental disease
Premature death of cells in chilling weather. Freeze damage.
Feminisation in males by absence of testosterone (related with the former point)
Being much more prone to die by heart attack
Looks pretty serious stuff to me. Even if your diet is based in lard, either you include some omega-3 and omega-6 or you will have fat deficiencies at middle term, and the brain is fat.
> Muscle is not a reliable source of ascorbic acid, and we need it to manage correctly our urea metabolism.
Let's be clear, firstly... I think we should stick to talking about the skeletal muscle of animals that our ancestors primarily adapted towards, which would be large ruminants (aka red meat with legs). I can't comment on a hypothetical animal that lacks vitamin C in its tissue.
What you're saying simply isn't true. There is enough vitamin C in meat, and the idea that you need to eat liver to get enough of any vitamin is largely mythical. But let's stick with vitamin C.
The human body needs very little vitamin C, and orders of magnitude less so on a diet of meat. Vitamin C and glucose both depend on the insulin pathway to enter cells, thus they "compete" to do so. With even a modest amount of exogenous carbs, glucose out-competes vitamin C for update because it has a greater affinity for the GLUT-1 receptor. Thus, one would need a lot more vitamin C on such a diet. Without exogenous carbohydrates, skeletal muscle provides plenty of vitamin C.
We all know that hard tack was once a staple on sailing ships, and that those who subsisted on hard tack too long were prone to scurvy. What people either forget or weren't taught is that not all sailors were eating hard tack on any given ship; the captain and his officers were more likely to be eating dried or cured meat, meaning the prevalence of scurvy was far greater among the regular crewmen who were receiving the lesser food.
> Your bold claim that "Skeletal muscle from cattle alone has everything one needs to thrive" would led us directly to die by scurvy.
Completely false. It takes as little as a month to develop scurvy, yet there are many people who have been eating meat exclusively for years and none of them have scurvy. When should they expect to get scurvy? After a year? 5 years? 10 years? I myself have experience with this and, well, it's been far, far longer than a month... still no scurvy. I don't eat liver. Never have and have no desire to start doing so.
> Muscle is not a reliable source of ascorbic acid
Again, not correct. A meat based diet requires substantially less vitamin C.
> So we need to add a source of Vitamin C, that comes typically in fruits.
No, you don't need to add fruit if you're eating a diet solely of meat.
> Yes, can be found also in liver of some animals
Yet many carnivorous animals, including humans historically, don't bother with the liver under most circumstances. Liver can have benefits, but eating liver too often or in too great a quantity can lead to types of poisoning and electrolyte imbalance.
> but liver is not skeletal muscle, so your previous claim is incorrect.
Yeah, it's not, which is why carnivorous animals consume mostly skeletal muscle and don't just eat the liver, despite how some think that liver is a cornucopia of health. Liver is not a cure for anything, except perhaps carbohydrate-induced scurvy.
> so your previous claim is incorrect.
Not really. It's quite correct. You really should reevaluate your view of vitamin C in the human diet.
As far as I am aware, no studies have been performed to determine how much vitamin C (ascorbate, specifically) is destroyed when cooking something like a steak. There are studies on vegetables, but cooking meat is a different dynamic and I don't think one can be inferred from the other directly.
My best guess is that, given that most people don't want their steak totally well-done (an oxymoron really), so enough aspartate survives. The more you heat your steak and for longer, the more the aspartate breaks down. Besides a few frankly questionable incidences like the notable James Blunt (which we don't actually know the cause of), the vast majority of carnivore dieters cook their meat and don't report scurvy. Out of the currently 47k members of the r/carnivore subreddit, none have made any posts saying they got scurvy. Yes, that's a very imperfect metric, but it's better than nothing. If vitamin C was a big deal, I think there'd be many more reports of serious issues. In the ketogenic diet community, countless people complain of side effects such as "keto flu", so I don't think people who are trying to eat mainly meat are all faking that they don't have scurvy.
As I said elsewhere, I have eaten mostly meat for years and have been eating 99% meat for most of this last year. Still no scurvy. My gums don't bleed and my teeth don't wiggle. In fact my gums bled more when I was eating closer to a standard diet. Now they don't bleed at all and they're rather firm.
Also, there's the possibility of eating meat raw or mostly raw. This of course depends on the meat. Beef is typically very safe to eat in a raw state given that it has either been butchered in a way specifically to be eaten raw or seared on the outside where bacteria colonize (aka "blue steak"). I have switched to just searing my steaks, leaving the majority of the center raw, and I'm not going back. This preserves the ascorbate and also the taurine. But I actually prefer the taste and texture.
The reason that beef has very diminished risk profile in contrast to something like chicken is that cows are given feed that isn't contaminated or prone to parasites, and modern regulation has made it so that meat plants must eliminate the 5 or so major forms of deadly bacteria from their process. Even raw ground beef is fairly low risk these days, though I don't recommend it.
By the way, I'm not actually here to advocate for a meat-only diet. I make sure not to command anyone. Life as a modern human is about being able to enjoy other things besides meat. What I take issue with is fake news discouraging people from even considering having meat more than a few times a week, of which there is an overabundance.
What many people don’t do or know is that you don’t have to eat meat everyday. In fact once or twice a week is more than enough, unless you have a super strenuous physical job.
That’s the best of both worlds without going all polarized for/against meat.
Getting good meat sources (aka not from Brazil for instance) is a great second choice one can consciously make.
As a matter of fact the "original" Mediterranean diet (i.e. what people actually ate in countries like Italy or Greece) rarely included meat more than once or twice per week (but not being actualy vegetarian or vegan it did include fish, eggs, cheese).
The advice that I've gotten from my doctor is five to seven portions of meat at spread over at least two days per week. So yes, you don't need to eat it every day, but you still need to eat a good amount. And it may just be simpler to eat 3 to 4 ounces of chicken each day with something else than to track how often you're eating 2-3x that much over two days in the week.
I am not going to argue with what a doctor advises you, but I am going to say it must be personal. Lots of people live their whole lives without eating meat and do fine. Anyway, the take away is that a lot less is probably fine for you if you are the typical meat eater 7x a week.
They do fine ? More than Half american is diabetic... 93% of US citizen has metabolic disorder, ...40% of western world is diabetic But they do fine. :)
Brazil is the world largest exporter of beef (mostly to the US) and it costs huge swathes of land, killing the rainforest plus more methane in the atmosphere. So it’s a double whammy when it comes to environmental costs. And lets not start talking about the main company behind it, feel free to research that.
India's beef exports are primarily buffalo meat ("carabeef"), not cow meat. In addition, there are states in India where slaughtering cows is permitted.
It costs all of that to make coca-cola, too. Can we get rid of soda before we get rid of our meat, please? I'm not going to eat bugs, but you can go right ahead.
I think you’re right that lumping anyone that eats meat at all into one big group hides the diversity there. It’s completely reasonable to eat a healthy diet with meat in it (lean chicken, fish, occasional beef, good sources of fiber and healthier fats, etc). It’s also possible to have a vegetarian diet that’s unhealthy. When I switched to being vegetarian my diet was very carb and cheese heavy at first.
I don’t think people considering leaning vegetarian/vegan should worry about getting enough protein. Protein deficiency is rare and just including eggs and dairy in your diet is really enough to not worry about it. If you’re bodybuilding, sure, you need to supplement, but that’s true for a meat diet as well. Many millions people lead healthy lives without meat protein and without keeping track of anything. I think people curious should try a meat-free day or two a week and see how they feel. I was skeptical (growing up where every meal had a serving of meat) but it’s really not an issue.
Full vegans need to make sure they’re getting the full range of protein types but it’s pretty easy if you have a diverse diet of grains, legumes, nuts, and other protein-rich foods. Basically don’t go in thinking vegan == “I only eat lettuce”! There’s lots of great, filling, protein-rich vegan food out there. Even a few vegan/veggie meals a week is a good thing.
100% agree impossible burgers are not good for you. Like real burgers they’re fine in moderation. My personal love for an impossible burger is that it satisfies a craving without causing harm to an animal. It doesn’t even need to be as good, just good enough to keep me from getting beef.
The big difference is you actually have to actually pay attention to your protein intake. If you just eat meat all the time, you can be pretty confident you'll get enough protein with maybe a tiny bit of supplementation. Convenience, in a word.
Seems like a weird comparison though since you’re comparing a diet that is defined by its incidental protein source (meat-eaters) vs one that is not and then suggesting that it’s more convenient to already be in the group that incidentally consumes protein. It’s begging the question.
All a vegan has to do is include any protein source in their diet, like become a bean eater.
> I think everyone should consume around 75g daily (I should add: as an absolute minimum)
You ought not to give advice based on your personal pet theories (no offence implied). The daily protein requirements vary for different people (in what is generally considered as «healthy» population – as in not having specific metabolic disorders), and those requirements depends on a few important metrics: the daily energy expenditure and energy expenditure patterns. Different people also have varying complexions – more on that below.
A person who engages in regular strenuous weight-lifting, body building or physical labour will have increased daily protein requirements to retain or to build up a muscle mass. A person adhering to a modern urban lifestyle (as in: commuting to and from work, running errands, light walking etc) will not require the same amount of protein as the former group.
Now, human bodies are self-regulating molucule cleaving machineries, and they will process protein according to their needs as per the body's own feedback loop. In complete protein, only 2x amino acids are ketogenic with the rest being glucogenic yielding a ketone or a glucose molecule during the digestion, respectively. Since the body can't store protein, for any excess amount of protein that has not been used for the muscle tissue growth or «maintenance», the body will cleave the amino group and remove it via kidneys whereas the cleaved glucose from the glucogenic amino acids will be eventually sent into the adipose tissue and deposited there as pure fat.
The current consensus is that daily protein requirements are in the 0.7g ÷ 1g of protein per 1kg of the body weight range (although the jury is still out on the exact ratio).
Therefore, your advice to consume at least 75g of protein daily for a person who does not engage in any strenuous physical activities and is 165 cm tall and 55 kg of weight (and the number of such people is significant across the human population) will result only in one thing: them getting fat. Which is why the unnecessary over-consumption of protein is just as counterproductive as overconsuming any other calorie dense foodstuffs. Also, as the metabolism rate slows down with the age, continuing to over-consume protein will result in such people getting obese and acquiring further secondary health disorders.
This is also why many bodybuilders who stop excercising later in their life become either fat or overweight fairly quickly: you can beat the laws of biochemistry.
The issue with the PB&J is that it's > 700 calories (440 just from the PB, call it 100 for a TBSP of jelly, probably 100-200 for the bread), whereas a grilled chicken breast might give you 30 G of protein with maybe 250 calories. If you were getting 150G of protein from PB alone, you would have to eat ~3.5k calories.
Some more data points:
* 150 g of protein from lentils: 1.9k
* 150 g of protein from chickpeas: 2.9k
* 150 g of protein from grilled chicken breast: 750
* 150 g of protein from whey powder: 675
* 150 g of protein from egg whites: 640
My experience is that I don't need to worry much about "getting meat in" when I'm bulking up, but when I'm cutting calories to lose weight (and trying to keep protein extra high in order to maintain lean mass/increase satiety -- I'll have as much as 200-230g per day on maybe 2400 total calories), it's really tough to hit without having a lot of lean meat in my diet.
I do cut calories (I bulk at maybe 3500 and cut at maybe 2500), I'm mostly saying that I find it much easier to feel full on a very high protein diet. I also believe there is some research suggesting that you should err on the higher side of the acceptable range when in a deficit. I would be nervous eating 150 G of protein in an extended deficit, weighing ~175 lbs.
I think the point being made is about the "density" of protein per serving. Sure you can get 75 from PB but that would also give you diabetes, and excessive fat too.
Same goes for plans, yes in powder form it's a few scoops but you probably would be way too stuffed if you eat the actual veggies.
On the other hand, 95% of Americans don’t eat enough fiber, which means they aren’t getting any of the other benefits of plants like vitamins and antioxidants.
I’d wager that’s much more important than the average muscleless flaboid getting 150g protein.
This is misleading, and demonstrated the complexities of meeting protein goals. Peanuts are not a complete protein [1]. If you ate 1kg of peanut protein a day, you would still be deficient.
I don’t get it. Even Google’s blurb for “are peanuts complete protein” points out that they are a complete source. Putting peanuts into Cronometer (nutrient tracker) also confirms they have all 8 essentials.
Yeah, the complete protein thing is bunk. Most plants are "complete" but can be low in something. Eating more than one kind of plant is all your need to counter that - so a peanut butter sandwich should do the job.
The sad truth is, though, that you'd end up with too many calories if you try to get all your protein from peanut butter sandwiches (unless you do some cardio to cancel it out).
For what it's worth, there are some pretty decent "New American" recipes too, for lack of a better word. They are often vaguely inspired by ethnic fusion foods and then modified both for Americanness (more sugar, less spice, familiar seasonings, etc.) and vegetarianness. But they include everything from sandwiches to lasagnas to pot pies to chicken strips to meat loaves to chicken-fried steak to burritos to grain bowls and salads.
Only very rarely do they use mock meats, but tofu, seitan (concentrated wheat protein), legumes/beans, and jackfruit are common. The trick, as you noticed, is to make the meal tasty as itself, not to make it pretend to be meat.
You don't have to give up meat to enjoy those dishes once in a while, or as a side.
If you eat out often, the HappyCow app is specifically for finding restaurants with good veggie options. It's free and super helpful whether you're in your home town or traveling.
If you want to cook, there are a ton of purpose made vegan cookbooks. I personally like the quick and easy ones that emphasize meals under 20 minutes, vs the super fancy ones that take forever.
> meat that tastes as good as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring
Interestingly, it seems that every time I see an Impossible burger on a menu, it's not cheaper. Often it's more expensive, but usually roughly the same price. I'm not sure why this is, but it seems like it's probably holding folks back from eating it regularly.
I am really not that knowledgeable about this space, but I would imagine it's because A) there are a lot of subsidies for the meat industry, and B) there are a lot of economies of scale present in the meat industry that do not yet exist in alternative meat industries.
Of course, it makes sense that when introducing a new product like this to the market, it is potentially going to be more expensive than existing products. It seems like, in theory, one should be able to make it much cheaper just because producing meat by way of animals is just very wasteful from an energy perspective. However, I have no clue what is required to synthesize such compounds without the use of animals, so I don't know how far away we are from being able to do this.
It just takes time to tilt the economies of scale. For soy milk it took 10 years from niche appearance in supermarkets to being cheaper than real milk.
I checked Kroger's website, which had some strange problems. You can't sort by lowest price and there are approximately 2.5k results for "milk". The "dietary preferences" filter does not include "lactose intolerant" or anything equivalent for milk alternatives, despite all milk alternatives being in the search results. The only one that looked genuinely useful (but not for me) was "Gluten free".
That being said, I did a price check and found that soy milk was not cheaper than regular milk. Kroger milk is $3.29 for 1gal and soymilk is $2.59 for 0.5gal.
As someone who doesn't eat meat, I prefer not to have fake meat. I'll often just pass on eating anything if fake meat is the only non-meat option.
A stir fry with rice or veggie fajitas (could be just peppers and onions) with Mexican tortillas possibly with a side of beans would be much preferable, and cost nearly nothing. Adjust for regional tastes.
Easy to justify when it is something that can be a main dish for the non-meat eaters and a side dish for the meat eaters. But, if people are serving themselves, the non-meat item should be earlier on the table / separated from the meat, so meat eaters do not contaminate it with meat (common).
Fake meat is a nice option for meat eaters who are trying to reduce their consumption of meat for $reason(s), but still crave meat. But, for folks like me who do not eat meat nor have any inclination to do so, it is kinda weird.
I was a vegetarian for 40 years. I could never understand why people go vegetarian and then... eat fake meat? WTF? There are zillions of awesome vegetarian dishes in this beautiful culinary world.
Because they enjoy the taste and/or it's something very familiar and comforting to them; it's not at all difficult to understand.
Especially if someone is new to vegetarian food and don't know what those "zillions of awesome vegetarian dishes" even are, let alone how to prepare them.
It's like trying to replace Champagne with alcohol free champagne when you can get any of the other hundreds of cheaper non alcoholic drinks and complaining it's expensive
The problem isn't bing vegetarian/vegan, the problem is that people have absolutely no education when it comes to nutrition
Maybe it's for the same reason cinema ticket prices are the same for every movie. Price is a (often inaccurate) signal of quality. By lowering the price you are saying this product is inferior.
On the other hand it could be because if restaurants have a similar product at a lower price, then customers might go for the cheaper option, thus reducing overall profits.
It's more expensive because the cost of meat is heavily, heavily subsidized by the government (at least in the US). The actual cost to produce meat is much higher than Impossible or Beyond [1].
> The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today.
$38 billion is $100 per person. People eat a lot more than 4 pounds of meat per year, so this doesn’t compute, or it’s singling out some category of hamburger meat, while ignoring all others.
Average meat consumption per person is 260 pounds, which would come out to about 40 cents per pound in subsidy.
They gave the cost of two beef products before and after subsidies. There are a bunch of other types of meat that presumably are not as expensive per pound. According to this article, less than 1/3 of Americans' meat consumption is beef [1].
I don't know what the factors are, but there might be some reason in particular ground beef ends up taking a large share of the subsidies. I know what steak at the grocery store is quite expensive compared to ground beef, so maybe ground beef is targeted so lower income people can afford it while steak is not. Who knows. It would take more than napkin math to convince me that they're lying.
And it is given without a citation, and the document's authors are Directors/R&D/Tech Lead people at Samsung, VMWare, and Google.
And: "This paper was created in an open classroom environment as part of a program within the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology"
So it's just laundered fake research.
The source of such a figure is surely going to be some reasoning like this, plus inflation, which cites the vast majority of "subsidy" being "healthcare costs":
But without looking at the source, napkin math tells you at the very least the number is way out of whack, and at best it'd have been cherry-picked for the purpose of deception.
As far as I've read, and I am not a doctor (although am married to one), it's the lack of fiber and huge amounts of sugar and salt that contributes to most of the health issues we North Americans face. Meat-replacements though are more about environmental causes (as this article points out). I think they would do tremendously better if they could argue that they were healthier options too.
The milk-replacements are even worse in this regard. Oat milk seems healthier than cows milk somehow, until you realize it has 50% more sugar, twice the carbs, half the protein, and fewer nutrients. I really don't understand how alternative milks have positioned themselves as healthy and artificial meat somehow has not.
There are brands of Oat Milk that are better than others. I usually drink soy, but sometimes I want an oat milk latte and I find I have to ask the barista exactly what brand they’re using.
At home I just use Elmhurst plant milks, which function fine as a base. Then again, this brand works for me because I’ve never used milk as a nutrient source - it’s just a flavor or texture.
As someone who's been strictly keto for over a decade, it would be difficult for me to maintain my macros without meat, or a close substitute. (I would mirror nu11ptr's comments[1] as well.) As someone who finds mass murder and exploitation of other animals distasteful, I'm also constantly on the lookout for realistic alternatives.
For a while, I really tried to make Beyond Meat work. I wasn't thrilled about introducing a highly processed food filled with low-quality fat (canola oil) as a daily staple, but the macros weren't terrible (although far from ideal).
It worked for a few months, but one day it was like a switch had suddenly flipped in my head, and even the smell of cooking it was enough to make me gag. I haven't been able to stomach it ever since. Impossible is probably more workable in that regard, but the macros are even worse, it's also highly processed (arguably more so), and I'd be skeptical of using soy as my majority protein source due to the phytoestrogens.
All that being said, I recently got a chance to try a "chicken cutlet" from Meati[2]. I would highly recommend it to anyone who isn't allergic. Summary:
* Rather than imitating ground meats, they sell fake steaks and chicken cutlets.
* Rather than a highly processed blend of ingredients, it's a whole food — just a particular species of mycelium (what they're branding as "mushroom root"), grown in molds to fit certain shapes then flavored and pressed to remove water.
* Complete protein, 0g net carbs, good variety of (naturally occurring) micronutrients. If this matters to you, it's also low-fat.
If I hadn't known otherwise, I would've assumed it was just a lean cut of chicken that had been marinated in some sort of mushroom sauce, and I'm saying this as someone who eats actual meat on a daily basis.
From my perspective, Meati seems like the holy grail. It's good enough to convince me that cultured meat may turn out to be redundant. The current supply is too limited to use as a daily staple, but it's going to become my go-to protein as soon as they finish scaling up production.
Canola oil is basically fine, but it wouldn't be my first choice. As I said, I was willing to tolerate ingesting significant quantities of it on a daily basis.
When I refer to it as low-quality, I mean by comparison to my preferred fats (olive oil, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, animal fats).
I think it gets an undeservedly bad reputation due to conflation with Mazola (corn oil), which is 59% PUFA. Canola is 28% PUFA. It's not a high-quality fat, but it's far from the worst.
Frankly this is misinformation; when people say "seed oils" they don't mean canola oil. Yes, it's a seed oil. Words sometimes have complex connotations.
Do you ever consider getting meat from a humane farm? To me that's as fair a solution as I can find. Especially understanding that during plant harvests thousands of small animals can be killed or greviously wounded.
I have bought meat at farmers markets, and make more humane choices in the grocery store where available (e.g. pasture-raised eggs and grass-fed beef), but I wouldn't pretend to think that killing animals is a good thing per se.
I'm not convinced that "humane" farming is a real answer to this problem. Unless it's theoretically scalable enough to feed the entire planet, I don't see how it would threaten the existence of less humane alternatives.
I agree that "humane" meat is the most practical option today, but Meati claims that they'll have scaled up production by the end of next year. Once it's available in grocery stores year-round at an affordable price, I see no reason not to prefer it over meat in general.
Sure, but we should at least attempt to be better than other animals. No one would seriously argue that death is a desirable result of meat production; it's just a side effect that we currently have to live with.
Well I live on a farm. Imagine what it looks like when a raccoon tears the heads off your chickens just for sport. Being shot in the head with a 44 after a great life on a bucolic farm is about as humane as it gets.
I like soy. I use soybeans in my cooking often. I agree that it's probably fine, but I still wouldn't go out of my way to use soy as my primary protein source given the existence of lower-risk alternatives.
To me, that's the "where's the beef" moment. The meatless alternatives are usually more expensive than the cheapest real-meat options in the stores.
While I suppose some of this is still "relatively early-stage firm versus entrenched industry that's spent the last century streamlining its operations", it means that it's still a conscious "I'm going out of my way to choose the meatless wonder" decision.
Once it got cheap enough, I figured you'd start to see it widely adapted by food services as a way to stretch margins or compete more aggressively. Although I suspect this will be hindered by various product-labeling legal issues; they'll have to still be explicitly telling people "it's not beef" and that's going to shape customer expectations.
I always liked the premise of selling vegetarian products as an economic choice rather than a moral one-- it avoids any direct personal values conflict by saying "You could try the McVeggie and save a buck on this meal."
Produce is of lower quality in general, in the U.S. And also more expensive, compared to meat. I have never eaten meat in my life. Out of curiosity, I checked the prices of chicken vs produce. It was depressing to see how much chicken I can buy for the same price of 3 mangoes (current almost 3$ for a single mango in my area).
I wish produce was subsidized instead of meat and dairy) or in addition to meat)
That was just an example. I don’t eat frozen veggies, I don’t know about it. Almost all fresh produce is expensive, except bananas. Organic is even more expensive
Ethiopian is an extremly underrated cousine. Both the distinct but simple taste of the "curries" and the unique flavour of the "pancake" which is traditionally used to eat (instead of cutlery) is a pleasant experience. Regardless of your diet please give it a try!
Kills me that Ethiopian restaurants are so hard to find here in Seattle. The other Washington, as in D.C., has several excellent ones. Get on the stick, people!
> The idea that you might make synthetic meat that tastes as good as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring
This sounds like:
“The idea that you might make synthetic fuel that has a higher energy density than petroleum while being cheaper is very alluring”
Of course it sounds good - but reality isn’t that simple to twist to our desires. Impossible meat was more expensive (in spite of them running at a loss), didn’t taste as good, wasn’t any healthier, and by many accounts wasn’t any better environmentally. All downsides and no upside.
I’m not surprised it fizzled out given those realities. Perhaps if they’d had another 5 years to perfect it before launching they could have overcome one or two of those deficits?
> by many accounts wasn’t any better environmentally
This is false according to every serious analysis I've seen.
For example:
> The most popular plant-based alternatives, Beyond [Meat] and Impossible Burgers, produce about 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions in comparison with beef [..] They reduce land use by at least 93 percent and water use by 87 percent to 99 percent. They also generate no manure pollution.
I read articles like that and they talk about reducing land usage by not having cattle or sheep. How they cause groundwater pollution.
Then I walk on the moors or the highlands with scattered livestock and I struggle. I believe the problem is mass production, factory farming, not meat. The issue is trying to keep meat insanely cheap such that it can be eaten every meal.
I think if I source grass fed meat properly my impact is minimal. But. Maybe I am wrong!
Hard disagree, eating veggie is perfectly fine and does not require meat substitutes.
However, the solution to mass meat production is regulation imo. But it is politically untenable because it amounts to pricing people out of their lives
There are a lot of variables when it comes to the environment. Grass-fed cattle grazing in the Great Plains would be tremendously better for the environment than the mass soybean/canola/corn agriculture permanently destroying the entire Midwest.
The reason the Midwest is so fertile and has so much topsoil is because of thousands of years of ruminant grazing. We’re destroying millennia of ecological development and topsoil in decades. Not to mention what all the fertilizers and herbicides do.
Your article just blanketly declares animals bad for the environment and plants good, which is absurd. Are we better off for having killed nearly all the buffalo? Clearly feeding cows M&Ms and canola/soy is bad. But so is mass agriculture in the first place. Responsible animal husbandry can be an actual ecological positive.
You can reduce beef's greenhouse gas emissions by just mandating a different animal feed that results in less methane production by the cattle. But that would require governments to actually do something.
Do you feel that governments would be better at farming than farmers? If so I assume you feel that government bureaucrats can do your job better than you.
I personally think that governments would be better at making decisions of what to farm and where to farm it than farmers. Farmers have a profit motive whereas governments can have other non-profit motives.
Look at history and tell me where governments deciding these things has worked. Bonus points for understanding how this worked out in China, the Soviet Union, the French Revolution, and South Africa right now. Bureaucrats never, never make these decisions without corruption, greed, and ignorance taking over. I assume you believe that they would be able to make decisions about your job better than you?
One difference between fuel and food is that the fundamental ingredients are cheaper for “meat” than meat. Impossible has huge and ongoing R&D expenses as they try to simulate more things and enter more markets. But at the end of the day, raising animals is expensive and soybeans are cheap. The crappy pre-Impossible veggie burgers are cheaper than real meat for this reason (though less tasty, of course). As the R&D requirement slows down, I would expect a similar path for Impossible and other fake meats.
> “The idea that you might make synthetic fuel that has a higher energy density than petroleum while being cheaper is very alluring” Of course it sounds good - but reality isn’t that simple to twist to our desires. Impossible meat was more expensive (in spite of them running at a loss), didn’t taste as good, wasn’t any healthier, and by many accounts wasn’t any better environmentally. All downsides and no upside.
To me, it seems that the question comes down to energy efficiency. How many calories in are required to produce one calorie of beef? Our World In Data claims the efficiency is 1.9% [1], whereas Yale Center for Business and the Environment claims it's 2.5% [2]. So, it seems that if somehow you could figure out how to reconfigure plants into meat in a way that isn't as inefficient, you could come out ahead on cost. Now, maybe this is way too hard to do currently (I don't know since I don't know much of the science), but it at least seems like there could be an opportunity.
Another place where cost could cost factor in would be if governments were to enact a carbon tax (or, alternatively, tax meat, or subsidize plant based meats). If the actual cost to the environment could be reflected in the cost consumers pay, that's another opportunity for plant based meats to come out cheaper.
Being a vegetarian, or Mediterranean, or keto usually means you have to cook.
Eating out in North America (Canada and Mexico too) is always full of meat. Even in nicer restaurants.
Cooking at home regardless of your diet is the simplest way to eat better. I used to used Uber Eats 3-4 times a week and I got 10x healthier just making my own food and it's been a great way to get off social media and spend more time with people.
People want to come over and socialize when you get good at cooking. Which is 10x better than getting into the 100th argument online.
One hack I used during my decades as a vegetarian was ordering side dishes, not entrees. Even in, maybe especially in, steak houses the non-meat entrees are often every bit as interesting as the main course.
Restaurants almost all use inferior fats, such as seed oils. It's rare to find one using real butter, decent olive oil, etc. They also generally buy their sauces and dressing from large industrial processors. If you are trying to avoid PUFAs, you need to cook your own meals.
My problem with all of these fake "meats" is that they don't taste like meats, they taste like vegetables and fruits that have been handled to the point of not being enjoyable to eat. I'd rather just eat well prepared and cooked vegetable dishes like what you can get in many nations and cultures around the world than these fake "meat" products.
The fake meats are of course the epitome of ultra-processed food. Hallmarks of which are if fats, proteins, sugars are entirely reshaped in a way that does not happen in cooking.
What is so difficult about pan frying a steak for 3 minutes on each side followed by 4 eggs, scrambled and some broccoli florets steamed in the microwave for 2 minutes?
I feel like the premium pricing for the plant based alternative is a major problem. Personally I think they've achieved "good enough" results, but I rarely eat them because of the cost difference at restaurants.
The story is flipped for home cooking, e.g., making mapo or meatballs at home. We actually prefer the plant based alternative there, and lately it's also been the economical choice.
Eh, I think the fact that they are not healthier (by fat or calorie content, I forget which) is a major deterrent.
Admittedly, this is a very informal survey, but of the people I know of who have tried one, all of them claimed that not eating meat was not a big enough motivation to change. They'd rather they also be healthier than they actually are.
Cheaper might actually harm adoption. when you compare eating ground meat to an engineered product, making the engineered product cheaper just makes it seem more like processed junk food.
In retrospect it should have been obvious that they would not be healthy.
Taking a bunch of plants and heavily processing them to make them look, taste and feel like ground beef is clearly not going to be as healthy as just eating plants or eating beef. We just do not understand nutrition and biology well enough yet to do that. The actual "Beyond" meat will be when someone figures out how to grow it safely in a petri dish, hopefully people stop eating meat from slaughtered animals then, but who knows.
Generally, they are lower in saturated fat, but that’s less of a “lose weight this year” improvement and more of a “reduce your chance of a heart attack in 20 years” improvement.
We really don't know that, and there is a huge difference between eating canola or palm oil and eating beef fat (although we throw them all under a blanket "saturated" label). I would guess beyond is using a variety of seed, palm, and coconut oils to fatten the burgers. Everyone can have their own opinion on this but I believe animal fats are healthier than those seed oils.
Everyone can have their own opinion but the best research says that replacing animal fats with plant fats in one's diet leads to longer life: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qInpEKHdjXk
Dr Paul Mason on "Saturated Fat is not Dangerous"[1] talks about the introduction of the "lower saturated fat" guidelines in Australia and how it was not based on any evidence or medical literature review. He mentions three meta-analyses on saturated fats:
"Insufficient evidence of association is present for intake of ... saturated or polyunsaturated fatty acids; total fat ... meat, eggs and milk" - Mente A, et al. A systematic review of the evidence supporting a causal link between dietary factors and coronary heart disease. Arch Intern Med. 2009 April 13.
"... no significant evidence for conclusing that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD" - Siri-Tarino PW, et al. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar.
"There were no clear effects of dietary fat changes on total mortality or cardiovascular mortality..." - Hooper L, et al. Reduced or modified dietary fat for preventing cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database Syst. Rev. 2011 Jul 6.
And he says "the balance of evidence available at the time of developing our nutritional guidelines says that saturated fat in the diet is not associated with any deleterious health outcomes, that is, it's safe".
Newer research published after 2013, same results, he cites three more reviews and meta-analyses, two from the British Medical Journal.
Then he mentions the biggest most expensive study done on reducing dietary fat, $700,000,000 dollars, 50,000 people, 8 years, and the only statistically significant result from the study was that women with a history of heart disease who were randomly selected into the lower fat group, increased their risk of problems such as heart attacks was increased by 26%.
That is, saturated fat (animal fat tends to be) hasn't been proven to do anything bad, and reduced fat (vegetarianism tends to be , but not necessarily) hasn't been proven to do anything beneficial.
It is not clear. Why people in Caucasu region live so long? They only eat meat and cheese? But maybe it is true.
Anyway, “Meat is not healthy” is distraction against the real killer: sugar.
The main problem in typical American diet is way too much sodium and sugar. But sugar industry is way way too powerful do do anything.
So let’s attack meat … or gluten or whatever. But god forbid removing sugar from bacon and hamburgers (and plant based burgers have about 10g of sugar in it).
I guess if I’m being pedantic, sugar isn’t technically the same as carbs, but from a health perspective carbs aren’t much better. I’ll give you that. No one is going to be using using this stuff for a keto diet :)
Sugar is a carbohydrate, it's a simple carbohydrate - which is just a shorter chain of glucose molecules opposed to a complex carbohydrate which has a longer chain. The end result is glucose, and the differing factor is the rate at which your body metabolizes it.
If you read that article, the “scrutiny” is that the original research didn’t factor in potential benefits of vitamins in meat, which feels like a stretch.
The best research does not say this. The best research is completely unclear since nutritional epidemiology is plagued with bad data, bad science and political agendas one way or the other.
Good video, I am a little suspicious of the neutrality of a channel called "plant chompers" with other videos about how plant protein is as good as meat protein etc. but it has some good points.
The "best research" 20 years ago said fat free was the solution, now everybody is walking around with mental health issues. When it comes to nutritional science there's WAY too much corporate influence to trust "the best research" at any given point in time.
No to mention it is super hard to do any kind of real world research on long term effects of certain foods.
Plus the food we eat does all kinds of stuff to our bodies. What is good for our bodies on one dimension might be bad on another. Our interaction with food is incredibly complex.
This is my problem. Id rather have an “old school” black bean or soy based veggie burger. I’m not a low fat adherent or vegetarian but I’d rather have the nutrient density, fiber content, and fewer calories of the traditional alternatives. Otherwise I’m ordering a quality meat product or a salad.
I had these all the time in college 15 years ago. I liked them!
I've had the Beyond Meat burger patties. The taste is not bad at all, but there is an uncanny valley feeling when you eat it (with the manufactured juiciness) that isn't there with black bean burgers.
It's also very expensive. In Canada, a pack of 4 patties is $8.49.
I think the fact that they are not healthier (by fat or calorie content, I forget which) is a major deterrent.
I think another minor item that's overlooked is that there are a number of people trying to avoid "processed" foods, and there's few foods on the planet more processed than artificial meat.
People interested in their health and this line of thinking will take beef from a local butcher over shrink-wrapped frozen frankenfood that is pretending to be beef.
I'm not much of a meat-eater. I probably eat meat maybe three or four times a month. But when I do, I get something from the farmer down the street who is happy to show me her cows, pigs, and chickens, and not something from a cardboard box that came from an industrial factory.
Totally agree and another anecdote to add to the pile is that our kids love the fake meat chicken nuggets and don't know the difference. Nor do I. I could see this being a bigger long-term impact on low-end meats than high-end meats where you are paying for the rarity.
A hefty carbon tax on meat would be a start. If the environmental costs of burning Amazon rainforests for beef production [1] were included in the cost of burgers, there would be a lot more people eating plant-based alternatives.
Good enough? As a vegetarian who moved from EU to Canada, I honestly dislike the meat-free replacements here. They try to make them represent actual meat and it doesn’t work.
More variety in EU and overall better quality. (That actually goes for many food products though)
I can never remember if it is Impossible or Beyond but one of the two has reached "close facsimile" for my tastes when I have them at local spots. Burgers, meatball subs, that sort of thing.
Personally I don't care about the health aspect, and as long as they're somewhat close in cost that's fine by me. I like that it is cutting down on the ecological impact, or at least that's the claim. At the same time I don't care about that impact so much that I'm going to cut meat out of my diet. This provides a nice middle ground for me.
Probably Impossible. Beyond is good but it has a unique flavor that I think anyone would recognize as "not beef." They might think it's some other real meat, though.
Yep, I just looked and you're right. Beyond tastes to me like a better version of those frozen patties at the grocery store. It still has that "fake meat" flavor I always hated, but not as strong. I don't mind them but don't like them as much as Impossible.
This would reduce the motivation to actually make it cheaper. It’s equivalent to “we lose money on each user but we’ll make money at scale”. Fine for investors to fund this, but why should taxpayers?
Indeed. It's probably both subsidies for meat production and high margins for the fancy new meat replacements. Looks like there's a need for more competition.
I've been vegan for nearly a quarter century. Part of the problem is that deliberately positioning the fake meat products as, well, "fake meat" will forever create unreasonable expectations by way of comparisons. I have only the faintest recollection of what a hamburger, or steak, or fried chicken tastes like but if my experience were more recent, then I would probably reject the vegetarian alternatives if they were positioned as comparable in the market.
But I think fast-food places have few alternatives to this practice. Outside of the fast food world, it's easier because restaurants are at greater liberty to not be constrained by the typical ways that animal flesh is shaped and used.
It's a shame, because occasionally, those who don't eat animal products end up in social situations where they have to eat at fast-food places and are often left eating nothing.
Not a vegan here, but to bolster your point somewhat, there's this huge assortment of South Indian food that is completely meat-free, it's grain and plant based, and it is ancient cuisine that mastered being delicious. It has no pretense around fake chicken or fake this or that.
It does contain a lot of ghee, so it isn't vegan, but my point remains. Once I was taken to a vegan sushi place, and I was given some sort of "vegan salmon roll" that was made with mango slices. It wasn't bad - but the fact that you said it was salmon, and it wasn't, is a turn-off. They'd be better off just saying, we're a vegan restaurant, here's our food to try, rather than calling it something fake.
People don't like to play pretend, it feels odd, and it doesn't convert the non-vegans like myself.
I’ve had the opposite experience. I’m not vegan, but my diet has trended that way lately - and I’m totally fine and prefer when restaurants liken foods to salmon/tuna/etc. I want the point of comparison.
South Indian cuisine is da bomb. Here in the PNW it's picking up steam and I like that trend very much. Stout patriot here, but American cuisine is loathsome. Indian, French, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Szehchuan, Canton, so many cultures do so much better that the good old US of A it's embarrassing.
My Chinese wife finds this bemusing and jokes that I was a Szechuan farmer in another life.
Indeed, I am a meat lover but most of my South Indian meals during the week are meat-free. Our family historically and usually only eats meat on the weekends because meat used to be expensive back in the day in the old country.
As a vegan, agree. I once described benevolent bacon as “you’re not going to think ‘oh wow I totally just ate bacon’ but you might think ‘oh wow I don’t need bacon after that.”
And it’s a recipe thing. Just need to get a little creative perhaps.
Also when I made my own vegan bbq out of seitan (gluten) I can mix the smoke flavor right into the wheat flour mixture. It doesn’t take the 14-18 hours to coax smoke flavor into a bit of meat. Can dial it all right to whatever I want from the get go.
But ultimately finding recipes that people want to eat without meat should be a better goal. Feels like a false premise.
I’ve been a vegetarian for similar length of time (30 years give or take) and have also always wondered why fast food places only seem to do “fake meat”. My local Subway did a trial of falafels and it was amazing. After about 6 months they went back to the (imo) gross soy protein veggie pattie’s. Anyways, I always thought most fast food places could basically replace their meat with falafel’s and 80% of vegetarians would love it, but none seem to have ever done it. I’m sure they do focus groups and have figured out the fake stuff sells better, but I think with a bit of marketing about it not being “fake” it could do as well, if not better, than the imitation meat stuff.
> Part of the problem is that deliberately positioning the fake meat products as, well, "fake meat" will forever create unreasonable expectations by way of comparisons.
I've always thought that was strange. Naming products they consume after the very things a lot of vegans are against. Like if a meat eater made something that looked like lettuce out of meat and called it a salad.
I think you do have a good point but want to provide a small counter argument:
The alternative meat offerings are providing food in a package which is easier to turn in a dish than other vegetarian / vegan ingredients. You get lots of things that can just be fried in a pan: fake meat balls, fake schnitzel, fake chicken nuggets, etc. These things don't need to taste like meat, they just need to taste good to succeed. The manufacturers are piggybacking on form factors and taste-signatures which have a name for consumers to recognize.
I think you’re correct in fact, but have the wrong conclusion.
I’m vegetarian and my partner (who I live with) is not.
Those meat-fakes and vegetarian chicken nuggets and shit are sad. They just don’t taste as good as the originals. If you take a could-be-vegetarian person and say “it’s easy to try out being vegetarian, just swap meat for fake meat” then you’ll disappoint them. It’s just worse and they won’t stick with it. Those products are for people who are committed to being vegetarian but haven’t yet discovered new ways to eat or people catering to vegetarians who are meat eaters. I’ve been to friends house where someone made a meat dish and made me a few fake-meat nuggets to be nice. It was a kind gesture. “Real” vegetarian don’t eat like that though, they find recipes designed to be enjoyed as is.
If you’re trying to go vegetarian, eat Indian or éthiopien food. Explore real Mediterranean food. Don’t try to make steak and potatoes vegetarian. Yogurts or smoothies are good snacks. Etc.
Disclaimer: I love a good hamburger and fake hamburger meat I’ll tolerate. If you’re American you may not want to give up burgers entirely.
I was going to post a similar comment to yours. I'm not vegetarian/vegan but I've been very keen on testing alternatives to meat and dairy and I completely agree with your statement:
>Part of the problem is that deliberately positioning the fake meat products as, well, "fake meat" will forever create unreasonable expectations by way of comparisons.
Look, I have eaten some patties which were made of very tasty vegetarian/vegan combinations (lentils, beans, carrots, etc) and I do enjoy these a lot. Now if you call them a replacement for meat patties it's just not gonna work out. Even the ones that really try hard to imitate meat just don't cut it in my opinion (plus all the processing and ingredients they use to imitate meat is worrying to me). Are they bad? No they aren't, they're delicious and I can take them anyday as long as they're somewhat healthy and nutritious but please don't call them "fake meat", they're not and they must not be marketed that way because it'll make people reject them, which is probably part of the failure we're seeing now.
> But I think fast-food places have few alternatives to this practice
Yup. Your practice is certainly a great one and it works for some things and gradual changes, but it probably won't work very well for people who are not very fond of change when they notice it, which is likely most of them.
Beyond Meat, for example, has the goal of reducing the ecological impact of meat consumption. It's not for seasoned vegan vets. It's for nascent, plant-curious folk who just need a little push in the right direction.
The company's goal is to make money, full stop. The way to make money, is to tell a story about reduced ecological impact, which is (like any marketing pitch) heavily biased and short on unintended consequences or contradictory facts. It's an effective marketing plan, because so many people seem to a) believe it without much checking and b) want to believe it, that is, have a healthy conscious by "doing their part" about the environment.
it was kind of funny to see the PR campaigns ramp up - placement in news articles, podcast interviews with the founder, partnerships with fast food chains.
after the smoke cleared there was never any real demand, just hype. a bunch of people made money, rinse repeat.
That's what you get when you have over a decade of near zero interest rates and easy money. A lot of hyped products and companies that mysteriously don't make any money. We're paying the price now.
There was also a lot of cool and important shit that was made due to the same conditions. I hope things turn around asap. Cheap money is good for fake progress as much as it is for real progress.
Or we could just produce less crap to be wasted, and have healthier work-life balances to boot. It takes an especially foolish kind of monetary environment to manufacture perfectly good e-scooters just to dump them into rivers and onto sidewalks, hoping that enough people tripping over them will create a recurring revenue stream from the coins falling out of their pocket. Plus that whole disenfranchisement of individuals further into renters rather than distributed capital owners.
I'd rather eat a falafel pita wrap, or a Indian spicy potato burger, or a bean burrito. There's plenty of great vegetarian food, no need to torture plants to become something else.
Mostly I think the same way. Except sometimes when I go with my friends to McDonalds or Burger King, then it's nice to not be excluded, and have this meaty textures. As I am a vegetarian since 14, now with 37 I really was shocked by the first Beyond Meat burger, I thought they mixed up my order.
Exactly. I'm not a vegetarian, and I won't even consider buying an impossible burger or whatever, but I would love to eat some meat free meals like you described.
I'm also really picky about meat and I love vegetables.
I'm not a vegetarian but the first time I went to Indonesia and tried tempeh I thought it was fantastic and could be used as a substitute protein in so many western dishes.
My thought exactly. When I was in college, I flipped burgers (real and fake). We sold regular burgers, Impossible burgers, veggie burgers, and turkey burgers. I'd say turkey made up about 1/20 of the burgers I made. Veggie was probably 1/30. Impossible burgers... 1/100? Maybe?
It was right next to campus. Vegans were everywhere. My guess is that, as a vegan, you probably don't think to go to a fast-casual place with the word "Burger" in the name, when there's two falafel joints around the corner. Another guess is that, as a college student, you would rather not spend way more to get an imitation, when you could just get the real thing.
As a line cook, Impossible burgers are a pain in the ass. You have to handle them with more finesse than normal burgers, or they crumble. We had to run the second flat-top at a lower temperature for them, because they would sear horribly if you ran them at the normal birger/turkey burger temperature. As a result of the lower temperature, they cook slower. Any niche ingredient that rarely gets used inherently causes hiccups in the process, slowing down the kitchen.
I tried an Impossible burger on a meal break once. It didn't really taste like a burger, more like "someone mixed some bison with a bunch of black beans and salt," but it still tasted great. The thing is, the normal burgers also tasted great, and they cost less (to the business and the customer).
If I wanted to eat plants, I'd go eat plants. I don't feel the urge to eat plants that are pretending to not be plants. That said, if Impossible could undercut ground beef prices, then they might be onto something. Good luck undercutting ground beef prices in the Midwest, though.
I sent a few years in India. I found the vegetarian emulations of western dishes all pretty unsatisfying vs an impossible or beyond meat version (note: actual Indian food is great, I’m just saying I don’t love McPaneers and even higher end restaurants vegetarian burgers). I did recently see that beyond meat or impossible was looking at offering some products in India and I bet if they get their prices and branding right, they’d do really well there
Just wrote a wall of text about it in another comment, but I used to flip burgers at a place that offered both black-bean veggie burgers and Impossible burgers. The veggie burgers sold better, by more than 2:1. I suspect it was because of the price, not the flavor.
At the same time, over the past few years, I've explored more of the world's cuisines and generally become a better cook. What I've learned (which surely is obvious to many but was not obvious to me) is that the typical US diet is unnecessarily meat centric, and that being a vegetarian is much easier, healthier, and tastier when one basically stops eating typical American meals. Being a vegetarian is much easier when eating Indian food for instance, and it's laughably easy when eating Ethiopian.
I'm still rooting heavily for Impossible, because factory farming is a global atrocity. And, it would be really cool if one day, I could eat an Impossible burger that was cheaper and healthier than a regular burger. But for now, and for the foreseeable future, I think that my attempts to be vegetarian will revolve around learning to better cook food from non-American cuisines, foods that are better suited to not having meat.