Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation
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1. Beyond burger has canola oil in it, and canola oil is responsible for diabetes, dementia, depression, anxiety, aggression, and kills kittens. Okay, I made the last one up, but he did claim the other ones. And they're all nonsense, except for the bit where he mentions canola oil has an unhealthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, which it does, but he conveniently forgets to mention that it's one of the healthiest vegetable oils by that metric. (He incorrectly slams "seed oils" as being especially bad, but most non-seed oils at worse, and one of the only oils which is better - flax seed oil - is also a "seed oil".)
2. Impossible Burger uses engineered bacteria to produce soy leghemoglobin, and even though that's perfectly healthy, engineered bacteria are kinda weird, and uh, something something Nassim Teleb, don't put "foreign ingredients" in your body. Or in other words, it's probably healthy, but it's icky and violated his sense of taboo.
Meh.
(Whether beef tallow is actually better or worse than canola oil is complex, and some suggest trans fats in beef fat are healthier in canola, etc., but OPs naive "don't swap out a beef burger for a beyond burger because traaaaaans" seems a bit simplistic. Canola oil doesn't have much, and it's comparable to other sources of oil, including animal fats.)
For now I'd just try and eat in moderation and look askance at people making sweeping assertions about any food being all good or all bad.
(On the other hand, we have much better data about the environmental impact of vegetable versus anaimal calories.)
This stuff is difficult to reduce to a pithy tweet.
Where do you draw the line with processed? A beef patty is in essence just a steak, ground up, and mushed together. Now there are no doubt some more unsavory purveyors of beef patties that do more than that, but in itself I find it hard to argue that a beef patty (which I can trivially make myself in my own kitchen using only a chefs knife) counts as processed.
edit: that being said, I don't find his overall argument persuasive at all and it's not like he's a neutral scientist.
Some beef patties are ground steak.
Others use mechanically recovered meat, where the bones left after butchering are sprayed with high pressure water to blast off any remaining scraps of meat.
One country had significant health scare where MRM was thought to be the highest risk product: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1482140.stm
> Spoiler alert - I am incredibly skeptical, and am short $BYND
So...sells his own bullshit superfood, and is short on BYND. Welp, I'm convinced that he's completely unbiased and only interested in the greater good.
His complaint is > 8/ My larger concern on both of these burgers is that - at minimum - they are HIGHLY processed products with lots of stuff that doesn't lead to healthier humans: vegetable oils, soy, protein isolates, additives, all non-organic. They are not real foods. (cough, Soylent)
Mainstream science doesn't think vegetable oil is worse for you than burger fat.
It doesn't think soy is bad for you
It doesn't think orgamic is healthy for you.
He doesn't specify which additives are bad for you and I'm too lazy to go through all the additives.
And I have no idea what science thinks about protein isolate but I doubt it's any worse for you than other forms of protein.
He just stringing together a bunch of friends truisms and pretending it's a rock solid case.
P.s. I don't understand why they're getting so much hate for a fairly innocuous product that is trying to do some good.
Try reading these nutritional studies and you will see how much bullshit is behind them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20029519
It still amazes me that people surrender to nutritional authorities, instead of self-experimenting (cf. Asra Conlu on YouTube) and finding out the facts for themselves.
Unless you have read those studies, before seeing how much bullshit is behind them, you'd be wasting your breath away on borrowed beliefs.
But then I doubt you are capable of doing it, as even a scientific review appears as "corporate brochure" to you.
I can't speak for environmental friendliness, but I doubt these burgers are "healthier" than ground beef (especially from humanely raised cattle), which I eat on daily basis. Come meet me in person and tell me that I look unhealthier.
Too much soy? There are plenty of PubMed studies that cite soy's effect on hormones and the estrogenic activity that it can cause.
It seems to come down to balance.
Most studies looking at soy's effect on the body find a positive or neutral effect. Only a few(mostly in vitro) studies show the opposite.
There are lots of reasons people want vegetarian versions of meat. Here are some of the most common:
1. Still want to eat meat, but want to reduce the environmental impact of meat production.
2. Don't want to eat meat for moral/preference reasons, but still enjoy the taste of eating it.
3. Want to eat meat, but don't like the dietary impact and want a healthier replacement.
It's not trying to be this "best vegetarian food that you had that did not taste like meat at all, how it should be". It shouldn't be like anything. Both food options can co-exist. You're completely misinterpreting the niche it's filling. If I want tasty food, I'll eat something that's veg-based and tasty, not mock-meat. 90% of my diet is curries, chillies, stews or stir-fry's and I'm more than satisfied - but if I crave something that I can't/won't eat, you bet your arse I'm going to go for the worse tasting, greasy, salty, crave fulfilling option, be it an Impossible burger or some crappy cardboard tasting mock-meat.
No matter what it’s a much better deal than going in to a mcdonalds / whatever and getting the burger of the month from there.
Doubt these processed plant based foods are very health promoting, but we at least don’t know for a fact that they’re carcinogenic.
I'm pretty sure what they're getting at here is something like a salami or cured bacon. Not simply ground beef.
I suspect that frozen burgers may be included in this (depending on ingredients), but ground mince converted into burger patties definitely isn't.
The science seems to point to whole plant foods as being the way to go in terms of optimal health, and this is highly processed food.
It sure helps to reduce the environmental impact of meat, so I'm all for them as long as people are well aware that they are not healthy.
At that point, I knew something was up. He is one of those who consider soy harmful to you. Sheer insanity.
Also, he is making an argument on a false pretense: that eating processed meat is somehow okay because its already introduced to our diet. Guess what: it is not good for people. This is a product that is designed to be an alternative to that, not to home-cooked healthy italian meatless alternatives.
Now, the nutrition profile of naturally fed animal sources is very different from garbage/feed fed livestock. Which is another issue at hand.
Personally, I'm allergic to legumes so can't really handle any of the vegetarian options out there.
"their most controversial ingredient is Soy Leghemoglobin. To make this ingredient, Impossible genetically engineers a yeast bacterium to produce a protein". So? What is the problem with that? It is scary because is made by a bacterium like most of the industrially produced vitamin C? Or is it because the bacteria has been genetically modified, like the ones who produce insulin for people suffering from diabetes? And what about "natural" meat produced from animals being fed with GMO soy then?
"In general, I think unwise to mess with the complex system of human biology by introducing large qts of foreign ingredients". Again, "foreign"? What do you mean with that?
Then it continues with "all non-organic" and so on, like the process is relevant, while the final result is not, similar to homeopathy.
I am very skeptical about this kind of criticisms.
The act of processing removes nutrients from the food and adds preservatives and other chemicals, it modifies a lot the chemical composition of the food.
Unprocessed vs processed: I was not talking about that, but your statement is not always valid, it depends from what the process does. "unprocessed milk" is more dangerous for example. My point is that reality is way more complex than "natural" vs "non-natural" and so on, and there is a lot of marketing going on which reinforces unscientific ideas.
Our bodies react not only to the presence of a given molecule but to the other types of molecules that were ingested at the same time, the amount, and how those molecules react to each other.
A whole food has thousands of different compounds in it, that interact in ways that we can only now begin to image, together with undigestable compounds such as fiber that pass right through us but that feed bacteria in our gut that then produce nutrients that we also need, in a symbiotic (or sometimes parasitical) relation.
The meaning that a food is a whole food, does not mean that is not made of the same molecules as an extract, but that it is provided in the relative amounts and in the right combination with other molecules that our bodies (including our gut bacteria) have evolved to consume.
+1: If he is so worried about canola oil, just check what quality of oil burger king is using for frying his meat.
Also I re-read his tweets and I can't find the part where it's clearly stated that transfat are used, I just see oil being mentioned in those ingredient lists.
> Also I re-read his tweets and I can't find the part where
> it's clearly stated that transfat are used
Most burgers are made of 20 to 30% fat trimmings anyway, and the rest is ground beef.
All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil.
The backlash against these fake meat products will come slowly but surely, these are not heath foods and should only be eaten sparingly.
Whole foods are the way to go, as opposed to highly processed foods like this plant-based burger.
I don't buy this. Omega 3 is the obvious counter example, but I don't even believe that olive oil is outright bad for you.
Whole olives are a great source of plant fat, but olive oil is not. Eating the whole food is crucial, instead of these highly processed extracts.
Of course, it's much better than other foods such as saturated fat, but still it's not a health food.
I use olive oil everyday (I was born in Italy, were it is widely used), but it is dangerous to fry with it, especially the extra-virgin one, because it has not been purified, and you get the known smoke at a lower temperature. This is just to demonstrate that there are different oil for different usages, there is no black and white.
One tablespoon of olive oil is 120 empty calories, no fiber, no protein and no carbs, minimal volume, almost zero satiety. Yet it has the same caloric amount as a large banana.
I don't think micro-nutrients are over-estimated, they are essential for well-being according to science. The body only needs them in small amounts, but they are essential.
I know we have been marketed for a very long time that oil is a health food, and it's a very hard thing to let go, but it's just not true.
The Mediterranean diet is healthy despite the olive oil and not because of it (due to the high amount of fruits and vegetables).
Also, just a thought game for you: if I were to claim that your carbs are just empty calories, and my fat covers those calories too, what would your response be? Because the body can create carbs from fat and fat from carbs, so that point is kinda moot. Just pointing out the calorie content of an oil is not a negative against it. An average man need ~2000 kcal daily, and an average women needs ~1500. Just by carbs and proteins alone, that would mean 400g+ of that intake. Why?
Eating olive oil for vitamins is a bit like smoking for getting oxygen, there are plenty of other ways much healthier to cover those nutritional needs.
The body can create fats from carbs and vice-versa but those processes are not metabolically efficient. That is not the main way our body consumes calories.
Most commonly, carbs are broken down into sugar and fat is either burned as it is or is stored directly as it is, without further modification.
Olive oil and oils, in general, are some of the most calorically dense foods in existence, with very little volume and very little satiety associated with them.
So you get a lot of calories but your body does not register them because they have very little volume, so you stay hungry and keep eating more until you are full.
That is the problem with this very high caloric density, is that you will very easily overheat and not be able to lose weight while eating oils.
That caloric density simply does not exist in nature, and our bodies have not evolved to cope with it, we will constantly overeat which over time leads to obesity.
For example, greeks are some of the heavier people in Europe, a study did a tissue sample of a group of women to check what type of fat they had stored in their abdomen. About a third of it was the fat from olive oil, it sticks to you.
No more wiggling around with "too many calories" and "you need to burn calories to transform them to carbs" and then "oh, but it also sticks to your abdomen". Pick one. Stick to that one, and argue with that.
Also, yeah, since, for example, coffee is the highest source of antioxidants in the western diet for many people, I am willing to make a bet that sunflower oil will going to be their highest source of E-vitamin (300% of your required daily amount per 100ml). Olive oil will be the highest source of Vitamin K and both Vitamin E for people who do not GORGE on greens.
In the US, the olive oil wont be the highest source for Vitamin E only because peanuts are more abundant in them.
You will be starving all the time, and won't be able to make it past a month. A lot of satiety comes from the volume that foods takes up in the stomach and oils are the worst food for that.
In order to lose weight, you need foods high in volume and low in calories, so that you feel satiated without overating, and oils are the worst food from that perspective.
Sunflower oil is almost 900 calories per 100g, like olive oil is 120 calories per tablespoon. So one tablespoon of any of those oils has the same calories as a large banana.
Had two tablespoons in the bottom of the pan to fry something, and bam you just added the equivalent of two large bananas to your meal without even noticing.
In the US, the overconsumption of oils and the ton of added hidden calories that they add to a meal is one of the reasons for the obesity epidemic.
Eating oils for vitamins is not a good solution, vitamins are better found directly in greens, vegetables, and fruits. Just eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and you will be OK.
Coffee is not that bad, but a better source of anti-oxidants are red fruits, that can be easily eaten every day at breakfast with oats for example.
Peanuts, for example, which are also mostly fat are a much better source for Vitamin E because its a whole food, it's not an extract. Together with vitamin E you are getting a lot of other nutrients.
Peanut oil, on the other hand would be a bad choice, because it's an extract of a whole food.
It's not a whole food, most of the nutrients and the whole fiber has been taken out by the processing.
Olive oil only contains modest amounts of some vitamins, that can be easily obtained elsewhere.
Otherwise, it's almost 100% liquid fat with little micro-nutrient content.
You mean fish oil? I think here people are talking about plant oils. Fish oil is not a health food either, AFIK it's no longer recommended by the American Heart Association https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/practice-manag...
For a pollutant free source of Omega 3, there is algae oil at very small amounts, or most people bodies just make their own Omega 3, just like any other animal.
How do herbivores get their Omega 3? Through diet, ground flax seeds is a great way to help your body produce Omega 3.
If the fish oil was removed from fish, the resulting fish would not be healthier.
I'm not sure how this became a debate about vegetarianism either.
The effect that has in your digestive system is not the same. Another example is eating fructose extract instead of a whole fruit.
Eating the whole fruit does not spike your blood sugar, unlike eating the equivalent amount of fructose. Also, it does not satiate as much.
Compare the satiety of eating 10 olives to eating a tablespoon of olive oil or two.
It's this reductionistic approach to nutrition where we try to extract these single nutrients that is harmful, because our body has evolved to eat whole foods and not food extracts.
We humans have evolved to eat the whole foods, not highly processed food extracts.
There are thousands of compounds in whole foods that interact with each other and our bodies in a million different ways, and that we are only beginning to comprehend.
You picked olives, so...what exactly is great about eating a raw, unprocessed olive?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...
I don't think the argument to eating raw makes much sense either, as we are the only animal on the planet that has evolved to eat cooked food and that has been the case for maybe a couple of millions of years, at least much longer than the human species (which goes back to aprox. 200k years).
The olives that we eat as appetizers are cured or sun-dried, because the raw olive tastes horribly indeed.
So there is some treatment of the food to make it edible, or some cooking involved.
But this is very different than extracting an oil and discarding the rest of the food, together with all of its fiber and most of its nutritional content.
It's like taking a fruit and only eating its sugar, one is healthy and the other is not.
Generally speaking most dietary fat for pre-agricultural man would come from fish, meat or fatty fruits and tree nuts. All of which are/were prevalent and common. As to the sourcing, my own opinion is that the more refined the source, the less natural it is... which means that most seed oil sources are anything but natural to take in any significant quantity.
I tend to stick to lard, butter, evoo, avocado oil, and occasional walnut oil for cooking or salad use.
Most nuts and seeds are also almost 100% fat, plus many fruits and vegetables contain some fat.
You mention 80-120g of protein a day, that is probably more like 50g. Most people overeat on protein, which leads to all sort of issues like kidney problems, etc.
On the other hand, most people don't eat enough fiber, which leads to all sorts of digestive issues that are consider normal but are not.
For example, getting diarrhea or constipation every other month, carrying around anti-diarrhea pills, etc.
This is not normal and does not happen while eating enough whole plant foods, but it's socially considered normal because its so prevalent.
Most people get 15g or less of fiber per day, while they should be getting 30 to 50, that is one the main problem with the western diet, and not the lack of protein.
But nuts and seeds are NOT "almost 100%" percent fat. They range from fat contents of 30g to upwards 70-75g per 100g (walnuts, for example, are on a higher end of this, so are hazelnuts. Almonds, pistachio are the middle ground, while peanuts - technically legume, I know -are on the lower side.
The rest? 8-10 percent carbs, 10g+ fiber (some contain less, some much more), and anything between 10 to 30% protein (highest ones, again are almonds and peanuts, and sesame seeds).
This is very easy to verify, you just need to do a quick googling. I do not know why anyone would clame this. Some of your other claims are going to be harder to look up, so I would like some citations, like the ones with olive oils STICKING TO YOUR ABDOMEN :P
Its very different eating nuts from eating oil, because nuts are whole foods, you are getting a lot more than the fat when you eat a nut, as you mention.
But they are to be eaten in moderation, not by the bags.
The quote about olive oil I heard in one of Dr McDougall videos on oil on YouTube, although which video I cannot tell.
Probably in this video he will talk about it, it's his longest video on oil - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptF0KuF8xHU&t=74s
Anyway, my bottom line is that oil is not a health food, unlike popular belief.
Reasons being: it's almost only liquid fat with little nutritional content (those vitamins can be easily obtained elsewhere), and it's the number one source of hidden calories in food and one of the multiple causes for the obesity epidemic in the west.
Easting olives is healthy, but eating olive oil is not. Eating an extract of a food is very different from eating the whole food.
Also, getting up to 2x the suggested protein range (minimum is 0.8g:kg to 1.2g:kg) rarely has the complications you mention. I'm also not suggesting that people don't eat general plant food. I'm not big on refined foods overall though, and that includes refined vegetable oils.
Most people are afraid of fat, and specifically animal fat for no good reason. Fatty cuts from grass fed ruminant animals are one of the lowest inflammation foods you can have and eating nose to tail is a very good nutrition balance. For every correlation survey based study associating disease to red meat, there is a much higher correlation to refined grains, sugars and oils.
IMHO, people should eat closer to real/whole foods that they prepare themselves. And imho, this can and should include some meat, fish and plenty of eggs (another food staple that gets a lot of undue negative press).
Just saying, if you weight 100kg, even if you would be 2 meters tall you would still be overweight.
You can check that according to any BMI calculator like this one https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmi...