Is beyond meat actually healthier than meat? If you search my question you’ll see the results are hardly conclusive.
What’s everyone’s take?
What’s everyone’s take?
Meat is an ancient food. We've evolved as hunter-gatheres, with most of our calories coming from hunting. It would be very surprising if we were not well-adapted to eating a lot of meat. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes which eat a lot of meat, like the Hadza, have excellent health.
Something like Beyond Meat is novel; it may well be OK, but I'd certainly exercise a lot of caution before trusting it.
Another way to look at the question, while incomplete, is just to look at the breakdown of the nutrients. Per cronometer.com, here's specimen A:
and specimen B:
Which of those looks healthier to you?
To me, they look pretty similar, except for A has a lot more PUFA, and a lot less vitamin B. There is a lot of controversy about PUFA, but my belief is too much of it is one of the main causes of disease in people eating "Western-style" diets.
So I'd guess specimen B is healthier; that's the cow burger.
(Tangentially, is there a good website to easily share pngs? Imgur compression is pretty brutal for text stuff.)
I would agree, strongly, with your assessment of PUFAs. They are even harder to eliminate from ones diet than sugar. They are in most of what one eats that they aren't making from base ingredients.
There is a great deal of misinformation about hunter-gather diets: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers... or https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-ha... (I didn't invest much effort in finding illustrative links, there are many more, and academic research).
Walking around constantly and digging up/harvesting edible plants, insects, fungi, possibly carrion, and the occasional meat (including organs) is much more likely.
Most of our ancestors' calories didn't come from hunting in most areas. Those that did had lifestyles so different from a modern one that it makes no sense to compare them.
But I don't think it's true we weren't also eating a lot of animals, and in many cases, getting most of our calories from animals.
Separately, the existence of modern hunter-gatherer groups like the Hadza that eat a lot of meat and are healthy suggests eating meat is healthy.
(Of course, you have to be careful, since there are potentially large differences between the Hadza's nose-to-tail fresh, wild kills, and what you might get at the supermarket. Meat is a broad category.)
You also hint at traditional societies having much shorter lifespans than modern ones; it's true they have much higher rates of infant and childhood mortality, but lifespans for people who make it past childhood are very similar.
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/
I agree evolutionary arguments in and of themselves will never be convincing (since there will always necessarily be a large amount of conjecture), but they are not being made in isolation: they providing an explanation for the observed fact that people living in modern societies are suffering a rising epidemic of degenerative diseases, and people living in traditional societies are not.
See also: the fantastic book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston Price.
People are probably so sick right now that they can't taste the difference, nor is their mind healthy enough to comprehend how ludicrous the proposition is.
To be clear, it is not an ingredient, and it is Generally Recognized as Safe in multiple applications (https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/food-addit...) and it's pretty obvious from the product this is food equipment lubrication.
I have, however, done a LOT of studying about food because I have some serious stomach issues.
What has finally worked for me? Intermittent fasting for 15-16 hours a day — eating a low-carb diet filled with veggies.
I feel a night and day difference eating like this.
Btw I was mostly vegan and vegetarian for half a decade before this.
Take it as you will.
I prefer real food over fake.
(no affiliation, just a subscriber)