I'm afraid of products such as these for the same reason, because we have no long term health data.
I'm happy to eat plants of all sorts, in their natural form. A slurry of plant fats and proteins which approximates eggs sounds like nasty factory runoff.
Do you have some specific concerns? Specific processes? Specific ingredients? (like heme iron https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/heme-iron/ )
I believe a number of the "vegan" butters on market shelves today strive to avoid this issue, hence it's not necessarily the same... or, rather, to put it another way: just because something was done wrong once doesn't mean it can't be tried again with a better formula.
It's not like regular butter is being phased out here, and people really shouldn't be consuming so much of this stuff (butter or vegan butter) period.
I don't get this trend anyway. There are lots of perfectly good vegetarian dishes out there.
Why do we have to whore out the food industry to the tastes of meat eaters in the name of saving the planet? Can't wannabe "virtuous" meat eaters learn to eat vegetarian foods without making them look and taste like meat?
The whole thing is some form of insanity.
(For the record: I eat semi-vegetarian in that I eat less meat than most Americans and some meals are meatless. I have been accused of being vegetarian by meat-and-potatoes people and vegetarians also openly hate on me for my "crimes" of eating a sensible diet that fails to fall into either political camp.)
Overall if the goal is meat reduction, then it's a win if you can get someone to occasionally buy a transitional meat instead of the real thing.
I've had more luck trying to get people to eat plant-based meat-likes than cricket-based foods, anyway.
But hear me out.
We eat too much meat and I loathe the industrial complex that supplies 'technically meat' - at the expense of it actually being good and the lack of welfare that brought that price down. The average turkey is tofu-taste with suffering. Nobody should want this (and I genuinely don't see how anybody enjoys eating it).
On the converse, a grass-fed, heritage breed, 28 day aged cow rib-eye is amazing. Not cheap, it shouldn't be cheap, it should be a rare treat - is amazing, and I'm not giving that up.
What I dislike about the "tech startups selling fake-meat" is that they're treating us like fuck-wits. #press-release Burger King is now selling our patty, only available at BK!! Nobody who cares about their food was going to BK in the first place. Saying "BK customers can't tell the difference" is a f'in low bar.
Sorry, I'm meandering. I just meant that the world is full of amazing vegetarian/vegan food - homemade hummus, pitta and roasted veg. Might be my favourite meal. Few toasted pine-nuts chef's-kiss Switch up to vegetarian and there's even more amazing choice and dishes.
What we should be pushing is that a felafel-burger is amazing. BK selling a beetroot coloured chemical concoction and telling us their customers can't taste the difference, is not a 'win'
A lot of the country has almost a toddler-like relationship with food. They like what they like and you have to practically shove it down their throats to get them to try anything new... just look at the restaurant options available in some parts of rural america... they're basically large chains microwaving frozen foods (at least the south gets exposure to some authentic mexican food and barbeque... the midwest is... well... limited)
People literally die because they will not eat healthier to save their lives. It's not at all unusual for a diabetic person to lose a limb and still not change their diet.
I'd wager that a meat-like replacement that tastes enough like meat and looks like meat will be more successful than anything on the BK menu containing the word falafel. It's like tricking children to eat healthier by putting a food they don't want to try into a fun shape.
Everywhere I've been, there's been an immigrant selling their food - first place I randomly had Ethiopian food for example. But also my first Tamale, which seemed pretty normalized.
I think people not being able to cook, is maybe the hurdle we need to clear - or not having the confidence to cook. My mum let me help out, I got taught at school - not to any great standard, but enough to instill in me the confidence that after a few tries you can make anything you want (and now I have fun seasonal arguments when I produce a meat thermometer and ask her to stop killing it)
Typing that actually helped me out. It's not that I have an issue with meat substitues - it's that they seem to be pasting over the symptom, and missing the cure. Getting somebody to buy their Beyond-Meat-Patty from BK is good, but it would be better if they cooked themselves, or picked up something from their local-vegetarian-Indian restaurant - "STOP GOING TO BK"
Whole Beyond Meat thing seems to be some weird stop-gap - filling a cheap-meat hole. "Just Stop Eating Cheap Meat"
>Whole Beyond Meat thing seems to be some weird stop-gap - filling a cheap-meat hole. "Just Stop Eating Cheap Meat"
For a variety of reasons (if nothing else, even just economics wise) this is unlikely to ever happen in America.
At the very least, we lose nothing by trying to solve the problem both ways - substitutes for the low end of eating to move people who wouldn't otherwise move, and better education/skills/etc for the general range of the population where it's lacking.
What I feel is really detrimental is the fitness culture pushing for no carbs and 2 grams of proteins per kg of body weight.
The other end seems much more common... we've got big boxes of cheap frozen hamburgers sold in supermarkets that consist largely of beef heart, tongue, and whatever other garbage is left behind. The baseline for what consists of meat in the US is almost literally what's swept off the floor.
Put another way, can't you learn to like an all meat diet without sneaking in vegetables or making them seem like non-meat? (Well, no, you like what you like, and you probably won't make huge changes without incentive).
But lentils, carrots, potatos, brocolli, peas, beans, onions, mushrooms, nuts -- that's fantastic.
Stuff tastes less interesting now.
+ Erythosine - Red No3, found in basically all red foods
+ Propylene glycol - found in peanut butter, eye drops
+ Ferric orthophosphate aka Iron Phosphate - used to treat anemia ,found in your multivitamin
I mean just consider the 'vegeburgers' these places previously sold. There was clearly no attempt/inclination previously - and I feel the meat substitutes now offered come with as much care.
Saying "existing vegetarian food is good enough, let's not see what else we can do, everyone should just get over it" seems a bit silly to me.
Your extremist attempt to go from presumably a meat-centered diet to absolutely no animal products at all is not really a counterpoint to anything I've said.
Yes... I'm aware. That's why I said vegan.
> Your extremist attempt to go from presumably a meat-centered diet to absolutely no animal products at all is not really a counterpoint to anything I've said.
Your post was hardly a formal argument to be taken down through rigor. You said you don't "get this trend", saying that there are already good vegetarian meals. I explained that I would like more vegetarian meals to replace things like eggs.
If you think this wasn't a "counterpoint", examine your own post first.
If people really want to save the planet and eat less meat as part of that goal, there are better ways to achieve that. But those ways tend to be harder to monetize effectively than creating a product that inflexible, overprivileged people will snap up and feel virtuous about.
As a meat eater, I can't imagine myself ever even trying a plant-based "meat" product. If I want veggies, I eat veggies. If I want meat, I eat meat. I know, crazy.
But I am one of those people with a hybrid only because I like the gas mileage.
Meat that is fed almost exclusively corn: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-burger-youre...
It's not exactly healthy either.
Assuming that you're talking about all plant-based processed foods with this, you can pry tofu and vegan breads from my cold, dead hands.
Women who eat four or more teaspoons of margarine a day have a 50 percent greater risk of developing heart disease than women who eat margarine only once a month
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/05/us/study-links-heart-disea...
Margarine intake and subsequent coronary heart disease in ...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9229205
Butter vs. Margarine - Harvard Health
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/butter-vs-mar...
> From the standpoint of heart disease, butter remains on the list of foods to use sparingly mostly because it is high in saturated fat. [--] Some of the newer margarines that are low in saturated fat, high in unsaturated fat, and free of trans fats are fine as long as you don't use too much (they are still rich in calories).
Plus it doesn't have any bearing on the detail that such articles can be readily found with a quick search, so there's no need to ask the OP to cite their sources.
> I'm afraid...
> I'm happy to...
It seems a little absurd to me to ask the OP to cite the source(s) of their thoughts, emotions and memories.
Don't forget that in the game of capitalism companies are in a never ending quest to develop new products, this simply is the next iteration. Just like cigarettes and alcohol were marketed as medicine, these things will be marketed as climate change or animal cruelty solutions
I don't believe that food, like many other industries, needs to be disrupted. I'll stick to veggies and fruit, pasta, bread, local stuff if possible &c. all the basics we've been eating for hundreds of years, processed food is poison, plant based or not