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Comment by t_mann | Hacker News Reader

> The strips get salt, sugar, coconut oil, beet juice, and liquid smoke added to them, and presto—they’re ready to be packaged and sold as MyBacon.

Unfortunately, that's my impression of most meat replacement products I've come across so far - they're what I would consider mostly junk food. Highly processed, low in naturally occurring nutrients and rich in salt and additives (liquid smoke??).

I'd much rather have plain mushrooms, even over normal bacon, which I find super easy to cook and delicious even with very little seasoning.

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Liquid smoke is an interesting one. It seems like most of the really harmful compounds in smoke are fat soluble. Since liquid smoke is water-based, a lot of those compounds don't make it into the mix once everything is filtered.

It does contain small amounts of known carcinogens, but if you compare a teaspoon of your average liquid smoke product to say, smoked salmon, the liquid will be a tiny fraction of the safe limit while the salmon will tend to greatly exceed safe limits.

I'm not suggesting everyone should consume liquid smoke, and I agree, this is essentially junk food. You just put two question marks beside something I happen to know a bit about.

The main takeaway with smoked products is that they can be remarkably harmful to your health, with the exception of proper usage of liquid smoke. That can be hard to hear because good god, smoked food is delicious.

Smoked plant foods (i.e. tofu or tempeh) don't seem to carry nearly as much risk as smoked animal foods. I'm not sure why, but I think it is known.

This study is 30 years old, but offers some insight into risk factors for meats vs liquid smoke: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8224319/

Since very small amounts of the liquid are used, one would end up ingesting ~1/40th or less of the carcinogenic compounds compares to if they, for example, ate a grilled pork chop.

> Total PAH concentrations in smoked meat products ranged from 2.6 micrograms/kg in a cooked ham sample to 29.8 micrograms/kg in grilled pork chops, while those in fish products ranged from 9.3 micrograms/kg in smoked shrimp to 86.6 micrograms/kg in smoked salmon.

Of course smoked salmon is the tastiest one on the list

Interesting thanks. Yeah, I had smoked products down as something unusually unhealthy compared to the taste benefits. Interesting to learn about liquid smoke.

What about my beloved islay whisky?

Seems like it should be similar to liquid smoke in that it's in water and alcohol after being filtered, so, it should contain much less of the bad stuff than the barrel initially contained. These compounds can sometimes dissolve into water or alcohol, but it seems rare and the larger, filterable compounds are only soluble in lipids (according to wikipedia).

That's not to say the whisky is good for you (great podcast on alcohol and health): https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain...

> Total PAH concentrations ... 86.6 micrograms/kg in smoked salmon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbo...

I was a happier person, approximately seven minutes ago.

Also fwiw a teaspoon of liquid smoke would absolutely overwhelm whatever you were putting it on, in most recipes a few drops are more than sufficient.

Something is off here though, grilled pork chops wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to smoke, just maybe the PAH coming from charred areas which could happen to any meat. Using bad or wet charcoal you get what BBQ people refer to as a “creosote” taste, ie bitter unpleasant white smoke.

Still if a 10 min pork chop could be that bad I can only imagine that a 5 hour smoked brisket would be absolutely off the chart.

I think you’re right - foods like this seem like they should be once per year indulgences rather than weekly or biweekly.

And yes, it is an odd discrepancy but smoked and grilled foods are combined in a few of the studies I came across. I suppose they both contain the same carcinogens, and the goal was only to measure those carcinogens and not so much to evaluate specific foods.

> I'd much rather have plain mushrooms, even over normal bacon

That's great for you, but it's not true for a huge number of people. For those people, who aren't happy to choose plain mushrooms over bacon, a mushroom-based product just has to be as (un)healthy and as tasty as real bacon to already be a big improvement in reducing animals farmed and (hopefully, depending on the tech used, but almost certainly especially as these production methods scale up and get improved upon) also be much more eco friendly than eating animals.

If they can go a step further and make something as tasty as bacon (again, subjectively, in the eyes of people who don't choose mushrooms over bacon) that's also healthier than real bacon, great! It's just not as simple as only looking at healthiness vs ideals.

That's true, typical smoky bacon is quite processed as well, I guess that's what I don't like about it.

I get a pork belly, salt cure with regular salt, then cold smoke and slice. There is more process in chopping the wood than making the bacon. Where do you guys get this stuff?

That's not the process used for a package of bacon from the supermarket, which is the relevant comparison.

Salting and cold smoking is processing it, "processing" doesn't require some fancy high-tech voodoo.

And it's possible (I'm not particularly up to date on the science - but for example search for "cold smoked meat carcinogens" and you'll find plenty of reading material) that by salting & cold smoking it you're already making it as unhealthy as much-more-processed (for higher shelf life, product consistency, etc.) supermarket bacon.

No, processing is pink-salt processing, which is where the nitrates come from. This is not my process.

Pork belly is very disappointing if you are looking for bacon. It has all the fat but very little flavor. It’s usually bulkier and doesn’t cook down to an acceptable texture. Just a flabby kind of a disgusting mess. I don’t really know why people often suggest it as an alternative to bacon. Not the same product at all.

That farmer should take better care of their hogs, it sounds like they don't get much activity. What you describe is very atypical, I'd say comparable to a factory farmed animal.

Well this product is probably already healthier than actual bacon though not nearly as nutritious.

If you don't want salt and processing you aren't the target market for bacon, meat based or otherwise.

> they're what I would consider mostly junk food. Highly processed, low in naturally occurring nutrients and rich in salt and additives

This is my main issue with most modern "meat alternative" products too - they're basically a high GI mashup of wheat flour, potatoes, sugar and other low-cost carbs, with a load of flavourings and salt added. And of course, they're often coated in breadcrumbs or batter. Basically any old shite with breadcrumbs. Even the macros aren't close to those of actual meat.

Yeah, from personal experience and a few friends who are vegetarian, meat replacements are more about texture and flavor than actual nutrition. It's often the case that people who are vegetarian/vegan aren't so out of dislike for meat so much as other reasons, and these products exist to serve that craving. That said, most people I know obtain their nutrition elsewhere, the meat substitutes are far more expensive than the real thing and mostly just an occasional treat.

Though, for greasy products like bacon and chorizo, it doesn't seem hard for ultraprocessed plant-based look-alikes to be healthier.

Most fake meats I eat like impossible have macros very close to real meat. And for the junkier cuts like nuggets often slightly better. They are salty though so I try to avoid adding extra salt to other parts of the dish

I didn't mean the few expensive products that are meant to be half decent, like Impossible; my comment was more about the bulk of the market, which is frozen aisle nuggets and the like, mainly made of high-GI cheap shite and pea protein.

There's nothing scary about liquid smoke: https://www.seriouseats.com/pantry-essentials-liquid-smoke

Luckily that is readily available! The idea of these products is to prompt people to switch from bacon, not from mushrooms. I'm quite confident this is better for you (and the world, and certainly the poor tortured animals) than regular bacon.

> I'd much rather have plain mushrooms

I'd much rather have mushrooms with real bacon (and some onions).

I do agree with your broader point though. "meat replacements" are a fundamentally flawed concept, if you want to eat meat, you should eat meat. If you don't want to, there are plenty of great other options. The best is a combination of both however, absolutism in either direction is a fatal flaw.

What if I don't want to eat meat, but still miss the flavor of meat?

Why should companies not try to cater to that market that is trying to make the ethical choice yet may miss the flavor of meat based products?

FYI, liquid smoke is literally what it sounds like. It's condensation of smoke from burning wood. It can imbue the same flavor that actual smoking can, but it doesn't have the soot and ash that usually comes from smoking, so it's safer. A lot of "smoked" foods might actually be made with liquid smoke these days.

In my experience the flavor is not especially close to a real smoking - which is a cooking/preservation technique - not just a flavoring.

Many tall mushrooms can be pulled into strips that, with a marinade and good marketing, could probably be sold as mushroom-based bacon. I love cooking tall mushrooms with just lots of olive oil and S&P. Crispy and bacony—great with sunny side up eggs.

Cheese also makes great vegetarian bacon. Just put grated cheddar in a pan and cook thin like a pancake and flip. It cools hard and crispy.

Those can be tasty but are nothing like bacon.

> Highly processed

By that standard every meat product is highly processed too. Since you cut it, add salt and pepper and sear it in oil. It’s literally just mushrooms with seasoning and cooked in oil. I doubt your enjoying your mushrooms raw all the time? Ever add a bit of salt and fry them in butter? Wham, highly processed!

Their post referred to "most meat replacements", not specifically the myco bacon. When comparing plant based proteins (the overwhelming segment of meat alternatives), there is certainly a difference in processing. In a lot of the newest food science literature, scholars are even differentiating some of these foods as "ultra processed".

Plant based proteins doesn't have to be processed... a lot of the newer "meat alternatives" on the market are trying to bring the same flavor profiles that meat eaters are already used to to the market.

Beans themselves have plenty of protein in them, breads also have protein, tofu has protein, nuts have protein... none of those are "ultra processed", and those are already consumed by meat eaters too.

Again, I'm referencing the original comment to which you replied to. And again, the terminology they used is important as it is the basis of what I'm trying to convey. I'm an agricultural researcher and am well aware of the protein content and amino acid profile of various crops. To that end, we are talking about "meat alternatives". Consider a recipe that calls for sausage or ground beef. Sure, you can create a black bean burger at home. I've done it. It's ok. But if you scan various plant-based communities ie blogs and forums, there is an overwhelming sentiment that it is very difficult to reproduce meat-centered recipes with plant-based inputs. When you look at "meat alternatives" in a grocery store and look at the label, they are mostly highly processed. I'm just stating facts here. I'm not arguing a stance either way.

Sure, you can point out that lentils, beans, etc are technically plant based proteins. But I'm referencing the widely accepted food industry jargon. Semantics are annoying.

Most "normal bacon" is actually a tortured pig, fattened on the cheapest feed available and shoved full of antibiotics and antifungals so they don't spread disease in dense living quarters.

By comparison, "liquid smoke" is a natural byproduct of burning wood.

There's also still the issue of the environmental impact, which is not always as pristine as the PR would suggest.

For instance, 'coconut oil'. So they now need to ship coconut oil across the world. Indonesia is one of the main exporters of coconut oil and the rainforest (and orangutans) over there might not like that too much.

My problem as well. All the impossible burger or beyond meat stuff appears worse for you (nutritionally) than a real burger. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.

That's an empirical question and I am not sure we know the answer to that yet. Impossible Burger definitely sound worse for cardiovascular health than broccoli or beans, but is it worse than meat? I am still agnostic.

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