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Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

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Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#151

Post by spraak »

shanev wrote: post #140
venantius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've studied the amount of energy and water necessary to produce beef extensively, both at university and professionally, and I can say from experience that it would be extremely difficult for something like the impossible burger to consume more energy and water than the equivalent amount of actual meat. Meat is expensive in energy and water because it takes huge amounts of vegetable matter and water for a period of…

Did you study industrial beef production or grass-based holistic management? As far as I'm aware, the latter isn't taught at schools (yet). Although the technique is very old, and based on nature's natural cycle of herd movement, it only caught on again in the early 2000s. How will said vegetable matter get it's nutrients year after year as the soil it's growing on gets eroded? Wouldn't external fertilizer, pesticide…

> How will said vegetable matter get it's nutrients year after year as the soil it's growing on gets eroded?

1. It won't be eroded if you practice good farming, e.g. Permaculture 2. The meat industry is horrendously worse at regeneration of land than the worst farm practices 3. How else do you expect nutrients arrive in soil? It's a process that happens naturally very easily and just needs to be managed

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#152

Post by lern_too_spel »

shanev wrote: post #138
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>potentially (and most likely) more land needed to produce equal amounts of meat Please explain this in more detail. >and sequesters carbon/methane as a side effect I have not heard of a farming practice that sequesters methane released from ruminants. Can you provide more information?

>>potentially (and most likely) more land needed to produce equal amounts of meat >Please explain this in more detail. Sure! Plants are much less nutrient dense that animals. So for them to create fake meat that's equally nutrient dense as real meat, their farms have to be adequately large. You need a ton of plants to achieve the density of meat. Animals on land however are already nutrient dense. The only physical s…

You should become familiar with the energy pyramid. It's an order of magnitude more efficient to extract energy from plants than to pass the plant energy through animals first. https://www.brainpop.com/science/energy/energypyramid/

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#153

Post by mustacheemperor »

mikekchar wrote: post #139
acchow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried the Impossible Meats burger - it was nowhere near as tasty as a beef burger. I think it could be improved drastically by just adding a little MSG tho.

I just want to point out that there are lots of ways to get umami. MSG is just one of them (and not really a great way IMHO). I cooked vegan at home for a long time (I'm not actually an ethical vegan, I just like vegan food). Konbu dashi will give you similar glutamate profiles, but tomatoes, fermented products like shoyu and miso, etc are simple ways to boost the umami as well. Usually the biggest trick in good vega…

MSG consumption has never been linked to physical symptoms in a double blind test.[0] It's an abundantly occurring natural amino acid. Kombu dashi is one of the foods where the flavor of MSG was originally identified as umami because it contains MSG.

[0]http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadd...

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#154

Post by spraak »

shanev wrote: post #150
venantius wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, it doesn't make that much of a difference when we compare the cost of calories from vegetable matter to the cost of calories from meat (and, when we're talking about a few ounces of organic matter for a burger, that is basically what we're talking about). Sure, you have to worry about soil erosion, but by the same token you have to consider the fact that a single cow has a large grazing area. Fertilizer…

Could you please enlighten me on how land gets fertilized on it's own without grazing herbivores to create a proper soil micro-biome? Sure cows need grazing land, but they don't require all the external inputs an industrial soybean farm, for instance, needs. All they require is land, sunlight, electric fences, and some water if rainfall is inadequate or the soil is in bad shape due to prior mismanagement or desertifi…

You're saying grazing is zero input but e.g. a soy bean farm is not. This whole comparison is off.

A soy bean farm is a bad idea, firstly. To maintain balance, you wouldn't just want to farm soy beans.

Next, grass doesn't just magically appear. It too needs nutrients.

Cow manure is one way to improve soil nutrients, but Permaculture shows us many more ways to keep the cycle flowing.

In the end, the best picture is actually that the cows grazing and the soy beans exist together in a larger system of many other products that work together in providing nutrients that the others need.

Cows, though, are ultimately unnecessary for a Permaculture style system, and we can grow food without them. Then they can just be there as our friends and participate in our agricultural systems as fertilizers, if circumstances happen that way.

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#155

Post by spraak »

shanev wrote: post #150
venantius wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, it doesn't make that much of a difference when we compare the cost of calories from vegetable matter to the cost of calories from meat (and, when we're talking about a few ounces of organic matter for a burger, that is basically what we're talking about). Sure, you have to worry about soil erosion, but by the same token you have to consider the fact that a single cow has a large grazing area. Fertilizer…

Could you please enlighten me on how land gets fertilized on it's own without grazing herbivores to create a proper soil micro-biome? Sure cows need grazing land, but they don't require all the external inputs an industrial soybean farm, for instance, needs. All they require is land, sunlight, electric fences, and some water if rainfall is inadequate or the soil is in bad shape due to prior mismanagement or desertifi…

You're saying grazing is zero input but e.g. a soy bean farm is not. This whole comparison is off.

A soy bean farm is a bad idea, firstly. To maintain balance, you wouldn't just want to farm soy beans.

Next, grass doesn't just magically appear. It too needs nutrients.

Cow manure is one way to improve soil nutrients, but Permaculture shows us many more ways to keep the cycle flowing.

In the end, the best picture is actually that the cows grazing and the soy beans exist together in a larger system of many other products that work together in providing nutrients that the others need.

Cows, though, are ultimately unnecessary for a Permaculture style system, and we can grow food without them. Then they can just be there as our friends and participate in our agricultural systems as fertilizers, if circumstances happen that way.

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#156

Post by spraak »

aphextron wrote: post #26

What is it with first-world vegans/vegetarians wanting to eat these extremely processed imitation meat frozen foods? There is an entire tradition of vegetarian cuisine around the world from Rasta Ital, to Hindu Sattvic, Afghani, and Thai which you could learn with just a tiny bit of effort.

That's a great suggestion, and what I do as a vegan (mostly I eat beans and rice). But I believe things like this are developed in response to current cuisine, e.g. meat burgers. That people don't want to give up that taste and want a way to maintain their current desires for taste. I admit that I still enjoy e.g. a Beyond Burger occasionally for that reason.

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#157

Post by spraak »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #56

I am extremely eager to see lab grown meat more so than I am eager to see better meat substitutes become mainstream. However, being a meat eater, since the news of this product came out however many months and years it was, I have been wanting to try it. Which is more than I can say for other meat substitutes.

It's hard for me to understand the excitement for lab meat. Can you explain your interest?

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#158

Post by acomjean »

ceph_ wrote: post #43
aphextron wrote: post #26

What is it with first-world vegans/vegetarians wanting to eat these extremely processed imitation meat frozen foods? There is an entire tradition of vegetarian cuisine around the world from Rasta Ital, to Hindu Sattvic, Afghani, and Thai which you could learn with just a tiny bit of effort.

People enjoy eating certain foods. Having options that allow you to replicate a certain taste without having to kill something is desirable to people who have gone veg. There's also the aspects of food as a culture or social participation. People want to be able to participate in things like BBQs or eat out at restaurants with friends.

>without having to kill something

I think even vegans/vegetarians have to acknowledge they are killing plants to eat. I suspect the better for environment/health argument is more prevalent (why I eat little meat).

At some point somethings going to have to die to feed yourself (until we can gene edit photosynthesis into humans..). I take some consolation that I'll be feeding bacteria when I'm gone.

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#159

Post by steanne »

acomjean wrote: post #158
ceph_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People enjoy eating certain foods. Having options that allow you to replicate a certain taste without having to kill something is desirable to people who have gone veg. There's also the aspects of food as a culture or social participation. People want to be able to participate in things like BBQs or eat out at restaurants with friends.

>without having to kill something I think even vegans/vegetarians have to acknowledge they are killing plants to eat. I suspect the better for environment/health argument is more prevalent (why I eat little meat). At some point somethings going to have to die to feed yourself (until we can gene edit photosynthesis into humans..). I take some consolation that I'll be feeding bacteria when I'm gone.

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

Re: Impossible Foods has raised $75M for its plant-based burgers

#160

Post by shanev »

spraak wrote: post #154
shanev wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please enlighten me on how land gets fertilized on it's own without grazing herbivores to create a proper soil micro-biome? Sure cows need grazing land, but they don't require all the external inputs an industrial soybean farm, for instance, needs. All they require is land, sunlight, electric fences, and some water if rainfall is inadequate or the soil is in bad shape due to prior mismanagement or desertifi…

You're saying grazing is zero input but e.g. a soy bean farm is not. This whole comparison is off. A soy bean farm is a bad idea, firstly. To maintain balance, you wouldn't just want to farm soy beans. Next, grass doesn't just magically appear. It too needs nutrients. Cow manure is one way to improve soil nutrients, but Permaculture shows us many more ways to keep the cycle flowing. In the end, the best picture is ac…

Everything I'm talking about is based on Permaculture. From the Wikipedia page on Permaculture [1]:

Animals, domestic or wild are a critical component of any wild or designed sustainable ecosystem. Research indicates that without the animal’s participation and contribution, ecological integrity is diminished or impossible. Some of the activities that contribute to the system include: foraging to cycle nutrients, clear fallen fruit, weed maintenance, spreading seeds, and pest maintenance. The nutrients are cycled by animals, transformed from their less digestible form (such as grass or twigs) into more nutrient-dense manure.

Fertilizer requires manure. Without manure you need synthetic fertilizer, which breaks the natural feedback loop and no longer good Permaculture practice.

Sure grass doesn't magically appear on it's own, but it can when you rotate some ruminants around from paddock to paddock. I have a friend who has a business doing this. She drives around a truck full of sheep and revitalizes land that has been turned to desert due to overgrazing or mismanagement [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

[2]: http://brittanycolebush.com

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