Live data from Hacker News

Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

arstechnica.com

71–80 of 109 posts

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#71

I'm not a vegetarian, but if I was one, I would hope to have the good taste not to pretend I am eating meat when I am not. There are excellent vegetarian culinary traditions in the world. India stands out as a country with amazing regional vegetarian cuisines that celebrate their ingredients and don't pretend to be something they are not. In the United States, vegetarians eat fake meat.

I wouldn't be too upset. There are a few traditions of Buddhism that attempt to make plant derived substances approach the texture and taste of a few animal proteins[1, 2]. They do a pretty good job of it.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine#Ingredients

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#72
post #54
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but when you are talking about meat, it's usually safe to assume 'bleed' means to 'bleed blood'.

When people refer to a “bloody steak”, they aren’t implying the red liquid is actually blood.

I've lost count of how much people I've met that actually thinks it's blood. In my experience, it's the default assumption.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with trying to replace meat. Is the unknowns about why we survived as carnivores for thousands upon thousands of years and our current obsession to suddenly play god with a food supply. We don’t know what we don’t know. And impossible doesn’t know why there would be side effects. Or they do and you’ll not know. Buy grass fed organic meat and eat less of it. We already eat too much.

I think Buddhists would disagree that humanity has survived solely as carnivores for thousands of years. Plenty of other cultures have existed on solely vegetarian/vegan diets as well, throughout history. Peasants within meat-eating cultures also did not always have frequent access to meat, and thus ate primarily vegetarian, or perhaps pescatarian. The idea that humans have always eaten meat and that it’s an essentia…

What are these cultures which existed solely on vegan diets? Honest question, I searched but couldn't find the answer, there was a response on Quora which mentioned some Buddhists are vegan by default, and some Hindus and Essene Christians are vegetarian, but she "wasn't aware of any 100% vegan cultures."

I can understand vegetarian cultures surviving, since they can acquire essential nutrients through the animal products found in diary, but would be intrigued to find a vegan (plant-based only) culture. Was there perhaps one in the distant past or ?

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#74
post #71

I'm not a vegetarian, but if I was one, I would hope to have the good taste not to pretend I am eating meat when I am not. There are excellent vegetarian culinary traditions in the world. India stands out as a country with amazing regional vegetarian cuisines that celebrate their ingredients and don't pretend to be something they are not. In the United States, vegetarians eat fake meat.

I wouldn't be too upset. There are a few traditions of Buddhism that attempt to make plant derived substances approach the texture and taste of a few animal proteins[1, 2]. They do a pretty good job of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cuisine#Ingredients [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue

And they tend to do a damn good job. There is a brand called May Wah that makes incredible fake meats. I have no issues eating meat, but some times I crave May Wah nuggets.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#75

I'm not a vegetarian, but if I was one, I would hope to have the good taste not to pretend I am eating meat when I am not. There are excellent vegetarian culinary traditions in the world. India stands out as a country with amazing regional vegetarian cuisines that celebrate their ingredients and don't pretend to be something they are not. In the United States, vegetarians eat fake meat.

I'm not a vegetarian, but if I was one, I would hope to have the good taste not to pretend I am eating meat when I am not.

There's a lot to be said for food that's "true to itself", but burgers are really good, perhaps especially to people who have grown up enjoying them and like to continue doing so. That doesn't seem in bad taste to me.

India stands out as a country with amazing regional vegetarian cuisines that celebrate their ingredients and don't pretend to be something they are not. In the United States, vegetarians eat fake meat.

Pretty baseless assertion. In my experience, most of them don't eat much of it but some like it sometimes.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#76
post #30

It'll be interesting to see what effect this stuff has on people after 20 years of use. Until then, I'm not touching it. There are plenty of other tasty meat substitutes out there with more tried-and-true ingredients.

Did you miss out on this part of the article? "There are more than 10,000 chemicals added directly or indirectly to foods in the US and food makers use an estimated 1,000 without notifying the FDA. In a policy statement as recent as Monday, July 23, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that of the nearly 4,000 additives inventoried by the FDA, only about 263 had reproductive toxicology data, and developmental tox…

> Better make sure those "tried and true" substitutes don't use any of those...

This is precisely why I, for one, have recently chosen to begin eating real meat after 10+ years of veganism. Who wants to be a lab rat in some food scientist's experiment? How many of the Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) substances will turn out to be anything but?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in his books including _Antifragile_ how he doesn't eat any fruit that doesn't have an ancient Greek or Hebrew name, and doesn't drink any liquid that hasn't been in existence for 1,000+ years. Those which pass through this great filter have survived the test of time.

Humans have eaten bovines before history, cattle being domesticated around 8000 BCE but even earlier, about four million years ago Australopithecus, an ancient predecessor to genus Homo, ate meat. Their contemporaries, Hominin, did not and were outcompeted by the meat-eating Australopithecus (Scientific American: Early Meat-Eating Human Ancestors Thrived While Vegetarian Hominin Died Out, 2012).

Eating meat, and beef especially, is in our DNA. Soy hemoglobin "leghemoglobin" is not. I know which one I'll choose.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Buddhists would disagree that humanity has survived solely as carnivores for thousands of years. Plenty of other cultures have existed on solely vegetarian/vegan diets as well, throughout history. Peasants within meat-eating cultures also did not always have frequent access to meat, and thus ate primarily vegetarian, or perhaps pescatarian. The idea that humans have always eaten meat and that it’s an essentia…

What are these cultures which existed solely on vegan diets? Honest question, I searched but couldn't find the answer, there was a response on Quora which mentioned some Buddhists are vegan by default, and some Hindus and Essene Christians are vegetarian, but she "wasn't aware of any 100% vegan cultures." I can understand vegetarian cultures surviving, since they can acquire essential nutrients through the animal pro…

I’m not an expert in the subject, but I don’t think we know. “Vegan” didn’t exist as a term until a few decades ago. Many Buddhist monks lived entirely vegan lifestyles, or so it is believed, but veganism doesn’t have a strict definition among vegans today. I probably should’ve just used the term “vegetarian”, but then I thought about the monks.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#78
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal isn't just to have a "veggie burger bleed", it's to replicate the experience of eating meat. Perhaps they have failed so far (according to your taste test), but the goal is valid. If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable from meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a massive victory for the environment (meat production is CO2-intensive), for the cause of bringing decen…

> If someone can find a way to make a product near-indistinguishable from meat without raising and killing animals, it would be a massive victory for the environment (meat production is CO2-intensive), for the cause of bringing decent food to poor people, and for reducing animal suffering. I'm all for reducing animal suffering (especially from CAFOs) but replacing meat with plants isn't necessarily a victory for the…

What do you think the animals are being fed exactly...?

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with trying to replace meat. Is the unknowns about why we survived as carnivores for thousands upon thousands of years and our current obsession to suddenly play god with a food supply. We don’t know what we don’t know. And impossible doesn’t know why there would be side effects. Or they do and you’ll not know. Buy grass fed organic meat and eat less of it. We already eat too much.

The one sure thing about humans in terms of diet is opportunistic omnivorousness. We were never herbivore or carnivores, and the fact that we would gladly chew leaves, eat fruit in season, and suck the marrow from a bone we found all contributed to our lasting success. We’re definitely not, and have never been dietary specialists. Eat meat or don’t (I do), but don’t kid yourself about some historical or dietary imper…

Thank you. It's obvious in several ways that we've evolved to be omnivorous. We have pronounced molars. We have relatively long digestive tracts. We can synthesize basic nutrients from plant diet precursors that are common in meat diets.

Re: Impossible Burgers’ key, bloody ingredient gets long awaited nod from FDA

#80
post #21
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for that purpose it's better to work on lab-grown meat. Making veggies taste like meat seems misguided to me. Either eat real veggies or eat real meat.

What about the people who gave up meat for health reasons? There is a market for this, just because you aren't in the target market doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Processed foods generally are not healthy for you. Marketing is making this product appear healthy. There is a large market for processed foods and this product seems novel and has a decent taste so I could understand it's popularity.
Post reply on HN