Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#501

Post by screye » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #94

screye wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being born in India, I've had the privilege to eat vegetarian meals that can rival even the best meat based meal. While I welcome 'impossible' meat replacements, it is funny that the meat reduction movement is looking at such impractical and immature products instead of simpler solutions such as bringing veg friendly cuisines to the fore. I am opposed to advocating for cold-turkey veganism though. Milk products and e…

Being of Indian descent, I might be biased. But Indian cuisine is the only cuisine I'm aware of where being vegetarian isn't a compromise in the creativity, quality, and sheer flavors available to you. For other cuisines, where centuries of culinary creativity mostly went towards making meat, this is the only viable approach to weaning us off growing animals for meaty foods.

Thai cuisine (my favorite cuisine, even above Indian) can do without meat. Their curries (green,red) and flat noodle dishes (pad ki mow, pad see ew) work well with protein substitutes. Though, a certain richness will be lacking.

Vietnamese cuisine also kind of works if you know how to make a good veg stock. My vegan fried basically lives out of a local Vietnamese place.

Chinese stir fries can be made any way you like. Again, you will need to be a good cook to get add sufficient richness and umami to a veg only stir fry, but with a good base of chinese spices, the sky is the limit.

You may see a trend here. Any cuisine that relies on spices to impart flavor to the dish, can be easily ported over to a veg only format. Western dishes depend on leveraging the innate flavors in the ingredients, and veggies don't fare quite as well in that regard.

honorary mention: (cuisines that taste great veg, but do get a huuuge boost when meat is added) * Middle eastern falafel-hummus-salad based cuisine (these are no normal salads. Huge variety in salads here) * Mexican ( treat it like a Subway with better ingredients. Most veg Indians that I know of, live off of Subways anyways. We are hard wired to like Rajma Chawal...so mexican feels like home)

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#502

Post by screye » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #138

screye wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being born in India, I've had the privilege to eat vegetarian meals that can rival even the best meat based meal. While I welcome 'impossible' meat replacements, it is funny that the meat reduction movement is looking at such impractical and immature products instead of simpler solutions such as bringing veg friendly cuisines to the fore. I am opposed to advocating for cold-turkey veganism though. Milk products and e…

The one big problem for me is that nearly every "veggie" dish I've ever known would be IMPROVED with meat in my very personal opinion. Is there any meal/food that tastes worse with a dead animal added?

I live in a primarily meat eating household, with a couple of veg days every month. (and my mom makes some Michelin star tier non-veg...strong bias applies)

Everyone in the house looks forward to the veg day, because we know it will be special. The techniques needed to cook good vegetarian food are fundamentally different, in a way that meat can't take advantage of it.

You would never want to eat a parmesan beef or a chicken pastrami. It just won't work. Similarly some dishes only work as veg dishes.

There are many indian veg dishes (daal-baati-churma, Undio, garlic-tomato sabji, misal, usal, chat) which simply do not have any non-veg equivalent. And all of these are main courses with the vegetable being the highlight.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#503

Post by screye » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #202

screye wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being born in India, I've had the privilege to eat vegetarian meals that can rival even the best meat based meal. While I welcome 'impossible' meat replacements, it is funny that the meat reduction movement is looking at such impractical and immature products instead of simpler solutions such as bringing veg friendly cuisines to the fore. I am opposed to advocating for cold-turkey veganism though. Milk products and e…

> vegetarian meals that can rival even the best meat based meal I like a few Indian dishes, so I can appreciate what can be done in the vegetarian space. Even so, I'd find it difficult to believe that any of them could match a properly cooked smoked BBQ beef brisket in flavor or texture. Though I'm sure more than a few would make good side dishes, or work well with the brisket as an ingredient.

Just to make a point, there are many Indian dishes that are cooked very sloppily out of the state they are found in. (yes, sloppy even in other states in India, and especially sloppy in the US) Just as you would need to be in Texas-NC-SC to get the best good BBQ.

The best Indian food I've had in the US is always when a friend's mom is visiting.

Trying an Indian dish in the region it hails from, completely changes your perception of dish. If you are ever in Delhi, do try their Mughlai cusine. It is the Indian equivalent of meat heaven.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#504

Post by screye » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

jtuente wrote: post #293

danso wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm aware of that. But this is the full context of the comment: > I am opposed to advocating for cold-turkey veganism though. Milk products and eggs are great meat substitutes, and the lack of both makes entire cuisines inaccessible. The "immediately change" connotation of "cold-turkey" doesn't make much sense here. The commenter seems to imply that eliminating entire cuisines -- i.e. having "entire cuisines ina…

> Which is why I find it weird that he thinks it's weird why people who weren't born on vegetarian cuisines can't just switch to them, when introduced. I didn't read it like this at all. He's arguing to bring more vegetarian cuisines to the forefront to raise awareness of the possibilities that exist. His critique was against lauding the "impossible" as the solution to getting everyone on veganism immediately.

That is what I meant.

I applaud efforts such as the impossible burger. But maybe, we should have a gander at the 'very much possible' first.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#505

Post by dabos999 » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

arijun wrote: post #491

dabos999 wrote: post #490

There's no science behind meat affects the environment, fakenews as always, what else can you expect from journalists. Also a meat diet is the healthiest diet know to man. Too bad so many people are uninformed. For example a meat only diet is the natural cure for type 2 diabetes. www.justmeat.co Plants are medicine, not food.

What? What about cows releasing methane, 10x more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide? Or the clear cutting of the amazon to make space for pastureland?

All bs fed to you by journos and corporations, cow produced methane level has been stable for the past 20 years for example.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#506

Post by detaro » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

dabos999 wrote: post #505

arijun wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? What about cows releasing methane, 10x more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide? Or the clear cutting of the amazon to make space for pastureland?

All bs fed to you by journos and corporations, cow produced methane level has been stable for the past 20 years for example.

> cow produced methane level has been stable for the past 20 years for example.

"The same amount of bad stuff has been produced for the last 20 years" isn't an argument for why less bad stuff wouldn't be good.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#507

Post by i_cant_speel » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #6

That's really cool. Although I wish there were more vegan food that didn't try to replicate non-vegan textures and flavors. Imitation can only be playing catch-up. The best vegan and vegetarian food does its own thing.

I eat meat but my girlfriend is vegetarian, so I end up eating a lot of vegetarian meals. For some reason, the vast majority of fake meats turn me off. To me, it feels like I am eating spoiled meat. I much prefer vegetarian meals that don't attempt to seem like the real thing.

But if this leads to less total meat consumption for the population, I'm all for it.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#508

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #462

logfromblammo wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would advise against telling someone who they are or why they feel a particular way, without at least some minimal level of acquaintance. Meat comes from the corpses of animals slaughtered on our behalf. Selfishness does not come from eating it, or from insufficiently valuing the environmental impact of it, or from getting annoyed with people that have made it a cornerstone of their personal religion. I don't feel…

> The person making the claim has no specific interest in me or my prior claims, but is using me as a prop to preach to the more accessible listeners in the audience, and to their own choir. They are treating me exactly as I treat a piece of meat--a thing to be used to advance their own ends, rather than something of inherent value. I doubt you'd see anyone arguing with you for any reason other than it benefitting th…

And that would be fine. That's a perfectly reasonable argument to make.

I'd make the counter-argument that you are optimizing without profiling first, and the environmental benefit yielded from convincing me to live slightly greener is insignificant compared to spending the same amount of breath on petitioning and lobbying for environmental legislation, but it's your own time you're spending. But even then, I won't back your political effort unless it includes pollution standards for container ships, research money for aneutronic fusion, research money for efficiently storing and returning energy from inconstant sources such as wind and solar, negotiation rules for including environmental considerations in international trade agreements, externality taxes on proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, and a laundry list of other points that I feel would each be more effective than trying to push an omnivorous species towards more vegetarian by word or by force.

If a company meets the criteria from my original post, it's an immediate victory, without any arguments at all. The price of beef becomes anchored by the cost of its closest cheaper alternative, and that price determines the price of livestock, and that price determines the size of herds. The argument from the pocketbook is superior to the one from hot air or hot lead.

...Some people will argue, just because someone is wrong on the Internet.

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#509

Post by kup0 » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #473

saagarjha wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes... haven't you ever eaten food and liked/disliked the texture/taste based on what you expected? Yes, but that doesn't "trick" me into changing the nutritional value of the food.

The "trick" is occurring when the impossible burger is indistinguishable to your senses from a real burger. You are not changing anything about the nutritional value, but your body will release leptin, insulin, salivia, etc as if it did have the nutritional value of a burger. This is bound to lead to some kind of problem, the only question is how big. Take it to the extreme of something that is totally undigestible c…

Are leptin, insulin, etc released because of what the brain "thinks" you are eating, or are they released as a response to what actually goes into your body?

Aspartame tastes sweet and one could easily imagine the brain "thinking" it is sugar- and yet aspartame consumption does not produce an insulin response.

How did you arrive at a conclusion that this "tricking" is actually happening, when it seems there are proven cases where it does not?

Re: Meat-free 'Impossible Burger 2.0' tastes even closer to the real deal

#510

Post by devmunchies » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

scoot wrote: post #439

xfitm3 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ground beef considered processed meat?

No it isn't [1]. But both processed meat and excessive consumption red meats have been linked to cancer in some studies [2]. This has also been refuted. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processed_meat [2] https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/red_meat [3] http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/meat-and-cancer/ Google "meat cancer" for alternative sources.

you're 3rd link comes from a person who is so anti-plants its laughable. Almost all of her posts are pro-meat. It seems her livelihood now depends on it.

https://twitter.com/GeorgiaEdeMD/status/1011204721598660608