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Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

theverge.com

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Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#411

Post by mynameisvlad »

wolco wrote: post #407
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, from the very first paragraph of the article you linked to: "It's basically like how your grandma would do it—except they use an infernal magic machine called a 'pressure frier.'" Thanks! I feel a lot better about KFC chicken now!

And the extra fat/salt/antibiotics.. and 26 questionable substances out of 29 for the spices. Just like grandma.

Several things to unpack here:

- Unless you are in the SLT of KFC, you have absolutely no way to know what's in their spice blend. It is one of the most closely guarded recipes in the world.

- There's famously 11 spices in the original recipe. So not only could you not possibly know what's in it (and therefore what's questionable), but you didn't even get the number of ingredients right to criticize.

- Based on all the various copycat recipes out there, I highly doubt that 10 out of the 11 ingredients (same proportion that you used, just adjusted for accuracy) are questionable. You know, unless "salt", "flour", "thyme", "garlic salt", etc. are all questionable. There's only so much that can go in a spice blend after all.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#412

Post by jasonvorhe »

m0zg wrote: post #115

I've tried Beyond Meat sausages a couple of weeks ago. They suck compared to the real thing and cost twice as much. I don't know what all the hoopla is about. They're edible, but that's about the highest compliment I can offer at this time. Back to the drawing board, BM.

I always hated Curry Wurst but Beyond Meat sausages are awesome.

Tastes are different. Surprise surprise.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#413

Post by jasonvorhe »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #248
saagarjha wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vegans will never be able to get the protein they need to survive There are millions of vegans around the world who can "survive" without meat: they just get their protein from other places.

They're dependent on technological intervention to get the required supplements. It isn't a natural way for humans to persist.

So do sick people.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#414

Post by michaelmrose »

devinhelton wrote: post #387
namdnay wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. o_O > how fashionable vegetarianism has become I don’t think it’s a question of fashion. However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. Whether it’s in 50 or 500 years’ time, one day our descendants will look back at us and wonder: “they ate corpses?!”

However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. I disagree entirely, but there is no need to relitigate this debate here. If by any chance you have never read the pro-meat argument, the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is a pretty good primer.

I realize that sourcing wikipedia is kind of lazy but I lack the time to read entire books full of every sort of misinformation that happens to be going around.

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

From the article:

---------------------------------------------------------

For the earth to survive, Keith thinks, the human population needs to be reduced by more than 90 percent. She also argues that the human food-supply needs to come mainly from hunting and small-scale animal husbandry.[4]

Criticism:

Sami Grover, referencing "Jason V", says Keith's book is filled with "factual errors and fallacious thinking". Furthermore, Jason V writes that Keith fallaciously uses her ex-vegan status in an attempt to depict herself as an authority on the subject.[11]

Patrick Nicholson writes that the book misinterprets scientific articles, cherry-picks facts, uses strawman arguments and relies heavily on anecdotes and faulty generalisations.[5] Ian Sinclair writes that Keith's arguments are "full of lazy thinking, willfully ignorant logic and glaring omissions".[12]

---------------------------------------------------------

My thoughts:

I think its meaningful or even sane to suggest that virtually everyone stops having babies or dies and all the survivors go play hunter gatherers in the woods.

I think our present trajectory is obviously unsustainable but that doesn't make any alternative suggestion reasonable.

Our future is the stars or extinction. In between we have to find a sustainable reasonable way to live civilized lives. This probably isn't horrifically complicated we don't have to reduce our population by 90% we just have to not keep increasing it and make do with simpler and less.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#415

Post by _bxg1 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #27
impalallama wrote: post #11

I tried a few different varieties of chick'n nuggets, 90% of the taste is just breading and whatever the sauce so its really not a difficult as you'd imagine to have a substitute

Exactly. We buy meatless ones from the grocery store to eat at home and it's really not all that different when the "real thing" has been shaped from a paste.

Lol at whoever felt the need to downvote a personal anecdote

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#416

Post by whenchamenia »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #338
xvector wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the environmental impact is nil, I'm fine with the reduction in suffering imposed on tens of billions of animals a year. The scale of suffering created by the meat industry is unfathomable so I think this is a step in the right direction regardless.

Here's just one thing our ag industry does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_u0jxi_v-w (male chick maceration). Nice video to enjoy with your factory farmed eggs.

Your local want ads will have home raised eggs at below store prices in most areas. I suggest supporting your local farmers and ranchers as the best offset against factory farms.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#417

Post by dikdikvandik »

Wonder how storing and transporting artificial meat compares to the real thing.

Unrelated - anyone wanna invest in my new startup? We're gonna cross DNA from a spider with a chicken to produce 8 legged chickens to disrupt the chicken market. Hopefully we don't get spiders with wings.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#418

Post by shados »

mackey wrote: post #333
shados wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impossible whooper was inevitable and brilliant. As you mentioned, the meats served were often already low quality, with fillers, and it was arguable if it was even meat. Some fast food chains served "100% beef", but it didn't taste very different from the other crap. So the bar is low. Replacing questionable meat with hype pseudo-meat is a straight win all around. I'm as carnivore as they come, but if I have to…

I agree with others, get with the times. I am pretty sure all the major national fast food burgers are 100% beef, no fillers, no preservatives. I don't eat a ton of fast food anymore, and when I do its usually McDonalds, but I have always enjoyed the Whopper. I had one a few months ago at an airport and tried the Impossible Whopper last week. It's close, but the beef version is still better in my opinion.

Fair enough, I shouldn't have put the "with filler" part. I still stand by the "low quality" (or at least very mediocre flavor) bit though, which still makes the point stand.

When I have a whooper most of the taste is the sauce/bun/toppings with the patty only being responsible for a small portion of the taste, which makes it perfect for a substitute. I've had impossible whoopers a few time, and while eating the whole thing, it's basically the exact same taste. If I eat a piece of the patty with nothing else then there's a noticeable difference though.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#419

Post by _bxg1 »

whatshisface wrote: post #269
_bxg1 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Livestock contributes around 15% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. Produce fundamentally has a smaller impact, in part due to its relative simplicity. I don't know how much processing is required for these products after-the-fact, but I know that at least one of the recent pivotal innovations was in genetic engineering, not processing.

Veggie burgers don't grow on trees - they are highly advanced industrial end products with million-mile supply chains. I don't get why people can't just eat vegetables if they want to be vegetarians. Instead of being unhealthy from eating too many grams of well-understood macronutrients (where dieting is easy, just eat less), we're all going to be unhealthy from eating to many micrograms of beef simulating molecules.

I've never heard of a veggie burger with chemical flavoring. Most of them aren't intended to simulate beef; they're a combination of various savory, protein-rich plants and some seasoning. I'm not a vegetarian, but sometimes I enjoy a bean patty anyway.

As for this new wave that is intended to simulate real meat, the flavor is completely natural, just found in an unusual source outside of actual meat:

> Impossible Foods' scientists discovered that heme is a key factor in how meat behaves.[15] Heme is the molecule that gives blood its red color and helps carry oxygen in living organisms.[16] Heme is abundant in animal muscle tissue and is also found naturally in all living organisms.[17] Plants, particularly nitrogen-fixing plants and legumes, also contain heme.[18] The plant-based heme molecule is identical to the heme molecule found in meat.[19][20]

> To produce heme protein from non-animal sources, Impossible Foods selected the leghemoglobin molecule found naturally in the roots of soy plants.[21] To make it in large quantities, the company's scientists genetically engineered a yeast and used a fermentation process very similar to the brewing process used to make some types of beer.

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

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#420

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wil421 wrote: post #133

Why do American (and presumably westerners) vegetarians want to replace meat? I hated vegan and vegetarian food for song long until I ate meat free Indian food. It was always the meat replacements like veggie patties and tofurkey type products that turned me away. Indian food doesn’t have some weird mystery replacement I find on almost every vegan or veggie dish. I had a conversation with and Indian colleague who liv…

Chinese vegetarian food in China is also big on meat replacement, usually via some kind of tofu magic. I’m also not a fan.
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