541–550 of 648 posts
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I wonder, aren’t there some countries where this isn’t the case? We might look at them to see how diet relates to agriculture subsidies.
India
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Ethics aside, I think the parent comment was referring to weird additives and oils in things like the Impossible Burger. That being said, I think it's only fair to compare that to all the antibiotics, hormones, and fertilizers that your average low-grade ground beef has been exposed to or fed.
> weird additives and oils in things like the Impossible Burger. Here's the ingredients list for the impossible burger: Water, textured wheat protein, coconut oil, potato protein, natural flavors, 2% or less of leghemoglobin (soy), yeast extract, salt, konjac gum, xanthan gum, soy protein isolate, vitamin E, vitamin C, thiamine (vitamin B1), zinc, niacin, vitamin B6, riboflavin (vitamin B2), and vitamin B12. The only…
"textured wheat protein" - no idea what it, but it sounds disgusting, and very highly processed. I'd presume it also contains gluten?
"potato protein" - again, it sounds like something highly processed.
"natural flavors" - it doesn't specify exactly what they are, so I don't even know what I'm eating - I don't like it.
"leghemoglobin" - you mentioned what this is, but otherwise it sounds like a lab-produced chemical.
"yeast extract" - makes me think of marmite, which is one of the most revolting substances on earth! Aside from that, I think of the smell of yeast; I... don't think I want to eat that.
"konjac gum" - never heard of it.
"xanthan gum" - I think it's some kind of thickening agent?
"soy protein isolate" - no idea what this is. The wheat and potato proteins don't have "isolate" in their names, so I assume this is even more highly processed. For some reason it makes me think of processes like "hydrogenation" - ways we mess around with foods to make them as cheap as possible, sometimes with negative health consequences.
"vitamin E..." - makes me think the raw ingredients on their own are so unhealthy that they had to add a few crushed multivitamins.
Overall: it sounds highly processed and devoid of nutrition. blech!
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I'm not sure that tracks. Impossible burger: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% Or Less Of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), Soy Protein Isolate, Vitamins and Minerals (Zinc Gluconate, Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitam…
For the vast majority of those ingredients, the answer sure looks like "yes." A few are literally standard home cooking ingredients, and nearly all the rest (dextrose, yeast extract, vitamin mixes, etc.) are pretty common in any processed food, which -- let's be honest here -- a lot of us buy pretty regularly. I'm not sure there's anything there that's unique to the Impossible Burger other than the "soy leghemoglobin…
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As much as I would love to see subsidies ended on animal products, it couldn’t happen overnight without huge backlash. Lowering the subsidies over time and eliminating the power that the animal agriculture industry has over politics would do a lot to increase the number of plant-based eaters.
Depends on how you do it. There are proposals for carbon tax schemes that go like "we'll pay back all the income from the carbon tax to all citizen directly". You can imagine the same for methane. Pretty sure such a proposal would be popular.
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> I can buy organic, grass-fed, no-GMO, sustainably pasture-raised beef. No, actually you probably can't [1]: > Is there such a thing as a climatically-guilt-free steak? Are grazing livestock climate villains or climate saviours? A new report by an international research collaboration led by the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), part of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, provides an authoritative…
Any food transported to your plate by a car has an environmental cost. As does modern life in general. I believe we will eventually solve the problem (via carbon-capture & sustainable energy production) but I see that mostly orthogonal to eating meat.
>Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
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> I think it pushes away those who are on the cusp of moving towards plant-base foods. I think you are completely wrong. People eat meat because they like the taste and the texture, but at the same time everyone knows that meat is produced by killing animals, and that it's much less sustainable than vegetarian food. If you want to get people to switch to meat alternatives, you have to keep everything that's great abo…
Well you could also just promote delicious vegetarian dishes. There are entire cultures that mostly eat vegetarian. Fake meat is such a silly concept.
Despite being a meat eater at home, any time I'm in India, I don't eat meat - none at all, for up to 4 weeks at a time. And I don't miss it one bit! Fact is that India veg food is much more common, but also IMO much more tasty.
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It's a reasonable argument that government subsidies for farmers reduce prices for the consumer, but I don't think it's necessarily a correct assumption. Subsidies help the local farmers to compete with farmers in low cost countries. Transportation costs are usually insignificant. So without subsidies the consumer might pay the same price, but the store just ends up sourcing the product from a different country. Howe…
You could also just have large import tariffs on food. I’m honestly suprised the us doesn’t just have a 25%+ import tariff. Would quickly cause more domestic manufacturing. Like why do we even import garlic from China. We have plenty of domestic ability to produce.
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While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given? Now I'm not saying that subsidising farmers to produce huge crops of the same 3 crops is the best way of continuing to ensure no one goes hungry, it self evidently doesn't work given the current status quo. However, to talk about making huge changes to these systems…
> While you guys throw tariffs on food here and cut subsidies are any of you aware that for some 10% of American's having food on the table is not a given? So let's funnel that 25% import tarif or money we save from not subsidizing the meat industry into the federal food stamps program.
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I don’t think parent was ever saying that tofu was (nor should) be similar to meat in taste nor texture. That is not the point. You can still prepare and spice tofu just like you would do with meat, and get a complete meal that replaces meat with something else that adds to the quality of the meal just like meat would, regardless of whether the substitute replicates the texture or taste at all.
That is much closer to my standpoint then. I think it’s silly to imitate meat, when there are plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes. For example tofu dishes.
I admit I love meat but I am increasingly trying out plant based alternatives and I must say that I am increasingly impressed by what I taste. Availability is a problem for me. Most stores don’t have all these new products.
It is also one of the downsides and benefits of living inside the Norwegian agricultural bubble. We rely a lot on our own products which is limits variation given how small the Norwegian market is. On the positive side it means better animal welfare and meat safety. When you don’t directly compete with foreign meat producers government is not pressured to lower standards to be competitive.