Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thhere's also evidence for the contrary. If you care about any dieting at all and watch your micros and macros, you will invariably be above average in health.
Really? There's a body of evidence that a meat-containing diet is protective against heart disease, type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer, versus a plant-based diet ? I'd genuinely be very interested for those sources to be shared, please...
Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
391–400 of 947 posts
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#392I tried the impossible whopper. You literally could not tell the difference between that and a normal beef whopper. I realized a lot the attributes of these commercial food products are the additions, like sauce, and toppings that contribute to that precisely calibrated flavor.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. This seems to presume two things: 1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment. 2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math. To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is real…
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like elephants? giraffes? Hippos?
I'm not a vegetarian but I can think of lots of large herbivores.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm highly dubious of the statement that growing plants to eat them is lightly less polluting than growing plants, feeding them to cattle and then preparing the cattle to eat the meat. Cattle does not sequester CO2 like plants do and emits greenhouse gases. Also uses way more treated water.
Right, but cattle can be raised where growing plants is impossible, and they can be fed by-products of plant agriculture that is not fit for human consumption. It's really not an either-or, something that I feel is often lost in these discussions. Eating plants and meat is complementary, and has been for all of human history.
It's also becoming possible to grow plants hydroponically in a highly automated and controlled environment (warehouse/cattle shed), with up to a 98% saving in treated water usage, 60% less nutrients required but with more nutritious crops and no pesticides. This is the case for High Pressure Aeroponics, which is slightly more complex than other hydroponic methods.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. This seems to presume two things: 1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment. 2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math. To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is real…
> "On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are." This was my position for a long time until finally making the jump at the beginning of the pandemic (vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes). For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the envi…
> For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the environmental or nutritional arguments feel like side issues to avoid just tackling this issue directly.
For me, this is the weakest argument. Animals are not people, and agriculturally farmed animals only exist because of our actions. Cruelty aside, farming and eating them is hardly immoral (as it is evolved behaviour - we wouldn't be here to talk about it otherwise). The suffering of an animal is not the suffering of a human; and if suffering is our primary concern, there's plenty of human suffering that still needs dealt with before we worry about animals.
> In theory, you could draw some line at 'well humans and other more intelligent beings are different because they have dreams and a plan for their future'.
I don't have to resort to dreams and plans. They're simply _not human_ and so as someone who doesn't anthropomorphize them it's easy to simply not care whatsoever about their emotional state. It doesn't noticeably impact the quality of the meat.
I think there are a lot of oversocialized people who watched too many anthropomorphic movies and cartoons as kids. Some of them become sexually attracted to such, some of them just won't eat them anymore. Either way, it's a strange and divorced-from-reality way to go, seems to mostly have negative nutritional impact, and no difference is made in the world as less demand = cheaper meat = everyone else just gets more.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
80/20 is very typical for ground beef, although some people shop specifically for 85/15 or even 90/10. I find the 90/10 lacks flavor.
I drain the 80/20 meat after cooking it... so it is probably close to 90% meat when I'm done
Yea depends on how you use it. Ground meat cooked for a casserole, probably too much fat, but 20% fat in a burger is good.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#397This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…
The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant and the environmental impacts have been greatly exaggerated. See below: Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%. At the same time, both transitions woul…
> Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%.
ONLY? That's a pretty damn big percentage for such a small piece of the economy.
It feels a bit like saying "removal of Ford vehicles from the road would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6%" .. or whatever it'd be. Of course you can make it sound small if you compere a portion (livestock) of a portion (farming) of the national economy, to all emissions from the entire nation.
Plant alternatives would have their own emissions of course, but I think there's a more realistic path to zero emissions. There's some interesting work on reducing methane emissions from livestock themselves (additives to the feed and such), but the path is more challenging.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. This seems to presume two things: 1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment. 2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math. To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is real…
> "On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are." This was my position for a long time until finally making the jump at the beginning of the pandemic (vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes). For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the envi…
>> For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals.
The way I think of it, pigs are very intelligent, more intelligent than dogs. However, humans are more intelligent. If pigs were more intelligent, pigs would eat humans.
And that's not a figure of speech. Pig would eat us if they could. They wouldn't stop and think, gee, does this little baby human girl cry because it doesn't want to be eaten, maybe I should stop munching on its belly? They wouldn't stop to think, sheesh, this little blond baby boy with piercing blue eyes is so cuuute, how can I eat it? They'd eat us.
And they'd also eat the cows and the chicken and the sheep and the fish and everything else we eat. And they'd kill their babies to keep the cows lactating and to take their stomachs to make cheese with. And so on, and so forth.
So why should I not eat them? What kind of superior morality am I supposed to claim for myself to think I'm morally better than a pig? None. A pig would eat me, so I eat a pig.
I appreciate that's not a common line of reasoning and I'm possibly overestimating the nutritional value of humans, but in any case I don't see any problem with eating meat, given that I'm an animal and some animals eat other animals' meat.
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taco meat [EDIT: in Taco Bell's usage] is a perfect application, since its texture is already squishy and the flavor is dominated by spice. Plus, it's wrapped in a shell and mixed with lettuce and other things. Even a mediocre fake meat is enough to pass. Beyond Meat should have no trouble producing a virtually-indistinguishable taco meat.
Jack In The Box has been using textured vegetable protein instead of meat forever. Most people don't even realize it's not meat.
> Most people don't even realize it's not meat.
Except that it is indeed meat. It contains a Soy filler in addition to the meat, but it is meat.
Straight from the Jack's mouth[1]:
Taco, Regular Filling Ingredients: Beef, Chicken, Water, Textured Vegetable Protein (Soy Flour, Caramel Color), Defatted Soy Grits, Seasoning... etc
Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you missed the point -- that if you tried to replace meat with plants providing the same nutritional profile, then the impact is far less than anticipated by most calculations.
I'm highly dubious of the statement that growing plants to eat them is lightly less polluting than growing plants, feeding them to cattle and then preparing the cattle to eat the meat. Cattle does not sequester CO2 like plants do and emits greenhouse gases. Also uses way more treated water.
There is a big difference is growing plants for human consumption when compared to growing feed for an animals and then consuming the animal meat.
Basic biology says that when cattle eat feed only of portion of that feed ends up as meat.
The farming industry actually measures this using a measure called the Feed Conversion Ratio.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Beef_cat...
For example the FCR for cattle is over 4 meaning for every unit of animal mass you'll need over 4 times that mass in feed.
This basic biology means it is always be more efficient to grow vegetables for direct consumption than to grow them for animal feed.