Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

css.umich.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 794 posts

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#641

Post by user-the-name »

tsimionescu wrote: post #531
ownagefool wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the original argument is a good one, but lets try another. If we had fully lab grown meat that was identical to the real thing. How many of us would convert? In theory, we all would. In reality, we still covet mined diamonds, so we'll probably still irrationaly claim there's a difference long after there really is.

> If we had fully lab grown meat that was identical to the real thing. How many of us would convert? In theory, we all would. Why would we all, even in theory? If we could farm animals humanely, grazing them in areas where crops anyway can't be planted, letting them range, giving them a good life where they don't fear predators, don't freeze to death in winter or die of hyperthermia in the summer etc., and then kill…

Would you actually get meat of a quality good enough that people would want it if you did that?

Currently, most meat-producing animals are overfed and killed young. Would an animal that gets fed a healthy diet and killed once it's had a long and fulfilling life actually produce meat people would want?

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#642

Post by MayeulC »

bronzeage wrote: post #616

Most estimates of greenhouse gas emissions are misleading. Cows might emit methane and co2, but that carbon came from their food, and that carbon in their food was captured from the air, so it's actually a cycle without net increase in carbon in the air. That's unlike fossil fuels, which bring carbon from the ground into the air and actually increase the carbon in the air in the process. The only real net emissions i…

That's true, and I hadn't considered that angle too much.

However, methane's greenhouse effect is 25 times more potent[1] than the one of CO2, so converting carbon to methane is worse than just burning it.

And lastly, farming meat is not neutral either: at the very least, that's land you're not going to use as forest (carbon sink). And then there's the other net emissions.

I think the IPCC is doing a very thorough job at getting accurate estimations. They have many lobbies to go against, which will carefully examine discrepancies on their reports. Like wikipedia, having persons of different opinions and interest cooperate on a report, the report comes out as generally more objective and accurate, as that's the only compromise acceptable by both parties.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-ca...

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#643

Post by fredophile »

gwd wrote: post #444
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unless worldwide (and particularly US) total meat and dairy consumption drops precipitously.

Right, but "Let's not eat any animals at all ever" is a different target than "Let's raise and kill animals in a way that's ecologically sustainable and humane". I'd argue that working towards #1 is actively working against #2. The other factor that I don't quite get about think-of-the-animals vegans is this: What exactly do you think is going to happen to all those cows and chickens if the entire world becomes veget…

I don't think vegans are going to convince the rest of us to give up eating meat overnight. At most there would be a gradual shift to vegan ism over a period of years. If that happened you'd see a similar gradual drop in meat production to match falling demand.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#644

Post by twhizzle »

dotsam wrote: post #405
doodirock wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um... Now you sound like the one who is ignorant. Not everyone thinks killing an animal for food is some terrible blight on the world. I have zero issues with it and no amount of "but they're living things and so cute" is going to change that fact. It's exactly this type of nonsense that gets people to turn away from meat like products. We don't need a lecture about sad little animals every time we order a delicious…

I think it is useful to distinguish between 'killing an animal for food' and 'rearing billions of animals each year in factories in conditions in which they suffer, and subsequently killing them for food'. Factory farmed animals does look like a terrible blight on the world to me - what makes you think it isn't?

It doesn’t bother me a bit.

I understand some people get real emotional about this type of thing, but I truly do not care.

I’d just prefer we start gene editing to create brainless cows so people can find something else to get all uppity about.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#645

Post by ErikVandeWater »

dguaraglia wrote: post #165
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying a little silly, given that if people had decided to stop eating cows 20 years ago, the cow I ate a part of today would never have gotten to exist in the first place. An argument that cows are abused and are better off never existing would be a reasonable one.

The cow that you ate today most likely lived its whole life in a cage no much bigger than its body, inside a huge facility reeking of feces and death and ate an atrocious diet, only to be killed at the perfectly calculated time to maximize profit. I'm a meat eater. Heck, I hunt (and eat what I hunt) and even I can tell you that your argument is ridiculous.

You obviously didn't read what I wrote.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#646

Post by [deleted] »

hourislate wrote: post #216
anthony_romeo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been starting to look for alternatives TBH. I’m really starting to get ‘Reddit 2015’ vibes from the type of knee jerk low quality cynical uninformed comments I’ve been seeing float to the top recently somewhat more frequently than usual. Not jumping ship yet, but I always like to be ahead of the game a bit.

Have you tried /g yet?

[deleted]

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#647

Post by knuthsat »

lambdaba wrote: post #639
knuthsat wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyanide in apple seeds is toxic in proper amounts, should I avoid consuming apple seeds, or apples completely? Toxicity of certain compounds in meat or other foods has nothing to do with the food itself being healthy or unhealthy. Similarly how antioxidant, vitamin or macronutrient content has nothing to do with that particular food being healthy or unhealthy. Promoting the idea that a particular food or ingredient i…

Here's a riddle for you: if seed oils were not toxic, why are mice given seed oils as low as 4-5% of calories in order to cause cancer in the presence of other carcinogens? They don't get cancer with the carcinogens alone, they have to add the seed oils to trigger the cancers.

There are similar studies on meat/Neu5Gc being combined with fibre to reduce the toxicity - more carcinogens present the less fibre there is.

There are similar studies on casein/whey.

These studies do not make meat, milk, cheese or seed oils inherently unhealthy or show that you can't have them as a part of a healthy diet.

edit: doing a quick Google Scholar search I can find a bunch of studies that show positive outcomes after regular consumption of flaxseed (rich in omega 3s) or pumpkin seed (rich in omega 6) oils. These studies do not make these oils healthier.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#648

Post by mjstone »

jb_gericke wrote: post #345
atweiden wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right? Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you, and would generally never harm you unless provoked. Breeding intelligent lifeforms in a bespoke way to murder them for cash — whatever the reason or creature involved — is diabolically evil. If you do this for…

I've been feeling more conflicted about consuming meat lately, but it's blanket assertions like this that trigger my inner libertarian hard, and I come out swinging. There is considerable evidence suggesting meat consumption contributed significantly to our cerebral expansion ( https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701477?mob... ). Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can…

Alternatively it has been suggested that harnessing fire to cook our food was the breakthrough that allowed that cerebral expansion. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cooking-up-bigger...

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#649

Post by JeremyNT »

sweetheart wrote: post #36

While it is not my experience at all, I understand that some folks have certain negative opinions of Beyond Burgers, and other fake meat/imitation burgers: - The texture is off - Maybe they cook strangely - Potentially less taste But the most important thing about them, and the reason I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. This is not an argument that fairs well…

A funny anecdote: my wife and I have removed most meat (apart from occasional fish) from our diets for a variety of reasons (health concerns, sustainability, and animal cruelty).

Do you know which concern resonates most with my 10 year old daughter? Absolutely none of them. She is aware of the issues, and appears to be a conscientious person in the abstract, but when confronted with the option of eating an animal in the moment she simply doesn't care at all.

Are adults more empathetic? Maybe. But fundamentally I think that by the time something makes it to your plate, it's simply too far removed from where it came from for any of these considerations to resonate with most people.

We've considered trying to show her Okja [0] to see if it has any effect on her perspective. I know it was at least partially instrumental in causing me to reconsider factory farming.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okja

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#650

Post by dotsam »

twhizzle wrote: post #644
dotsam wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is useful to distinguish between 'killing an animal for food' and 'rearing billions of animals each year in factories in conditions in which they suffer, and subsequently killing them for food'. Factory farmed animals does look like a terrible blight on the world to me - what makes you think it isn't?

It doesn’t bother me a bit. I understand some people get real emotional about this type of thing, but I truly do not care. I’d just prefer we start gene editing to create brainless cows so people can find something else to get all uppity about.

I like the idea of gene editing to remove brain stems, although that still leaves us with the input/output issues (feed, methane etc), which perhaps we can also engineer away.

If animal suffering doesn't bother you, does human suffering?

Post reply on HN