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Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

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11–20 of 102 posts

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#11
post #5

These fake meat products shouldn't be much healthier than pink slime burgers made of ground beef and fat. Most burgers are made of 20 to 30% fat trimmings anyway, and the rest is ground beef. All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil. The backlash against these fake meat products will come slowly but surely, these are not heath foods and should only be…

> All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil.

I don't buy this. Omega 3 is the obvious counter example, but I don't even believe that olive oil is outright bad for you.

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#12
post #7

"unnatural ingredients". What does it mean? Are "natural" ingredients better a priori? Is a molecule that is produced by a living organism better than the very same molecule synthesized in a lab? No, there is no scientific proof of that; that is just marketing. "their most controversial ingredient is Soy Leghemoglobin. To make this ingredient, Impossible genetically engineers a yeast bacterium to produce a protein".…

Unprocessed foods or food with minimal processing are healthier. Unprocessed meaning: nothing good was removed and nothing bad was added.

The act of processing removes nutrients from the food and adds preservatives and other chemicals, it modifies a lot the chemical composition of the food.

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#13
post #7

"unnatural ingredients". What does it mean? Are "natural" ingredients better a priori? Is a molecule that is produced by a living organism better than the very same molecule synthesized in a lab? No, there is no scientific proof of that; that is just marketing. "their most controversial ingredient is Soy Leghemoglobin. To make this ingredient, Impossible genetically engineers a yeast bacterium to produce a protein".…

He has several a-prioris built into his argument, the most important hidden one is: - Meat is inherently superior because we keep eating it (nevermind that we keep eating lentils and peas just fine for thousands of years) - That your gut somehow cannot be introduced new things to it because the science is not clear on the long-term effects (regardless of how clear science are on the long term effects of processed red meat) - Also, naturalistic fallacy, like hamburgers were natural entities that grow in gardens, and you just pluck them from the trees, and its oh-so-natural

+1: If he is so worried about canola oil, just check what quality of oil burger king is using for frying his meat.

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#14
post #5

These fake meat products shouldn't be much healthier than pink slime burgers made of ground beef and fat. Most burgers are made of 20 to 30% fat trimmings anyway, and the rest is ground beef. All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil. The backlash against these fake meat products will come slowly but surely, these are not heath foods and should only be…

> All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil. I don't buy this. Omega 3 is the obvious counter example, but I don't even believe that olive oil is outright bad for you.

You should not buy this, olive oils are one of the healthiest sources of fat on this earth. Plenty of studies confirm it.

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#15
post #5

These fake meat products shouldn't be much healthier than pink slime burgers made of ground beef and fat. Most burgers are made of 20 to 30% fat trimmings anyway, and the rest is ground beef. All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil. The backlash against these fake meat products will come slowly but surely, these are not heath foods and should only be…

Why are oils not good for us?

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#16
A lot of fear mongering there. His argument boils down to:

1. Beyond burger has canola oil in it, and canola oil is responsible for diabetes, dementia, depression, anxiety, aggression, and kills kittens. Okay, I made the last one up, but he did claim the other ones. And they're all nonsense, except for the bit where he mentions canola oil has an unhealthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, which it does, but he conveniently forgets to mention that it's one of the healthiest vegetable oils by that metric. (He incorrectly slams "seed oils" as being especially bad, but most non-seed oils at worse, and one of the only oils which is better - flax seed oil - is also a "seed oil".)

2. Impossible Burger uses engineered bacteria to produce soy leghemoglobin, and even though that's perfectly healthy, engineered bacteria are kinda weird, and uh, something something Nassim Teleb, don't put "foreign ingredients" in your body. Or in other words, it's probably healthy, but it's icky and violated his sense of taboo.

Meh.

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#17
I don't think anyone is arguing that these burgers are healthier than eating salmon and broccoli. Just healthier and more environmentally friendly than ground beef.

His complaint is > 8/ My larger concern on both of these burgers is that - at minimum - they are HIGHLY processed products with lots of stuff that doesn't lead to healthier humans: vegetable oils, soy, protein isolates, additives, all non-organic. They are not real foods. (cough, Soylent)

Mainstream science doesn't think vegetable oil is worse for you than burger fat.

It doesn't think soy is bad for you

It doesn't think orgamic is healthy for you.

He doesn't specify which additives are bad for you and I'm too lazy to go through all the additives.

And I have no idea what science thinks about protein isolate but I doubt it's any worse for you than other forms of protein.

He just stringing together a bunch of friends truisms and pretending it's a rock solid case.

P.s. I don't understand why they're getting so much hate for a fairly innocuous product that is trying to do some good.

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#18
post #2

Regardless of veracity of OP's claims on Twitter, it's worth noting he sells "bone broth" and other animal-derived health and fitness products. There's always a dog in the fight somewhere.

Makes a lot of sense now. Read the comments in that twitter thread. There are people there who think a beef patty isn't considered a "processed food". Wow, I just don't know what to say. Also you can kinda tell people commenting kinda have an agenda when they're using terms like "fake meat".

Re: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Are the Trans Fat Purveyors of Our Generation

#20
I always assumed fast food was unhealthy and full of artificial ingredients, even real patties can have negative health effects. I would not consider those meat replacements to be healthy but they surely are good enough to replace fast food patties.

Also I re-read his tweets and I can't find the part where it's clearly stated that transfat are used, I just see oil being mentioned in those ingredient lists.

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