Beyond Meat

[GaryD]

Hi,

My daily Gizmag feed features a story on Beyond Meat......a chicken substitute made out of plant protein.....designed by a vegan for use by other vegetarians/vegans.

The manufacturers "promise" is to offer a tasty alternative to animal-based food.

Notwithstanding the fact that they often approach me in smug, self-righteous way, I'm tolerant of vegetarians.....but I'm alway amused when, in the midst of a sermon about the virtues of vegetarianism, they sit down to a meal that features a meat substitute.

If meat is so terrible, why do vegetarians feel the need to emulate it? If vegetarian food is so great, why do we need a "tasty" alternative to animal-based food? Is vegetarian food not tasty?

While I sometimes ponder these questions, I'm not sufficiently concerned.....or interested....enough to pursue the answers.

Where i do have a concern, however, is with the following:

Beyond Meat’s processing plant is more like a laboratory than a kitchen (and definitely not like an abattoir), where different ingredients based on soy, pea, carrot and gluten-free flour, among others, undergo a cooking and cooling process before strips of the stuff come out of customized equipment.

Just what we need......more food coming out of a laboratory.

While the ingredient list will probably reinforce the perception among carnivores that vegetarian food is only fit for vegetarians, it's the final ingredient (called "and others") that would convince me that it would be more palatable to eat cockroaches.

If Beyond Meat is like much of what we already eat, some clever food technologists will eventually come up with substitute ingredients (for the soy, peas and carrots) with names that are so long that they use a system of numbers to describe them.

That's the good thing about aquaponics......if it looks like a fish and swims like a fish, it's probably a fish. There's no substitute for knowing what you're eating.

Gary

[JohnMc]

Vegan, least my view, runs counter to our nature. Our ancestors endowed us with stereoscopic vision, incisors and the like. All markers of a omnivorous predator. The need for high value protein sources are required at points in our individual physical development as an animal.

[kellenw]

Without modern agriculture, vegetarian and vegan diets were virtually impossible to pull off because they were almost always a calorie deficient diet. It took more calories to find and collect the food than you received from eating the collected food. Even hard core modern "foragers" will tell you that.

[Pseudoreality]

To each their own. Personally I'd rather eat minimally processed locally sourced food.

[tpilk]

It's an interesting discussion. Historically, we did not develop as a vegetarian species. That said, going back to our origins, folks seldom lived past 35 years old...

I am a meat eater, who also takes Lipitor every night (not to be blamed on "meat" alone). I have migrated toward vegetarian diets for periods of time and it's amazing how the blood work and overall healthy feeling improves. I also tend to be motivated to exersize more with the healthier diet.

To me the best balance is fish, chicken and lots of veggies...but I sure do love a great steak - just not easy to find one in this part of the world!

[GaryD]

Hi Tpilk,

To me the best balance is fish, chicken and lots of veggies...but I sure do love a great steak....

Me, too......and as a vegetarian concession, I like chips (fries) with my fish, chicken and steak.

Gary

[kellenw]

Lean sources of proteins are very important to human health. However, one of our failings is that we have "improved" many of our livestock animals to have more fat for flavor at the expense of good health. On top of that, the profit motive to grow out as fast as possible, feeding large amounts of grains to grass eating animals and keeping them in high density lots has made them even fattier and caused all sorts of disease issues that otherwise likely wouldn't exist.