Beyond Meat is Beyond Healthy
 

http://thescienceofeating.com/2019/...yond-unhealthy/

These are the ingredients of the Beyond Meat BUrger:

Water, Pea Protein Isolate*, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Contains 2% or less of the following: Cellulose from Bamboo, Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Natural Flavor, Maltodextrin, Yeast Extract, Salt, Sunflower Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Dried Yeast, Gum Arabic, Citrus Extract (to protect quality), Ascorbic Acid (to maintain color), Beet Juice Extract (for color), Acetic Acid, Succinic Acid, Modified Food Starch, Annatto (for color).

I think I will skip it.

I'll stick with the 1-ingredient alternative - MEAT!

It looks sufficiently low carb that I might try it out of morbid curiousity.

Mmmmmm, sounds delicious when Jean describes the ingredients. You can't make this stuff up . . . .

Hmm, Canola Oil (probably GMO laced with round-up), potato starch (carb), natural flavor (could be anything like the extract from a beaver's anal gland), Methylcellulose (Laxative), Succinic Acid (they use this to make perfume and lacquers), Modified Food Starch (has no nutritional value)?

Besides, if you get (and this is important) 100% grass-fed beef, it gets all it's nutrition from prairie land. The land needs nothing other than what mother nature provides; no fertilizer, no pesticides, no additional carbon footpring (however the load on the planet gets huge if your beef is finished on a feed lot).

To farm that prairie-land that gives the animals 'free food' and instead grow farmed crops would take intensive amounts of fresh water, fertilizer, insecticide, and fossil fuels.

To grow the plant ingredients for the frankenburger means using a lot of precious groundwater, lots of fertilizer (made in factories with smokestacks), herbicide (most likely a carcinogen) and a resource filled factory with lots of energy hungry equipment hooked to the power grid.

Which do you think is better for the environment?

And which do you think gives you better nutrition?

I know what my choice will be.

Bob

One more thing. I think that grazing ruminants on natural grasslands as humans have done for millennia and the animals have done for almost eternity is sustainable.

Bob

Beaver's anal gland doesn't bother me. I'm guessing that's not in there, since it's supposed to appeal to vegans and vegetarians.

The overprocessing is a point versus environmental impact. But for us all to be eating as much meat as we want to, grass feeding becomes a bit of a bottleneck. And anything you can say about raising plants to feed humans you can say about raising those plants to feed animals humans eat--more so, because you lose a lot of protein and calories in the process.

Morbid being the operative word.

Me neither, but technically cat urine or rat feces is a natural flavor. Who knows what between beaver butts and rat feces a food company will claim is a natural flavor.

I read an article about that years ago in the Scientific American, and you would surprised what waste products get put in as Natural Flavors.

Bob

Cellulose from bamboo? Are we giant pandas? And even they only eat the bamboo leaves. But I'm picturing the bamboo wood that's used to make things like furniture and cutting boards. Yeah, that's really digestible. :Puke:


The whole mess sounds like a horribly unappetizing chemical stew.

People do eat bamboo shoots. On purpose. I can't imagine why. :lol:

To get fiber?

for me it would be 'by accident'

I keep thinking this has to be a pre-agriculture period. Because you need some large, somewhat amenable, animal to plow, do you not?

Maybe when you get to larger scale farming. But you can certainly get your foot in the door just on human labour.