I remember when margarine, and other plant based fats were being touted as the healthier alternative to animal fats, and in the end, it turned out that these artificially oxidized plant oils ended up being a direct cause of heart disease.
I'm afraid of products such as these for the same reason, because we have no long term health data.
I'm happy to eat plants of all sorts, in their natural form. A slurry of plant fats and proteins which approximates eggs sounds like nasty factory runoff.
I invite a food scientist or some such type to correct me (it's HN, so there's probably one lurking around somewhere), but the margarine issue was due to high concentrations of trans-fats coupled with the already high concentrations of saturated fat.
I believe a number of the "vegan" butters on market shelves today strive to avoid this issue, hence it's not necessarily the same... or, rather, to put it another way: just because something was done wrong once doesn't mean it can't be tried again with a better formula.
It's not like regular butter is being phased out here, and people really shouldn't be consuming so much of this stuff (butter or vegan butter) period.
I'm happy to eat plants of all sorts, in their natural form. A slurry of plant fats and proteins which approximates eggs sounds like nasty factory runoff.
I don't get this trend anyway. There are lots of perfectly good vegetarian dishes out there.
Why do we have to whore out the food industry to the tastes of meat eaters in the name of saving the planet? Can't wannabe "virtuous" meat eaters learn to eat vegetarian foods without making them look and taste like meat?
The whole thing is some form of insanity.
(For the record: I eat semi-vegetarian in that I eat less meat than most Americans and some meals are meatless. I have been accused of being vegetarian by meat-and-potatoes people and vegetarians also openly hate on me for my "crimes" of eating a sensible diet that fails to fall into either political camp.)
I'm a big proponent of vegetarianism, and I think there's a lot of value in these "transitional meats." I've convinced one friend to vegetarianism over the years by cooking "meat-like" replacements for them... this is the type of person who might say "oh I've considered it before, but I could never give up hamburgers" to a vegetarian.
Overall if the goal is meat reduction, then it's a win if you can get someone to occasionally buy a transitional meat instead of the real thing.
I've had more luck trying to get people to eat plant-based meat-likes than cricket-based foods, anyway.
Beyond beef and impossible have been successful because meat eaters are willing to choose them and like them.
Put another way, can't you learn to like an all meat diet without sneaking in vegetables or making them seem like non-meat? (Well, no, you like what you like, and you probably won't make huge changes without incentive).
It wouldn't surprise me if this were less about saving the planet and more about hedging against the possibility that factory farming ceases to be sustainable such that prices for real meat increase enormously. Such a circumstance would create a huge new market for relatively inexpensive meat substitutes, competing on palatability probably far more than nutrition.
Are meat eaters the target audience here? I was always under the impression that the target audience was vegetarians that longed for a burger et al.
As a meat eater, I can't imagine myself ever even trying a plant-based "meat" product. If I want veggies, I eat veggies. If I want meat, I eat meat. I know, crazy.
Good point. Another issue I take with these substitutes are the amount of ingredients used to make the fake counterparts. Whilst a burger is most meat, a “veggie burger” contains dozens of highly processed ones.
There's three classes of veggies burgers to me: the old fake patties, such as Boca burger; the newer, less pretentious patties full of recognizable veggies; and the latest, ultra-processed fake meat, such as Impossible and Beyond. The second class, the ones not afraid to show they're just beans, grains, and veggies shaped like a disk, are the most appealing to me. They're also the most versatile.
A quick search readily brings up multiple articles about margarine and heart disease.
Women who eat four or more teaspoons of margarine a day have a 50 percent greater risk of developing heart disease than women who eat margarine only once a month
Nature is very kind and provides enough food to survive even without meat. I personally avoid all these ultra processed plant based products targeted to vegetarians/vegans and favor classic veggies/fruits
Don't forget that in the game of capitalism companies are in a never ending quest to develop new products, this simply is the next iteration. Just like cigarettes and alcohol were marketed as medicine, these things will be marketed as climate change or animal cruelty solutions
I don't believe that food, like many other industries, needs to be disrupted. I'll stick to veggies and fruit, pasta, bread, local stuff if possible &c. all the basics we've been eating for hundreds of years, processed food is poison, plant based or not
Vrimp is officially the worst branding I have heard since Kraft rebranded to Mondelez.
Otherwise very cool! I've started eating Impossible or Beyond burgers wherever they have them because I like the flavor and honestly beige blend of 1000 cattle [1] isn't a particularly appetizing product.
Looking forward to expanding this to eggs and, uh, vrimp.
Its hard for me to understand exactly how the term "plant-based" came to be an acceptably descriptive name for a category of food. Is it so hard to just put the name of the plants in the name of the food? I think most people would be skeptical of going to a bar and ordering something off the menu that was simply called "Animal-based Wings."
It's a terminology used to entice those who feel like they'd need a replacement for the things they're used to, and yet might have a bad perception of the plants used in these products (like eww that tastes bad) - so it's a term for the general population.
Also these products as mostly a combination of plants, like it wouldn't be right (or maybe even legal) to say that the vEGGie is soy eggs.
If they listed the shit they put in them nobody would eat them.
Same thing with hot dog sausages or chicken nuggets, when you've seen the factory videos they're puke inducing
I would think there is a big difference between using anuses and other misc. parts in hotdogs and mung bean protein in a beyond burger in terms of what's revolting.
Eh, it varies. I've ordered meat loaf, hot dogs, and fish and chips in bars. I've bought containers of mixed nuts without looking to see what kind of nuts were inside. I'm not a big juice person but lots of people buy juice blends without checking the ingredients.
No it's because so many people have an allergic reaction to the idea (and ideology) of Vegan. People who eat plant-based tend to be more (health based) pro-veggie than militantly anti-meat. It's trying to promote a healthy vision with out the quagmire of the extremists.
Foods that can be "engineered" these days are getting quite impressive, at least on a technical level. It seems that we're getting close to turning soy, yeast, etc. into almost arbitrary flavors.
Using this knowledge for new vegan products seems better than just creating increasingly bizarre flavors of chips or junkier junk food.
I tried the Tuna recently and think it is close to indistinguishable when you don't put too much attention on finding out if it is real or not. I would say it does it's job for most dishes, specially for things like ready-made sandwiches in a supermarket.
I am a big hater of canned tuna and my vegetarian wife once bought the plant-based tuna from Nestle. It's a disaster, it's as stinky as the real one. I hated the smell as much as the real one. So they did nail it. Therefore I see their egg and shrimps as a big opportunity. Honestly, I could never understand why vegetarian products can't reproduce the meaty flavors better. There are so many chips and junk-food products with fake smells who taste closer to the real thing than most replacement products, while being vegetarian or even vegan.
A big part of meaty flavor is the tasty animal fat. I find a lot of veggie products just taste like vegetable oil mostly, not too appetizing and makes you feel pretty gross after a meal.
I wish there wasn't such a focus on making (and failing) meat flavor. I know vegetarians who don't even like eating the beyond burgers because it tastes a little bit too meaty for them, and obviously it doesn't taste meaty enough to get people to stave off meat en masse, so I don't know who that product is for. I wish we would lean into existing cuisine that doesn't use meat, like falafel, which is my favorite vegetarian food by far.
Are you equally pedantic on the colloquial classification of nuts when a large portion of the "nuts" we eat are actually drupes?
Or fruit vs vegetable classifications?
Perhaps language is a tool used to convey meanings and ideas in ways that are quickly and concisely understandable. The "plant-based" insert_animal_food_name allows people to understand that this food item is meant to mimic an animal-based food item, except it's derived from plants.
My personal issue is i then expect the product to taste similar
I got disappointed when i first tried "almond" milk, i was expecting the taste to not differ from the cow milk i used to drink, and it was simply just a disgusting taste.. that made me puke..
If you consider a chicken that only eats corn, an egg is made of corn (and air, water and whatever the chicken eats that's not her food). It's just that it's fabricated by a chicken.
This is so very annoying especially in vegan restaurants. Why is everything called "Chicken" or "Beef" when its really gardein? I wish they would just call it ground chuck or something so its clear what you are being served. It's confusing even for vegetarians sometimes.
Readit News
I'm afraid of products such as these for the same reason, because we have no long term health data.
I'm happy to eat plants of all sorts, in their natural form. A slurry of plant fats and proteins which approximates eggs sounds like nasty factory runoff.
Do you have some specific concerns? Specific processes? Specific ingredients? (like heme iron https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/heme-iron/ )
I believe a number of the "vegan" butters on market shelves today strive to avoid this issue, hence it's not necessarily the same... or, rather, to put it another way: just because something was done wrong once doesn't mean it can't be tried again with a better formula.
It's not like regular butter is being phased out here, and people really shouldn't be consuming so much of this stuff (butter or vegan butter) period.
I don't get this trend anyway. There are lots of perfectly good vegetarian dishes out there.
Why do we have to whore out the food industry to the tastes of meat eaters in the name of saving the planet? Can't wannabe "virtuous" meat eaters learn to eat vegetarian foods without making them look and taste like meat?
The whole thing is some form of insanity.
(For the record: I eat semi-vegetarian in that I eat less meat than most Americans and some meals are meatless. I have been accused of being vegetarian by meat-and-potatoes people and vegetarians also openly hate on me for my "crimes" of eating a sensible diet that fails to fall into either political camp.)
Overall if the goal is meat reduction, then it's a win if you can get someone to occasionally buy a transitional meat instead of the real thing.
I've had more luck trying to get people to eat plant-based meat-likes than cricket-based foods, anyway.
Put another way, can't you learn to like an all meat diet without sneaking in vegetables or making them seem like non-meat? (Well, no, you like what you like, and you probably won't make huge changes without incentive).
Saying "existing vegetarian food is good enough, let's not see what else we can do, everyone should just get over it" seems a bit silly to me.
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As a meat eater, I can't imagine myself ever even trying a plant-based "meat" product. If I want veggies, I eat veggies. If I want meat, I eat meat. I know, crazy.
Meat that is fed almost exclusively corn: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-burger-youre...
It's not exactly healthy either.
Assuming that you're talking about all plant-based processed foods with this, you can pry tofu and vegan breads from my cold, dead hands.
Women who eat four or more teaspoons of margarine a day have a 50 percent greater risk of developing heart disease than women who eat margarine only once a month
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/05/us/study-links-heart-disea...
Margarine intake and subsequent coronary heart disease in ...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9229205
Butter vs. Margarine - Harvard Health
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/butter-vs-mar...
> I'm afraid...
> I'm happy to...
It seems a little absurd to me to ask the OP to cite the source(s) of their thoughts, emotions and memories.
Dead Comment
Don't forget that in the game of capitalism companies are in a never ending quest to develop new products, this simply is the next iteration. Just like cigarettes and alcohol were marketed as medicine, these things will be marketed as climate change or animal cruelty solutions
I don't believe that food, like many other industries, needs to be disrupted. I'll stick to veggies and fruit, pasta, bread, local stuff if possible &c. all the basics we've been eating for hundreds of years, processed food is poison, plant based or not
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Otherwise very cool! I've started eating Impossible or Beyond burgers wherever they have them because I like the flavor and honestly beige blend of 1000 cattle [1] isn't a particularly appetizing product.
Looking forward to expanding this to eggs and, uh, vrimp.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/05/there...
true, most chains are inedible, but I just can't get past the aftertaste - feels too synthetic and unhealthy.
I feel people tho tout "you won't believe it's not beef" have never tried either of them.
Also these products as mostly a combination of plants, like it wouldn't be right (or maybe even legal) to say that the vEGGie is soy eggs.
"Plant based" is fairly neutral and doesn't outright prescribe a hard line.
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Using this knowledge for new vegan products seems better than just creating increasingly bizarre flavors of chips or junkier junk food.
I wish there wasn't such a focus on making (and failing) meat flavor. I know vegetarians who don't even like eating the beyond burgers because it tastes a little bit too meaty for them, and obviously it doesn't taste meaty enough to get people to stave off meat en masse, so I don't know who that product is for. I wish we would lean into existing cuisine that doesn't use meat, like falafel, which is my favorite vegetarian food by far.
best way for a product to not work is to label it as "plant based" *insert_animal_food_name*
My personal issue is i then expect the product to taste similar
I got disappointed when i first tried "almond" milk, i was expecting the taste to not differ from the cow milk i used to drink, and it was simply just a disgusting taste.. that made me puke..
Deleted Comment