Anything that gets us closer to a world in which chickens are not farmed for their meat or eggs is good. The incomprehensible violence of factory farming for mere taste is unforgivable, and stuff like this is a small step to its undoing.
I'm aware that the USA has shockingly, appallingly low animal welfare standards, especially for a developed country - but chickens don't have to be farmed like that.
I haven't bought a non-free range egg in at least a decade, and I make sure any poultry I buy has been reared with good welfare.
1 - They might not actually be free-range after all. I've seen multiple exposes where the chickens advertised as "free-range" actually weren't, or they were allowed out of their cages for an hour a day and they called that "free-range".
2 - Even if they're are free-range, their conditions could still be appalling. Overcrowding and debeaking are common.
Free range means nothing. This is humane washing, and is incredibly misleading. Here’s a good rule of thumb: any animal product you use, outside of veeery rare cases like backyard eggs, you _know_ it is the result of needless suffering. Even things like backyard eggs can easily be rife with issues, however.
What do you mean by "mere taste"? Hominids didn't evolve for 22 million years to have taste buds that are completely useless.
More often than not, better tasting food means it has higher nutritional value. This has been slightly butchered by modern food science when they started mixing chemicals to help sell industry waste as food... but for vast majority of foods that humans culturally ate before the food industry took over, good taste does mean higher nutritional value.
"What do you mean by "mere taste"? Hominids didn't evolve for 22 million years to have taste buds that are completely useless."
Not for nothing. It can be useful and pleasurable, but taste has a dark side as well. Having a sweet-tooth has been a stab in the back for many modern humans, as it leads to over-consumption of sugar, which can be horrible for one's health. More on-topic, the craving for the taste of meat has led to the suffering and slaughter of countless animals.
No one in the developed world uses their taste to determine if they’re eating a balanced diet. We are so beyond that. So it’s kind of irrelevant what our tongues evolved for.
> but for vast majority of foods that humans culturally ate before the food industry took over, good taste does mean higher nutritional value
Ah, yes, just ask the Romans, who liked to flavor their food with nutritious lead.
(The Romans' lead-based flavoring is an extreme example, but people have been eating pretty dubious things, particularly sugar, for a very long time because they taste good)
Sunk cost fallacy. 22 million years of evolution doesn’t make up for the millions of birds and other animals we murder everyday for their meat and eggs.
I would like very much to eat proteins of the same quality as animal proteins, but made by a fungus or yeast, instead of eating animal proteins.
I hope that one day this would be possible.
Nevertheless, I will never eat food having a secret chemical composition and/or food whose production is monopolized by the sole owner of some patents, as it appears to be the case with this product.
Any kind of food must have a chemical composition that is completely published, because there have been far too many examples in history, of stupidity in assessing what is good or not too eat.
I would not care if some non-essential food has a single-source, e.g. some fancy kind of chocolate.
On the other hand for a food whose purpose is to provide the nutrients that keep you alive, e.g. the necessary daily intake of proteins, it must be possible to be produced everywhere and by everyone, without restrictions.
It is acceptable for its production methods to be patented, but the patents must be licensed to anyone on FRAND terms.
Until such conditions will be met by an animal-substitute food, it cannot really substitute the animal food, except for niche uses, regardless of how well it reproduces the taste and any other qualities of the original food.
I don't think this is intended for people to put in their fridge and make breakfast with as much it's going to replace egg whites in a lot of factory processed foods and bakeries.
I can't wait to be able to buy stuff like this or "cow-free milk" in the supermarket, but it'll be a long long time due to the irrational European fear of GMOs which is a basic tool for most cases of bio-engineered yeasts.
"I can't wait to be able to buy stuff like this or "cow-free milk" in the supermarket..."
There's plenty of cow-free milks in the supermarket already: they're called nutmilks (ex: soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, etc). They've been around for decades.
The main thing I'm waiting for are good vegan versions of sharp cheeses like sharp cheddar and blue cheese. A good vegan smoked gouda would be nice too.
I've yet to taste creamy vegan ice cream that's on par with the best milk-based ice cream, but at least vegan ice creams can be pretty good and getting better.
Same for me! I already use a lot of plant-based substitutes and the fact that I'm lactose intolerant makes this even easier for me, but as you already outlined - there are a few remaining niches which can't be filled adequately by alternatives yet.
We in Europe have good reasons, in fact very good reasons to reject GMOs. Its a very powerful tool, very poorly tested, side effects on whole ecosystem not tested at all (aka if you don't brag about safety in ads, it means there is nothing to brag about).
They often come from most amoral companies in the world, ie Monsanto which clearly don't care about human health and life, only profits at all costs. They are often pushed by political means (ie US business folks coming ie to UK to lobby for lowering food safety standards compared to those from EU right after it was clear Brexit is happening).
You want to solve world hunger and feed those poorest and most unfortunate that would otherwise die? Sure go ahead, but at least attempt to be moral and show some serious research into collateral damage. You try to push that cheap untested crap on one of the world's most rich and free regions? Well clearly your chops are not good enough right now.
Chicken-free egg products have become remarkably good. I bought and enjoyed ready-made folded egg recently and didn’t realize until afterwards that it was plant-based.
The parent comment is probably talking about JUST brand eggs, which is made primarily from mung bean. I scrambled some up this past weekend with kimchi for a great breakfast!
This type of stuff will eventually lead us to a vegan world. It's hard to see it now but future generations will find it harder to slaughter millions of animals when perfect meat substitutes are available. It will be similar to the slow transition from fossil fuels.
On a more serious note, why do ethical vegan proponents feel it is better for an animal to never live at all? To be devoid of purpose due to lack of existence?
Billions of male chickls are ground up by the egg industry every year because they aren't productive at all. Also, egg laying chickens are only economically viable for a few years at most, even though they live for many more, so egg laying chickens are indeed killed because they become a liability.
> why do ethical vegan proponents feel it is better for an animal to never live at all?
The same reason that I feel it'd have been better for someone who abused and murdered their child to have never had any children.
Bringing something into this world does not permit us to treat it however we want. We all know that, some people just think it for some reasons doesn't apply to chickens, cows, pigs, etc.
I'm not an ethical vegan or a vegan at all, but I'm aware of our mass agricultural system being terrible ethically for animals.
If just chickens and cows ceased to exist, I don't think the world would suffer too much. Goose and ducks would fill the role chickens have in aerating the soil.
> To be devoid of purpose due to lack of existence?
Plenty of people and creatures commit suicide when life is too much to bear. Sometimes depriving oneself of life can be a blessing. If I was hooked up to a machine that just drained me of blood, milk, or something else and I was force fed, I'd probably kill myself if able. Why do we not afford a creature the same pity?
I mean... if you want eggs on an industrial scale, yes, obviously you do. Chickens live 5-10 years; laying hens are typically killed at about a year in.
If you get all your eggs from your pet backyard chickens, that's one thing, but most people don't.
You're constructing a vegan strawman here. Ethical veganism is about reducing harm to animals. You can't harm a hypothetical chicken that was never born.
Are you seriously suggesting torturing and slaughtering animals is a better alternative to a world where that doesn't happen and that might have less chickens?
i’m not vegan, but the egg industry is probably one of the most atrocious concerning animal welfare iiuc. they do slaughter chicks in droves—just not for meat
This kind of research seems promising because it's not even a substitute, it claims to be the exact same product, only derived from a different source. A lot of people don't want weird plant based alternatives to animal products because of the taste or nutritional content.
Chickens lay eggs. It is a fact of their life, there is nothing exploitative or bad about it (in principle, I will say that a lot of farms are garbage). "solving" egg whites is the furthest from the ideal that you are espousing that you could possibly get. What needs to be solved properly is dairy, specifically cheese. It is a giant range of foods and none of the current vegan offerings come even close to covering it.
Per the article, cow-free cow's milk is beginning to become a thing.
There are, incidentally, non-animal-welfare-related reasons that this stuff is interesting. In particular, there's the potential to considerably reduce the CO2 cost of producing egg whites this way, and the product could reasonably be expected to be safer.
> Chickens lay eggs. It is a fact of their life, there is nothing exploitative or bad about it
It seems like you don’t know much about the poultry industry in general. Your statement is like saying — to use an analogy — that human women give birth to human children as a fact of life, and that it’s ok to force them to give birth consecutively for decades without a break. Left to themselves, chickens would probably lay about 25 eggs in a whole year. In the industry, they’re forced to lay more than 300 eggs a year. There is simply no way that this is not constant physical abuse (even if you ignore battery cages, starvation, light exposure, etc.).
It would require much more
than "cheaply":
1.It has to provide same
nutrition.e.g. egg with
B12 removed would not be equivalent to chicken egg.
2.It could be privately
produced like eggs.
(As otherwise people depend
on megacorporations abusing
their mass production costs
to monopolize the market)
3.It would need to have
to compete with existing
culinary preferences:
i.e. recipes with eggs would
not 'adapt to artificial eggs', with people continuing to use chicken eggs.
Readit News
I haven't bought a non-free range egg in at least a decade, and I make sure any poultry I buy has been reared with good welfare.
1 - They might not actually be free-range after all. I've seen multiple exposes where the chickens advertised as "free-range" actually weren't, or they were allowed out of their cages for an hour a day and they called that "free-range".
2 - Even if they're are free-range, their conditions could still be appalling. Overcrowding and debeaking are common.
They probably have to if you want to keep the same, low and subsided price that people, who don't want or can pay more, got used to.
https://www.surgeactivism.org/humanewashing
If you want a chicken that can actually walk around and go outside you want a pasture raised egg.
I use to think of it in numbers of a4 sheets of paper per hen. In a battery cage they have almost one. In fee range systems they have almost 3.
Not nearly enough for them to avoid stress behaviour and them killing eachother.
More often than not, better tasting food means it has higher nutritional value. This has been slightly butchered by modern food science when they started mixing chemicals to help sell industry waste as food... but for vast majority of foods that humans culturally ate before the food industry took over, good taste does mean higher nutritional value.
Not for nothing. It can be useful and pleasurable, but taste has a dark side as well. Having a sweet-tooth has been a stab in the back for many modern humans, as it leads to over-consumption of sugar, which can be horrible for one's health. More on-topic, the craving for the taste of meat has led to the suffering and slaughter of countless animals.
This is just a version of the fallacy of nature.
Ah, yes, just ask the Romans, who liked to flavor their food with nutritious lead.
(The Romans' lead-based flavoring is an extreme example, but people have been eating pretty dubious things, particularly sugar, for a very long time because they taste good)
I hope that one day this would be possible.
Nevertheless, I will never eat food having a secret chemical composition and/or food whose production is monopolized by the sole owner of some patents, as it appears to be the case with this product.
Any kind of food must have a chemical composition that is completely published, because there have been far too many examples in history, of stupidity in assessing what is good or not too eat.
I would not care if some non-essential food has a single-source, e.g. some fancy kind of chocolate.
On the other hand for a food whose purpose is to provide the nutrients that keep you alive, e.g. the necessary daily intake of proteins, it must be possible to be produced everywhere and by everyone, without restrictions.
It is acceptable for its production methods to be patented, but the patents must be licensed to anyone on FRAND terms.
Until such conditions will be met by an animal-substitute food, it cannot really substitute the animal food, except for niche uses, regardless of how well it reproduces the taste and any other qualities of the original food.
There's plenty of cow-free milks in the supermarket already: they're called nutmilks (ex: soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, etc). They've been around for decades.
The main thing I'm waiting for are good vegan versions of sharp cheeses like sharp cheddar and blue cheese. A good vegan smoked gouda would be nice too.
I've yet to taste creamy vegan ice cream that's on par with the best milk-based ice cream, but at least vegan ice creams can be pretty good and getting better.
They often come from most amoral companies in the world, ie Monsanto which clearly don't care about human health and life, only profits at all costs. They are often pushed by political means (ie US business folks coming ie to UK to lobby for lowering food safety standards compared to those from EU right after it was clear Brexit is happening).
You want to solve world hunger and feed those poorest and most unfortunate that would otherwise die? Sure go ahead, but at least attempt to be moral and show some serious research into collateral damage. You try to push that cheap untested crap on one of the world's most rich and free regions? Well clearly your chops are not good enough right now.
Shameless plug for their site - https://www.ju.st/eat/just-egg
They could be called 'chicken-free egg white substitutes,' though.
On a more serious note, why do ethical vegan proponents feel it is better for an animal to never live at all? To be devoid of purpose due to lack of existence?
> why do ethical vegan proponents feel it is better for an animal to never live at all?
The same reason that I feel it'd have been better for someone who abused and murdered their child to have never had any children.
Bringing something into this world does not permit us to treat it however we want. We all know that, some people just think it for some reasons doesn't apply to chickens, cows, pigs, etc.
If just chickens and cows ceased to exist, I don't think the world would suffer too much. Goose and ducks would fill the role chickens have in aerating the soil.
> To be devoid of purpose due to lack of existence?
Plenty of people and creatures commit suicide when life is too much to bear. Sometimes depriving oneself of life can be a blessing. If I was hooked up to a machine that just drained me of blood, milk, or something else and I was force fed, I'd probably kill myself if able. Why do we not afford a creature the same pity?
And again, I say this as someone who eats meat.
I mean... if you want eggs on an industrial scale, yes, obviously you do. Chickens live 5-10 years; laying hens are typically killed at about a year in.
If you get all your eggs from your pet backyard chickens, that's one thing, but most people don't.
Are you seriously suggesting torturing and slaughtering animals is a better alternative to a world where that doesn't happen and that might have less chickens?
Yes, it’s better not to live at all if the alternative is to be tortured for your whole life
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Have you seen what goes into industrial egg operations? How on Earth could you not call it exploitative or bad?
There are, incidentally, non-animal-welfare-related reasons that this stuff is interesting. In particular, there's the potential to considerably reduce the CO2 cost of producing egg whites this way, and the product could reasonably be expected to be safer.
It seems like you don’t know much about the poultry industry in general. Your statement is like saying — to use an analogy — that human women give birth to human children as a fact of life, and that it’s ok to force them to give birth consecutively for decades without a break. Left to themselves, chickens would probably lay about 25 eggs in a whole year. In the industry, they’re forced to lay more than 300 eggs a year. There is simply no way that this is not constant physical abuse (even if you ignore battery cages, starvation, light exposure, etc.).
Dead Comment
2.It could be privately produced like eggs. (As otherwise people depend on megacorporations abusing their mass production costs to monopolize the market) 3.It would need to have to compete with existing culinary preferences: i.e. recipes with eggs would not 'adapt to artificial eggs', with people continuing to use chicken eggs.