I enjoy eating meat and have no plans of going off of it completely. But we eat so much of it as a culture.
And when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too!
And I know people blast tech companies for focusing too much on making things flashy and cool, but the people who are making electric cars and fake meat cool are the ones who are going to save our asses while we were busy scolding people for not trying harder to enjoy brown rice.
>when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too!
Read the labels more closely the next time you eat that hot pocket or frozen sausage pizza. A large number of these products already have "textured vegetable protein" (TVP) or other meat substitute in them to pad out the protein on the label and reduce overall cost to produce.
How on Earth did we end up having so many ingredients in what essentially is just pizza. The food industry really has gone too far by over-processing everything.
It's not as bad as it looks. Half those ingredients are sub-ingredients. It's like you making something like chili and using salsa. You'd then need to add all the ingredients of the salsa to your chili ingredients. With the sub-ingredients removed it comes down to this:
ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR, WATER, LOW-MOISTURE PART-SKIM MOZZARELLA CHEESE, TOMATO PASTE, COOKED SEASONED PIZZA TOPPING (MADE WITH PORK AND CHICKEN, BHA, BHT AND CITRIC ACID ADDED TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR), PEPPERONI MADE WITH PORK, CHICKEN AND BEEF, COOKED BEEF PIZZA TOPPING, SUGAR, WHEAT GLUTEN,
2% OR LESS OF VEGETABLE OIL, DEGERMINATED WHITE CORN MEAL, YEAST, SALT, DEGERMINATED YELLOW CORN MEAL, DATEM, BAKING SODA, SPICES, WHEAT FLOUR, ENZYMES, DRIED GARLIC, ASCORBIC ACID.
A lot of it is due to the "frozen" part of frozen pizza. There's a ton of what amounts to materials science happening in your frozen pizza. Find a local pizza joint that makes their dough from scratch and bakes in a brick oven, and you can cut down on that ingredients count by an order of magnitude.
The issue is that the vast majority of these ingredients are artificial substitutes for the actual content of a pizza-like-thing that an average consumer might expect. That they are artificial is not in itself inherently an issue (at least to me, although many many artificial additives have been proven to cause problems while manufacturers continue to use them), but the fact that so many substitutions are made all at once in a given product renders any "common" understanding of its health effects effectively irrelevant.
It basically means that you can't compare a pizza made from the basic ingredients that you and I might normally expect to the contents of a hot pocket. Even comparing apples-to-apples, the ingredient list of a DiGiorno's frozen pizza would be wildly different from the basics of a pizza you could make yourself.
Fearmongering over these subjects never helps, but it is fair to raise concern over the unknown effects of the things you consume.
What ingredients of a "real" pizza have been substituted for? That list includes flour, water, salt, yeast, tomato and cheese, which are roughly speaking the essential components of a pizza.
Using soy protein or other substitutes like this is relatively rare. Hot pockets use real cheese meat. The same is true of most food people buy at grocery stores or restaurants. Even hotdogs are generally either all beef, or a mixture of chicken and pork.
I suspect that sneaking it into prepared foods is easier (detail doesn't matter quite as much) and high volume (people who don't care what they eat), while presenting it solo is more difficult (needs to look/feel/taste/smell just right) and lower volume (people who make an effort to avoid meat).
I've turned to mainly a restaurant meat eater. My day to day protein and fats are mainly from plants now. Especially garbage fast food meats really don't need to be from animals. If I feel like a long smoked brisket or carnitas or a steak or game meats, well there just isn't any meaningful analog so I don't feel too bad about indulging every once in a while.
Exactly what I've become over the past 5 years. I only let myself to eat meat as a treat, in a very good restaurant at least.
I grew up in a culture that is completely meat-centric (Brazil) and I moved to Sweden some 5-6 years ago, vegetarian and vegan options here are plenty and somewhat tasty. It's been pretty easy to cut down my meat consumption to zero on a day-to-day basis and save meat for special occasions.
This reminds me of how my dad would always blast taco bell for using filler in their beef. But from my perspective, it's tastes good and the filler makes it cheaper (and probably healthier).
I think you're right, most processed meat could be replaced partially, or entirely with vegetable proteins without anyone really noticing. The last time I had baked a frozen, breaded chicken, it tasted like little more than grease and pepper. I'm certain a plant substitute could be found that would maintain the flavor of nothingness and be suitable for dipping in honey mustard.
The current issue, I think, is price. Vegetarian substitutes I've seen are more expensive than the meat based products.
Beyond Meat is not like tofu or so, it is designed to be unrecognizable from meat by tasting it - so you won't have to give on our beloved meat. I also don't want to go with a vegan diet just because "environment", but having a reasonably priced substituent which does not contain tortured animals and has lower env. impact - then just why not.
I've consumed a lot of Beyond and Impossible, and it's good! But still a far way from unrecognizable.
In fact, one thing they have made me appreciate is how good some of the "traditional" meat substitutes are. I actually quite like Boca and Garden Burgers et al!
Still, the once or twice a year I go to a steakhouse and get a nice medium rare steak - we're a long, long way off from that.
I'm sure Burger King's meatless burger is recognizable to some, but when I tried it I don't think I'd really be able to tell the difference. It's easier to hide when the meat is already super processed like fast food meats.
Agreed that there's still no comparison to a fine steak.
I guess it depends. I dont know anyone who cant tell the difference even without knowing it. They do taste good, but they are not meat. Even processed one.
And generally speaking, McDonald's processed food are pretty damn good in terms of processed food category. As compared to rest of the industry.
I know it's slightly different, but the goal is to be the same.
And actually, if I were to decide whether the meat in Mc Donald's burgers or nuggets is real, I'd just say no - it is much further from a "real" burger / nugget than I'd say about beyond.
Beeyond is not like real meat at all, it's just more obviously "imitation meat" than soy. I don't know why fast restaurants don't just serve tofu like Asian restaurants -- it's cheaper and tastes just as good when they cook in a sauce. USA mass culture's fear of tofu is bizarre.
For some reason people who cook in the USA believe that food isn't worth eating unless it looks like meat. I'm astonished at the amount of time that I go to eat "vegetarian" food anywhere and it's just the meat dish with fake meat in it.
Meanwhile, I go to India and check for vegetarian food, and suddenly it's like care and thought was actually put into making food that works for vegetarian ingredients instead of just substituting what's in a meat dish.
I like tofu, despite a soy allergy that causes me unfortunate issues, but tofu isn't anything like meat. A lot of recipes are built around meat and its qualities. It makes sense to offer folks a choice. If people wanted tofu, people would be selling more tofu.
I started using Impossible in any beef recipe which highly seasons or sauces the meat, and can't tell the difference. Or don't care enough about the difference. Talking hamburger helpers, manwhiches, casseroles, that sort of thing.
The price of Impossible and Beyond per pound is still higher than real beef, probably due to government subsidies artificially reducing the cost of beef. Once the equation flips I expect just about every fast food menu item, freezer food, and quick prep box to switch to these new vegetable meats.
There is a snowball effect happening. More and more places and products are offering a meat alternative because Impossible and Beyond are 1:1 recipe substitutes. This brings the cost down as manufacturing processes can scale up. Confidence is growing and taste isn't suffering. Toward a vegetarian future, economics will succeed where ethics and wellness have failed.
Yeah and the health arguments tend to fall apart when you get into fast-food/highly processed crap territory, which probably accounts for a large portion of meat consumption in the developed world. Eating less of that stuff is probably a good thing.
That said quality meat is a good source of various nutrients and amino acids that can be difficult to get from plant-based sources, and fish in particular can be farmed very sustainably. I would never consider cutting meat out of my diet.
> fast-food/highly processed crap territory, which probably accounts for a large portion of meat consumption in the developed world
A large portion of animal by-products, almost certainly. I doubt that a lot of what fast-food joints use, would be considered "meat" before it was processed.
Nobody is asking their local butcher for the Cows eyeballs and asshole.
How many cow anuses would it take to make McDonalds meat? more than cow anuses exist in the world, I bet. McDonalds' is made of meat, just processed into a highly manageable consistent form.
This process happens after the primal cuts are removed.
I guess it's basically the modern "industrialised" alternative to the more traditional use of the carcass after those cuts are removed, which would be to break it down and boil them to make stock.
McDonalds Chicken Nuggets used to be made of this. Apparently they are no longer using it.
The secret to enjoying brown rice is to add some sweet/sticky/"glutinous" rice to it. A good recipe:
1. 600 g brown rice
2. 200 g sticky rice
3. Mix the dry rices together. Use a spoon to avoid a sticky rice layer on the bottom.
3. 1200 mL water
4. Cook on "rice" mode in a 3-quart Instant-Pot. Makes about 15 120 mL (0.5 cup) servings. These freeze nicely in containers. You can heat one up in 1:30 in a 1500 W microwave.
> hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted
But then what will they do with all the eyeballs, assholes, and cartilage?
I'd imagine that the amount of actual animal tissue humans would otherwise consume, that ends up in any of those products you mentioned is negligible.
Yeah, recently I made a burger using lentils, with the lettuce, Ketchup and Mayonnaise added, the kids didn't even notice any difference... I did, but it was still pretty nice!
And when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too!
And I know people blast tech companies for focusing too much on making things flashy and cool, but the people who are making electric cars and fake meat cool are the ones who are going to save our asses while we were busy scolding people for not trying harder to enjoy brown rice.