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The Quorn revolution: the rise of ultra-processed fake meat
- XorNot 9y agoI don't really know what the point of this article is. Like is meanders a lot. It seems awfully surprised that synthetic meat products would be heavily processed, but is...I don't know, maybe it's actually trying to take a dig at vegans?
- ianai 9y agoI think the article's just against vegetarians & vegans. It's trying to say that since "so many" vegetarians & vegans endorse meat-substitutes they are all 'frauds' - claiming to eat plants for health purposes when they're eating highly processed meat-analogs. I think that's a pretty awful way to treat people. Why do you care what vegetarians/vegans eat? Why attack them? Every now and then it's fun to have a quorn "buffalo patty." It satisfies a desire of mine for something like that. But I don't have to eat healthy in order to be a vegetarian or vegan. I don't have to make health food my choice to be either vegetarian or vegan. I can simply be grossed out by animal products, or any other reason that results in me not eating/using animal products. My reasons for the way I live my life are mine, and yours are yours. I don't ask this person to explain their life nor dietary choices, so they shouldn't bother with mine.
- anewhnaccount2 9y agoTake a look at this (Finnish language) Facebook group. It's for "chips/crisps and beer vegans". I really like this approach of "owning it" as a response to the kind of muddled attacks in the article.
- anewhnaccount2 9y ago(I meant to include a link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1701571030062709/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1701571030062709/ )
- algorias 9y agoI was wondering the same. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a submarine PR campaign [1] spreading FUD about meat replacements. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- vadimberman 9y agoI don't give a damn if I get downvoted for this one, but that's The Guardian in a nutshell. The general format is about picking a subject (person, brand, company, political party, country) that they are ideologically hostile to, and then picking bits and pieces from the Internet that show that it is baaaaaad. Not that it has a particular downside, but it's baaaad because maybe A, looks like B, I think C, and I heard that D. In this particular piece: the base is not a mushroom (who cares?), Quorn is successful (get'em!!!), I don't like how it tastes (good for you?), and it's owned by a big corporation (see, told you they're evil!). Also, other companies selling fake meat use very complex recipes (you don't say...). None of that involves actually talking to people or scouting publicly unavailable documents, which is what I perceive as journalism. And they have the guts to claim that "The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce."
- arkades 9y agoThis is a reasonable summary of the guardian, IMO. I think it largely has the stature that it does because it is in accord with the cultural and political tastes of a large swathe of the UK, and articulates itself better than The Daily Mail. If you consider yourself a moderately liberal intellectual, it affirms your sense of self and world. It’s a warm blanket and a bottle of milk, not great journalism.
- amriksohata 9y agoAs a life long vegetarian, quorn is okay for weaning off meat but agreed it is processed and if you want to get off meat your end goal is lentil, legumes etc
- vermooten 9y ago+1, much tastier than quorn - and meat.
- esrauch 9y agoWhy is it so bad if someone wants to get off meat and their end goal is Quorn?
- wvlia5 9y agoif you want to get off meat, your end goal is anything else you can feed on besides meat, no matter how processed it might be. if you would want to also get off processed foods, then of course your end goal would be non processed foods.
- code_duck 9y agoIt’s simply the synthetic meat version of the ultra-processed everything else at the grocery store. It doesn’t reflect traditional hippie style vegetarian or vegan values because the consumers don’t have those values.
- prepend 9y agoThis is a good point. It’s like a vegetarian hot dog.
- ghusbands 9y agoThe article mainly denounces Quorn and similar products as being heavily processed, and further denounces any vegetarians or vegans who would eat it. It strongly implies that any actual vegetarian would of course eat only whole foods, which is blatant elitism. Many people enjoy Quorn and similar products, and preferring not to eat animals doesn't mean denouncing processed foods. They're orthogonal concerns.
- nabla9 9y agoThe article uses words 'natural' and 'processed' in a very superstitious way that implies always bad or negative. Just saying natural without explanation can imply: natural as obviously better or healthier, natural as in way it has been always done, natural as with non-modified biological growth process, natural as no processing or raw. Same for the word processed. In fact, beer is “ultra-processed” in the way this article describes quorn. Quorn is product from common and unmodified mold found in earth's soil. It is grown in tanks where they add required nutrients, mostly sugars. I fail to see how it is unnatural. Is yeast unnatural? If the protein growing process involves continuous fermentation, flash drying, filtration etc. Is the processing somehow bad and unnatural? Allergy concerns are of course real, but the same thing applies to peanuts and most foods. Mycoprotein seems to cause much less allergic reactions than most 'natural' foods. If the process that produces mucoprotein contains less chemical processing than the processed meat that most people eat, isn't that natural? World Health Organization classifies nitrite processed meat as a Group 1 - carcinogenic to humans.
- ianai 9y agoIf it's mostly a mold, then isn't it essentially a whole food? It's not like molds have to be spun up in a vat from inorganic compounds. It's mold - a whole organism like any other.
- nabla9 9y agoWhole foods are plant foods that are unprocessed and unrefined. The process extracts proteins, so it's not whole food. Again, the assumption that whole food is automatically better is not true. There are good reasons why whole foods are generally healthier (good mix of nutrients, micronutrient, fibers, water), but there is no reason to assume that they have some kind of magical quality in them.
- YouAreGreat 9y ago> magical quality Taste, cravings, satiety etc. are based on evolved heuristics. Heavily processed food can fool those heuristics (and is engineered to do just that), while whole foods can't. The "magic" therefore is that it's a lot safer to eat whole foods.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoseems to be on the right side of the prevailing food paradigm, which holds that eating meat, fish, dairy and eggs is a redneck habit that has had its day Where does the author live that they think the “prevailing food paradigm” is vegan?
- ajmurmann 9y agoIt's awful that truly everything is being turned into identity politics including food. It turns out there are people who identity as "rednecks" and now the food shaming goes so far that association with them is being used to food shame people who want to be part of a different tribe (hyper liberals???) out of eating a new type of food but stick with the tribe's version of kosher. The entire identity politics direction we are going on is incredibly scary and this highlights the extent to which is happening. What makes it even scarier is how hard it is not to fall for identity politics myself. I would argue that identity politics also was what drove Naziisim, larger parts of Leniism and the awful culture revolution. This one might be the sneakiest incarnation yet. I hope the train will stop a long time before we get to Hitler station. Edit: Maybe this is even a natural end state of the two party system?
- YouAreGreat 9y ago> Where does the author live that they think the “prevailing food paradigm” is vegan? It's easy to think so. Try this very comment thread. Try talking about meat eating at your next big-city cocktail party. Yes, vegetarian/vegan evangelists are probably just a lot louder than everybody else, but that doesn't mean it isn't working for them.
- tom_mellior 9y ago> Try this very comment thread. OK, I'll bite. Links to concrete comments in this thread presenting veganism as the "prevailing food paradigm", please.
- YouAreGreat 9y agoAt the time I wrote this, there were 23 comments here. The majority was from self-declared vegetarians/vegans. That means that either that's the prevailing food paradigm among HN readers, or they're more vocal about it than non-vegans.
- Faaak 9y agoI eat Quorn on a weekly basis (my family except me is vegetarian). Frankly it's not so bad. I find it reasonably good actually. So yeah, it's "processed", but if it can make a subset of vegetarians eat healthier (some don't want to bother counting amino-acids; which is important if you are 100% vegetarian), then…
- nabla9 9y agoFirst time I had quorn, I was still ate meat. It was well prepared and served with chicken sauce. I noticed the unfamiliar texture and complemented the cook that this is either incredibly tender chicken breast or most amazing tuna fish I have ever had. As with many other frozen foods, the preparation is important. When I make quorn food myself, it's just OK, but when a good cook makes a meal, it can be amazing.
- tigershark 9y agoSaying that it was difficult to understand if the Quorn you ate was chicken or tuna steak makes me wonder what kind of food you were used to eat... Seriously, probably even with the mouth full of Carolina reaper I can tell the difference between tuna and chicken..
- dood 9y agoThe idea that vegetarians/vegans need to be "counting amino acids" is a myth - any reasonable diet containing grains and legumes will give sufficient protein. For example rice and beans, chickpeas and bread, lentils and pasta. They don't even need to be consumed at the same time, the body doesn't care as long as grains and legumes are consumed at some point. Even better if you throw in some vegetables and nuts, you've got a balanced healthy diet without needing to count anything.
- osrec 9y agoI enjoy quorn now and again, as does most of my family. We're all vegetarian, and it provides a nice change once in a while (I make a pretty nice Indian curry with their chicken style pieces). I've never really felt unhealthy eating it an and appreciate the variety it adds to my diet. If I ate meat, I would probably be more suspicious of meat products after the recent scandals around horsemeat and intensive farming practices...
- noir_lord 9y agoNot to mention the conditions that Chickens are often raised in.
- dtech 9y agoThis article is absolutely rubbish. It is using "processed" as a pejorative, without any explanation as to why processed is bad or why this fake meat movement is so bad. It seems to pander mostly to hard-core vegetarians/vegans for them to feel superior. Processed foods can be very bad because too much salt and sugar and the removal of fibers, but afaik Quorn and similar fake meats don't suffer from that problem.
- glenstein 9y agoThis is exactly what I was wondering also. It says Quorn is "processed," and in general I understand that processed means bad in the context of starchy foods. But... Is that what Quorn is? Is the argument being put forward that it has the same negative traits as other processed foods? I honestly don't know if that's intended as the explicit argument or if it's just being used as a weasel word.
- leonroy 9y agoThe Guardian used to have much higher quality journalism before they decided to avoid a paywall and instead produce traffic generating articles like this one which are light on sources and facts but heavy on hand wringing and outrage. I say this AS a Guardian subscriber but I think this will be my last year subscribing - at the rate they’re heading towards click baity articles they’ll be the left wing equivalent of the Daily Mail. The Independent is another formerly stellar paper now pumping out filler and relying on their name to sell it. Damn shame what’s happening to so many previously decent journalistic outlets in the UK.