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Congrats to that team for building a great product. I hope they see a lot of success. Long term, I hope plant based meat alternatives become commoditized. If th
by nindalf 8y ago
Congrats to that team for building a great product. I hope they see a lot of success. Long term, I hope plant based meat alternatives become commoditized. If there are a bunch of alternatives that taste just as good and importantly are cheaper than meat, most people will switch. That's a huge win for the environment (and also animal rights), and I can't wait to see it happen.
- toyg 8y agoUntil the people currently destroying forests to grow cattle, start destroying forests to grow ingredients for these burgers. Soil depletion is also a thing. I still remember the argument for biofuel and where it ended up. More options in the mix is always good, but trying to replace everything with vegetable stuff is not going to work in the long run.
- giarc 8y ago"but trying to replace everything with vegetable stuff is not going to work in the long run." But we have to eat... what do you recommend we replace our protein intake with?
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI suggest other plant protein sources, like soy or pea. Wheat, in particular, has a terrible amino acid profile for humans [0]. Aside from making it so that anyone with coeliac can't consume their burgers, it's just not as effective for humans as animal protein. Pea and soy, however, are nearly as effective and much better for the earth/environment. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3887888 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3887888
- nickik 8y agoThe Impossible Burger is designed to use environmentally friendly ingredients that can scale. I don't understand what your issue is.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI’m suggesting they simply use different plant protein to do so. Would you consider wheat protein to be the only kind that can scale? If so, why?
- cpeterso 8y agoBeyond Meat, another meat-substitute company, uses soy and pea protein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Meat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Meat
- Aromasin 8y agoQuinoa is also an excellent source for a full amino acid complex. It has substantially higher Lysine content then that found in other grains. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1546052 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1546052
- nate_meurer 8y agoThe incomplete protein thing is a myth [1]. The amino acid profile of single ingredients is almost never a concern in practice, because meals nearly always contain complimentary proteins. It's actually really difficult to avoid complimentary proteins if you have anything like normal dietary habits. Furthermore, it's not even necessary for every meal to provide all essential amino acids, as long as your diet isn't chronically deficient in any of them over time. Wheat protein is easy to complete. This is acknowledged at the link you gave: > when combined with other food proteins such as legumes, oil seeds or animal products the proteins of wheat exhibit excellent nutritional complementarity. Lysine is the limiting amino acid in wheat protein. Lysine is easy to find in other places, and wheat protein can be made fully complete using half as much pea protein, for example. A single 20 g portion of wheat protein similar in size to one impossible burger contains over a quarter of the RDA of lysine [2]. Nearly any other protein you consume in a day will easily provide the rest, even with sensible vegan diets. 1 - https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-myth-of-complementary-protein/ https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-myth-of-complementary-pr... 2 - https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Wheat_flour%2C_whole-grain_nutritional_value.html https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Wheat_flour%2C_whole-grain_nu...
- stochastic_monk 8y agoIt depends on your protein needs and goals. Survival is different from optimal performance.
- nate_meurer 8y agoNot sure what you mean by "optimal performance". Your body needs a finite daily amount of each essential amino acid for tissue growth and repair. If you're an athlete you might need more at times, and some health problems can cause usage of particular aminos to spike, but the requirement is always finite. Consuming more than those amounts has no proven benefit (unless that protein is meant to displace calories from carbs or fat, which is a completely different topic). Optimal daily intake of all essential amino acids is easy to achieve with any sensible dietary habit, even for very active adults. If you're consuming adequate protein each day, given your activity level and health, then the amino profile of your protein intake is completely irrelevant unless your diet is really goofy. I'd encourage you to read that Forks over Knives article.
- rebuilder 8y agoThe question you're replying to isn't the one being asked. Also, per the article, the current iteration of the Impossible Burger is no longer wheat-based.
- cerebellum42 8y agoThe cattle need to be fed too, and they don't turn their food into meat very efficiently. That's why replacing meat with plant based alternatives is (almost) always a huge gain in efficiency, in terms of resource use.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI believe this is an urban legend? Anyway, most crops don't convert to protein any better than cattle.
- cerebellum42 8y agoCrops are also not perfectly efficient, but it's simply replacing two chained instances of inefficiencies with one. Instead of Crops -> Animal feed -> Cattle -> Meat -> Eat you have Crops -> some processing -> Eat
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoThen there's the 92% of grazing land that doesn't grow crops. That's a clear win for cattle.
- yorwba 8y agoAccording to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization [1] "just less than half the world's usable surface is covered by grazing systems" and "Grazing systems supply about 9 percent of the world's production of beef and about 30 percent of the world's production of sheep and goat meat." Doesn't seem like such a clear win for cattle. They do note that "For an estimated 100 million people in arid areas, and probably a similar number in other zones, grazing livestock is the only possible source of livelihood.", so not everyone might be able to afford a vegetarian diet, but 91% of beef seems replaceable. [1] http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5303E/x5303e05.htm#chapter%202:%20livestock%20grazing%20systems%20&%20the%20environment http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5303E/x5303e05.htm#chapter%202:%2...
- nate_meurer 8y ago
- rsynnott 8y agoGenerally, most of that forest destruction is to grow soy beans for animal feed. Feeding the soy beans directly to humans is far more efficient, so, if more people adopt TVP instead of meat, you'd expect a drop in land requirements.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoYou go ahead and spend your money on that stuff. But in a free market, soy-based protein is going to be a hard sell.
- yorwba 8y agoAccording to TFA, the Impossible Burger 2.0 has reached parity with meat-based burgers. It seems unlikely that they'll just stop innovating, so they might eventually produce a soy-based burger that tastes better than meat at the same price. If that happens, it's game over for meat.
- cr0sh 8y agoIt'll still be a burger - or ground burger product. What if I want a well-marbled aged beef ribeye? Or if I want to smoke a pork shoulder or brisket? Those kinds of products are going to take some time before they become manufactured from plant-based sources (or before they are "grown" - indeed, the first versions of that nature are likely to be too lean, which will be a real problem, especially for taste and texture).
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoWe have them in local joints - at a 50% premium. Not gonna take over at that price.
- Vinnl 8y agoWe're so far from that being even close to a problem that I feel it's a bit disingenuous to see it repeated so often when vegetarianism comes up. There's a whole lot of meat we can cut out of our diets without any of that becoming a problem. (And of course, if the soy that is currently fed to cattle is fed to humans directly, we can feed quite a few more humans from that than that cattle currently can, without needing to use more resources. That's not to say it does not come with its own problems, but they're unlikely to be as severe as the ones we get with meat anytime soon.)
- alangpierce 8y agoPlant-based foods are almost always significantly more efficient to produce than meat since you no longer need to grow all of the food to feed an animal for its entire life. From another article ( https://www.cnet.com/news/impossible-burger-2-0-tastes-like-beef-really/ https://www.cnet.com/news/impossible-burger-2-0-tastes-like-... ): > But Impossible Foods can produce a burger using a fourth of the water and less than 4 percent of the land -- and emit one-tenth of the greenhouse gases -- than a conventional burger, Brown said. So yeah, we might still destroy forests to make veggie burgers, but it'll be 1/25th of the forest destruction (if you believe the numbers).
- tptacek 8y agoIt's easy to win the argument that plant-based foods are more efficient to mass-produce than CAFO meat, but you might need to be careful generalizing; pigs and chickens fed forage and scrap are supposedly pretty efficient as well. (I have no idea if there's an efficient way to scale beef).
- hundt 8y ago> I have no idea if there's an efficient way to scale beef If you're interested, https://twitter.com/drsplace https://twitter.com/drsplace is a good follow. She writes and cites a lot on this topic (because she is employed by the beef industry).
- firethief 8y agoEfficiency and scalability are not the same thing. Does forage not have high land requirement? If there were a massive demand for scrap, would it be met by something other than scrap farming?
- tptacek 8y agoNo, the point of forage is that it does not spend arable land generating crops for livestock. That's the meaning of the term.
- epanchin 8y ago
- 24gttghh 8y agoI've been under the impression that plant-based proteins take up less land than does animal-derived protein[0][1][2]. I could go on with the citations. So yes, replacing everything with plant-based protein would be vastly better. Edit: Vastly better than Beef* [0]https://www.wri.org/resources/charts-graphs/animal-based-foods-are-more-resource-intensive-plant-based-foods https://www.wri.org/resources/charts-graphs/animal-based-foo... [1]https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/protein/#protein-planet https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you... [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5899434/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5899434/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mistercow 8y agoUnless the Impossible Burger is exceptionally inefficient to produce, that's still a huge win. An acre of land can produce about twenty times as much edible protein from soy as from beef.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> trying to replace everything with vegetable stuff is not going to work in the long run. I'm not sure what you think the alternative is. People need to eat.
- cr0sh 8y agoMaybe cattle farming (plus fertilizer and methane recovery) in near-Earth orbit O'Neill Cylinders will be the answer?
- be-ez 8y agoWhen compared to meat there is almost no doubt that Impossible is better for the environment. Impossible has an environmental mission first. Checkout the sustainability report from 2017 http://www.ift.org/~/media/Food%20Technology/Weekly/IF_SustainabilityReport2017.pdf http://www.ift.org/~/media/Food%20Technology/Weekly/IF_Susta... Or the update from 2018 https://impossiblefoods.com/if-pr/2018-Impact-Update/ https://impossiblefoods.com/if-pr/2018-Impact-Update/
- skybrian 8y agoWhy "no doubt"? What's your basis for that? I'm no expert, but I expect land is different in different places. There are different sources of feed. Someone changes a supplier or a farming practice, and it changes a number in a spreadsheet, and you'll get a different answer. Accounting gets complicated enough with money. When you're doing science it's much more difficult. This sounds like the sort of thing that scientists and economists can debate for decades. I'm certainly not going to trust some unsourced numbers in a press release.
- be-ez 8y agoIt sounds like you didn't read the report or check the references on page 26. I recommend reading this paper and coming to your own conclusion about "almost no doubt". Within sustainability science, there is little debate about the lack of efficiency to produce protein via cows. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0189029 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- skybrian 8y agoThat's more impressive, and yet, as a non-expert, I still don't know how to evaluate whether the calculation is bug-free. Do you? I guess I'd have to track down all the references and build my own spreadsheet? There are some spreadsheets listed in the references, but it seems like a complicated task. Just to nit-pick one little detail, it seems to treat all land the same: "Significant decreases in land occupation also follow from a shift away from animal-based foodstuffs. The VEG and VGN occupy 70% and 79% less land than the MUD, respectively (VEG = -63% and VGN = -74% for isocaloric diet comparison)." But, prime farmland and grazing for grass-fed beef aren't the same, so adding them up and taking a percentage seems dubious. (I'm also skeptical of estimates with no margin of error.) Given that no single scientific paper is definitive (you need to read the literature) I don't see how to come to a conclusion on any of this without a whole lot more work than I'm going to put into it for an online discussion.
- logfromblammo 8y agoThis is about the only kind of vegan proselytizing that I can stomach. If you can make food that tastes as good as meat, with nutrition similar to meat, and sell it at a lower price than meat, I will switch overnight, and never look back. And it would be nice if it came in bulk forms, rather than just as pre-formed patties. I eat ground beef a lot more often than I eat burgers. Until then, good luck with the test kitchen research. The results so far indicate that the developers understand the problem they need to solve.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThis. I want my tacos and burgers to taste like tacos and burgers. I don't care whether it's "real" beef or not. If someone's selling 80/20 that's blended with some plant product (or even just 100% plant product) and it's substantially cheaper than 80/20 and tastes about the same then that's what I'm gonna buy. So far no option like that exists on the shelf. All the fake meat options cater to the people who shop at whole foods and I'll take value priced 80/20 over that any day.
- w0utert 8y agoMost of the meat you get from the ‘easy’ places like supermarkets tastes terrible anyway, compared to quality meat from a specialist store. I’ve long ago stopped eating chicken almost completely because of this, in the end you just taste whatever you serve with the chicken, and you get a certain bite from it that is easily imitated using ‘fake meat’. I’m pretty sure I will never be a strict vegetarian, but I honestly don’t see the point of eating cheap mass-produced meat over some more environmental- and/or animal-friendly produced alternative anymore. Quality over quantity please. I cannot understand how so many people disagree, especially those who claim to love meat.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago> I cannot understand how so many people disagree, especially those who claim to love meat. Well for starters, a lot of them probably can't afford higher quality meat. Quality over quantity doesn't work if the quantity goes down too far.
- zornado 8y agoI am not getting this. Highly processed foods are the source of all problems and people cheer up for synthetic food!
- tim333 8y agoThe devil's in the details. Because some processed food is bad doesn't mean it all it.
- cies 8y agoIn this case it certainly looses from straight up beans or lentils. It will straight up win from a regular burger though. Talking health here. Nothing to back it up, just common sense about cholesterol and different fats.
- staplers 8y agoPeople cheer while it's novel (like television, social media) but our children will hate it and feel cheated out of real nutrition by 'manufactured food'.
- ldh 8y agoMost of the meat they eat now comes from factory farms, you can't get much closer yo manufactured food than that.
- puranjay 8y agoI love meat but I've always struggled to reconcile my love of eating it with my love of animals. I would be happy to pay a premium if it meant I could get meat-like taste without the guilt
- mrspeaker 8y agoI'm more excited about where they go after they get passed the "uncanny valley of meat". If they can nail it, they'll get bored and move on to new and weirder flavors and textures. Hook it up to Watson and you don't just get new recipes, but they're combined with new meat! (https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/article/how-ibm-chef-watson-works https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/ar...)
- puranjay 8y agoI wonder if they can somehow replicate the flavor in bones. I'd love to make stock or a stew, but so much of the "meaty" flavor comes from bones
- dashundchen 8y agoI eat plant-based and don't know what bone broth tastes like, but I assume very savory from the others descriptions When I want to cook savory foods, there's certain things you can look to: 1. Miso pastes. There's several kinds but in a regular American grocery with international sections you'll usually find a mild white miso and a slightly more pungent red one. Both are usually savory. I am sure Chinese and Japanese groceries will have more options. 2. Seaweed 3. Certain vegetable broth brands - "Better than Bouillan" vegetable stock, with the green label, is extremely savory 4. Less of an impact, but certain foods, like lentils and tempeh can impart an earthy, savory flavor You'd be surprised how many flavors you can get mixing these in various quantities, along with other seasonings such as liquid aminos, liquid smoke, nutritional yeast, roasted tomatoes, and soy sauce.
- scrumbledober 8y ago
- ChuckMcM 8y agoI agree it is really positive outcome. It suffers patent risk like a number of technologies that were slowed significantly in their early life (like encryption and digital cash).