8 ms·
As far as I can tell, I'm the target demographic for this. I eat beef (and other meat) burgers because I like how they taste. If this comes close, I'll gladly
by wccrawford 8y ago
As far as I can tell, I'm the target demographic for this.
I eat beef (and other meat) burgers because I like how they taste. If this comes close, I'll gladly switch, even though they cost a little more. I'm far from vegetarian, but I've been thinking more and more that I'd like to slim down on my actual meat eating for a few reasons, including the environment, the animal living conditions, and the cholesterol.
The one thing I'm not happy about is trading fat for carbs. I'd rather stick to the protein and fat. But no solution is going to be perfect.
- chrisco255 8y agoAs someone raised around cattle ranches, I really don't understand the animal living conditions argument.
- GFischer 8y agoCows have it pretty good (especially in my country Uruguay) - I absolutely understand it when you´re speaking about chicken and fish though. The one ugly part for cattle is the slaughter, you need to have tough skin to work at a slaughterhouse.
- mrfusion 8y agoWell most of them don’t live on “ranches” for one.
- Faramir4k 8y agoThere's an interesting anti-meat psyop going around, coinciding with rising meat prices (Canada).
- 0xB31B1B 8y agoRanches and feed lots are different. In the US, cows are raised on ranches until 6 months before slaughter, where they are brought to a feed lot, fattened up in crowded conditions, then slaughtered
- henryfjordan 8y agoDoesn't that end up being almost a third of their life?
- milquetoastaf 8y agowow it's almost as if you had a singular anecdotal experience that doesn't cover the entirety of the issue
- ma2rten 8y agoThere is a documentary called Dominion which might be interesting to you: https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch Warning: it's quite shocking / bloody.
- mercer 8y agoI've wanted to meaningfully change my diet and watching this made me realize it's time. Thanks for the reminder.
- chrisco255 8y agoI grew up in a rural area, with ranchers as personal friends, I don't need to watch a propaganda film. I know how cattle are raised and slaughtered. And I know butchers who have done that sort of work for decades and it doesn't bother them at all. They enjoy their work.
- matthewtoast 8y agoMy understanding is that the vast majority of cattle (80%?) in the United States is raised in factory farms; the vast majority the meat Americans available to purchase grocery store, served in restaurants, and processed for fast food, is sourced from those same farms. And my understanding is that the conditions would be horrific by almost any standard: the animals are kept confined, in extremely cramped and nasty conditions, often unable to move or turn around, all day and every day, seldom or never permitted to roam. (I'm ignoring the whole antibiotics overuse question.) When they're ready for slaughter, they're crammed into trucks and transported for hundreds of miles, in all weather, standing in their own feces. Exhausted, terrified, and freezing or overheated after transport, many are shocked with electric prods or beaten to force them back out of the trucks. Then they are hit with bolt guns to "stun" them, after which their throats are slit. The lucky cows are unconscious before they are sawed apart, but you can bet that the types of workers who do these dirty, low-paying jobs, hundreds of times per day, as quickly as possible, without clogging up the factory line, aren't always trained well enough nor concerned whether they cause suffering.
- evandev 8y agoThe bolt gun is not to stun them, but an ethical method of killing an animal. > A captive bolt stunning gun kills the animal and reduces it instantly unconscious without causing pain. https://www.grandin.com/humane/cap.bolt.tips.html https://www.grandin.com/humane/cap.bolt.tips.html
- mrfusion 8y agoYou kind of have to think of the human toll on those workers too. Granted they are free to leave which helps but still. That’s a lot of weight on ones soul.
- chrisco255 8y agoNo, 91% of cattle ranches are family owned and about half of all cattle are raised in small herds of 50 head or less. You are also belittling the work of these professionals. You sound like you have little knowledge of the industry in general.
- deadmetheny 8y agoAs one who also grew up and currently lives in the rural Midwest - it's people not knowing what they're talking about. They hear about the awful conditions poultry are raised in and extrapolate it to all livestock.
- mcculley 8y agoI welcome all companies that sell meat to publish videos of their operations. I would really like to buy meat only from companies that minimize the suffering of the livestock. Do you have any preferred livestock vendors that document their supply chain?
- protomyth 8y agoI cannot imagine its economical for anyone in South Dakota to have these "factory farms".
- mcculley 8y agoWhat do you mean? Do you think "factory farms" are less capital efficient than farms that would try to minimize suffering?
- deadmetheny 8y agoIf you take a car trip anywhere outside the major city centres of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc (and from what I hear, Texas) you'll inevitably see many, many head of cattle milling about in fields. I would put forth that no farmers really want to mistreat their animals, and will go at great lengths to keep them as safe as they can - this year's cyclone blizzard in Nebraska was especially indicative of this[0]. Farmers generally don't have a complete supply chain anyway - they sell their animals at the stockyard to whichever packing plant is buying them. [0] https://www.omaha.com/news/plus/heavy-snow-freezing-temps-have-nebraska-farmers-fighting-to-keep/article_72524850-bab7-56f9-9a94-430ce53ff004.html https://www.omaha.com/news/plus/heavy-snow-freezing-temps-ha...
- hart_russell 8y agoI've driven by a few factory farms in California. You know you're close to one when you're hit with the smell of manure many miles out. When you actually drive by the farms, the reality is quite depressing: the cattle are standing in their own shit with barely any space to move. I'm done with red meat myself.
- chrisco255 8y agoSo the cattle are living in the same condition as many San Franciscans? I live in TX and grew up in FL and the cattle have plenty of room to roam here.
- protomyth 8y agoSouth Dakota cattle are roaming the fields, in fact, about 100,000 died in the early winter storm in 2013. They were still in the summer pastures and had not grown their winter coat. It started as a rain and then turned into a blizzard. The winter pastures are better protected. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/100000-cattle-feared-dead-after-early-south-dakota-snowstorm/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/100000-cattle-feared-dead-after...
- tracker1 8y agoThat's pretty bad, it isn't like that in other places. In fact it's better for the environment to rotate grazing lands overall. It helps deal with or reverse desertification. It's not much different than how fish farms have been changing to something closer to what nature offers in places. My single biggest issue with these meat alternatives is I cannot understand why it's costing so much more than actual meat.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yellowapple 8y ago> My single biggest issue with these meat alternatives is I cannot understand why it's costing so much more than actual meat. I'd imagine it's because of the economies of scale; once production ramps up to sufficiently-high volume, the prices should in theory go down. Availability in fast food should hopefully help with that. Subsidies are another aspect to this, though I don't know offhand how heavily cattle ranching is subsidized v., say, corn or soy.
- ALittleLight 8y agoSame. I tried the impossible burger recently and was pleasantly surprised - it's as good as meat in my view. As a moral matter I will never eat meat when the Impossible variant is available.
- gitgreen 8y agoThis may sound ridiculous but what I really want to try is an Almost Impossible burger. The flavor and texture of a regular Impossible burg was a bit off from a regular burger but still tasty and close to an all beef experience. I wonder if mixing in a small percent of beef will still achieve the goal of drastically cutting meat consumption while still giving beef consumers their fix.
- rawrmaan 8y agoYou might enjoy the Improbable Burger: https://youtu.be/vSh58Tg75Ds https://youtu.be/vSh58Tg75Ds
- jbob2000 8y agoI've been eating the Beyond Meat (pea protein) burger from A&W for a while now. It's pretty damn close to the taste of beef, I'm happy to make the switch. It has an aftertaste that some might describe as metallic, but you really have to look for it, it's not that strong. What shocked me was how much the taste of a burger comes down to texture. There's enough toppings on burgers that you don't really get the beef taste anyways, the patty is really just there for texture!
- rootusrootus 8y agoThat metallic aftertaste is the only thing I found disagreeable about the Impossible Burger I tried recently. The texture wasn't exactly right, either, but it was not objectionable. Also, if you cannot really taste the beef, you're eating crappy burgers :). My #1 trick for making an inexpensive burger palatable is to get it as a double, just to try and get enough meat for the flavor to come through.
- riyakhanna1983 8y agoHi! Is there an email I can reach out to you at?
- jimmaswell 8y agoHave you actually been diagnosed with high cholesterol or is this just preventative? You probably don't have to worry unless your diet has already been causing a problem. Lots of people eat terribly and their bloodwork comes back with flying colors.
- tracker1 8y agoThe issue I have, is that this shouldn't cost more at all. They're literally charging more to process the food they're feeding the cows into something meat-like than it costs to actually buy the meat. If the cows are a less expensive process, then I'm just not into it. (Aside from the fact that I can't handle legumes anyway)
- vages 8y agoThat's development costs. With time, the infrastructure to make these burgers will be as widely available as that to make cow burgers, and that will bring costs down.
- skykooler 8y agoThere are large agricultural subsidies on meat, and on corn (which the cows are fed). You can't make a veggie burger out of just corn, so it has to use less underpriced components.
- tracker1 8y agoAren't there also subsidies on soy and other sources of protein that are used? Aside: I'd be okay eliminating most subsidies as long as work-life and safety standards from import countries match US. https://farm.ewg.org/cropinsurance.php?fips=00000&summpage=PS_BY_CROP®ionname=theUnitedStates https://farm.ewg.org/cropinsurance.php?fips=00000&summpage=P...
- laura2013 8y agowell, the product being sold is not your typical grind beans and other ingredients made into a patty. This is a genetically modified protein made to feel and taste like meat. The R&D that went into making this happen is incredibly complex. I'm confident the price will go down just as with everything else.
- nradov 8y agoThere is no significant link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol levels. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dietary-cholesterol-does-not-matter https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dietary-cholesterol-doe...
- ArrayList 8y agoExcept there is. You've been fooled by the egg industry shills. https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/03/22/the-effects-of-dietary-cholesterol-on-blood-cholesterol/ https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/03/22/the-effects-of-dietary...
- Forbo 8y agoI vouched for your comment because you do raise valid counter evidence, however for future reference I think it could have been stated a bit more tactfully.
- opportune 8y agoThat was conventional knowledge for those "in the know" for the last couple years but I recently read a pretty big study which disputes this too: https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2019/03/eggs-cholesterol/ https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2019/03/eggs-cholester... Which sucks because I really enjoyed eating tons of eggs for the few years where people thought they were actually not bad for you
- Henk0 8y ago”Diet data were collected using food frequency questionnaires or by taking a diet history. Each participant was asked a long list of what they’d eaten for the previous year or month. The data were collected during a single visit.The study had up to 31 years of follow up (median: 17.5 years), during which 5,400 cardiovascular events and 6,132 all-cause deaths were diagnosed. A major limitation of the study is participants’ long-term eating patterns weren’t assessed.” You can probably start eating your eggs again. Food questionnaires are pretty much useless, and more so the longer the time period you’re supposed to try to remember your food intake for. People usually can’t remember what they’ve eaten for the last week, much less the last month or year. These dietary epidemiology studies get way too much attention and can’t prove anything. Here we’re supposed to act on a single questionnaire being administered, asking about an already-at-the-time maligned food product, and a followup decades later, with no interim data, and no data on other factors known to influence heart disease (exercise, stress, etc.) For a good critical look at the heart disease question, I recommend Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s series of posts on the topic https://drmalcolmkendrick.org https://drmalcolmkendrick.org