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I'm excited for meat alternatives, but have 3 thoughts on them that I haven't seen mentioned yet (I'm 42): * Nearly all of the rangeland and high desert in the

I'm excited for meat alternatives, but have 3 thoughts on them that I haven't seen mentioned yet (I'm 42): * Nearly all of the rangeland and high desert in the western US was destroyed by cattle and sheep grazing over the past 150 years. This is a billion dollar industry with the emotional buy-in of millions of people so I'm skeptical that it will be reformed in our lifetimes. * My digestive system got wrecked trying to be on a mostly vegetarian diet over several years after the housing bubble popped. The gist of it is that the lectins (and other defense mechanisms in the husks) of legumes and nightshades disrupt the mucus lining of the intestines, which leads to leaky gut and stool getting into the body cavity and blood (leaky gut), which may lead to autoimmune diseases like colitis and arthritis. Something about animal protein heals this lining, probably because humans evolved as scavengers eating leftover kills and carrion from top predators. * I have not yet seen studies comparing the healing and regenerative properties of meat compared to plant protein, especially concerning bodybuilding. In my own experience, there is simply no comparison between the two. Beef, eggs, salmon, tuna, turkey and chicken simply dwarf any gains obtained from bean burritos (I wish this wasn't the case). I don't know a solution to this, although I'm guessing that a portion of the gains are hormonal. Maybe someone can isolate the animal compounds and make supplements similar to creatine, BCAAs, glutamine, taurine, etc. Not to knock current meat alternatives, but I view them sort of like compact fluorescent light bulbs, as a 10 or 20 year stopgap until we have true test tube meat (LED bulbs). In order for meat alternatives to compete with meat, someone will need to reform the federal food subsidies that keep meat an order of magnitude cheaper than it should be. An impossible burger should cost LESS than beef, not more.

landonxjames 7y ago
> My digestive system got wrecked trying to be on a mostly vegetarian diet over several years after the housing bubble popped. The gist of it is that the lectins (and other defense mechanisms in the husks) of legumes and nightshades disrupt the mucus lining of the intestines, which leads to leaky gut and stool getting into the body cavity and blood (leaky gut), which may lead to autoimmune diseases like colitis and arthritis. Something about animal protein heals this lining, probably because humans evolved as scavengers eating leftover kills and carrion from top predators. Do you have a citation for this? I've never heard anything like it before.
- zackmorris 7y ago
  Ya sorry, it's a relatively new concept: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php My feeling is that it's similar to how allergies/cancer/etc often have 2 or more triggers that must coincide to set off the condition. So for example, maybe people who wouldn't typically have gluten sensitivity (a lectin), ended up with it because they distrupted their gut flora by eating, say, the glyphosate in oats (especially processed oats like Cheerios). It could also happen if they eat compounds not typically encountered in nature, like those present in GMO foods. Western medicine has a blind spot when it comes to these holistic effects because it tends to mainly study single root causes and cures. We also don't yet have enough long term studies, because GMOs only went mainstream around the late 90s and we're only just today able to start tackling big data with machine learning. But many people were wary of herbacides, pesticides and GMOs because there were no long term studies yet. Unfortunately a lot of unscientific practices got rammed to market during the George W Bush years, and during the dot com boom years before that under Clinton where money trumped public health concerns. Ok and really all through the 80s as well... For anyone who reads this, and especially vegetarians dealing with IBS, what really helped me was the glutamine powder you buy at any workout supplement shop. Then I laid off legumes and nightshades (especially peanuts and peppers) for 6 months to let my gut rebuild. Use a pressure cooker to break down the lectins in beans, and also try de-husked grains like white rice instead of brown rice, or say sourdough bread over whole wheat bread. Then be aware that the gut is always breaking down and rebuilding, so treat it maybe like red meat or alcohol and try limiting yourself to a day or two of beans/salsa in a row instead of eating them every day. Also the Gundry ProPlant protein powder (hemp, flax, spirulina) helped me. If you're under 40 and don't yet have IBS, you might be seeing other symptoms like puffyiness, weight gain and lethargy that feels kind of like chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. For me, that coincided with discovering I had sleep apnea. I had been chronically tired for as long as a decade.
  - intopieces 7y ago
    While I don’t doubt your story and haven’t read your link, what is interesting to me is that I have been a vegetarian for 13 years haven’t had any of these symptoms. What explains the variation here?
geddy 7y ago
> someone will need to reform the federal food subsidies that keep meat an order of magnitude cheaper than it should be Sadly, as most of us probably know already, that would require the buddies of Big Agriculture to do work that directly attacks Big Agriculture. Won't happen, not now, not ever. There's simply too much money in it. I think the only thing that might shuttle this process along is that Big Agri starts coming out with their own plant-based alternatives, like Tyson is doing. Once the big money gets into the political environment, that's when things will really change. I look forward to the prices taking a dive when that happens.
- annogram 7y ago
  Insular behavior like this will eventually leave the USA in the dust. China is redoing their entire energy infrastructure and while they probably wont move off meat any time soon at least they have that going for them. Most of Europe and the rest of the Anglo-sphere will happily move to plant-based proteins and completely leave that industry behind. When some of the leading industries in the US are just not exported whats the status of that country going to be.
  - F-0X 7y ago
    > Most of Europe and the rest of the Anglo-sphere will happily move to plant-based proteins and completely leave that industry behind I really doubt that.
dsalso 7y ago
You are correct sir. When first coming to the US from Mexico I felt something (of my ALWAYS up to this point)- resilient stomach was going wrong. After doing some research plus experimentation, I realized back home I ate some kind of bone broth multiple times per week. The glycine and collagen in general inside it is so restorative you would not believe it. I find it to be extremely relaxing and anti inflammatory to consume it at least once per week. Plus the meat I did consume had some mixture of tendon/cartilage in it. Once I figured out what was missing it has been only smooth sailing for my stomach. Regarding meat and bodybuilding, I would like to comment that there is simply no comparison for the amount of vitamins and mineral in meat, plus the absorbability of not having lectins and oxalates to leech them. There is a reason why both my grandmother's insisted on cooking their children liver once a week and they all grew up very healthy individuals.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tryptophan 7y ago
>My digestive system got wrecked trying to be on a mostly vegetarian diet over several years after the housing bubble popped. The gist of it is that the lectins (and other defense mechanisms in the husks) of legumes and nightshades disrupt the mucus lining of the intestines, which leads to leaky gut and stool getting into the body cavity and blood (leaky gut), which may lead to autoimmune diseases like colitis and arthritis. Umm...did you cook the plants before eating them? Cooking destroys like 99% of lectins. >Something about animal protein heals this lining, probably because humans evolved as scavengers eating leftover kills and carrion from top predators. This sounds like total pseudo-science new age woo. No organism EVER directly incorporates foreign protein into itself. Its always broken down completely first, so the structure or origin of these "animal proteins" doesn't matter.
- wavegeek 7y ago
  > Umm Signaling of disdain and contempt not required. > Cooking destroys like 99% of lectins. Citation required. > Its always broken down completely first It's Ummm We are talking here about the lining of the digestive system. You know, the system that takes in whole foods and breaks them down. You bet the digestive system's walls are exposed to the proteins.
cmonnow 7y ago
regd. thought 2 - A billion vegetarians around the world without stomach issues think otherwise.

landonxjames 7y ago

> My digestive system got wrecked trying to be on a mostly vegetarian diet over several years after the housing bubble popped. The gist of it is that the lectins (and other defense mechanisms in the husks) of legumes and nightshades disrupt the mucus lining of the intestines, which leads to leaky gut and stool getting into the body cavity and blood (leaky gut), which may lead to autoimmune diseases like colitis and arthritis. Something about animal protein heals this lining, probably because humans evolved as scavengers eating leftover kills and carrion from top predators. Do you have a citation for this? I've never heard anything like it before.

zackmorris 7y ago
Ya sorry, it's a relatively new concept: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php My feeling is that it's similar to how allergies/cancer/etc often have 2 or more triggers that must coincide to set off the condition. So for example, maybe people who wouldn't typically have gluten sensitivity (a lectin), ended up with it because they distrupted their gut flora by eating, say, the glyphosate in oats (especially processed oats like Cheerios). It could also happen if they eat compounds not typically encountered in nature, like those present in GMO foods. Western medicine has a blind spot when it comes to these holistic effects because it tends to mainly study single root causes and cures. We also don't yet have enough long term studies, because GMOs only went mainstream around the late 90s and we're only just today able to start tackling big data with machine learning. But many people were wary of herbacides, pesticides and GMOs because there were no long term studies yet. Unfortunately a lot of unscientific practices got rammed to market during the George W Bush years, and during the dot com boom years before that under Clinton where money trumped public health concerns. Ok and really all through the 80s as well... For anyone who reads this, and especially vegetarians dealing with IBS, what really helped me was the glutamine powder you buy at any workout supplement shop. Then I laid off legumes and nightshades (especially peanuts and peppers) for 6 months to let my gut rebuild. Use a pressure cooker to break down the lectins in beans, and also try de-husked grains like white rice instead of brown rice, or say sourdough bread over whole wheat bread. Then be aware that the gut is always breaking down and rebuilding, so treat it maybe like red meat or alcohol and try limiting yourself to a day or two of beans/salsa in a row instead of eating them every day. Also the Gundry ProPlant protein powder (hemp, flax, spirulina) helped me. If you're under 40 and don't yet have IBS, you might be seeing other symptoms like puffyiness, weight gain and lethargy that feels kind of like chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. For me, that coincided with discovering I had sleep apnea. I had been chronically tired for as long as a decade.
- intopieces 7y ago
  While I don’t doubt your story and haven’t read your link, what is interesting to me is that I have been a vegetarian for 13 years haven’t had any of these symptoms. What explains the variation here?

geddy 7y ago

> someone will need to reform the federal food subsidies that keep meat an order of magnitude cheaper than it should be Sadly, as most of us probably know already, that would require the buddies of Big Agriculture to do work that directly attacks Big Agriculture. Won't happen, not now, not ever. There's simply too much money in it. I think the only thing that might shuttle this process along is that Big Agri starts coming out with their own plant-based alternatives, like Tyson is doing. Once the big money gets into the political environment, that's when things will really change. I look forward to the prices taking a dive when that happens.

annogram 7y ago
Insular behavior like this will eventually leave the USA in the dust. China is redoing their entire energy infrastructure and while they probably wont move off meat any time soon at least they have that going for them. Most of Europe and the rest of the Anglo-sphere will happily move to plant-based proteins and completely leave that industry behind. When some of the leading industries in the US are just not exported whats the status of that country going to be.
- F-0X 7y ago
  > Most of Europe and the rest of the Anglo-sphere will happily move to plant-based proteins and completely leave that industry behind I really doubt that.

dsalso 7y ago

You are correct sir. When first coming to the US from Mexico I felt something (of my ALWAYS up to this point)- resilient stomach was going wrong. After doing some research plus experimentation, I realized back home I ate some kind of bone broth multiple times per week. The glycine and collagen in general inside it is so restorative you would not believe it. I find it to be extremely relaxing and anti inflammatory to consume it at least once per week. Plus the meat I did consume had some mixture of tendon/cartilage in it. Once I figured out what was missing it has been only smooth sailing for my stomach. Regarding meat and bodybuilding, I would like to comment that there is simply no comparison for the amount of vitamins and mineral in meat, plus the absorbability of not having lectins and oxalates to leech them. There is a reason why both my grandmother's insisted on cooking their children liver once a week and they all grew up very healthy individuals.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

tryptophan 7y ago

>My digestive system got wrecked trying to be on a mostly vegetarian diet over several years after the housing bubble popped. The gist of it is that the lectins (and other defense mechanisms in the husks) of legumes and nightshades disrupt the mucus lining of the intestines, which leads to leaky gut and stool getting into the body cavity and blood (leaky gut), which may lead to autoimmune diseases like colitis and arthritis. Umm...did you cook the plants before eating them? Cooking destroys like 99% of lectins. >Something about animal protein heals this lining, probably because humans evolved as scavengers eating leftover kills and carrion from top predators. This sounds like total pseudo-science new age woo. No organism EVER directly incorporates foreign protein into itself. Its always broken down completely first, so the structure or origin of these "animal proteins" doesn't matter.

wavegeek 7y ago
> Umm Signaling of disdain and contempt not required. > Cooking destroys like 99% of lectins. Citation required. > Its always broken down completely first It's Ummm We are talking here about the lining of the digestive system. You know, the system that takes in whole foods and breaks them down. You bet the digestive system's walls are exposed to the proteins.

cmonnow 7y ago

regd. thought 2 - A billion vegetarians around the world without stomach issues think otherwise.