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Whole Foods CEO on plant-based meat: good for the environment, not for health
- nefitty 7y agoI became vegetarian because of the ethical aspects. I really missed Carl's Jr. burgers for a long time until they introduced a burger with a Beyond patty. I totally empathize with meat eaters who say, "I could never go vegetarian." That's how I feel about the Whole Food CEO's diet. Fifteen fruits and vegetables every day? Unfathomable!
- sprafa 7y agoLol, even in his worst case he’s saying you get one out of two predicted advantages from it. That doesn’t sound too bad, particularly if you eat veggie meat in moderation.
- rgrieselhuber 7y agoSeed oils and pesticides, how could that possibly be bad for your health?
- imglorp 7y agoThat's kind of a false dichotomy, because the animals eat that too, which means you eat it, plus you eat the steroids and antibiotics they're given.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoThe animals actually digest it. So no, you don't eat it. You eat meat, which is obviously a different thing from seed oils.
- imglorp 7y agoNot true, for all compounds at least. Meat does indeed contain pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. We might not test for it, is a different problem. https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/does-meat-contain-pesticides-c587f6b252e7 https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/does-meat...
- avmich 7y agoThe argument was, I believe, against this - > the animals eat that too, which means you eat it It's not true in general, as some things animals eat get digested into other things and don't exist in the animals anymore. Their components do exists, but we don't consider atoms of meat the meat itself.
- rgrieselhuber 7y agoIts a moot point if you buy locally from farmers who raise their meat without pesticides and antibiotics. Factory farming is the real culprit in this whole discussion.
- fucking_tragedy 7y agoPesticides and other pollutants bioaccumulate. If they were easily metabolized, they wouldn't be much of a problem.
- coder4life 7y agoStuff accumulates the further up the food chain you go. Like mercury does in tuna.
- rgrieselhuber 7y agoNot the animals I buy.
- vzidex 7y agoOne of my biggest frustrations as a 95% vegetarian (for environmental reasons) is this misconception that's emerged about plant-based burgers being healthy. It distracts from the actual benefits of plant-based burgers - environmental and ethical benefits - and gives meat eaters another reason to discount a vegetarian diet. It's a hamburger after all, it's not meant to be healthy.
- dmihal 7y agoI'm a carnivore, I can't see myself ever giving up meat, but I'd love an alternative that is more environmentaly friendly.
- imglorp 7y agoI've tried both impossible and beyond burgers and you can tell they're different but they're tasty in their own way. The carmelized heme taste is definitely there.
- klmr 7y ago> It's a hamburger after all, it's not meant to be healthy. Hamburgers aren’t inherently unhealthy (though I’ll concede that in practice they often are). A well-made hamburger contains part protein, vegetables and carbs. It’s a whole meal. A bit too heavy on the carbs maybe, but not extremely so. It can stand on its own with very few additional flavour components, and has the potential of being a more wholesome meal than many others. The issue, rather, is twofold. First, almost all burgers skimp on the veggies and generally use low-quality ingredients, instead relying on other flavour components (i.e. too much sugar and salt, and often added fat in the form of low-quality cheese and bacon). And secondly, burgers are umami bombs and lead people to overeat, both in terms of quantity (serving size) and frequency.
- jniedrauer 7y ago> A bit too heavy on the carbs maybe Fat and protein would be the problem. The typical American diet is very high in fat and protein. More carbs (low GI carbs with fiber) would make it healthier. To make a well balanced burger, you'd probably need to eliminate cheese, reduce the size of the patty significantly, use a whole wheat bun, and add plant fiber. You're basically replacing all of the ingredients.
- la_barba 7y agoActual headline: Whole Foods CEO: Highly-processed food not good for health.
- jefflombardjr 7y agoIdeal headline: Highly-processed organic matter is not food.
- rc_kas 7y agoSadly, it is food. I hate processed foods as much as anyone, but it would be irresponsible to print this headline.
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- strict9 7y agoCompared to a diet of pure fruits and vegetables and grains as the guy says? True, Beyond/Impossible aren't as healthy as that. But he's literally comparing a veggie burger to a salad, not what it's replacing: ground up cow meat that's reassembled in a factory. You won't find everything in ground beef listed on a label. Fake burgers are a transition and off-ramp for people looking to eat less meat. Not people living a purist lifestyle like the Whole Foods CEO. Beyond Meat/Impossible serve as nice punching bag for people denying the impact of the beef trade has on the environment and this article is catnip for them.
- DivestTrump 7y agoAbsolutely. Oreos are vegan and nobody would argue they're healthy. As processed as some "meat alternatives" may be, it's still a better path than meat for health. Objectively, nicorette is unhealthy, but doctors will recommend it all day if it helps you quit smoking.
- brodouevencode 7y agoHow is Nicorette unhealthy?
- s_dev 7y agoIt contains nicotene -- a well known carcinogenic.
- brodouevencode 7y agoI'm not so sure that's the case: https://cancer-code-europe.iarc.fr/index.php/en/ecac-12-ways/tobacco/199-nicotine-cause-cancer https://cancer-code-europe.iarc.fr/index.php/en/ecac-12-ways...
- slimed 7y agoNicotine does not cause cancer.
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- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoIt's not meat that's bad for the environment, it's the large scale factory farming methods. There are plenty of veggie farms that damage the environment too.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoWhich, unfortunately, feed us all. Except for a few fortunate folks with room to grow some fraction of their own food.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoIt needs to be more distributed, but that makes food more expensive and not enough people want to pay those higher prices.
- the_gastropod 7y agoEating from a lower trophic level is generally more efficient than eating from a higher one.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoI thought it was the other way, that the further up the food chain the more concentrated nutrients were and the higher the energy density. Eating a cube of lamb is more efficient than eating grass, surely?
- belltaco 7y agoMore efficient if you're starving and need some calories immediately without having to gather grass. Not efficient in terms of environmental resources invested. How much grass being eaten by the lamb resulted in a pound of lamb? How much water did the lamb consumer per pound of weight? From the article: >a plant-based burger generates 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, requires 45% less energy, has 99% less impact on water scarcity, and 93% less impact on land use than a ¼ pound of traditional U.S. beef.
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- chrisBob 7y agoWhat is it exactly about "processed foods" that make it bad for you. Is it just that they tend to be the ones with high sugar and fat content, or is there something about the processing of processed foods that is unhealthy?
- romski 7y agoYea
- javagram 7y agoUltraprocessed foods produce taste and nutrition combinations that we didn’t evolve to eat healthily. It’s incredibly easy and tempting to overeat when consuming ultraprocessed foods compared to consuming more traditional foods. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-heavily-processed-foods-cause-overeating-weight-gain https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-find...
- tracer4201 7y agoI’ll continue buying lean ground beef and steaks from the local butcher. I tried the impossible burger. It wasn’t for me.
- tmountain 7y agoFWIW, John Mackey has a pretty warped view on the environment, so I have a hard time lending him credibility regarding his opinions on the topic. "We’ve been in a gradual warming trend since the ending of the “Little Ice Age” in about 1870, and climate change is perfectly natural and not necessarily bad. In general, most of humanity tends to flourish more when global temperatures are in a warming trend and I believe we will be able to successfully adapt to gradually rising temperatures." https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/whole-foods-market-john-mackey-interview-conscious-capitalism/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/whole-foods-...
- javagram 7y agoSeems like a perfectly reasonable opinion to have? Humans have adapted to climate change before and now we have better technology than ever before to help us deal with it whether that’s by transportation, new construction, irrigation, and so on.
- tmountain 7y agoWhen I hear the phrase, "climate change is perfectly natural and not necessarily bad", it comes across a denial that human beings are the cause of climate change. Rhetoric that dilutes the message that we're facing the biggest existential threat in the history of humankind is universally harmful.
- tluyben2 7y agoThis again; is there seriously anyone who ate these things and thinks they are healthy? Or anyone who eats burgers and thinks they are healthy? As vegetarian I like them once a month and it would be great if they were extremely good for us; I think we will get there, but for now; if you bake one, smell one, feel one; it definitely does justice to the original; it feels fatty and unhealthy. Which is great as it is better for the world, but healthy, nah.
- nightski 7y agoYes, we eat burgers all the time sans the bun and it's an incredibly nutritious meal with a perfect mix of macro-nutrients. Great protein, good source of fat, and tons of nutrients. Hard to beat honestly.
- shlant 7y agoI wonder how many non-keto people would be making this claim... > "a perfect mix of macro-nutrients" What is this "perfect mix"? who is determining this? Macronutrients say very little about how good a food it for you. > "Great protein, good source of fat, and tons of nutrients. Hard to beat honestly." Hamburgers contain trans fat[1], cholesterol[2], Neu5Gc[3], heme iron[4] and other cancer causing compounds from cooking/charring[5]. But yea, it's the bun you need to worry about... 1. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/plant-based-fats-better-for-the-heart-than-animal-fats https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/plant-based-fats... 2. https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/heart-disease-lower-cholesterol-risk#1 https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/heart-disease-lowe... 3. https://www.sciencealert.com/evolutionary-story-of-red-meat-cancer-cmah-gene https://www.sciencealert.com/evolutionary-story-of-red-meat-... 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261306/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261306/ 5. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/cooked-meats-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/d...
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- vemv 7y agoI might be wrong, but last time I visited the US (coming from Europe) I couldn't find in Whole Foods _fresh _ veggie patties. Those are kept in the fridge, not in the freezer. They are somewhat processed, but surely not as heavily as BM/Impossble. Seems a nice middle ground. Not as intense as meat / meat imitations, but I'm quite sure they are healthy (given their relative simplicity) and provide sufficient protein. Have consumed them non-stop over 6 years, and I've kept myself in shape and energetic. Here are some examples https://www.vegetalia.com/categoria-producto/vegeburgers/ https://www.vegetalia.com/categoria-producto/vegeburgers/
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago>Whole Foods CEO on plant-based meat: good for the environment, not for health That's literally not what he said, though. The quote from the article is: >“As for health, I will not endorse that, and that is about as big of criticism that I will do in public.” Not endorsing something as being healthy as the CEO of a health foods chain and saying something is "not good for health" are two completely different statements. There are probably insider trading implications holding him back from making absolute promotional statements for a company that he most likely holds stock in. I agree the Beyond burgers could be "less processed", but IMHO the main health benefit from eating Beyond Meat burgers is because they're "not meat". That's the main point people seem to be missing. They're perhaps not as healthy as eating raw nuts and berries for dinner, sure. But if it's a choice between traditional beef patties and a beyond meat burger of the same size and weight, the beyond meat burger is "healthier" hands down.
- simplecomplex 7y agoUhh nowhere in the article does the CEO say that. He says: > “I don’t think eating highly processed foods is healthy. I think people thrive on eating whole foods,” Mackey says. “As for health, I will not endorse that, and that is about as big of criticism that I will do in public.”
- donclark 7y agoIs Impossible Meat GMO? Any details/studies on if GMOs are healthy/unhealthy for humans/mammals?
- mnm1 7y agoHaving been a vegetarian for fifteen years, I simply don't see how it's possible to eat vegetarian healthily without cooking for yourself from scratch. Of course these burgers are not healthy especially compared to meat burgers whose worst ingredient is the bun (which could be replaced by healthy beard instead of the sugar cake it is at most places). Since I started eating meat again, I dropped fifty pounds without even trying (exercise helped a bit). I agree, eating processed foods is terrible and as a vegetarian that doesn't cook there are few alternatives. It's easy to eat garbage and get fat as a vegetarian.
- subculture 7y agoWHO has details [1] about the carcinogenic impacts of animal meat consumption. There's nothing of that sort for any plant-based burgers. The arguments in these types of articles seem to ignore what I think are more serious health risks from animal proteins. And animals don't subsist on air. In terms of 'processed', the types of nutrients fed to factory-farmed animals are terrible, including massive amounts of antibiotics. Cows are regularly fed the cheapest carbs available, including Skittles [2] [1] https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ [2] https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/health/spilled-skittles-road-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/health/spilled-skittles-road-...