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The obvious alternative to meat long term is plant protein. That cuts out an entire stage in the food chain, which is obviously going to be more efficient (abou

by pdonis 5y ago

The obvious alternative to meat long term is plant protein. That cuts out an entire stage in the food chain, which is obviously going to be more efficient (about a factor of 10 more is the usual rule of thumb). The key is to make sure the plant protein is complete, which is why pea protein and legumes are preferred over things like soy.

Falling3 5y ago
> The key is to make sure the plant protein is complete, which is why pea protein and legumes are preferred over things like soy. 1. I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing? All the essential amino acids are essential (duh), but don't need to be consumed together like once thought. 2. With that said, soy is a complete protein. 3. Soy is also a legume.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing? By "complete protein" I just meant that you need to have all the essential amino acids in your diet, not that they all need to be contained in the same dish. However, AFAIK all animal proteins do contain all the essential amino acids in a single dish, which makes it a lot easier to make sure you are getting them all. So any plant protein that is going to be a good meat substitute should have that same property. > soy is a complete protein. 3. Soy is also a legume. Agreed, that was a mistake on my part.
  - Avicebron 5y ago
    The day that this complete protein tastes, looks, and behaves exactly like meat..might be the day it's accepted as a substitute, otherwise it's a lost cause. and before that one has to factor in the effort to make that change to the plant protein.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > The day that this complete protein tastes, looks, and behaves exactly like meat..might be the day it's accepted as a substitute While I'm sure there are people who won't accept anything less than that, I suspect there are many more who, like me, would be quite happy with "fairly close" to meat instead of "exactly like". There are plant protein products on the market now that already meet that goal. Even if such products don't displace 100% of meat consumption, they might still make a huge dent in it.
      - luxpir 5y ago
        You're not wrong. I'm still very much a fan of meat, but have swapped out most of my consumption for plant-based versions. Mostly from the Linda McCartney brand. It feels much better post-meal digesting the lighter alternative and the flavour and texture is very comparable imo. The sauce and sides carry most of the flavour in our case anyway. Which is I guess why the "tastes like chicken" line became so widespread. Haven't found a steak replacement yet, but we eat vanishingly few of those so it's not much of an issue. Will jump on a healthy, eco alternative that's full of iron though. As it stands, I'm really not interested in labmeat. I'll just save my meat consumption for "special occasions", while using plant-based as the daily driver. They say they could feed the world on plant-based food, if only they'd give it a fraction of the subsidies meat gets. I think it's an avenue worth taking seriously.
        pdonis 5y ago
        > They say they could feed the world on plant-based food, if only they'd give it a fraction of the subsidies meat gets. Or just stop subsidizing meat and make it compete on a level playing field with other protein sources.
        xorfish 5y ago
        If you include external costs, how much should suffering of mammals cost?
        pdonis 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
That's the Impossible Burger. The process for making that is reasonably simple and scales well. Part of the trick is that they add heme, made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast, to produce the "bloody" taste people want in meat. So the only part that requires a bioreactor is no more complicated than a small brewery. The other part of the trick is some clever extrusion technology to get a meat texture. It's not bad as a burger. Go to a Burger King and get a beef Whopper and and an Impossible Whopper and compare. Even with no condiments they're pretty close. Now if they can get the excessive salt content down...
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Now if they can get the excessive salt content down... As I understand it, that's not a necessary part of the process, it's just what fast food places like Burger King do to all their meat. I don't see why something like ground Impossible Burger meat substitute that was sold in a grocery store would need to have the same salt content that the BK version does.
  - Klonoar 5y ago
    Eh, I hope the person you're responding to clarifies whether they meant the BK burger(s) or store options, but I wanted to chime in. I was in the store just a day or so ago looking at alternative meats and I _also_ found the sodium content to be a bit high in some (though offhand, I can't remember if it's Impossible specifically). A frustrating aspect of some of these alternatives is that they overload on this stuff to get around taste differences - many of the coconut yogurts have more sugar than their dairy counterparts, for instance. I generally prefer these options but it's frustrating that they have these caveats. Would be nice if we could learn from the mistakes made in the existing products.
    - dqv 5y ago
      For yogurt at least, the casein yeast will hopefully give rise to yogurt that is much closer to cowmilk yogurt. We’ll probably see a formulation that uses yeast-derived casein in the next 5 years.
xdennis 5y ago
> about a factor of 10 more is the usual rule of thumb That's often a dishonest figure which ignores how land is actually used, such as: - Much of the land used for animals (for grazing etc) is not suitable for growing human edible plants. - We feed animals with plants that would otherwise go to waste. When growing corn, we only use the seeds. The whole rest of the plant (i.e. most of it) is feed to animals.
- ireadfaces 5y ago
  Sauce?
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Much of the land used for animals (for grazing etc) is not suitable for growing human edible plants. I wasn't talking about land use. I was talking about energy. Plants capture solar energy directly. Animals capture it indirectly, by eating plants. That extra stage in the food chain decreases the available energy to humans eating animals instead of plants by a factor of about 10. Also, if plant protein largely replaced animal protein in human diets, the land now used for animal grazing could be used for wild animals that weren't raised for food at all but just allowed to exist in their natural habitat. So the fact that that land is not suitable for growing human edible plants does not mean the use of that land is irrelevant to the choice between animal and plant protein in human diets. > We feed animals with plants that would otherwise go to waste. No, they would otherwise go into the food chain somewhere else, most likely by being eaten by microorganisms and fungi. That's not "waste". It's a natural part of the cycle. Whether or not animals eating the plant material is a stage in the cycle does not change the fact that the cycle is there.

by pdonis 5y ago

Falling3 5y ago

> The key is to make sure the plant protein is complete, which is why pea protein and legumes are preferred over things like soy. 1. I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing? All the essential amino acids are essential (duh), but don't need to be consumed together like once thought. 2. With that said, soy is a complete protein. 3. Soy is also a legume.

pdonis 5y ago
> I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing? By "complete protein" I just meant that you need to have all the essential amino acids in your diet, not that they all need to be contained in the same dish. However, AFAIK all animal proteins do contain all the essential amino acids in a single dish, which makes it a lot easier to make sure you are getting them all. So any plant protein that is going to be a good meat substitute should have that same property. > soy is a complete protein. 3. Soy is also a legume. Agreed, that was a mistake on my part.
- Avicebron 5y ago
  The day that this complete protein tastes, looks, and behaves exactly like meat..might be the day it's accepted as a substitute, otherwise it's a lost cause. and before that one has to factor in the effort to make that change to the plant protein.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > The day that this complete protein tastes, looks, and behaves exactly like meat..might be the day it's accepted as a substitute While I'm sure there are people who won't accept anything less than that, I suspect there are many more who, like me, would be quite happy with "fairly close" to meat instead of "exactly like". There are plant protein products on the market now that already meet that goal. Even if such products don't displace 100% of meat consumption, they might still make a huge dent in it.
    - luxpir 5y ago
      You're not wrong. I'm still very much a fan of meat, but have swapped out most of my consumption for plant-based versions. Mostly from the Linda McCartney brand. It feels much better post-meal digesting the lighter alternative and the flavour and texture is very comparable imo. The sauce and sides carry most of the flavour in our case anyway. Which is I guess why the "tastes like chicken" line became so widespread. Haven't found a steak replacement yet, but we eat vanishingly few of those so it's not much of an issue. Will jump on a healthy, eco alternative that's full of iron though. As it stands, I'm really not interested in labmeat. I'll just save my meat consumption for "special occasions", while using plant-based as the daily driver. They say they could feed the world on plant-based food, if only they'd give it a fraction of the subsidies meat gets. I think it's an avenue worth taking seriously.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > They say they could feed the world on plant-based food, if only they'd give it a fraction of the subsidies meat gets. Or just stop subsidizing meat and make it compete on a level playing field with other protein sources.
        xorfish 5y ago
        If you include external costs, how much should suffering of mammals cost?
        pdonis 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

That's the Impossible Burger. The process for making that is reasonably simple and scales well. Part of the trick is that they add heme, made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast, to produce the "bloody" taste people want in meat. So the only part that requires a bioreactor is no more complicated than a small brewery. The other part of the trick is some clever extrusion technology to get a meat texture. It's not bad as a burger. Go to a Burger King and get a beef Whopper and and an Impossible Whopper and compare. Even with no condiments they're pretty close. Now if they can get the excessive salt content down...

pdonis 5y ago
> Now if they can get the excessive salt content down... As I understand it, that's not a necessary part of the process, it's just what fast food places like Burger King do to all their meat. I don't see why something like ground Impossible Burger meat substitute that was sold in a grocery store would need to have the same salt content that the BK version does.
- Klonoar 5y ago
  Eh, I hope the person you're responding to clarifies whether they meant the BK burger(s) or store options, but I wanted to chime in. I was in the store just a day or so ago looking at alternative meats and I _also_ found the sodium content to be a bit high in some (though offhand, I can't remember if it's Impossible specifically). A frustrating aspect of some of these alternatives is that they overload on this stuff to get around taste differences - many of the coconut yogurts have more sugar than their dairy counterparts, for instance. I generally prefer these options but it's frustrating that they have these caveats. Would be nice if we could learn from the mistakes made in the existing products.
  - dqv 5y ago
    For yogurt at least, the casein yeast will hopefully give rise to yogurt that is much closer to cowmilk yogurt. We’ll probably see a formulation that uses yeast-derived casein in the next 5 years.

xdennis 5y ago

> about a factor of 10 more is the usual rule of thumb That's often a dishonest figure which ignores how land is actually used, such as: - Much of the land used for animals (for grazing etc) is not suitable for growing human edible plants. - We feed animals with plants that would otherwise go to waste. When growing corn, we only use the seeds. The whole rest of the plant (i.e. most of it) is feed to animals.

ireadfaces 5y ago
Sauce?
pdonis 5y ago
> Much of the land used for animals (for grazing etc) is not suitable for growing human edible plants. I wasn't talking about land use. I was talking about energy. Plants capture solar energy directly. Animals capture it indirectly, by eating plants. That extra stage in the food chain decreases the available energy to humans eating animals instead of plants by a factor of about 10. Also, if plant protein largely replaced animal protein in human diets, the land now used for animal grazing could be used for wild animals that weren't raised for food at all but just allowed to exist in their natural habitat. So the fact that that land is not suitable for growing human edible plants does not mean the use of that land is irrelevant to the choice between animal and plant protein in human diets. > We feed animals with plants that would otherwise go to waste. No, they would otherwise go into the food chain somewhere else, most likely by being eaten by microorganisms and fungi. That's not "waste". It's a natural part of the cycle. Whether or not animals eating the plant material is a stage in the cycle does not change the fact that the cycle is there.