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Low nutritional quality in vegetarian meat substitutes

113 points by hirundo 4y ago

alphanullmeric 4y ago
going vegan would be a much more appealing proposition if it wasn't for the fact that the only vegan food that both tastes good and is satiating is processed.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  "vegan food"?! There are boat loads full of vegan cooking books teaching how to make delicious food. I wouldn't equate "fake meat" with vegetarianism or veganism. This is more of a problem of reliance on processed foods in general which is bad, vegetarian, vegan or not.
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    I guess added sugars, tofu and canola oil aren't processed?
    - javanissen 4y ago
      Added sugars are definitely processed and definitely unhealthy, but completely optional for many good vegan recipes. Canola oil is processed, but also easily swapped for olive or peanut oil. And sure, I guess tofu is processed… but it’s also a 2000 year-old dish that has been consumed as part of a healthful diet in multiple Asian cultures for centuries. The common denominator among all the things you mention here is that they’re also optional in a healthy vegan diet.
      - alphanullmeric 4y ago
        if I was cool with getting my protein from processed food I'd be better off with a protein shake. If you believe processed food is optional in a vegan diet, feel free to enumerate any whole-food sources of protein in a vegan diet. It sure feels like every argument with a vegan ends with "you don't need protein" or "<insert processed vegan thing> is actually good for you" or "1 kilo of kale has just as much calcium as a glass of milk!"
        delecti 4y ago
        You don't need as much protein as most people get on omnivore diets, and you can easily still get more than enough protein on a vegan diet anyway, and plenty of processed foods are fine even if you don't stick to whole foods. Multiple things can be true. There are very few things that are remotely difficult to get from a vegan diet, and a B-Complex vitamin covers most of them.
        radec 4y ago
        legumes, grains, potatoes, seeds, nuts (if you can afford them). plenty of protein in all of those things. I've been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for the past 19years. I've never once had to think about getting enough protein. Having never eaten real meat and I don't much care about the fake processed stuff. I mean I'll eat it, but I don't buy it much. lentils and rice is a lot cheaper and tastes better imho. I guess if it matters, I would say I'm a fairly active person. I bike for transportation when ever possible, I backpack and hike a lot, and typically work jobs in the trades or farming. So not a pro athlete but just keep active and moving.
      - boring_twenties 4y ago
        > Canola oil is processed, but also easily swapped for olive or peanut oil. Not really? Olive oil cannot withstand higher temperatures, it smokes at 350F, compared to 500F+ for canola oil. Peanut oil imparts a strong peanut flavor, compared to the neutral flavor of canola oil.
        javanissen 4y ago
        Fair points! I guess my cooking rarely requires a smoke point above 350. Looking at the internet, it seems like avocado oil and light olive oil (as opposed to EVOO) have high enough smoke points to use for frying. But I suppose vegetable and canola oil are ideal for frying and switching to other sources requires some tradeoffs
    - burnished 4y ago
      What’s your point? The topic is vegan food, not the first three things you thought of right? Also lol, processed sugars aren’t vegan because the whitening stage uses bone meal.
      - abrambleninja 4y ago
        > processed sugars aren’t vegan because the whitening stage uses bone meal This is a good rule of thumb for North America, but not true all the time. In the USA, organic sugar cannot be processed with bone char. Also, beet sugar is never processed with bone char, only cane sugar. Also, not all non-organic cane sugar is processed with bone char. For example, in Canada, neither of the two main sugar companies (Rogers/Lantic and RedPath) use bone char for processing their sugar anymore (RedPath never did, and Rogers/Lantic stopped within the last few years). Finally, all sugar in Australia and the EU (and probably other places) is processed without bone char.
        burnished 4y ago
        Neat! Thank you very much for the details
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      Tofu is not actually very processed. It's an ancient dish, on the order of 2000 years old, that is essentially just cheese making but with soy beans instead of milk.
      - mercutio2 4y ago
        (Agreeing with and amplifying you:) Tofu is processed only in the sense that some techniques for making soy milk involve grinding the soy beans. I don’t think “pressing the curds for a while”, which is about all there is to making tofu after curdling hot soy milk, really qualifies as processed.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Mmm. Have you ever heard of curry?
- raspyberr 4y ago
  I'm not vegan or vegetarian. It sounds like you simply haven't cooked vegan meals before. Vegan isn't raw carrots and boiled vegetables. Vegan curries, sauces, soups are all delicious and aren't processed. The satiating aspects of non-vegan food are mostly the same ones as in vegan foods. It's mainly the staple carbs that fill us up and they're all practically vegan - potatoes, yams, corn, rice, wheat. As for "tastes good", well it's subjective but fat carries flavour and coats your mouth and lingers. Meat comes with fat already so it's easy to make it tasty enough. Apply the same process to vegan food and make some roast potatoes in oil. Taa daa tasty and filling. Probably about as unhealthy as fried meat. Your comment just seems like you need to actually try cooking some vegan food. It's easy af to make any food delicious by covering it in salt, oil, spices.
- javanissen 4y ago
  Not a vegan but I disagree with this as someone who has lived with one and dated two. Rice, beans, lentils, Indian recipes, mac and “cheese” made with nutritional yeast, pasta with tomato sauce: all filling, all delicious when seasoned correctly, all (relatively) unprocessed.
- burnished 4y ago
  This is an education problem and the solution is learning how to cook. I’ll admit that pure vegan is a higher and harder bar, but this is the same way people talk about not having meat every meal. It’s the way I used to talk. It’s just confident ignorance.
- Maximus9000 4y ago
  to be satiated on a vegan diet, you have to eat more... but I would argue that you "get to eat more". Eating is fun - more is better :)
- armoredkitten 4y ago
  What a sad state of existence if you think this is true. There are so many incredibly tasty and satiating foods made entirely out of vegetables. Many cultures have a wide range of tasty plant-based foods -- India, Thailand, Japan, Mexico (just to name a few)...have you never had chana masala? Bean tacos? Any of a dozen types of curries? Veggie sushi? Vegetables add so much texture and flavour to dishes (even dishes with meat...). Vegan food is not just salads and Impossible burgers. Get to an Indian restaurant and pick from any of a half-dozen to a dozen options that are entirely plant-based, and then tell me that there's no vegan food that tastes good and is satiating.
  - boring_twenties 4y ago
    All the things you've listed can be tasty, but none of them are satiating. Even after eating enough of that stuff for 2 or more people, I end up needing a serving of meat to actually feel satisfied.
aradox66 4y ago
I'm a vegan who loves fake meats. I know they're not ideal. But I still end up eating way more vegetables, beans, etc as a vegan than I do otherwise. I don't think any fake meat is really satisfying enough for most people to eat it the way some omnivores sometimes eat animal proteins (as the main food for most meals). But I suppose it takes all kinds.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  The problem I think is we don't know how how to cook a meal from scratch anymore which makes any vegetarian or vegan diet suboptimal because of all the processed and overly packaged foods. Our lives don't allow anymore to wait 30 minutes for a porridge, 2 hours for a soup even if it's an async process. That's a prerequisite however for a healthy diet a lot of the times.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    Whose lives are you talking about? This seems to be a generalization based on a small subset of humanity or something.
    - mersenne 4y ago
      He's probably talking about themself and a few close individuals, likely also from the tech scene. Remote work has made it easier than ever for many people to cook at home. Before the pandemic, meal prepping was a pretty convenient way to do it. A couple of hours a week can get you very far.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        Tech people are the people who are are working from home, and are most able to cook. Barbazoo seems to me to be talking about the opposite of the tech scene, the 90% of people who don't have (or want to waste) an hour after work to cook dinner. Or even worse, take a half an hour away from sleeping every day to have time to cook breakfast, all for dubious benefit. Will processed, quick foods hurt you more than sleeping an hour and a half less a day?
deleted 4y ago
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mint2 4y ago
It’s not exactly a secret, but ensuring people are aware is good. There’s an old South Park episode about cartman Being outraged at the vegetarian school meals until he realizes they are highly processed goo and then he’s okay with it. I actually like beyond meat and find impossible meat good in pasta with red sauce. Yeah they’re vegetarian and tick two out of the three main reasons people go vegetarian but I doubt it’s any healthier, the third reason.
- x0x0 4y ago
  I dunno; the article seems to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Are most meat substitutes maximally healthy? Probably not. Are they likely healthier than the red meat they're replacing? Yes.
  - nradov 4y ago
    There is no reliable scientific evidence that meat substitutes produce better long-term health outcomes than regular (non processed) red meat.
    - tstrimple 4y ago
      It's difficult to measure long term health impacts of a product that has only been generally available for a couple years.
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    Ounce for ounce, beyond meat burger has higher fat, higher sodium, lower iron and calcium than just regular ground 80/20 beef. Healthier is at best debatable.
    - x0x0 4y ago
      lower saturated fat, lower trans fats, lower cholesterol, etc. Is it a perfect win? No. Is it likely healthier per our best guesses at nutrition science per the articles I've read? Yes. Again, it's not perfect. https://chanapdavis.medium.com/the-skinny-and-fat-on-wall-street-darling-beyond-meat-902b7ea85492 https://chanapdavis.medium.com/the-skinny-and-fat-on-wall-st...
sdenton4 4y ago
Tempeh is noted in the study as a good exception; the fermentation process breaks down phylates which normally inhibit iron uptake. So, eat more tempeh!
- cjoelrun 4y ago
  Try making your own once rather then buying from store. The flavors developed are rich in comparison.
  - notesinthefield 4y ago
    Know of a good recipe? My regular grocer's tempeh stock has steadily dropped recently.
    - lapetitejort 4y ago
      I've made black bean tempeh a few times. I bought a starter pack online. I cooked the beans in an instant pot and waited for them to cool to room temperature. I mixed in the powder (fungal spores, essentially) and let it warm in the instant pot for 24-48 hours. There will be a white mold in and around the bean mixture. The mold should be enough to bind the beans into a loaf. No one else in my family ate it, so I gave up after two batches. I want to restart using banana leaves as a wrapper, the way they make it in Java. I've also wanted to try out natto, another way of fermenting beans.
      - aradox66 4y ago
        Instant pot sounds like a good idea! My housemate built a custom incubator in a styrofoam cooler. We made some good tempeh. We had one batch of good natto, then it went south. When natto goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. It's already pretty borderline :P
- lapetitejort 4y ago
  Fermented foods need to be the next diet fad. The fermentation process acts as a pre-digestion mechanism, breaking down complex structures to be more easily digestible. I recently started an oatmeal "starter" similar to a wheat sourdough starter. I began with a 1:1:1 ratio of rolled oats, water, and active yogurt. I let it sit for 36 hours. Then in the morning I take out half, and replace it with a 1:1 ratio of water and oats. It smells yeasty and tastes as if it's been cooked. I have no source on this but I'm hoping that the process nets me more nutrition than cooking. I also don't have to heat or refrigerate it. Everything operates at room temperature. If I ever go out of town I can put it in the fridge.
comte7092 4y ago
For the average person living in a high income country, protein needs are easily met to begin with. People end up conflating advice from fitness culture with general health, which while overlapping isn’t the same. If you want to be super jacked then sure, eat a lot of protein, but if you just want to enjoy your life without major health issues there are bigger fish to fry so to speak.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  Late in life you are gonna wish you built up a little more muscle mass by then.
  - comte7092 4y ago
    I do actively build muscle, the thing is that you don’t have to be “optimal” to do so. You can build plenty of muscle if you eat significantly below the recommended 1g/lb that fitness influencers talk about, it just won’t be as much as you could have otherwise. That’s a fine trade for me, I’m not planning to compete in any bodybuilding shows and I have other things I’d rather focus on in life.
    - tasoga 4y ago
      While I am certain that influencers are saying 1g/lb, I just want to clarify that it is around 1.4-1.6g/kg. It takes significantly less protein to build muscle and have an atheltic physique than some are trying to prescribe, which is a shame because it is overconsumption like anything else we do and as a vegetarian I previously struggled with the idea knowing full well I couldn't hit 190 g of protein unless I was chugging shakes all day
      - comte7092 4y ago
        The irony is that even non vegetarians will chug shakes all day to get “enough” protein.
- iopq 4y ago
xnx 4y ago
The concern over the "highly processed" nature of plant-based meat-alternatives seems really disproportionate to all the other problems common in American diets: high sugar, low fiber, etc.
- jethro_tell 4y ago
  Stick with the healthy stuff like unprocessed arsenic and hemlock teas . . .. The act of processing or modifying our food is not in and of itself unhealthy. Nuance is important and you are correct that there are tradeoffs here. The most unhealthy vegetable calories are almost certainly better than a soda.
  - forgetfulness 4y ago
    The issue is that we began utilizing a lot of ingredients that just weren't available, or edible at all, until the advent of modern industrial processes. Eating as much refined flour, sugars and novel vegetable oils turned out to have some pretty negative outcomes, and we wouldn't have made those choices without economic incentives to do so; we developed the technology to make them cheaper, at a scale, and durable to be stored for long periods of time and remain saleable, and much of it is stuff that you wouldn't have eaten as much if not. It was an uncontrolled experiment. Now, picking apart peas and rice, isolating their proteins, putting them together with refined coconut oil in a cellulose matrix, none of these things you would even be able to cook yourself, you can't make any assumptions that they'd have an effect in you similar to eating peas, rice or sauteeing something in coconut oil, it's not a valid inference.
- no-dr-onboard 4y ago
  > The concern over the "highly processed" nature of plant-based meat-alternatives seems really disproportionate Well we're dealing with two separate audiences now, aren't we? The people who care about their health and have moral quandries about eating meat are likely a separate group from those who engage in the typical "American diet". Based off how the article is written, it seems that the intended audience is more of the former than the latter.
- 4y ago
darod 4y ago
you can't patent a vegetable, but a vegetable in it's normal state is always going to be a better source of nutrition than something man made.
- nradov 4y ago
  GMO vegetables can be patented in some countries, including the US.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    so can non-GMO hybrids. basically any seed that you put research into.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure you can still patent human genes, if you claim to be the first to find that particular gene interesting.
jiveturkey42 4y ago
The market seems to have rejected Beyond Meat. I wonder what, if anything, would bring vegetarianism into the mainstream in the USA
- mattnewton 4y ago
  My guess is that it is primarily a cost issue. Beyond meat is 2-3x more expensive than real meat in most grocery stores I have seen. I know we subsidize the meat industry in the US, but it’s not clear to me if this is because of that subsidy or their business model just isn’t competitive yet.
- xnx 4y ago
  Stock price is down, but I think sales are still increasing.
dayvid 4y ago
Does the study mention sprouted tofu or sprouted beans/grains? Sprouted grains and beans can reduce phytic acid. Here's a study, though honestly doesn't look like much, but maybe it is from a non layperson POV: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252429/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252429/
likpok 4y ago
It seems like the article is mostly talking about micronutrients like iron and zinc absorption rather than the protein. While important to keep in mind it doesn't seems like a big indictment of meat substitutes. Take a supplement and move on with your life! Vegans (less so vegetarians) need to supplement anyway, things like creatine or B12 have few natural plant sources. My personal beef with meat substitutes is that they aren't particularly good substitutes so I'd rather eat the real thing. But if you're eating a burger you're not really thinking about your health anyway.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- OJFord 4y ago
  Those are the harder ones to hit than protein anyway, makes sense it's looking at those. In a way it would make a lot of sense for these kinds of products to intentionally add them - just like your 'take a supplement', why not have it added to the food? Can't really do that with raw vegetables, but processed vegetarian (especially 'meat substitute') stuff...
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
    According to the article the problem is anti-nutrients. I’m not sure how powerful the effect is, but it could mean phytates in beans disable added supplements. Maybe the advice is don’t take supplements when eating high phytate foods.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- floor2 4y ago
  Fun fact, animals don't produce B12. Historically meat contained B12 because animals got it from drinking water and eating food that had the microorganisms which do produce it, but in contemporary industrial scale agriculture, where animals are drinking chlorinated water piped into their pen, eating grains from a trough and being given antibiotics, they no longer get it from microorganisms which would have been in their natural environment. The people running hog confinement operations, cattle feedlots or chicken warehouses give the animals B-vitamin fortified food to make up for the deficiency. So vegans should take a B vitamin directly, but it's the same B vitamin being given to the animals for it to end up in meat.
Zigurd 4y ago
In my case, meat substitutes were an off ramp from eating a lot of meat. They are more satisfying than a lentil burger or mushroom burger. Lost a significant amount of weight and meat substitutes helped. But now I'll splurge on high quality meats like bison or lamb when I do eat meat, which is much less often. If I buy a meat substitute now it's to avoid the more dubious meats like "breakfast sausage."
- trynewideas 4y ago
  > If I buy a meat substitute now it's to avoid the more dubious meats like "breakfast sausage." I laughed because the only substitute I actually prefer over the meat equivalent is Beyond's breakfast sausage links.
dcj4 4y ago
- sundaeofshock 4y ago
  A friend of mine drank water and DIED. I would not recommend it.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  I think your finger-pointing is more emotional than rational. But all the same, I'd really love to hear more about this if this isn't a troll post.
- mikestew 4y ago
  I had friends that ate meat and died. Some of them from heart attacks, others from motorcycle accidents, but they all had one thing in common...
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Every last person who ever crossed my great-grandfather is dead. Don't mess with us.
zackmorris 4y ago
I recently isolated what might be a root cause of my 2019 burnout, oxalates and other anti-nutrients: https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-high-in-oxalates https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-high-in-oxalates I've been a gym rat for 20+ years and tried to build my physique from primarily vegetarian sources. My favorite staple was bean burritos. But my joints were always achy (I couldn't survive without 1500/1200 glucosamine/chondroitin), my skin was broken out, I was bloated, I had chronically low energy, and I suffered from depression and anxiety for so long that I didn't know that I was (because they were my baseline for 2 decades). When I hit 40, suddenly I couldn't digest anything I had been eating. I believe the main culprits were: * Dehydration (exacerbated by creatine and not using a shaker for protein) * Almond butter (tree nuts are inflammatory and shells eat holes in intestinal lining) * Casein (slowest digesting protein, sits in intestines, promotes bad bacteria, many people are sensitive like with lactose) * Beans (oxalates, phytic acid) * Wheat (gluten irritates small intestine once immune system is sensitized, glyphosate disrupts intestinal flora and may be even higher in non-organic oatmeal) I experimented with autoimmune protocol (AIP) diets but never found a "cure". I made a full recovery, but it took 2-3 years of trying everything I could think of. The best things are: * Pumpkin seeds (like in Nature's path granola available in bulk at CostCo) * Spinach and broccoli * Rice * Kefir * Daily "stress" B complex with ~100% of each vitamin (the body can't store it, so a weekly 8000% B complex leaves 6 days of deficiency) * Psyllium husk capsules with meals (1 is usually enough) I've found that the body doesn't really care where protein comes from. So any whey protein is just as effective as meat, especially when taken with meals. But rare beef has (hormones?) and micronutrients which can't be mimicked by other foods, so is critical for healing micro tears. I'm looking forward to incubated meat because weightlifting progress is greatly enhanced by eating 1-2 pounds of meat per day, but I can't justify that ethically. The one meat substitute I can tolerate right now is Impossible breakfast sausages with 3 eggs and granola in the morning, and the bonus is that it's indistinguishable from meat. Some of the other ones trigger the shocked/hungover feeling I get the next day if I eat too many legumes or nightshades. So I endorse meat substitutes as long as they've had the anti-nutrients removed. But like milk substitutes, they may not have the healing qualities of the real thing. It's almost always best to get health advice from older people. Young lifters especially often make recommendations which aren't sustainable. And IMHO the backlash against meat substitutes comes from people procrastinating on their healing journey, who don't want to face the cognitive dissonance of how their personal choices affect others and the planet. And yes, I agree that humans evolved as scavengers and are meant to eat meat, I just think that tech has reached a point where we can do better.
boston_clone 4y ago
Direct link to the study; no paywall - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/19/3903 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/19/3903
moloch-hai 4y ago
Meat substitutes are, first and foremost, "processed food". They resemble meat secondarily. We are advised to avoid "processed food" and prefer real food, commonly defined for convenience as containing no more than five ingredients. So meat substitutes are right out, at least as a habit. A disastrously large fraction of descendants of subjects of England (incl. US, Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan) suffer from "processed food disease", also "metabolic disorder" or "fatty liver disease". Many are not obese. They can be cured with remarkable ease by dietary means, but generally are not.
- hgsgm 4y ago
invalidname 4y ago
I'm not an expert but I understood that the value of heme iron is disputed by some. It has the advantage that iron will always be available and you won't need to eat more every day. The problem with it is that some conditions can be caused by excess of Iron and that's more common in the west.
Khelavaster 4y ago
Iron availability is not the main issue in vegetarian meat substitutes. The authors conflate iron availability with nutritional quality :(.
barbariangrunge 4y ago
When I was vegan years and years ago, I discovered that getting enough cholesterol can be a challenge. I ate a ton of avocados to try to tackle it. Now the challenge years later is, "how do I reduce my cholesterol intake?"
whycome 4y ago
Why does the title use "Low nutritional quality..." instead of "Nutritional quality in vegetarian meat substitutes". The latter makes a judgment of something that is subjective and relative ("Low nutritional quality compared to..."). I mean, it's supposed to be a research paper...
Py-o7 4y ago
Meat substitutes are ultra processed foods. No real surprises here.
Slava_Propanei 4y ago

113 points by hirundo 4y ago

going vegan would be a much more appealing proposition if it wasn't for the fact that the only vegan food that both tastes good and is satiating is processed.

barbazoo 4y ago
"vegan food"?! There are boat loads full of vegan cooking books teaching how to make delicious food. I wouldn't equate "fake meat" with vegetarianism or veganism. This is more of a problem of reliance on processed foods in general which is bad, vegetarian, vegan or not.
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  I guess added sugars, tofu and canola oil aren't processed?
  - javanissen 4y ago
    Added sugars are definitely processed and definitely unhealthy, but completely optional for many good vegan recipes. Canola oil is processed, but also easily swapped for olive or peanut oil. And sure, I guess tofu is processed… but it’s also a 2000 year-old dish that has been consumed as part of a healthful diet in multiple Asian cultures for centuries. The common denominator among all the things you mention here is that they’re also optional in a healthy vegan diet.
    - alphanullmeric 4y ago
      if I was cool with getting my protein from processed food I'd be better off with a protein shake. If you believe processed food is optional in a vegan diet, feel free to enumerate any whole-food sources of protein in a vegan diet. It sure feels like every argument with a vegan ends with "you don't need protein" or "<insert processed vegan thing> is actually good for you" or "1 kilo of kale has just as much calcium as a glass of milk!"
      - delecti 4y ago
        You don't need as much protein as most people get on omnivore diets, and you can easily still get more than enough protein on a vegan diet anyway, and plenty of processed foods are fine even if you don't stick to whole foods. Multiple things can be true. There are very few things that are remotely difficult to get from a vegan diet, and a B-Complex vitamin covers most of them.
      - radec 4y ago
        legumes, grains, potatoes, seeds, nuts (if you can afford them). plenty of protein in all of those things. I've been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for the past 19years. I've never once had to think about getting enough protein. Having never eaten real meat and I don't much care about the fake processed stuff. I mean I'll eat it, but I don't buy it much. lentils and rice is a lot cheaper and tastes better imho. I guess if it matters, I would say I'm a fairly active person. I bike for transportation when ever possible, I backpack and hike a lot, and typically work jobs in the trades or farming. So not a pro athlete but just keep active and moving.
    - boring_twenties 4y ago
      > Canola oil is processed, but also easily swapped for olive or peanut oil. Not really? Olive oil cannot withstand higher temperatures, it smokes at 350F, compared to 500F+ for canola oil. Peanut oil imparts a strong peanut flavor, compared to the neutral flavor of canola oil.
      - javanissen 4y ago
        Fair points! I guess my cooking rarely requires a smoke point above 350. Looking at the internet, it seems like avocado oil and light olive oil (as opposed to EVOO) have high enough smoke points to use for frying. But I suppose vegetable and canola oil are ideal for frying and switching to other sources requires some tradeoffs
  - burnished 4y ago
    What’s your point? The topic is vegan food, not the first three things you thought of right? Also lol, processed sugars aren’t vegan because the whitening stage uses bone meal.
    - abrambleninja 4y ago
      > processed sugars aren’t vegan because the whitening stage uses bone meal This is a good rule of thumb for North America, but not true all the time. In the USA, organic sugar cannot be processed with bone char. Also, beet sugar is never processed with bone char, only cane sugar. Also, not all non-organic cane sugar is processed with bone char. For example, in Canada, neither of the two main sugar companies (Rogers/Lantic and RedPath) use bone char for processing their sugar anymore (RedPath never did, and Rogers/Lantic stopped within the last few years). Finally, all sugar in Australia and the EU (and probably other places) is processed without bone char.
      - burnished 4y ago
        Neat! Thank you very much for the details
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    Tofu is not actually very processed. It's an ancient dish, on the order of 2000 years old, that is essentially just cheese making but with soy beans instead of milk.
    - mercutio2 4y ago
      (Agreeing with and amplifying you:) Tofu is processed only in the sense that some techniques for making soy milk involve grinding the soy beans. I don’t think “pressing the curds for a while”, which is about all there is to making tofu after curdling hot soy milk, really qualifies as processed.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
Mmm. Have you ever heard of curry?
raspyberr 4y ago
I'm not vegan or vegetarian. It sounds like you simply haven't cooked vegan meals before. Vegan isn't raw carrots and boiled vegetables. Vegan curries, sauces, soups are all delicious and aren't processed. The satiating aspects of non-vegan food are mostly the same ones as in vegan foods. It's mainly the staple carbs that fill us up and they're all practically vegan - potatoes, yams, corn, rice, wheat. As for "tastes good", well it's subjective but fat carries flavour and coats your mouth and lingers. Meat comes with fat already so it's easy to make it tasty enough. Apply the same process to vegan food and make some roast potatoes in oil. Taa daa tasty and filling. Probably about as unhealthy as fried meat. Your comment just seems like you need to actually try cooking some vegan food. It's easy af to make any food delicious by covering it in salt, oil, spices.
javanissen 4y ago
Not a vegan but I disagree with this as someone who has lived with one and dated two. Rice, beans, lentils, Indian recipes, mac and “cheese” made with nutritional yeast, pasta with tomato sauce: all filling, all delicious when seasoned correctly, all (relatively) unprocessed.
burnished 4y ago
This is an education problem and the solution is learning how to cook. I’ll admit that pure vegan is a higher and harder bar, but this is the same way people talk about not having meat every meal. It’s the way I used to talk. It’s just confident ignorance.
Maximus9000 4y ago
to be satiated on a vegan diet, you have to eat more... but I would argue that you "get to eat more". Eating is fun - more is better :)
armoredkitten 4y ago
What a sad state of existence if you think this is true. There are so many incredibly tasty and satiating foods made entirely out of vegetables. Many cultures have a wide range of tasty plant-based foods -- India, Thailand, Japan, Mexico (just to name a few)...have you never had chana masala? Bean tacos? Any of a dozen types of curries? Veggie sushi? Vegetables add so much texture and flavour to dishes (even dishes with meat...). Vegan food is not just salads and Impossible burgers. Get to an Indian restaurant and pick from any of a half-dozen to a dozen options that are entirely plant-based, and then tell me that there's no vegan food that tastes good and is satiating.
- boring_twenties 4y ago
  All the things you've listed can be tasty, but none of them are satiating. Even after eating enough of that stuff for 2 or more people, I end up needing a serving of meat to actually feel satisfied.

aradox66 4y ago

I'm a vegan who loves fake meats. I know they're not ideal. But I still end up eating way more vegetables, beans, etc as a vegan than I do otherwise. I don't think any fake meat is really satisfying enough for most people to eat it the way some omnivores sometimes eat animal proteins (as the main food for most meals). But I suppose it takes all kinds.

barbazoo 4y ago
The problem I think is we don't know how how to cook a meal from scratch anymore which makes any vegetarian or vegan diet suboptimal because of all the processed and overly packaged foods. Our lives don't allow anymore to wait 30 minutes for a porridge, 2 hours for a soup even if it's an async process. That's a prerequisite however for a healthy diet a lot of the times.
- mcculley 4y ago
  Whose lives are you talking about? This seems to be a generalization based on a small subset of humanity or something.
  - mersenne 4y ago
    He's probably talking about themself and a few close individuals, likely also from the tech scene. Remote work has made it easier than ever for many people to cook at home. Before the pandemic, meal prepping was a pretty convenient way to do it. A couple of hours a week can get you very far.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Tech people are the people who are are working from home, and are most able to cook. Barbazoo seems to me to be talking about the opposite of the tech scene, the 90% of people who don't have (or want to waste) an hour after work to cook dinner. Or even worse, take a half an hour away from sleeping every day to have time to cook breakfast, all for dubious benefit. Will processed, quick foods hurt you more than sleeping an hour and a half less a day?

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mint2 4y ago

It’s not exactly a secret, but ensuring people are aware is good. There’s an old South Park episode about cartman Being outraged at the vegetarian school meals until he realizes they are highly processed goo and then he’s okay with it. I actually like beyond meat and find impossible meat good in pasta with red sauce. Yeah they’re vegetarian and tick two out of the three main reasons people go vegetarian but I doubt it’s any healthier, the third reason.

x0x0 4y ago
I dunno; the article seems to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Are most meat substitutes maximally healthy? Probably not. Are they likely healthier than the red meat they're replacing? Yes.
- nradov 4y ago
  There is no reliable scientific evidence that meat substitutes produce better long-term health outcomes than regular (non processed) red meat.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    It's difficult to measure long term health impacts of a product that has only been generally available for a couple years.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  Ounce for ounce, beyond meat burger has higher fat, higher sodium, lower iron and calcium than just regular ground 80/20 beef. Healthier is at best debatable.
  - x0x0 4y ago
    lower saturated fat, lower trans fats, lower cholesterol, etc. Is it a perfect win? No. Is it likely healthier per our best guesses at nutrition science per the articles I've read? Yes. Again, it's not perfect. https://chanapdavis.medium.com/the-skinny-and-fat-on-wall-street-darling-beyond-meat-902b7ea85492 https://chanapdavis.medium.com/the-skinny-and-fat-on-wall-st...

sdenton4 4y ago

Tempeh is noted in the study as a good exception; the fermentation process breaks down phylates which normally inhibit iron uptake. So, eat more tempeh!

cjoelrun 4y ago
Try making your own once rather then buying from store. The flavors developed are rich in comparison.
- notesinthefield 4y ago
  Know of a good recipe? My regular grocer's tempeh stock has steadily dropped recently.
  - lapetitejort 4y ago
    I've made black bean tempeh a few times. I bought a starter pack online. I cooked the beans in an instant pot and waited for them to cool to room temperature. I mixed in the powder (fungal spores, essentially) and let it warm in the instant pot for 24-48 hours. There will be a white mold in and around the bean mixture. The mold should be enough to bind the beans into a loaf. No one else in my family ate it, so I gave up after two batches. I want to restart using banana leaves as a wrapper, the way they make it in Java. I've also wanted to try out natto, another way of fermenting beans.
    - aradox66 4y ago
      Instant pot sounds like a good idea! My housemate built a custom incubator in a styrofoam cooler. We made some good tempeh. We had one batch of good natto, then it went south. When natto goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. It's already pretty borderline :P
lapetitejort 4y ago
Fermented foods need to be the next diet fad. The fermentation process acts as a pre-digestion mechanism, breaking down complex structures to be more easily digestible. I recently started an oatmeal "starter" similar to a wheat sourdough starter. I began with a 1:1:1 ratio of rolled oats, water, and active yogurt. I let it sit for 36 hours. Then in the morning I take out half, and replace it with a 1:1 ratio of water and oats. It smells yeasty and tastes as if it's been cooked. I have no source on this but I'm hoping that the process nets me more nutrition than cooking. I also don't have to heat or refrigerate it. Everything operates at room temperature. If I ever go out of town I can put it in the fridge.

comte7092 4y ago

For the average person living in a high income country, protein needs are easily met to begin with. People end up conflating advice from fitness culture with general health, which while overlapping isn’t the same. If you want to be super jacked then sure, eat a lot of protein, but if you just want to enjoy your life without major health issues there are bigger fish to fry so to speak.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
Late in life you are gonna wish you built up a little more muscle mass by then.
- comte7092 4y ago
  I do actively build muscle, the thing is that you don’t have to be “optimal” to do so. You can build plenty of muscle if you eat significantly below the recommended 1g/lb that fitness influencers talk about, it just won’t be as much as you could have otherwise. That’s a fine trade for me, I’m not planning to compete in any bodybuilding shows and I have other things I’d rather focus on in life.
  - tasoga 4y ago
    While I am certain that influencers are saying 1g/lb, I just want to clarify that it is around 1.4-1.6g/kg. It takes significantly less protein to build muscle and have an atheltic physique than some are trying to prescribe, which is a shame because it is overconsumption like anything else we do and as a vegetarian I previously struggled with the idea knowing full well I couldn't hit 190 g of protein unless I was chugging shakes all day
    - comte7092 4y ago
      The irony is that even non vegetarians will chug shakes all day to get “enough” protein.
iopq 4y ago

xnx 4y ago

The concern over the "highly processed" nature of plant-based meat-alternatives seems really disproportionate to all the other problems common in American diets: high sugar, low fiber, etc.

jethro_tell 4y ago
Stick with the healthy stuff like unprocessed arsenic and hemlock teas . . .. The act of processing or modifying our food is not in and of itself unhealthy. Nuance is important and you are correct that there are tradeoffs here. The most unhealthy vegetable calories are almost certainly better than a soda.
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  The issue is that we began utilizing a lot of ingredients that just weren't available, or edible at all, until the advent of modern industrial processes. Eating as much refined flour, sugars and novel vegetable oils turned out to have some pretty negative outcomes, and we wouldn't have made those choices without economic incentives to do so; we developed the technology to make them cheaper, at a scale, and durable to be stored for long periods of time and remain saleable, and much of it is stuff that you wouldn't have eaten as much if not. It was an uncontrolled experiment. Now, picking apart peas and rice, isolating their proteins, putting them together with refined coconut oil in a cellulose matrix, none of these things you would even be able to cook yourself, you can't make any assumptions that they'd have an effect in you similar to eating peas, rice or sauteeing something in coconut oil, it's not a valid inference.
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
> The concern over the "highly processed" nature of plant-based meat-alternatives seems really disproportionate Well we're dealing with two separate audiences now, aren't we? The people who care about their health and have moral quandries about eating meat are likely a separate group from those who engage in the typical "American diet". Based off how the article is written, it seems that the intended audience is more of the former than the latter.
4y ago

darod 4y ago

you can't patent a vegetable, but a vegetable in it's normal state is always going to be a better source of nutrition than something man made.

nradov 4y ago
GMO vegetables can be patented in some countries, including the US.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  so can non-GMO hybrids. basically any seed that you put research into.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure you can still patent human genes, if you claim to be the first to find that particular gene interesting.

jiveturkey42 4y ago

The market seems to have rejected Beyond Meat. I wonder what, if anything, would bring vegetarianism into the mainstream in the USA

mattnewton 4y ago
My guess is that it is primarily a cost issue. Beyond meat is 2-3x more expensive than real meat in most grocery stores I have seen. I know we subsidize the meat industry in the US, but it’s not clear to me if this is because of that subsidy or their business model just isn’t competitive yet.
xnx 4y ago
Stock price is down, but I think sales are still increasing.

dayvid 4y ago

Does the study mention sprouted tofu or sprouted beans/grains? Sprouted grains and beans can reduce phytic acid. Here's a study, though honestly doesn't look like much, but maybe it is from a non layperson POV: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252429/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252429/

likpok 4y ago

It seems like the article is mostly talking about micronutrients like iron and zinc absorption rather than the protein. While important to keep in mind it doesn't seems like a big indictment of meat substitutes. Take a supplement and move on with your life! Vegans (less so vegetarians) need to supplement anyway, things like creatine or B12 have few natural plant sources. My personal beef with meat substitutes is that they aren't particularly good substitutes so I'd rather eat the real thing. But if you're eating a burger you're not really thinking about your health anyway.

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OJFord 4y ago
Those are the harder ones to hit than protein anyway, makes sense it's looking at those. In a way it would make a lot of sense for these kinds of products to intentionally add them - just like your 'take a supplement', why not have it added to the food? Can't really do that with raw vegetables, but processed vegetarian (especially 'meat substitute') stuff...
- jcampbell1 4y ago
  According to the article the problem is anti-nutrients. I’m not sure how powerful the effect is, but it could mean phytates in beans disable added supplements. Maybe the advice is don’t take supplements when eating high phytate foods.
- deleted 4y ago
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floor2 4y ago
Fun fact, animals don't produce B12. Historically meat contained B12 because animals got it from drinking water and eating food that had the microorganisms which do produce it, but in contemporary industrial scale agriculture, where animals are drinking chlorinated water piped into their pen, eating grains from a trough and being given antibiotics, they no longer get it from microorganisms which would have been in their natural environment. The people running hog confinement operations, cattle feedlots or chicken warehouses give the animals B-vitamin fortified food to make up for the deficiency. So vegans should take a B vitamin directly, but it's the same B vitamin being given to the animals for it to end up in meat.

Zigurd 4y ago

In my case, meat substitutes were an off ramp from eating a lot of meat. They are more satisfying than a lentil burger or mushroom burger. Lost a significant amount of weight and meat substitutes helped. But now I'll splurge on high quality meats like bison or lamb when I do eat meat, which is much less often. If I buy a meat substitute now it's to avoid the more dubious meats like "breakfast sausage."

trynewideas 4y ago
> If I buy a meat substitute now it's to avoid the more dubious meats like "breakfast sausage." I laughed because the only substitute I actually prefer over the meat equivalent is Beyond's breakfast sausage links.

dcj4 4y ago

sundaeofshock 4y ago
A friend of mine drank water and DIED. I would not recommend it.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
I think your finger-pointing is more emotional than rational. But all the same, I'd really love to hear more about this if this isn't a troll post.
mikestew 4y ago
I had friends that ate meat and died. Some of them from heart attacks, others from motorcycle accidents, but they all had one thing in common...
moloch-hai 4y ago
Every last person who ever crossed my great-grandfather is dead. Don't mess with us.

zackmorris 4y ago

I recently isolated what might be a root cause of my 2019 burnout, oxalates and other anti-nutrients: https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-high-in-oxalates https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-high-in-oxalates I've been a gym rat for 20+ years and tried to build my physique from primarily vegetarian sources. My favorite staple was bean burritos. But my joints were always achy (I couldn't survive without 1500/1200 glucosamine/chondroitin), my skin was broken out, I was bloated, I had chronically low energy, and I suffered from depression and anxiety for so long that I didn't know that I was (because they were my baseline for 2 decades). When I hit 40, suddenly I couldn't digest anything I had been eating. I believe the main culprits were: * Dehydration (exacerbated by creatine and not using a shaker for protein) * Almond butter (tree nuts are inflammatory and shells eat holes in intestinal lining) * Casein (slowest digesting protein, sits in intestines, promotes bad bacteria, many people are sensitive like with lactose) * Beans (oxalates, phytic acid) * Wheat (gluten irritates small intestine once immune system is sensitized, glyphosate disrupts intestinal flora and may be even higher in non-organic oatmeal) I experimented with autoimmune protocol (AIP) diets but never found a "cure". I made a full recovery, but it took 2-3 years of trying everything I could think of. The best things are: * Pumpkin seeds (like in Nature's path granola available in bulk at CostCo) * Spinach and broccoli * Rice * Kefir * Daily "stress" B complex with ~100% of each vitamin (the body can't store it, so a weekly 8000% B complex leaves 6 days of deficiency) * Psyllium husk capsules with meals (1 is usually enough) I've found that the body doesn't really care where protein comes from. So any whey protein is just as effective as meat, especially when taken with meals. But rare beef has (hormones?) and micronutrients which can't be mimicked by other foods, so is critical for healing micro tears. I'm looking forward to incubated meat because weightlifting progress is greatly enhanced by eating 1-2 pounds of meat per day, but I can't justify that ethically. The one meat substitute I can tolerate right now is Impossible breakfast sausages with 3 eggs and granola in the morning, and the bonus is that it's indistinguishable from meat. Some of the other ones trigger the shocked/hungover feeling I get the next day if I eat too many legumes or nightshades. So I endorse meat substitutes as long as they've had the anti-nutrients removed. But like milk substitutes, they may not have the healing qualities of the real thing. It's almost always best to get health advice from older people. Young lifters especially often make recommendations which aren't sustainable. And IMHO the backlash against meat substitutes comes from people procrastinating on their healing journey, who don't want to face the cognitive dissonance of how their personal choices affect others and the planet. And yes, I agree that humans evolved as scavengers and are meant to eat meat, I just think that tech has reached a point where we can do better.

boston_clone 4y ago

Direct link to the study; no paywall - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/19/3903 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/19/3903

moloch-hai 4y ago

Meat substitutes are, first and foremost, "processed food". They resemble meat secondarily. We are advised to avoid "processed food" and prefer real food, commonly defined for convenience as containing no more than five ingredients. So meat substitutes are right out, at least as a habit. A disastrously large fraction of descendants of subjects of England (incl. US, Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan) suffer from "processed food disease", also "metabolic disorder" or "fatty liver disease". Many are not obese. They can be cured with remarkable ease by dietary means, but generally are not.

hgsgm 4y ago

invalidname 4y ago

I'm not an expert but I understood that the value of heme iron is disputed by some. It has the advantage that iron will always be available and you won't need to eat more every day. The problem with it is that some conditions can be caused by excess of Iron and that's more common in the west.

Khelavaster 4y ago

Iron availability is not the main issue in vegetarian meat substitutes. The authors conflate iron availability with nutritional quality :(.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

When I was vegan years and years ago, I discovered that getting enough cholesterol can be a challenge. I ate a ton of avocados to try to tackle it. Now the challenge years later is, "how do I reduce my cholesterol intake?"

whycome 4y ago

Why does the title use "Low nutritional quality..." instead of "Nutritional quality in vegetarian meat substitutes". The latter makes a judgment of something that is subjective and relative ("Low nutritional quality compared to..."). I mean, it's supposed to be a research paper...

Py-o7 4y ago

Meat substitutes are ultra processed foods. No real surprises here.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago