Vegetarian Fake Meats

[J842P]

Almonds are out. Dairy is a disaster. So what milk should we drink? | Environment | The Guardian noting Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers | Science

From The Guardian (Grauniad):


Coconut: ‘An absolute tragedy’


Almond: bad for bees

Almonds require more water than any other dairy alternative, consuming 130 pints of water to produce a single glass of almond milk, according to the Oxford study. Satisfying continual demands for larger almond crops is also placing unsustainable pressures on US commercial beekeepers. Nearly 70% of commercial bees in the US are drafted every spring to pollinate almonds. Last year, a record number –over one-third of them– died by season’s end as a result of these pressures and other environmental threats.

Rice: a water-guzzler

Rice is a water hog, according to the Oxford study, plus it produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other plant milk. Bacteria breeding in rice paddies pump methane into the atmosphere and large amounts of fertilizer pollute waterways.

Hazelnut: on the up

For consumers who want the nutritiousness and tastiness of a nut milk but without the environmental impacts of almond farming, the hazelnut is a rising star. ... Hazelnuts are environmentally superior to almonds in that they are pollinated by the wind rather than commercial honeybees and they grow in moist climates, such as the Pacific north-west, where water is less of an issue.

Hemp and flax: niche contenders

They are grown in relatively small quantities in the northern hemisphere, which makes them more environmentally friendly compared with a monoculture operation.

Soy: back in favor

According to the Oxford study, soy milk is the joint winner on the sustainability scale. Plus, soy is the only plant milk that comes close to offering a protein content comparable to dairy.

Oat: a humble hero

Meet the winner: the unassuming oat.

“I’m excited about the surge in oat milk popularity,” says Liz Specht, associate director of science and technology for the Good Food Institute, a not-for-profit that promotes plant-based diets. “Oat milk performs very well on all sustainability metrics.” Also: “I highly doubt there will be unintended environmental consequences that might emerge when the scale of oat milk use gets larger.”

The bottom line: as long as it’s not dairy

Both Emery and Specht emphasize that whether it’s coconut, soy or oat, consumers should drink whatever plant milk is most appealing to them and not fret over sustainability shortcomings, which are chump change compared with the environmental harms from dairy.

Saying people should be subsistence farmers instead of growing a cash crop is stupid.

In any case, I've always suspected that oat milk is the best of the alternative milks, and lucky for me, it's my favorite.

I've recently found out that I simply cannot consume as much dairy as I used to be able to, I doubt I ever really was able to tolerate as much, it just took a long time for me to make the connection between feeling bloated and drinking a cup of milk (recently, usually in the form of a latte).

I actually prefer oat milk over regular cow's milk for almost everything, but I still love a little bit of whole milk with cookies.

 

[Politesse]

Ran across a program yesterday where someone said out loud something that logic has always suggested to me.

The claim that meat uses huge resources in production is based on intensive factory farming methods. Livestock that is grass fed in paddocks - not so much.

Which is why we should greatly reduce meat consumption. If it were all being raised sustainably, there'd be no ecological issue. But it obviously is not, and volume of demand has a lot to do with that.

I've been reading a little lately about regenerative animal husbandry. Essentially, the claim is that using these techniques, which essentially mimic ruminant wild behavior, the overall effect is actually an increase in carbon sequestration through the prevention and reversal of desertification and land erosion, which is caused by agriculture and by the large-scale removal of ruminants from the ecosystem (e.g. bison in the American Great Plains).

If this were true, this would leave room for animal products in a climate friendly approach to agriculture.

It would probably render meat more expensive, but that would overall be a good thing, since it seems that the consumption of animal products is linked to all sorts of long-term, negative health outcomes.

I've heard of that! A colleague of mine has been working on something similar up at U.C. Davis. Far from being a widely distributable technique at this point, but there is a lot of promise. Which is good, because I doubt we will actually be getting off the carnivorous diet altogether any time soon...

 

[J842P]

I've been reading a little lately about regenerative animal husbandry. Essentially, the claim is that using these techniques, which essentially mimic ruminant wild behavior, the overall effect is actually an increase in carbon sequestration through the prevention and reversal of desertification and land erosion, which is caused by agriculture and by the large-scale removal of ruminants from the ecosystem (e.g. bison in the American Great Plains).

If this were true, this would leave room for animal products in a climate friendly approach to agriculture.

It would probably render meat more expensive, but that would overall be a good thing, since it seems that the consumption of animal products is linked to all sorts of long-term, negative health outcomes.

I've heard of that! A colleague of mine has been working on something similar up at U.C. Davis. Far from being a widely distributable technique at this point, but there is a lot of promise. Which is good, because I doubt we will actually be getting off the carnivorous diet altogether any time soon...

Yeah, telling people to stop eating meat probably has about as much chance of working (in the short to medium term) as telling a bunch of rabbits to stop procreating.

 

[lpetrich]

MorningStar Farms® | Veggie and Vegan Plant-Based Foods - I like its fake chicken patties.

I looked at the ingredients of some of these items, and they are indeed vegetarian, with the exception of egg white.

But even that might not be an exception, considering the recent development of synthetic egg white. It is made by genetically modified yeast, yeast with copies inserted into its cells of the gene for the main egg-white protein, ovalbumin.

• These ‘Chicken-Free’ Egg Whites Use a Protein Recipe From Real Chickens
• New GMO Alert: GMO-Made Egg White Proteins - The Non-GMO Project
• Clara Foods on cracking the ‘world’s first’ animal-free egg white
• Onego Bio — egg protein from fermentation
• Animal-Free Egg Whites: The Next Frontier in Ethical, Sustainable Protein | Sustainable Brands

 

[lpetrich]

Precision fermentation — feeding the planet with science? by Adam Lee

It's a sci-fi cliche that, in the future, we'll eat synthetic food grown in vats. ...

In most of these stories, vat-grown food is a sludge that's nutritious but tastes horrible. Sometimes there's a story reason why it's not more appetizing, but the real reason is that it reflects our ambivalence about technology.

Yet "You probably eat and drink things that come out of vats, and they're not unappealing slime." Bread, yogurt, alcoholic drinks, ...

Then mentioning "precision fermentation" - inserting genes into microbes to make desired foodstuffs.

This is not new. It's been used for some decades to make insulin and rennet's main enzyme, chymosin. Rennet is used in making cheese.

"Cow-free ice cream and chicken-free eggs"

Mentioning some examples of genetically engineered microbes making foodstuffs:

Hemoglobin in Impossible Foods's fake beef. Checking on Impossible Foods reveals diversification into fake-meat steak chunks, hot dogs, chicken patties and nuggets, and sausages.

Milk proteins like casein: Sustainable Animal-Free Dairy & Protein - Perfect Day

Egg-white protein: ovalbumin: The EVERY Company, Formerly Clara Foods | Vegan Egg Protein

 

[lpetrich]

Home - Solar Foods - bypasses animals and plants entirely, growing microbes in vats, making a protein: Solein | Protein out of thin air.

The first step is to electrolyze water, making hydrogen and oxygen. This hydrogen is then fed to certain bacteria, along with carbon dioxide, ammonia, and various minerals. Solein is then harvested from these bacteria and dried to make a flourlike powder.

The obvious advantage of this technology is that it's cruelty-free. We can eat the foods we enjoy without having to cage or kill animals.

However, the benefits to the planet could be even greater. By U.N. estimates, one-third of Earth's arable land is used to grow food for animals, with all the pollution and habitat destruction this entails.

Brazilian rainforests are cut down for cattle ranching. Water from the dwindling Colorado River is diverted to grow alfalfa for animal feed. Industrial feeding operations produce lakes of toxic manure. Animals crammed into crowded warehouses need heavy doses of antibiotics to keep disease in check, which breeds resistant bacteria.

And then there's the climate. Cows belch out methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Scientists estimate that one-seventh of all greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock.

 

[lpetrich]

Then noting Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all | George Monbiot | The Guardian

Let’s focus for a moment on technology. Specifically, what might be the most important environmental technology ever developed: precision fermentation.

...
The first is to shrink to a remarkable degree the footprint of food production. One paper estimates that precision fermentation using methanol needs 1,700 times less land than the most efficient agricultural means of producing protein: soy grown in the US. This suggests it might use, respectively, 138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means: beef and lamb production. Depending on the electricity source and recycling rates, it can also enable radical reductions in water use and greenhouse gas emissions. Because the process is contained, it avoids the spillover of waste and chemicals into the wider world caused by farming.

...
The second astonishing possibility is breaking the extreme dependency of many nations on food shipped from distant places. Nations in the Middle East, north Africa, the Horn of Africa and Central America do not possess sufficient fertile land or water to grow enough food of their own. In other places, especially parts of sub-Saharan Africa, a combination of soil degradation, population growth and dietary change cancels out any gains in yield.

Also noting The Life Cycle of Our Non Animal Protein - Perfect Day

This study found that, compared to the total protein in milk, Perfect Day whey protein is:

• 91% to 97% lower in GHG emissions
• 29% to 60% lower energy demand
• 96% to 99% lower blue water consumption

 

[GenesisNemesis]

In effect, they get yeast to make real egg proteins.

Vegans should be avoiding murdering yeasts as well. The monsters!

See nirvana fallacy. Why does literally every conservative argument involve logical fallacies? Also pretty sure yeast can't have the subjective experience of pain/suffering, which is one of the smart people philosophical reasons people use for justifying why it's fine certain organisms can be eaten while others aren't, because there's a very basic level of nuance involved in this, but people like you only go for the most stupid response in any situation, so you wouldn't get that.

 

[Elixir]

Vegetarian Fake Meats​

Vs

Meat-based fake meats?

 

[Politesse]

Vegetarian Fake Meats​

Vs

Meat-based fake meats?

Now you leave McDonald's out of this, the people love their tree pulp with a tiny bit of beef in!

 

[lpetrich]

AL also noted some skepticism about such claims:
Magical disruption? Alternative protein and the promise of de-materialization - Julie Guthman, Charlotte Biltekoff, 2021

Silicon Valley food tech entrepreneurs aspire to bring a new food system into being and convince their audiences that this food future is both better and achievable. Nevertheless, their representational practices make it difficult, if not impossible, for the public—or anyone really—to meaningfully assess the promises and their potential consequences, much less hold their proponents accountable to anything but pecuniary concerns.

I concede that I share some of that skepticism.

For instance, some lab-grown meat is fed fetal bovine serum - that's a kind of source that such meat is intended to get away from. An alternative would be to prepare a nutrient broth from plants and/or fungi and/or algae and/or bacteria, and for production use, one would have to do something like that.

Fungi and many bacteria have the problem of having animal-like metabolism, needing biomolecules for energy and as feedstocks for their own biomolecules. But many of them can live off of very limited diets, making them much easier to feed than lab-grown meat. Limited like only one organic carbon source, like glucose.

Glucose is made industrially by breaking down starch, but if one can also break down cellulose, that would make most of a crop plant available.

 

[lpetrich]

Vegetarian Fake Meats​

Vs

Meat-based fake meats?

Fake meats made from scratch

Like what a plant does, making all its biomolecules from inorganic precursors.

That is completely feasible, but it is VERY difficult. One needs to make a lot of molecules with specific shapes, often including a selection of which mirror image. That is why it is much easier to use organisms' biosynthesis for that synthesis - biosynthesis uses enzymes, which have very specific shapes, those needed for assembling biomolecules while avoiding assembling undesired variants of them.

 

[lpetrich]

In effect, they get yeast to make real egg proteins.

Vegans should be avoiding murdering yeasts as well. The monsters!

See nirvana fallacy. Why does literally every conservative argument involve logical fallacies? Also pretty sure yeast can't have the subjective experience of pain/suffering, which is one of the smart people philosophical reasons people use for justifying why it's fine certain organisms can be eaten while others aren't, because there's a very basic level of nuance involved in this, but people like you only go for the most stupid response in any situation, so you wouldn't get that.

There is a sort of hierarchy of  Vegetarianism and semi-vegetarianism:  Flexitarianism

 Pollotarianism - will eat avian meat, like from chickens and turkeys and ducks, but not red meat, like from cows and pigs and horses - mammalian meat.

 Pescetarianism - will eat seafood, but not the meat of warm-blooded land vertebrates.

There is a gap in between. Amphibians, like frogs, and reptiles, like turtles, lizards, snakes, and crocodilians, are not often eaten in our society, so the issue of their meat does not come up very often among semi-vegetarians.

One may reject reptilian meat along with avian and mammalian meat, thus rejecting amniote meat.

One may also reject amphibian meat, along with amniote meat, thus rejecting tetrapod meat.

One can go further and reject fish, thus rejecting vertebrate meat while while eating invertebrates like shrimp and clam: molluscatarianism.

In summary:

• Mammals - bovine, pig, sheep, goat, deer, horse, camel, guinea pig, dog, ...
• Amniotes - incl. reptiles (turtle, lizard, snake, crocodilian), birds (chicken, turkey, duck, goose, pigeon, ostrich, ...)
• Tetrapods - incl. amphibians (frogs)
• Vertebrates - incl. fish
• Animals - incl. invertebrates (crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster), bivalves (clam, oyster, scallop), gastropods (escargot: snail), cephalopods (calamari: squid, octopus), ...)

 

[GenesisNemesis]

In effect, they get yeast to make real egg proteins.

Vegans should be avoiding murdering yeasts as well. The monsters!

See nirvana fallacy. Why does literally every conservative argument involve logical fallacies? Also pretty sure yeast can't have the subjective experience of pain/suffering, which is one of the smart people philosophical reasons people use for justifying why it's fine certain organisms can be eaten while others aren't, because there's a very basic level of nuance involved in this, but people like you only go for the most stupid response in any situation, so you wouldn't get that.

There is a sort of hierarchy of  Vegetarianism and semi-vegetarianism:  Flexitarianism

 Pollotarianism - will eat avian meat, like from chickens and turkeys and ducks, but not red meat, like from cows and pigs and horses - mammalian meat.

 Pescetarianism - will eat seafood, but not the meat of warm-blooded land vertebrates.

There is a gap in between. Amphibians, like frogs, and reptiles, like turtles, lizards, snakes, and crocodilians, are not often eaten in our society, so the issue of their meat does not come up very often among semi-vegetarians.

One may reject reptilian meat along with avian and mammalian meat, thus rejecting amniote meat.

One may also reject amphibian meat, along with amniote meat, thus rejecting tetrapod meat.

One can go further and reject fish, thus rejecting vertebrate meat while while eating invertebrates like shrimp and clam: molluscatarianism.

In summary:

• Mammals - bovine, pig, sheep, goat, deer, horse, camel, guinea pig, dog, ...
• Amniotes - incl. reptiles (turtle, lizard, snake, crocodilian), birds (chicken, turkey, duck, goose, pigeon, ostrich, ...)
• Tetrapods - incl. amphibians (frogs)
• Vertebrates - incl. fish
• Animals - incl. invertebrates (crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster), bivalves (clam, oyster, scallop), gastropods (escargot: snail), cephalopods (calamari: squid, octopus), ...)

Way too much nuance for a conservative.

 

[lpetrich]

Vegetarians are divided on what animal products that they will eat, products whose extraction does not involve killing the animal.

•  Lacto-ovo vegetarianism - both milk and eggs and their products
•  Lacto vegetarianism - only milk and its products
•  Ovo vegetarianism - only eggs and their products
•  Veganism - neither

Milk products include cheese, yogurt, ...

Fungi, like yeast and mushrooms, are agreed to be legitimate foods by most vegetarians, even most vegans, even though their metabolism is animal-like, heterotrophic or organotrophic.

Fungi are also the closest macroscopic relatives of animals in eukaryotedom.  Choanoflagellate are closer, but they are one-celled and/or makers of small colonies. Progress towards the Tree of Eukaryotes: Current Biology and The New Tree of Eukaryotes: Trends in Ecology & Evolution

So are only autotrophic organisms legitimate to eat? That's plants, algae, and cyanobacteria ("blue-green algae").

One can go further, by avoiding eukaryotes, but one's options become VERY limited. The only prokaryote that we eat in bulk is Spirulina, at least the only one known to me. But it is a cyanobacterium, meaning that it is autotrophic.

That's about as far as one can go in organisms to eat, alongside the organisms that Solar Foods uses, organisms which are also autotrophic, and which are likely prokaryotes, judging from their metabolism.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I'm lacto-ovo AND I only buy free-range yeast.

 

[bilby]

According to John E. B. Mayor, who was a Professor of Latin at Cambridge University and who became the President of the Vegetarian Society in 1884:

Would you be surprised to learn that as Vegetarians, looking at the word etymologically, not historically or in the light of our official definition, we are neither required to eat all vegetable products, nor vegetable products only, nor even vegetable products at all? Far from committing us to abstain from milk and eggs, the name derives its connexion with diet exclusively from the definition given to it by our Society.

When librarian means an ‘eater of books,’ antiquarian ‘an eater of antiques,’ even then vegetarian will not, cannot, mean ‘an eater of vegetables.’ Your learned townsman, my old friend Mr. Roby, has cited many nouns substantive and adjective ending in arius = Engl. arian. All of these are derived from nouns substantive or adjective, none from verbs. Prof. Skeat was misled by a borrowed definition. Antiquus, ‘ancient’; antiqua, ‘antiques’; antiquarius, ‘one who studies, deals in, has to do with, antiques an antiquary or antiquarian.’ So vegetarius, ‘one who studies, has to do with, vegeta.’ What vegetus means you shall hear from impartial lips :—

Vegetabilis is not used in good Latin at all. Cicero's word for plants is gignentia.

‘Vegetus, whole, sound, strong, quick, fresh, lively, lusty, gallant, trim, brave; vegeto, to refresh, recreate, or make lively, lusty, quick and strong, to make sound.’ Thomas Holyoke, ‘Latin Dictionary,’ London, 1677.

Ainsworth adds to the senses of ‘Vegetus,’ agile, alert, brisk, crank, pert, nourishing, vigorous, fine, seasonable; and renders the primitive ‘vegeo’ to be lusty and strong, or sound and whole; to make brisk or mettlesome; to refresh.

The word vegetarius belongs to an illustrious family. Vegetable, which has been called its mother, is really its niece. Vegetation, vigil, vigilant, vigour, invigorate, wake, watch, wax, augment; the Gr. ὑγιὴς (sound) ; Hygieia, the goddess of health; hygiene, the science of health; all these are more or less distant relatives.

The Vegetarian, then, is one who aims at wholeness, soundness, strength, quickness, vigour, growth, wakefulness, health. These must be won by a return to nature, and the natural food for man is a diet of fruit and farinacea, with which some combine such animal products as may be enjoyed without destroying sentient life.

(Source - my bold).

Anyone who eats foods that promote good health can, therefore, be rightly described as a "vegetarian", even if their diet includes a daily beef steak - as long as they do not wish to subscribe completely to the rules of the late Victorian Vegetarian Society (specifically those regarding the destruction of sentient life), but only to the meaning of the word 'vegetarian' as that society understood it.

The Vegetarian is one who aims at wholeness, soundness, strength, quickness, vigour, growth, wakefulness, and health. Diet forms only a small part of the means to achieving of these aims, and is (or at least, originally was) far from central to the definition of a vegetarian.

 

[lpetrich]

Argument from etymology. Some words have gone on some odd journeys:

• Something new > book-length fiction
• Roman > ordinary-people language > book-length fiction > love story > love affair
• fig > liver

Back to the main subject:

Vegetarian < vegetable < (Old French) < Latin vegetābilis "can live, be lively, grow" < Latin vegetāre "to become / be made lively" < Latin vegetus "lively" < Latin vegēre "to be lively, active, to make lively, active" ~ Latin vigēre "to thrive" > Latin vigor > English -- both from Proto-Indo-European *weg- "to be lively, awake, strong" > descendants like English "to wake"

As to what Cicero called plants, gignentia is the neuter plural of gignens - Wiktionary, the free dictionary "begetting, producing"

plant/translations - Wiktionary, the free dictionary - Latin has

• herba - Wiktionary, the free dictionary - grass, herbage - herb - weeds - plant
• planta - Wiktionary, the free dictionary - any vegetable production that serves to propagate the species; a sprout, shoot, twig, sprig, sucker, graft, scion, slip, cutting - a young tree, a shrub that may be transplanted; a set - sole of the foot

Both "plant" and "herb" have squeezed out a native English word: wort - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

 

[bilby]

Both "plant" and "herb" have squeezed out a native English word: wort - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

There are no native English words.

 

[lpetrich]

We eat most parts of plants:

• Roots, rhizomes - potato, carrot, garlic, onion, ...
• Stems - broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, bean sprouts, ...
• Leaves - lettuce, cabbage, ...
• Seeds - grains (wheat, rye, oats, ...), nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds, ...), beans, ...
• Fruits (seed casings) - apple, peach, orange, grape, pineapple, berries (strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, ...), tomato, avocado, ...

If one doesn't like the idea of killing plants, one may consider only eating parts of plants that the plants themselves release:  Fruitarianism - eating only fruit, and maybe also seeds and nuts.