Plant-Based Fake Meat is a Load of Bull

One of the best things about capitalism is that businesses will always find a way to co-opt seemingly positive social trends for the sake of making money off of easily duped people. The best example of this is the rising popularity of the new fake meat products like Impossible Meat and Beyond Meat.  Even more recently, KFC has jumped on the bandwagon by testing out the Beyond Chicken in their menu.

The marketing behind these products is that they're supposed to be better for your health because they're "plant-based". You seemingly get the protein you get in meat from plants while getting the same nutritional value as eating veggies.

The marketing material also implies that choosing a plant-based diet means that you're also being more environmentally friendly and you're reducing cruelty to animals. All this while keeping the same taste and texture of real meat. Amazing.  You now have a product that will allow you to feel morally superior to those ignorant meat-eaters without sacrificing the delightful feeling you get in your mouth when you're chewing on the flesh of dead animals.

Perfect product, right? Not so fast.

Healthier than meat?

For one this stuff isn't necessarily much healthier than meat. It's highly processed. To replicate the look, smell, texture and taste of ground beef and chicken with peas, soy and "plant-based ingredients", you'll definitely need to do some heavy industrial processing. You'll probably need less additives and processing to get a refrigerated piece of chopped up cow or chicken.

Also, Beyond Meat is mainly made of soy.  Soy has been shown to lower sperm count and decrease libido.  It has also been linked to mood swings and depression.  Prolonged soy consumption has also been connected to the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors found in breast cancer.


What about the calories and fat content?  Calorie-wise, a real burger patty has about the same amount of calories as a fake meat patty.  Sure, real meat will have more saturated fat than the fake patties, but new research in nutrition is showing that dietary fat isn't necessarily bad for your health.  In fact, it's actually necessary for your body.  The problem has been the sugar and carbs found in your burger bun and not the fat in the meat.

Better for the environment?

So what about the argument that avoiding meat is better for the environment and is less cruel to animals? Is that really true? That depends.  Sure, beef production which is used by most environmentalists as the worst case, does have a high carbon footprint.  Yes, the space required for cattle grazing usually leads to deforestation.

However, the amount of soy and peas used to make your plant-based burger requires mono-culture farming that's bad for the soil, requires a high use of pesticides, causes a lot of water pollution and has a high carbon footprint that contributes to climate change.  It also causes the loss of biodiversity by creating areas where only one type of plant can grow.

Coconut farming also promotes monoculture

At the same time the plant ingredients in that fake burger aren't sourced locally.  For example, the coconut oil required not only promotes monocultures, but also has to be shipped from Indonesia, the Philippines, and other tropical countries to North America.  That's a significant when it comes to fossil fuel use and carbon footprint.

Taste?

As for the taste, if you want something that tastes like meat and you have no allergies, why not just eat meat?  It always makes me laugh whenever I see fake meat products made for vegans and vegetarian. It's especially funny when the ones eating these products are the ones preaching and proselityzing about their diets. If their meatless diet is so superior, why are they still craving and trying to replicate the taste and texture of meat?

Looks like real meat, smells like real meat, somewhat tastes like it too... why not just eat a real burger?

Bottom Line:
The fake meat phenomenon is basically another sign of living in a privileged and easy society.  Historically, when you look at different societies around the world, humans will eat whatever they could get to survive. Even in hunter/gatherer societies, meat was considered a rare luxury because it's so difficult to hunt down and chase animals with non-firearm weapons.

As societies become wealthier and more industrialized, the consumption of meat increases. We're seeing that now in many developing countries the same way that we've seen that in the past in Europe and North America.  I suppose that when you reach peak wealth and privilege, the next step is to take your surplus of resources, go into a lab and create something that simulates the most historically coveted type of food.

Of course, I'm not saying that we should only eat meat.  There are many benefits to eating plants when it comes to dietary fiber, vitamins and other nutrients that can't be found in meat.  However, instead of trying to highly process these plant ingredients to look like meat, wouldn't it make more sense to just be the omnivores we evolved to be by eating your meat with vegetables?  I know it seems novel, but humans seem to have survived for millions of years eating that way.