Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/06/10/the-impossible-burger-is.html
…
3 Likes
While I applaud the smaller ecological footprint to grow this burger, I feel I must point out that meat is equally “simple”, “all-natural” and “free of artificial ingredients”.
And while meat can be treated with hormones and antibiotics, vegetables can be genetically modified and treated with pesticides. It’s not the fact that it’s meat vs vegetable that is important, but how it’s grown…
I’ll take an organically grown free range chicken drumstick over a genetically modified & pesticide-sprayed veggie-burger anytime.
30 Likes
This kind of crap, vegan/vegetarian foods perfectly emulating meat, drives me crazy. It misses the point of not eating meat and people end up eating highly processed food
23 Likes
Quite. Asbestos and Mercury are “all-natural”, but I still do not want either of them in my food.
While I’m somewhat leaning towards vegetarianism - little, but good meat - I have never understood these faux foods that pretend to be meat. I like veggies. And if you know a little bit about cooking it’s not that hard to prepare delicious meals. With or without meat, and without dressing up aything as something else.
(Granted, you can find fun in it:)
9 Likes
Heme is also usually quite reactive, and easily converted from meat into toxic forms. A plant-based heme burger without being bound in proper animal proteins could conceivably make as bad or worse risk for colon cancer than simply eating beef. It’s one those ideas I would want tested thoroughly before I would consider eating it.
4 Likes
They’re using leghemoglobin, a protein found in the root nodules of legumes & the heme is bound to that. As far as I remember they’re getting the leghemoglobin from genetically modified yeast, not the roots of soy plants though, because they say it’s more environmentally sustainable & I think it makes it easier to scale up production. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/21/482322571/silicon-valley-s-bloody-plant-burger-smells-tastes-and-sizzles-like-meat
7 Likes
Yea, I’ll be having the filet with a friendly Pinot. I’m saving all the tofu for the starving children in China.
Also, who the hell wants a hamburger that bleeds? Rare filet sure, but a hamburger?
9 Likes
We have a family friend who is a lifelong vegetarian; he can’t stand the fake meat stuff just because he’s put off by the texture. I totally get where he’s coming from.
4 Likes
Some people seem to be addicted to meat. I’ve been a vegetarian for a long time, and one of the questions I’ve often been asked is, ‘Don’t you get a craving for meat?’ As it happens I don’t, but that may just be the luck of my particular body chemistry. It may be that the heme thing is the element the addicts are addicted to, not the bleeding or the sizzling or whatever. Overall my experience is that fake meat is not a good thing, but rather a sort of stopgap, like smoking a fake cigarette because you’re addicted to nicotine – going through the motions somewhat relieves the unpleasant feeling of deprived addiction.
6 Likes
Even rare filet, the juice isn’t blood, it’s myoglobin.
Yeah but I think lots of vegetarian meals are more about the suffering. That said since I can’t get kosher meat here, I cook lots of meals from only vegetables.
4 Likes
I have been predominantly vegetarian for over thirty years now. About 25 years ago I tried vegan and it was bleak. Brown rice,black bean and tofu bowls, ugh. Fast forward to three years ago; a vegan diet is amazing, the options are forever expanding, and this veggie heme is part of the fun. Along with such delights as aquafaba and readily available ancient grains; vegan cooking is a blast. As far as trying to emulate meat, I don’t get it either. Some things just make sense; coconut chips made into tasty soup and salad toppers just happen to look and taste like baco-bits, but not on purpose, one of my seitan recipes just happens to look like sausage links, but only because it will fit in the rolls I bake.
6 Likes
I’m looking forward to trying it. It’s not like I’ll stop eating beef - but - sometimes I enjoy a veggie burger or tempeh.
If it’s also healthier - that’s not a negative. But - I haven’t stopped eating bacon either.
6 Likes
Cherry pick much? I’ll take a tasty grilled seitan patty smothered in gravy all made with organically grown wheat over a factory produced chicken anytime.
8 Likes
what’s the point of not eating meat?
4 Likes
For a more meatlike experience, they have also genetically engineered the plants they use so that they feel pain.
Not just when they are cut down by the reaper, but their entire existence, from the time they are a seed to when your digestive juices break it down.
They are also working on a new species of wheat that wants to roam. It knows that if it could even wander an area the size of a veal pen it would be happier. But it is rooted to the ground.
With such a hellish existence, it would be morally wrong not to grant these plants the release of death.
13 Likes
No bitching about others dietary choices in those word choices.
7 Likes
I feel like you are just driving trollies, but I’ll bite.
Points for not eating meat: economy (the meat industry is heavily subsidized), pollution, ecology, animal welfare, health care costs (did I mention the external cost of meat production not covered by the consumer?), odors (livestock smell, slaughterhouses smell, dead flesh smells, turds from diseased human colons smell).
6 Likes
Not to mention extra-rank-body-odor smell.
Nah, I doubt it’s just you and your body. For most people, meat is like any other food habit. Give it up, or just eat far less of it, and after awhile the craving goes away. And, new cravings take its place.
8 Likes
Granted, for the sake of argument.
Which brings me to @GreyDevil 's point.
Why does the impossible burger miss the point of all this?
4 Likes
4 Likes
