Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates & Twitter Founders Put "Meatless" Meat To the Test
assertation (1255714) writes "Bill Gates and the founders of Twitter are betting millions that meat lovers will embrace a new plant-based product that mimics the taste of chicken and beef. Meat substitutes have had a hard time making it to the dinner tables of Americans over the years, but the tech giants believe these newest products will pass the "tastes like chicken" test. Gates has met several times with Ethan Brown, whose product, Beyond Meat, is a mash-up of proteins from peas and plants."
Prepare to be targeted by an angry mob from PETA...
The other PETA, that is... People Eating Tasty Animals.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Stuff like this tends to be prohibitively expensive. That seems to be the greatest obstacle to acceptance.
Peas and plants. Because now peas aren't plants? Who wrote that?
"The difficulty now comes in finding a way to convince carnivores to switch."
If it tastes like meat, smells like meat, and looks like meat, then I won't refuse it on principle. How do you get me to switch? Make it cheaper than real meat.
Use the return to classic view link. I hope they track the number of clicks and realize that everyone is bailing on the stupid beta version.
It's not enough to industrialize agriculture, now they want to trick us with fake food.
Cows graze around boulders and on slopes, where tractors can't work. They cannot be effectively replaced. (Feeding cows corn & soybean meal is rather foolish, and is the real problem here.)
"I just completely disagree with that. It is an assembly of amino acids, fats and water that is just like what you get out of an animal, so in my view, it is meat."
What a tool. It is *not* meat. It *is* fake meat. Die in a fire.
This is really a regional problem (understandable in a country that has never had capacity issues raising cattle on enormous scale).
Outside the US, many countries have been eating significant quantities of meat substitutes for ages - my favourite, even as a meat eater, being Quorn, which is genuinely rather nice tasting and doesn't have to taste 'like' meat to appeal to me (though it's not a vegan product in any sense).
Within the US, Quorn received a seriously dubious monstering from CSPI, but even in the UK Quorn needed help to get past the 'fake meat' angle; Sainsbury's went big on it and it survived.
Try it sometime, particularly with a splash of light soy sauce right at the beginning, which does help it taste more chickeny, if you need that.
Non-meat dishes, if properly done, have great flavors and textures all their own. And can satisfy the appetite.
As a long-term vegetarian, the main concession I make are vegetable patties. And that is for their form factor and ease of cook and not for a resemblance to a burger. Companies like Moningstar and traders Joes make patties out of all kinds of vegetables and spices- soy, bean corn, peas, garins, mixtures etc.
Mouse " You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything."
Grand liberal vision:
We stop eating meat, everyone has more to eat.
Actuality:
We stop eating meat, people breed until the damage is equivalent to what we're doing now.
Futurist Traditionalism
I've eaten (I won't say where) some earlier versions of Beyond Meat. While not as chewy as the real thing, they had a lot in common with meat; I could quite easily have believed they were the flesh of some animal I had not yet tasted. With good use of sauces or spices they should be able to compete with meat. Can anyone tell me if McDonalds has yet trademarked "BeyondBurger"? I mean, a plant-based patty that tastes better than their beef ought not to be difficult at all.
In fact I belong to one such group: south Indian lacto-vegetarian brahmin. My rational mind and my reading of scriptures tell me, it is just a cultural practice, Hinduism does not really ban meat. My reading of books in evolution and my rudimentary understanding of biology tells me Homo sapiens evolved to eat at least some meat. Our closes primate relatives bonobos and chimps both eat meat. Still my cultural training is so ingrained I would not be able to bring myself to bite a piece of chicken, or something that resembles chicken. I am sure bits and pieces of meat must have found their way into my plate by accident. Restaurant workers might not have changed gloves, or the pizza cutter might not have been wiped before cutting my pizza, or the soup might have had a chicken stock instead of vegetable stock. Even after knowing all this, I am not able to bring myself to eat meat or anything that resembles meat.
I know we form such a microscopic minority what we think or do would not have the slightest effect on the general population and trends. But still, I have no plans to change.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I enjoy several meat substitutes such as Boca Burgers and meal starters. I would use them more often if the price was more reasonable. It is odd that these substitutes can exceed the price of the real thing.
The cost of the alternatives: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip 3105.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
I tried it. The texture and protein feel matches lean chicken or turkey reasonably well. But the fat flavor is missing. This is a general observation I have with all the faux meats. They simulate really lean cuts, but all the flavor comes from the fat, which is missing. It's probably the case that recreating the fat of meat is more difficult than creating the protein. This is a challenge to the manufacturers out there.
After a long history of failures, from Hamburger Helper to VitaPro, this stuff apparently tastes more or less like processed chicken. It's sold at Whole Foods. It's not cheap. Chicken tends to be chopped up and extruded anyway. ("McNuggets"). Matching the taste of breaded chicken nuggets seems do-able.
Nutrition is an issue. The nutritional composition of this is entirely determined by the manufacturer. The mix of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals is a manufacturer choice. There are few standards on the required nutritional value for human food products. Most concerns about food safety involve excluding undesired or toxic components. It's quite possible to sell something that tastes like meat, is harmless, but has little nutritional value.
Raising livestock takes more water than growing plants, and water is certainly something one would like to conserve. Furthermore, livestock effluence (animal shit) tends to find its way into rivers and streams.
Animal welfare isn't the other ethical issue involved here. I see nothing objectionable in slaughtering an animal and eating it, but doing it on a mass scale presents a risk to the environment that has convinced me to limit my meat intake.
That should read "Animal welfare isn't the only ethical issue", sorry.
Good question, but did you realise it takes 6lbs of feed to raise 1 lb of meat?
And you do realize that most of that feed is grass, which is grown on land not suited to cultivation? The final few weeks of "finishing" uses more grain, but the cattle are raised on hay, pasture and range.
It's not all about flavor, it's also about presentation. A steak has to look and cut exactly like a steak to be a stake, and it must have the varying consistencies you get from everything between rare to well done. If they can pull that off, fine - but it has to be exact. Besides, it's not like we have a food shortage, the problem is distribution. If you're taking the ethical route, fine for you, but it's not for me.
Or you can make it half-assed and try to make it cheaper than real meat. Then you can replace all meat in the fast food industry.
If this takes off, and I don't see why not (unless it's significantly more expensive), I almost worry that the existing range of quorn-like products will die off. There's a potentially infinite range of tastes and textures out there, and by eating just real meat, we're forcing ourselves to a tiny sub-portion of possible flavours.
It's about time we moved away from dark-age style slaughterhouses to a tasty meat substitute. Bring it on.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I am sure this is going to create an zombie apocalypse due to some mysterious and unexpected side effects. I better get ready to build energy based weapons so that I can survive whatever is left once nature has taken its cut (vultures, dogs, cats and so on).
Anyone remember those old ads? Diet Dr Pepper tastes more like real Dr Pepper? Yeah, it did taste a little more like the real stuff... but it still tastes like ass.
And more to the point of things that actually matter.... anyone got a line on how much this stuff costs? How about if it's actually good for you or not? What kind of crazy flavoring and additives are being put into it to try and make it taste that way? Hey how about any GMO ingredients? Not that I think GMO is the devil that it gets made out to be. But I'm not much into it either.
In the UK, Quorn is the main faux meat mycoprotein. I'm not a vegetarian but I have tried a few of their products and they are, without exception, all about simulating meat.
The simulated chicken pieces are probably the most realistic; so much like the real thing in terms of appearance, texture and taste it's uncanny. The steak strips aren't as good texture wise, nor is the lamb cutlet, but both are ok taste wise although to visual inspection the lamb one is obviously artificial. The sausages are good but since the meat content of real sausages is questionable anyway, I don't think there's much comparison to draw. The biggest fail is the Quorn bacon rashers. You have to wonder why they bothered trying. Nothing can compare with real bacon and we can't help vegetarians who chose to give that up.
Compare the amount of livestock to the rest of the wild mammals on the planet, it's quite staggering, and i doubt many would expect the numbers to look like this:
http://xkcd.com/1338/
what the hell is with some people always needing to insert insults against republicans or democrats in articles that have nothing to do with politics?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Well, it doesn't take more water for the same protein value. One of the reasons we eat livestock instead of grass is because we need more complex stuctures (eg. proteins) to live. Animal shit may be a problem, but human shit is way worse, as it can't even be easily recycled as a fertilizant. I'm not in favour of animal cruelty (so some heavy processed meat process makes me wonder where we're going, but on the other hand, recycling everything from a corpse is more thant what I do with my vegetables), but your meat choices have no impact in life.
How something is supposed to 'look' is something that can change within a generation.
If on the other hand you believe in universal aesthetics (like I do), and must dip into the mere look of the presented food, then there's no reason we can't have a BETTER looking food put onto our plate than what stone-age meat has to offer.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I was thinking about that after I posted and I completely agree. Fast food "meat" barely qualifies as it is, and fast food in general is a major part of the health crisis here in the United States.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Imagine the ratio of surface area to protein/vital nutrient intake once those animals are converted into plants. Do you know how much grass a cow eats and how efficient it is converting it and water into milk and tasty meat? Do you think you can do the same by just eating grass? Go, help yourself. An adult cow drinks 20-40l of water and produces around 20l of milk, while producing tasty meat. Do the math.
http://remineralize.org/
"Better soil, better food, better planet.... We see a future of thriving farms and gardens producing healthy, nutrient-dense food in great abundance. We see exuberant forests returned to a state of grandeur not seen in centuries, silently sequestering the carbon dioxide that so threatens our planet today. We see a stable climate and a cleaner, healthier environment. We see all of this being possible through the simple and effective process of soil remineralization."
You are right that much of today's organic industry has become co-dependent on conventional livestock farms to use the manure for fertilizer to make up for what is removed from the soil. And returning human waste back to the soil has not proven that workable in the USA because sewage sludge is often contaminated with heavy metals or prescription drugs.That is a big difference from the "Farmers Of Forty Centuries" in China with cleaner sewage back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Also related:
http://water.epa.gov/polwaste/...
http://www.epa.gov/agriculture...
http://www.globalecotechnics.c...
http://www.oceanarksint.org/
From: http://remineralize.org/histor...
----
Benefits of Remineralization
* Provides slow, natural release of elements and trace minerals.
* Increases the nutrient intake of plants.
* Increases yields and gives higher brix reading.
* Rebalances soil pH.
* Increases earthworm activity and the growth of microorganisms.
* Builds humus complex.
* Prevents soil erosion.
* Increases the storage capacity of the soil.
* Increases resistance to insects, disease, frost, and drought.
* Produces more nutritious crops.
* Enhances flavor in crops.
* Decreases dependence on fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Soil Remineralization (SR) creates fertile soils by returning minerals to the soil in much the same way that the Earth does: during an Ice Age, glaciers crush rock onto the Earth's soil mantle, and winds blow the dust in the form of loess all over the globe. Volcanoes erupt, spewing forth minerals from deep within the Earth, and rushing rivers form mineral-rich alluvial deposits.
Within silicate rocks is a broad spectrum of up to one hundred minerals and trace elements necessary for the well-being of all life and the creation of fertile soils. Glacial moraine or mixtures of single rock types can be applied to soils to create a sustainable and superior alternative to the use of ultimately harmful chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
SR has been shown in scientific studies to achieve fourfold increases in agricultural and forestry (wood volume) yields and to produce both immediate and long-term benefits from a single application.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of appropriate rock dust for soil and forest regeneration are stockpiled by the gravel and stone industry.
---
I hope more people learn about this.
On the topic of this article on meat alternatives, about seventeen years ago I wrote a letter to a person I had met who was trying to raise fund for some kind of recreational complex in Des Moines, Iowa. His family was a producer of equipment for meat grinding. Inspired by the work of Jon Robbins and "Diet for a New America" and EarthSave back then, I suggested in the letter he consider adapting the technology to make meat substitutes, which I told him was a growing industry. Never heard back from him. See also:
http://johnrobbins.info/
Glad to see peop
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Sorry for the typos in the title -- fixed above.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Dairy cows aren't really used for meat generally. At least not at the dairy farms I've been to. They're usually too old. It happens, but only if it's kept in mind from the beginning.
An actual farmer could correct me, but some quick googling around seems to confirm it; about 30% are used for meat.
Why are you feeding the moron?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I tried that twice and both times it returned me to beta. To even hit it I had to resize my browser to about 30 pixels wide as there was an ad on top of the button and the close ad button was hidden under the header.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
70-90% of all soy, corn and wheat grown in the US is fed to livestock...and the return on that (in calories or protein) is a fraction of what goes into it...not to mention the energy used to grow the food, then raise livestock. A few cows in a large field may 'be efficient', if they're eating mainly grass....but that's not how 99% of the livestock in the US is raise. And imagine if it were: the majority of land is already used for this kind of agriculture. It would require cutting down the rest of our forests to create enough grazing land. Again, just look at that graph. It's indicative of how much space they require...and they're already 'compacted' in factory farms. If you want to see cattle grazing freely, visit India...
And that's not how much water goes into making milk. It's definitely not 1:1. Here's an informative article: http://sciblogs.co.nz/waiology/2012/05/24/how-much-water-does-it-take-to-produce-one-litre-of-milk/. Usually closer to 1000L of water per 1L of milk. Would love to see where you got that 40:20 statistic. And to respond to another comment: dairy cattle do get eaten, that's most of the hamburger you see. But they're just using it up, it's not considered very good grade.
Wrong. Even my wife (who believes in the linear interconvertibility of time and temperature) can't quite make a piece of meat resemble a wooden spike.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why would it have to be exact? You eat that nasty shit that's cut off a cow bred to grow fast and fat while living its whole life on a feed lot eating old corn stems. If you think the flavor or texture even remotely resembles that of a steak from a free-range heritage-breed cow raised in lush grasslands you're sorely mistaken. A meat substitute only needs to be close enough that you can pretend it's the real thing after getting acclimated to it, after all that's all most current meat can offer.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not meat, seafood. The first instance of humans adapting socially (rather than genetically) was to change their diet and exploit the other available options. The only reason you're alive is that humans will exploit anything they can.
Due to biological limtiations, that does not include silage.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If it looks like meat, cooks like meat, smells like meat, tastes like meat, and quacks like meat, then it's meat.
Our ancestors didn't eat meat.
So those charred and blade-scarred animal bones found in pits in caves when to be tens of thousands of years old just fell there? On the contrary, our ancestors ate mostly meat.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Bollocks. Most grass pasture is perfectly viable for grain.
The rough/rocky/hilly land that's fuck all use for anything else (or as we call it, Wales) is where you raise sheep.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can't eat that shit i'm allergic to peas and other vegetables so the future for me is foodless
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
Similar thing with wool sheep that are past it. They're edible if you cook them by the brick method: put a quarter of animal in a pot with a brick, water and a bay leaf. Boil.
When you can stick a fork in the brick the meat's nearly ready.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That cuts both ways though. A lot of what we consider to be "good' food isn't actually good food, it's just what we've been conditioned to consider to be good. I'm Asian and grew up with tofu. I love the stuff. Yet many Westerners despise it and refuse to touch it. Same goes for sushi - search the Youtube videos for "first time eating sushi." You'll see lots of Westerners gagging as they try to eat California rolls, even though they don't actually contain any raw fish. A lot of what makes a food good or bad is all in your head, and can be taught (in or out).
Maybe yours didn't, but I appear to have inherited teeth that were designed by a committee that couldn't make a decision one way or the other.
I certainly have fewer sharp ones than a cat but fewer flat ones than a cow.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I won't drink Jones' Soda's Turkey Dinner, no matter how good it might taste. I want the texture of meat. Conversely, I have a friend who won't eat steak (but will eat hamburger) because of the texture. Maybe she'll like the mealy fake steak.
Tofu is wonderful stuff, especially when you cook with it. It will take on the flavor of anything. If your cooking with many ingredients, you get all the flavor in one bite. Don't think I'm limited to eating red meat. At most I eat it once a week. Mostly vegetarian, but I do eat eggs and fish. I am always open to trying new foods.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Nothing new, or exciting. People have been eating it already for years.
Sounds like a bit of a marketing/product gimmick to me.
I've found many meat substitutes to be palatable in the past. But ultimately I couldn't stomach the higher cost.
it's gonna take a lot of regression for everybody to be able to enjoy western way of life in a sustainable way...
Everybody seems to forget that soy based product are rich in estrogen, and their consumption has a direct impact on male. If we need something, is it not more feminized male, but less.
If it is so good,STOP marketing it as a meat-substitute and market it on its' own merits and strengths. I am not looking to go vegan or vegetarian for that matter but I could always use a tasty new treat. You are only taking on years of fruitless arguing by trying to 'replace' meat.
Note : I love salads, tofu, and egg plant, but also cheese, eggs, ice cream, and BACON...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
This term is abused and overused but in this case it is absolutely pertinent; "That blew my mind."
Seriously -- it's so staggering to consider that wild animals are barely like a sideshow or a zoo to domesticated livestock. Survival of the fittest? Not anymore; survival of the tasty.
If we ever come up with a really great artificial substitute that is more nutritious, it will make a huge difference to carbon "footprint" and water consumption to remove so many mammals in a few short years.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Or possibly they don't yet have the economies of scale to match industrial food farming.
Seriously -- it's so staggering to consider that wild animals are barely like a sideshow or a zoo to domesticated livestock. Survival of the fittest? Not anymore; survival of the tasty.
It's not really that surprising, is it? We've dominated most of the landscape. Remember when the Amazon was the heart of darkness? It may already be past the point of collapse, and probably is.
If we ever come up with a really great artificial substitute that is more nutritious, it will make a huge difference to carbon "footprint" and water consumption to remove so many mammals in a few short years.
How about we find a way to feed algae to livestock? I sure don't want to eat that shit, but it's pretty much free and if they can turn it into meat, we all win.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I find that not eating meat is pretty trivial ...
Good for you. I'm reminded of a quote from a comic I read when someone expressed shock and incredulity that another character had not seen Star Wars. Her response was simply, "Your life experiences are different from my own." What you are basically saying here is that you don't really like meat all that much and it was no big sacrifice to give it up. That's not the case for everyone.
I find the switch to a meatless diet extremely hard, and I become just absolutely ravenous when I go more than a few days without it. I've tried three times for all the good reasons that you mention, and I just get a craving that cannot be satisfied by anything else.
Almost any garden variety restaurant in China can make you a dish that usually can't be distinguished from a meat dish, and if I wish I can make several of them myself.
As someone who likes meat, I find that statement laughable. If the vegetables in the dish are the most interesting and delicious part to you, then that's probably true for you. However, while I do enjoy many vegetarian Chinese and Indian dishes, I will NEVER confuse them for those with meat. The taste of the meat is not found in the meat itself but also in the sauces.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Because people like meat, and you aren't going to get some people to switch until they can get the experience of meat. The problem is that the primary consumers of vegetarian meat substitutes are people who don't like meat.
Imagine if we were talking about giving up chocolate. People could tell you that there's all sorts of yummy, fruit flavored alternatives out there that have "great flavors and textures all their own" and "can satisfy the appetite." But none of them are chocolate. They don't compare at all when you've got that craving, even if they are nutritionally equivalent or better.
So then someone invents carob bars, and all the chocolate lovers look askance at it, while the non-chocolate people are split between those that embrace the new "tastes just like chocolate" treat (which it doesn't) and others are just so puzzled why anyone would want chocolate in the first place. Is it any wonder it fails to attract people who are okay with chocolate?
It's the same with meat substitutes and meat.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Raising livestock takes more water than growing plants, and water is certainly something one would like to conserve.
No. No it isn't, because there is no shortage of water. What I want to do is stop career criminals from shitting in the water. In some cases, literally, like the many towns that treat sewage to varying degrees and then dump it into a river or the ocean. In some cases, figuratively, like when they go a-fracking in order to get resources that we should have gotten past even fucking using by now; we certainly have the technology.
Saying water must be conserved is missing the point. There's loads of water. What needs to happen is that assholes need to be prevented from making the water unusable. Calling it "conservation" makes it sound like we're using too much. In some cases, that is in fact true. But in many cases, there is plenty of water, and what we're doing is fucking it up. It's not conservation, it's protection. It's defense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How much do you think that chicken and beef would cost if it weren't raised on corn-subsidized feed?
Supermarket price is not the true indicator of net cost of all products.
You stereotypers are all the same...
Our ancestors didn't eat meat.
Tell that to the American horse, the Mammoth and a number of other species that our ancestors ate into extinction.
Have gnu, will travel.
Artificial meat is going to happen at some point, well before it can surpass the filet mignon or prime rib. Right now, it just needs to be better and cheaper than Meat Slurry , then, market forces will accelerate the quality.
Trust me on this, the bar is set pretty low for it to succeed.
You stereotypers are all the same...
Uhm... discredit today.com because that isn't NBCNews.com and they forgot to disclose Bill Gates as controller of Microsoft is mostly in control of MSNBC. If he wanted to report this, it would have come out as from NewsNation or some other MSNBC brand. Sorry, no match and the board goes back.
This totally misses the point. I, and many people, do not want factory produced food. I want food I can replicate without high technology. I can grow plants, fruit, nuts and MEAT out in my fields. Meat is easy to produce. I have pastures. The sun shines on them. The rain falls. The forages grow. My pigs, chicken, ducks, sheep and geese eat the plants (and bugs). I eat the animals (and plants). It works. It's easy. It's reliable. It's sustainable.
My way does not require electricity, high technology, a laboratory or shipments of chemicals from distant locations.
What the factory farmed methods, be they CAFO or huge grain fields, does is to concentrate the power and wealth into the hands of the few resulting in a fragile, brittle system that can easily fail or be attacked and controlled by hostile forces.
Bill Gates Meatless Meat is a total fail.
I'll stick to real meat.
At least Bill Gates is the man with the right track record here. For decades he's been selling something that looks just like real software and millions of consumers have bought it and not been able to tell the difference.
No left turn unstoned.
Is that what you think it is?
The conservative vision is to keep around the useful people and make sure they're doing well.
The rest nature will sort out.
If they have a will to live, they'll make survival happen. It's not difficult.
Most of the places that are "starving" are in fact quite capable of supporting basic agriculture using plants which can be gathered from the wild.
Is that what they tell you? Seven billion today, nine billion soon, next stop fifteen billion.
Futurist Traditionalism
You can't have grasslands without ruminants. Try that in most areas of the world and you end up with desert. Saying that raising cattle takes more water than raising grain is really kind of silly because you cannot separate grassland from grazing animals any more than you can take animals out of the forest and expect it to flourish. You'd have to then also add up all the energy and water used in creation of the fertilizer and the machinery used to keep the mono-culture productive then the energy to harvest it and the toll you're taking on the land creating pretty barren landscapes from most of the local wildlife's perspective. An ecosystem is both the animals and the plants both depending on one another. Cattle rotated on land correctly using high intensity grazing improves and increases soil providing better plant coverage and increases a pastures ability to retain water. You'll actually see standing water and creeks come back. You can take an old cattle farm that has been poorly managed or just some empty grassland that some well intentioned bureaucrat has been keeping cattle off of for 5 decades and completely heal it simply by moving your cattle in a way that mimics be behavior of wild herds -historically bison in my area.
Could you cite this, please? A broad swath of Eurasia consists of steppe where neither cattle nor sheep graze (there is of course livestock raising, but it takes place only over a miniscule part of this region).
I can only speak for my country (USA). There were tens of millions of bison historically. I think many pre-columbus estimates are at about 60 million. A quick google search on cattle inventory for thess states puts their number at around 87 million. I'm not sure about how the numbers of other ruminants native to north america would fit in. The thing is, moving to pure agriculture isn't exactly going to do those species any favors. At least cattle are a pretty good analogue to bison ecologically. If we're living off of nothing but grain an legumes we're going to be allocating much more land to monocultures vs the varied species of grasses and other plants you'd find in pasture.
You're generally right but dairy cows actually make up a significant percentage or the beef we eat just a relatively small one. Dairy beef also imo tends to taste better they just aren't as efficient as a beef breed bred to focus all their energy into weight gain.
Dairy is a different beast and I can't speak to that but beef cattle aren't factory farmed for the most part until the final few weeks of their lives. Most cattle in the states actually have good lives up until the horrors at the end where they are cramped together and fed nothing but antibiotic laden grain to keep them alive while they pack on weight. It would be pretty easy to move to mostly humanely raised grass fed but the problem is it isn't quite as efficient so of course we end up with feed lot beef lacking much in the way of nutritional content compared to grass fed. There's also the irritating notion amongst restaurants that feeding them all the same crap at the end standardizes flavor. Grass fed beef can have some variability in taste depending on what they've been munching on.
If we truly are what we eat, then it stands to reason that the best food we could possibly eat is a healthy human?
. .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
While we're at it, soybeans contain Isoflavinoids, another form of phytoestrogen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Bran, beans, fruits and vegetables contain lignans, yep anther phytoestrogen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
It is hard to believe that this estrogen load is all that good for men (or women who have had certain cancers) I mean, we've essentially banned Bisphenol A in plastics, and it is...... an artificial Estrogen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
But turning our entire diet into these other estrogen sources?
Which is all to say that I really like tits - I just don't want to grow my own pair of them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I guess I'll stick to fish and dairy.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"is a mash-up of proteins from peas and plants" Pretty sure peas are plants.
Taco Bell's "beef" is like 40% beef. The rest is food glucose and soy and some fillers, which make it a lot cheaper and healthier and not that much worse tasting. People seemed alright with it when the "shocking" revelation came out a year or two back.
please please please, don't call it "soylent green"
How hard it is to understand that what the substitutes lack is texture, not taste.
If it tastes like chicken and beef, it doesn't pass the "tastes like chicken" test.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
70-90% of all soy, corn and wheat grown in the US is fed to livestock...and the return on that (in calories or protein) is a fraction of what goes into it..
Of course. But the return on stuff our digestive system can actually process without difficulty is way bigger, or else we'd be eating dirt. After all, plants get their nutrients from the ground, right?
but that's not how 99% of the livestock in the US is raise
I'm assuming you have a huge experience in cattle farming in the US, to come up with such a bold number. Also, the rest of the world isn't the US.
And imagine if it were: the majority of land is already used for this kind of agriculture.
You're assuming that if we just grew soy instead, we'd be better off. The fact is that what most animals do is pruning (they eat the greener leafs of selected species, but leave older leafs intact as well as the roots). Most farming techniques don't use pruning, so the stress in the soils is way bigger. As an example, look at corn plantations. Also, rations made directly by smashing corn use the whole plant (except the roots) while the plant is still green, while human feeding based on it usually only recycles the seed part of it (so half of the plant is waste or used as low-nutrient food for cattle).
Again, just look at that graph.
Well, I cannot speak for graphics or metrics made by others, specially when they aren't really peer-reviewed and related to a specific population. Of course the amount of water I was mentioning was by direct consumption - there is a whole lot of water used for cleaning, irrigation and whatnot. That varies a lot according to the location of the cattle, the heat, the kind of feeding, among other factors. If you're worried about water usage, have a look at aluminum processing or lorries.
And that's not how much water goes into making milk. It's definitely not 1:1
Well, you can show me any blog articles you want.I can only speak by my experience, by working on a cow farm during the summers in my youth.
And it's really funny as can be, since grain-fed cattle taste far better than corn-fed cattle. Reminds me of the whole ethanol-for-fuel thing. Some genius (seriously) with an interest in the corn industry comes up with an idea, and the public suffers endlessly for it.
Oh, well.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Here's what they have to do: First, they have to get the taste right. So far, they've completely missed the mark on everything I've tried, and I've tried everything I could get my hands on. Second, they have to get the "mouth feel" right. That seems to be easier -- I've downed a few veggie burgers that felt right -- but that first point... gah. Third, they have to get it to look right. Again, sometimes they get pretty close. But they need 1+2+3, not some subset. Once they get there, it has to be affordable, and IMHO, that's going to mean subsidizing it initially. Otherwise, not enough people will try it, mass production doesn't happen, it stays expensive and gets minimal distribution, end of product.
I've more confidence in the lab-grown meat idea as a good final solution. No animal suffering, but it's actually meat. If they can make it work. So far, after years of trying, they don't appear to be that close. I donate money to this particular cause and have for years, but it is moving slower than I thought it would. I think we just don't know enough about biology, frankly.
I'd rather eat veggies, and mostly, I do. I have a gluten allergy that only allows me to eat anything with gluten about once a week while dosing myself with allergy pills. More often or without allergy pill support and the symptoms (myriad) get nasty, and quickly, too.
Between that and trying to limit my meat intake, my options are considerably more narrow than I'd like. Worse, before we figured the gluten thing out, my favorite foods were pasta and breads... pizza... spaghetti... sigh. :(
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm 57 and stopped eating meat suddenly one day when I was 18. I sometimes eat the various meat substitutes such as Quorn but this is for convenience not because I want a "meat replacement". Seriously, a benefit that meat-eaters don't realise is their easy ability to cook with high-quality protein in handy small pieces. No use asking me if I think it successfully mimics the taste of meat as I can't properly remember. My kids say the Quorn chicken nuggets are the closest and they actually prefer them to chicken chicken nuggets.
The rest of the time I eat food that is not in any way meant to resemble or taste like meat. It's not something I actively mention to anyone but you can't stop people finding out eventually say when you are at a group meal in a restaurant. Not so much these days but 30 years ago I used to get sideways looks from friends who thought I was not being serious with them and they would ask questions like "how can anyone not eat meat? doesn't it drive you crazy when you see a delicious steak?" Also used to get rants from aggressive meat eaters who thought I was trying to be superior to them somehow (I never did figure that one out.) None of this ever seems to happen any more I don't know why, maybe people have just got used to the idea.
Does not seem to have any long-term effects I'm pretty healthy so far as I know.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
As a slogan, I would suggest:
"I can't believe it's not Murder!®"
That should keep the PETA crowd happy.
Then of course there are the openly "chopped and shaped" steaks sold in the freezer aisle as well as burgers, meatballs etc. For people who can't afford real steak but still want meat. While they don't taste as good as a real steak, they're still edible.
And what makes a steak? It's the muscle fibres that make the "grain", the tenderness from aging the muscle to break it down, the fat that gives it moisture, and the flavour running through it. I don't think any of those things are insurmountable for an artificial meat. e.g. meat fibre could be achieved by growing meat in strands, bunching them together with the odd strip of fat, glued and formed into a long tube which is cut into 1/2 sections. Voila steak. It might not compare to a 20 day aged steak but it would probably pass muster over the kinds of steaks people more ordinarily buy. And stuff like burgers & meat balls should be relatively trivial.
But to get to that point, production costs have to be comparable with standard meat production. I think the bigger problem is persuading people to eat it at all. Animals don't die to make it but there is still a grossness about the idea of meat grown in a vat which will must be overcome.
Simultaneously, I'll bet.
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Or make it taste better. If it's more expensive than a cheap cut, less expensive than a pricey cut, but tastes like premium quality beef... that's a good selling point too.
In 10 years, given the standard growth rate and life cycle of domesticated animals, the problem of what will happen to domesticated animals not kept alive for meat production *will* fix itself.
My problem with plant based meat substitutes isn't taste, it's texture. Have they solved that problem yet?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What people fail to realize is that the extinction of grazing animals will lead to extinction of the wildlife that depends on said grazing animals. That is the environmental effect that artificial "meat" would have. From an environmental point of view, such products are worthless.
If we stopped mass farming chickens where we would we get our cheap eggs. This is, of course, if everyone suddenly stopped eating chicken. Would we have old folks homes for chickens? I read that egg laying chickens are only permitted around a year of life.
I went out of my way to locate, prepare according to directions, and taste every available variety of Beyond Meat "chicken" because it supposedly fooled folks at The New York Times. But, including the sample I sauteed in butter (to add fat), I found the texture a whole lot more like baked tofu than like chicken. I suppose Beyond Meat is more chickenesque than all the other faux chicken out there (I've tried all available products), but those who attest that the difference isn't obvious are impaired.
Our population is stable and has been for some time. Further, those statistics (and the source, the tape-doctoring NYT) are suspect.
It's not social Darwinism, it's just Darwinism.
Why do you deny science?
Futurist Traditionalism
I haven't eaten meat in about five years, before which I did the Atkins diet on which I ate a LOT of meat. I just had enough. These days I don't like the smell or taste of meat, or of products that try to mimic meat. Tofu trying to taste like meat turns my stomach, I'd far rather they make something taste as good as it can, not like something else.
I agree that getting it to taste familiar might make it easier to convert carnivores, but having tasty high protein options that don't try to mimic flesh would be appreciated by many people.
Good points. Let's take a look at South America instead: i had trouble getting a comprehensive number, but there appears to be over 300 million cattle there...almost 200 million in Brazil alone. How much forest has been replaced with graze land(and how many big grazers were there before)? And there are well over a billion cattle worldwide. It's pretty staggering and way out of proportion for the planet.
/. was to 'mod up' rather than down?
And almost as staggering are the people who keep modding down any post highlighting the facts of the matter...i thought the guideline on
This one has been done to death more often than the fatted calf gets pole-axed.
The only way this is actually going to be a problem is if the change in average behaviour takes place in a time period less than a couple of breeding cycles of the food animal in question. Which would be about 4 years for cattle, and less for pretty much every other food animal. (Counter examples, anyone?) On any longer timescale, the decreases in consumption rates will depress prices (supply exceeds demand), leading to the producers (I hesitate to use "farmers" for modern intensive meat production technicians) reducing their breeding of stock in order to bring the unit price back up.
Bringing about such a rapid change in average behaviour on a national basis ... is utterly incredible. Not credible. Un-be-lieve-a-fucking-ble.
Try coming up with a new argument. It's not a blood sport unless you punch yourself in the head trying to get the braincell working.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"