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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.
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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.
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.)
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.
I would say vaginitis is a helluva concession
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
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
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.
I'll never understand. For some reason some people apparently don't want to eat meat, but they want to eat a bad imitation of it.
It's like diet coke. If you want to lose weight, drink some water. If you like the taste of diet coke better, you are a weirdo, but at least I can respect that.
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.
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.
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
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...
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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.
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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.
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."
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 ?
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").
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...
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.