Interviews: The Hampton Creek Team Answers Your Questions

A few days ago you had a chance to ask the people at Hampton Creek about about their products and the science of food. Below you'll find the answers to your questions from a number of Hampton Creek employees. Scrambled egg?
by Anonymous Coward

What's the status of the "egg beaters" type substitute? What's the nutritional profile - similar to egg? Is it cheaper to produce over normal eggs? I've been vegan for a while and find scrambled tofu with some spices (especially black salt) to be a tasty substitute.

Hampton Creek: We’re working on it! Just Scramble (the world’s first scrambled egg made from a plant) will hopefully be available to consumers by next summer.



Plant based evidence for environmental benefits
by Anonymous Coward

What evidence do you point to when making the case that a plant-based diet is less destructive to the environment compared to eating animals and animal products? The environmental impact of my food choices has been the major factor in switching to a plant-based diet, but I struggle to find concise, creditable data on the impact of my choices, specifically around the amount of energy, water, land, and green house emissions that are saved. Has Hampton Creek done anything to aggregate and present good research in this area? Can you make any specific claims or projections about the environmental impact of using your products?

Hampton Creek: We've done the math on this one! For every 30oz jar of Just Mayo you use, in comparison with Hellmann's, you save 278 qts of water, 4.3 sq ft of land, and 157 g of carbon emissions. For Just Cookies, we've even created a cookie calculator to measure the environmental impact! Check out justcookies for more info.



3D printing, food allergies, and shelf life...
by Anonymous Coward

There's a question I've always wanted to ask one of these food-science guys:

How far are we from being able to mass-produce foodstuffs, growing yeast or simple bacteria in a tank, converting it into a long-shelf-life shelf-stable package, and being able to print it out 3-D printer style to make lunch? Especially for those of us who cannot eat gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, peanuts, etc.. It seems like the holy grail of food technology. Food replicators, but running with milliliter (or larger) droplet sizes rather than nanoliter droplet sizes to rapidly print & cook food. Kind of like a microwave, with large (replaceable) ink-cartridge-like containers on the side where you just tell it what you want, wait, and boom dinner is created, cooked, & ready to serve.

Gosia Malgorzata, PhD: Even though it sounds like science fiction, there are prototypes to make food replicators. This one is limited to sugar containing food but in few years who knows.



high carb vrs low carb
by layabout

This article is one study in a long line of studies that show that a low (40g/day) carb diet is healthier than a high carb one. How does the future of food keep diets under 40 carbs per day and still supply enough calories? assume 1200 cals for a woman and 2000 for a man. 30 cals/carb and 50 cals/carb respectively.

Hampton Creek: We’re not focusing on the strict nutritional details at this time. Our mission is really to make it easier for regular folks to eat better. And better has to start somewhere, so even if it is a little healthier, (eg no cholesterol in your mayo) that is a start.



Here's a question
by ArcadeMan

Are your products available outside of the U.S.A.? Do you have any Canadian distributors/resellers?

Hampton Creek: Right now we’re national in various US chains, in Hong Kong’s GREAT stores, and will be in Metro locations in Canada by the end of the year, as well as in Tesco locations next February.



Disrupting the global egg industry
by Anonymous Coward

Why is "[your] research is particularly focused on disrupting the global egg industry"? Thanks for doing the interview.

Hampton Creek: Our research is primarily focused on finding ways of utilizing plants to improve food. It just so happens that one aspect of food we have focused on is the industrial chicken egg. And that is for a number of reasons: they’re not very sustainable, they’re not especially safe, they’re a huge allergen (33M Americans alone), they’re not humane, and they’re rising in cost.



Research and the daily grind
by Anonymous Coward

Could everyone describe how your day-to-day work and goals are? Answers from the R&D people would be especially appreciated.

Carla Li-Carillo, Research Scientist: Our goals are to identify and understand the world of plants. Given that there are about 5 million plants, we have a long way to go.

I work on our high throughput screening, which is highly miniaturized and effective. On a typical day I will either prepare the plants or I will screen our samples through our many assays for molecular characterization or functional properties. As things calm down at the end of the day, I will either analyze the day’s data, or read scientific papers to better understand our results or to continue developing more assays.



Frustrated with lack of scientific understanding?
by Anonymous Coward

As scientists, are you ever frustrated with lack of scientific understanding of the public?I'm a molecular biologist and am always frustrated with the negative perception of science as artificial/sterile/zombie-apocalypse-inducing/playing god in the public's eyes. Do you have any reservations about marketing towards this anti-GMO, "All natural flavor, nothing artificial" demographic in a way that caters to their anti-science perception?

Gosia Malgorzata, PhD: Well, on this one Our policy is to use what the world of plants has to offer, discover and use its natural potential to create nutritional food. We do not engineer the protein, synthesize and etc. so if you ask me I’m not frustrated :-)



Eggs = Good
by unixcorn

Eggs are one of the best sources of protein, are natural and can be produced easily in a back yard chicken house. I have also read that most of the rhetoric about eggs being unhealthy has been debunked. Unless you are producing specifically for people with allergies, what's the point of an eggs substitute.

Hampton Creek: As previously stated, it’s not about eggs for us, it’s about using plants to make food better. Yes, we are using them for eggs in a few products right now, but we’re looking at other things in food, too, like sugar, and even food dyes. And why eggs? They’re not very sustainable, they’re not especially safe, they’re a huge allergen (33M Americans alone), they’re not humane, and they’re rising in cost.



Why would I buy your product?
by future sheep

Your product offers no benefit in calorie intake compared to regular mayo and none of the nutritional benefits of mayo made with eggs. Eggs are one of the most nutritionally sound food items I can buy. As a component in other foods, they're low calorie, high protein, and chock full of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids addition. Just Mayo is also more expensive than real mayo. So tell me, why should I buy your product?

Hampton Creek: I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benefits of mayonnaises made with eggs? Also, most eggs don’t come from very good places. Yes, some come from nice, free range farms. But the reality is that most come from dirty, filthy, factory farmed facilities, that are bad for the environment, bad for our health (not just nutritionally speaking, but spread disease and allergens), and inhumane, too. And at most places, it isn’t more expensive.

Comments

Cholesterol

[drinkypoo]

so even if it is a little healthier, (eg no cholesterol in your mayo) that is a start.

So, is mayo without cholesterol actually healthier? Since we now know that eating cholesterol has little effect on your cholesterol levels, this seems a specious claim.

And why eggs? Theyâ(TM)re not very sustainable,

Eggs are not inherently sustainable or unsustainable. They could be raising these chickens on some kind of bugs, maybe you could find some that will eat algae. Instead they're raising them on unsustainable feed crops. That is a problem. Many of our means of food production should change substantially if we hope for them to be sustainable. That's not an indictment against eggs, though.

theyâ(TM)re not especially safe

Well, unless you cook them. Pasteurizing counts.

Iâ(TM)m sorry, what are the nutritional benefits of mayonnaises made with eggs?

The same as the nutritional benefits of eggs themselves. They're made of a readily digestible protein.

I care about food a lot (you can tell if you've seen pictures of me) and the eggs in mayo are the absolute last of my worries. It's the oil, which is usually some GMO crap (which means it's been absolutely hosed down with chemicals) and then the oil is processed with hexane, not all of which is successfully removed from the final product. That's a way bigger concern than the eggs could ever be for anyone who is not allergic to them, and who has not invented a moral quandary over whether they should eat eggs like every other omnivore on the planet, including birds. You can bet your ass that if we laid eggs, chickens would eat them.

Re:Cholesterol

[alvinrod]

There's even some evidence to suggest that there are other substances in eggs that reduce the body's uptake of cholesterol from eggs. Study: http://nutrition.highwire.org/content/131/9/2358.full.

It would have been more interesting to have more of the responses from the scientists that work there rather than some droid in the marketing department. You can almost picture the person trying to pull out scarfs from a sleeve while trying to change the question.

Re:Cholesterol

[trout007]

I realize everyone's body is different but I have done quite a few experiments trying to figure out what to eat. For 2 months I ate 3-4 eggs a day for breakfast. I really like eggs but by the end I was getting tired. I have always had high LDL (150-170 range). Eating the eggs had zero effect over 2 months. What had worked for me is what you are suggesting. I try to get the majority of my calories from good quality natural fats. The Plant based ones are coconut oil, olive oil, and palm oil. These are actual oils you can get out of plants just by grinding and squeezing. I also get some from nuts and avocados. I avoid the ones you talk about that require chemicals to extract them from the plant before being mostly removed'. The animal fats are mostly heavy cream, butter, and to a less degree from meats. As a 40 year old man I went from 215 to 175 and have kept this weight off for over 2 years.

As for my cardiovascular health indicators everything improved with this way of eating with the exception of LDL which is still where it was. But HDL has increased and Triglycerides have gone way down as well as blood glucose levels. Plus I feel as good as I did when I was 20 where I felt like crap through most of my late 20's and 30's.

Again this is a one person experiment and I don't know if I'll die from a heart attack when I'm 60 but I'll take how I feel over contradictory theories proposed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Re:Cholesterol

[Vegan Cyclist]

FYI, if an oil is certified organic, hexane won't have been used, nor any other chemical. It will be, as you described, oils from plants that are crushed and/or ground. This includes soy, canola, and other oils that one might normally want to avoid.

Re:Cholesterol

[pushing-robot]

I think the biggest safety issue regarding eggs (and chicken farming in general) is the potential breeding ground for avian disease and antibiotics-resistant bacteria. Low-density farming can mitigate this to some extent, but only at the cost of greater land use, energy consumption and cost.

I won't argue the health benefits of eggs, but mayonnaise is mostly oil, not egg yolk. Hellmann's lists 0g of protein per serving. Unless you know of something dangerous about pea protein, I don't see the significance of substituting one with the other.

Speaking of oil, Hampton Creek's is non-GMO and expeller-pressed (no solvents). Hellmann's only lists 'soybean oil' or 'canola oil', so it's safe to assume theirs is GMO and processed with hexane.

Finally, on a side note, I've never understood the argument that because some other animals do a thing it makes it morally acceptable. Animals rob, rape and kill. Do you?

Re:Cholesterol

[drinkypoo]

Finally, on a side note, I've never understood the argument that because some other animals do a thing it makes it morally acceptable.

No, you've got it twisted. I'll eat chickens because they would eat me. Unless I was starving, I wouldn't eat a llama, because they wouldn't. I'll eat octopi on the same basis even though they're intelligent, although I do prefer to eat stupid food.

Re:Cholesterol

[drinkypoo]

It would have been more interesting to have more of the responses from the scientists that work there rather than some droid in the marketing department.

I think that will have done them more damage here than good, by far. What's funny is that really nobody wants to hear a line of bullshit any more. Kawasaki just sent a clueless flack to be on Leno's Garage and show off their new bike and a good portion of the comments were about what a lame he was. That's at least half of what people will take away from the experience. Send someone who knows what they're talking about and can handle being on camera, or don't send anyone at all. Just send the bike and a brochure.

Re:Cholesterol

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll eat chickens because they would eat me.

Most humans would also eat you if they didn't have other options.

When other options are available then it depends on whether you've formed a bond with the chicken. If you raised the chicken from a little chick and it cares about you then it will choose to eat the other option rather than you. And, regarding cows, unless you raised the cow from a little calf and established a bond, then the only reason it isn't eating you is that a cow's digestive system isn't evolved to eat people.

But the notion of imposing some sort of collective tit-for-tat morality on the level of an entire species is a bit bizarre. Why aren't you more concerned about the question of whether pain and suffering is being inflicted on the animals purely for your culinary enjoyment?

Re:Cholesterol

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am pretty sure that pushing-robot has it not twisted. Because a chicken will eat you (a claim I find dubious, but I will not argue it), you eat chicken. By that same logic, because a human would murder you, you will murder humans, and feel no moral quandary about it. Regardless of whether the particular human you murdered was going to murder you, regardless of whether the particular chicken you ate was going to eat you.

Re:Cholesterol

[RockDoctor]

hexane won't have been used, nor any other chemical

Not even water?

Everything but everything that you can touch, feel, smell or taste is a chemical. Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "chemical" versus the (implied) non-chemicals that you get in organic food.

[While you're trying to reply, please note that in my earlier years I've dome minor specialisms in both soil science (directly relevant to the question of what "organic" means, as well as what soil is) and food chemistry (as in "what is a chemical"). Please try to make effective arguments.]

Re:Cholesterol

[Vegan Cyclist]

*facepalm* It's obvious we're using commercial and food industry terms, not scientific terms. But this never grows old, so please keep it up.

Re:Cholesterol

[RockDoctor]

Then the fucking commercial and food industries should try using technical terms to mean what they mean, not what they want them to mean.

Re:Cholesterol

[Vegan Cyclist]

Sure, i'm totally with you there. I just don't know what you plan to achieve 4 levels in on a post on /. ;)

I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

>I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benefits of mayonnaises made with eggs?

Since you asked, I bothered to look it up for you and compared your product with Hellman's mayo, which is made with eggs.

Hellman's has lower carbohydrates.

Surprised you could not do this yourself. Surprised enough that it makes me question if you are competent enough to make your mayonnaise correctly.

Also, nobody except a few select persons care about what, based on the constant vitriol in your answers, is apparently an extreme hatred of animal farms. You are putting off potential consumers with your company's tirades despite what apparently is a personal need to get everyone to switch to your product. Consider that this is impossible if people begin to hate your company for its insulting manner of answering questions.

Please back up the following claims

[qume]

> so even if it is a little healthier, (eg no cholesterol in your mayo) that is a start

  - this is a very specific claim. Can you please provide a link to the best paper available to support this? I have read a number, including very recently, which fail to support this conclusion about dietary cholesterol

> bad for our health (not just nutritionally speaking, but spread disease and allergens)

  - can you please reply with a link to some evidence for modern commercial mayo (of the type your company is producing) spreading disease. Again a very specific claim I have been unable to find evidence for with a few minutes of googling. Also please back up the claim of eggs being bad for our health 'nutritionally speaking' as you say.

It seems to me your research is very worthwhile and could be a big part of the future of food, along with other modern food production research, and can stand on it's own feet without needing to embellish it's benefits, if in fact my suspicions of some of your claims being baseless are correct (looking forward to being corrected).

Not humane?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are eggs not humane? They;re the natural part of the chicken's menstrual cycle... Now, how these chickens are raised and used like machines, that's another story.

Re:Not humane?

[jensend]

Raising enough eggs to meet present demand for them in "free range" ways that meet with your moral approval would require tremendous habitat destruction, accelerate global warming, and increase poverty and death across the world. How is that any more humane than the present situation?

Re:Not humane?

[drinkypoo]

I'm not sure that's actually true. What would have to happen is that the production of chickens and eggs would have to become more distributed, and you would need more human labor. There's lots of places where the chickens can get free food, but they do need to range for that, so you're going to have to spend a lot more time and effort managing your chickens.

On the other hand, integrating chickens into more agricultural scenarios has the potential to improve them in a variety of ways. Chickens can be mixed in with most plants once they reach a certain size that makes them less appealing than the pests that they attract, and the weeds growing up around them. The chickens help with both of these problems. If we move to a more integrated food production model in which we do sensible things like compost our shit and put it back into the fields once it's become soil again, we'll want to move away from tilth and towards guilds anyway. Robotics is advancing on fruit-picking, and in the mean time, we have a lot of labor lying around to handle the substantial increase in labor currently demanded by such a change. We only don't do this now to maximize profits. We could pay people enough to pick vegetables, but then some of the vegetables which currently produce the most profit would fall by the wayside, and we can't disturb the status quo now, can we?

Re:Not humane?

[Anonymous Coward]

How are eggs not humane?

How is slavery not humane? Work is a natural part of human existence. If no one picks the cotton then we won't have clothes to wear.

The fundamental question is how bad things have to be before life isn't worth living. If a lifetime of slavery is still better than the oblivion of non-existence then why not just breed up a whole bunch of slaves? We'll be doing them a favor by giving them a lifetime of slavery. And the same goes for chickens. If being debeaked and crammed into a tiny cage on factory farm is better than non-existence then why not breed up a whole bunch of chickens for the factory farms?

Myself, I was born into a life of considerable privilege and I try to make the best of it but, if I could get on a time machine phone and tell my parents to use protection, I would. I really don't understand people who go on about "the gift of life". But maybe the slaves and chickens feel differently.

Re:Not humane?

[jensend]

"more distributed" means more land use. The studies on this have already been done: moving from battery farms to free range requires 20% more feed per gram of protein (largely due to the lack of precisely temperature-regulated environments) and on the order of 10x more land use.

10x the land use=huge habitat destruction and increased global warming. We already use 1/3 of the earth's total land area for livestock.

c.f. this or this.

The extra food those chickens have to consume is not "free" in any environmental sense no matter where the chickens are. It costs a lot of energy and land. And human labor is an astoundingly costly input, even just from an environmental perspective.

Your views of the labor market and modern food production are totally disconnected from reality. Your conclusion basically is "the only reason we quit all being hunter-gatherers is because of The Man. Take out a handful of shadowy puppet masters and we'd all go back to happy neolithic paradise." Modernization of food production is the central thing that has raised the standard of living from the stone age to the present day, and economic efficiency is not some kind of bogeyman.

Re:Not humane?

[drinkypoo]

"more distributed" means more land use.

No, not it does not. It means integrating them into existing land use, in places where they're not used.

human labor is an astoundingly costly input, even just from an environmental perspective.

Nonsense.

Modernization of food production is the central thing that has raised the standard of living from the stone age to the present day

Bullshit. That's often said but never backed up. The Green Revolution has in fact diminished our ability to produce food without massive energy expenditure. We must go back to a closed cycle in which the crap is reused or we will continue to deplete our topsoil. The best the GR achieved anywhere in the world was delaying starvation, and in some places it may well have caused at least as much as it postponed. Take a look at India to see what's coming for the rest of us.

Re:I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benef

[pushing-robot]

Hellman's has lower carbohydrates.

0g per serving vs. 1g per serving. Margin of error stuff, and dwarfed by the bread you're probably spreading it on.

constant vitriol...extreme hatred...tirades...insulting manner

You appear to view the world through a private perspective.

Egg subst > battery farm > "free range"

[jensend]

The interview says

Also, most eggs don't come from very good places. Yes, some come from nice, free range farms. But the reality is that most come from dirty, filthy, factory farmed facilities, that are bad for the environment

but the reality is that though "nice free range farms" may make people feel warm and fuzzy they are MUCH WORSE for the environment than battery farms. Feed inputs are ~20% higher per gram of protein, and land use is obviously tremendously higher. We already use an entire third of the planet's land surface to support livestock; trying to raise all that livestock in "organic, free range" ways just because people have an aversion to modern food production methods would actually require tremendous habitat destruction and accelerate global warming.

The same thing is true of other trendy organic etc methods. They are less efficient in ways that matter not only economically but environmentally. There are reasons people moved away from the "old ways" to be able to feed the planet.

Moving almost entirely to plant-based food is the only way to substantially improve the environmental impact of our food production, and it's urgent for us to do.

Hampton Creek's mission is an important part of that. It's just unfortunate that they seem to some extent to have bought into the anti-science, environmentally counterproductive attitudes of the Whole Foods crowds.

Re:I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benef

[DNS-and-BIND]

You really need to get out more, and mingle with people who incorporate a diversity of viewpoints. One thing I've found about environmental extremists is that they tend to ostracise anyone who doesn't share their radical views and thus tend to think that the rest of humanity thinks like they do. Go friend one on Facebook and then publically disagree with what she says if you are in denial.

Re:I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benef

[Anonymous Coward]

>0g per serving vs. 1g per serving. Margin of error stuff, and dwarfed by the bread you're probably spreading it on.

Ehhh, sounds good, we can use margin of error as an excuse then. I suppose it's just by margin of error that this company is too stupid to be able to figure out that not all birds are mistreated. And by margin of error, I'll not bother to do business with them.

Margin of error is a great excuse, I'll use it more often.

"You're 15 minutes late for work every day for the past month!"
"Ehhh, margin of error, boss!"

>You appear to view the world through a private perspective.

You appear to be satisfied with excuses over truth.

Re:I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benef

[Anonymous Coward]

Environmental extremists... ok, the hard core granolas. Also includes all the people sermingly anti-whatever the granolas espouse. Agressive indifference is as bad and stupid as agressive pro-/anti-whatever.

That being said... I'll stick with Heilmann's/Best Foods. Because it is just mayo.

The product "Just Mayo" is in the same category as Miracle Whip. Logically, figuratively, legally, etc. Stop lying about it, it is NOT mayonnaise.

If I was serious about it, I'd simply make my own mayo. Buy some local eggs. Separate the yolks. keep the whites for fru-fru egg white omeletes (but seriously?) Or just make angel food cake. And make mayo with the yolks and the nice expeller-pressed oil of choice.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[Vegan Cyclist]

Well said, nice to see someone else highlighting these facts! I've collected and shared few links and graphics that highlight this in an eye-opener of a blog post: http://blog.thevictoriavegan.com/2014/10/humane-meat-its-not-humane-for-nature.html

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[Anonymous Coward]

From your post, the only logical conclusion is that there are too many humans on the planet. all of that habitat destruction, unsustainable practices, etc. are all for the sustainability of humans. all of the vegetarian antics are nice, but simply kicking the can down the road.

We do not raise livestock for their own sake (except cows in India). We do not mow down jungles, arboreal forests, native grasslands, etc to "improve" those areas for their own sake. We do it for us, as we are that higher purpose.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[layabout]

Moving almost entirely to plant-based food is the only way to substantially improve the environmental impact of our food production, and it's urgent for us to do.

Hampton Creek's mission is an important part of that. It's just unfortunate that they seem to some extent to have bought into the anti-science, environmentally counterproductive attitudes of the Whole Foods crowds.

Unfortunately, one side effect of a plant-based diet will be an increase in the rate of diabetes. Older studies associated fat with diabetes Because that's what they were looking for the time. This was driven by the heart health studies such as the Framingham study which we are now finding was also flawed with regards to cholesterol and cardiac health. The current generation of studies are now looking at carbohydrate consumption and there's a much stronger association showing carbohydrate intake driving cardiac and diabetes risk. For a fun research read, look up glycated LDL

The primary signal seems to be spiky blood sugar levels which produce insulin resistance and, the start of diabetic neuropathy (if the BG level rises above 140 mg/dL). Doesn't matter if the carbohydrate is net, fast or slow, it's the absolute amount that matters. You can test this on yourself with a blood glucose meter. Many diabetics have reported that they get the same BG rise from a can of soda or the same number of carbohydrates in the form of whole-grain foods.

If you want to reduce your risk of diabetes follow this rule of thumb evolving from current experience. Limit yourself to no more than 40 g of carbohydrates in the meal or 120 g per day. No more big bowls of pasta, whole bagels, muffins. This also leaves out large quantities of lentils, beans, rice or any other starch used to make up the calorie difference between green vegetables and what you need for your daily caloric requirements.

Try it, run the science project. Figure out how many calories you should have, limit yourself to 40 g of the meal and figure out what you can eat to meet both the calorie requirement and carbohydrate limit. If you want to make it more of a project, by a blood glucose meter and measure your BG every 20 minutes for three hours after a meal.

Cut and paste.

[westlake]

And why eggs? TheyÃ(TM)re not very sustainable
IÃ(TM)m sorry, what are the nutritional benefits of mayonnaises made with eggs?

One of the most tedious things about posting to Slashdot is that cut and paste does not work. You can waste far to much time editing even the most trivial of quotations to make sure that they are readable. A little extra help with English grammar and spelling wouldn't hurt.

Re:Cut and paste.

[drinkypoo]

One of the most tedious things about posting to Slashdot is that cut and paste does not work.

It's only tedious if you care whether C&Ps come through accurately. I don't, so there's no problem here. I typically don't preview. I'm not fucking getting paid for this.

Re:Cut and paste.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only tedious if you care whether C&Ps come through accurately. I don't

So you do not care if people are unable to read the message that you are trying to communicate. I do not really understand why you would bother posting if that is the case, but to each their own.

Re:Cut and paste.

[drinkypoo]

So you do not care if people are unable to read the message that you are trying to communicate.

If you are too stupid to parse out some bad characters which obviously all replace the same character, you are not my target audience. You are probably unable to comprehend simple concepts anyway, let alone anything worth discussing on slashdot.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, is organic and free range supposed to be a better, that is tastier, product or just better for the environment? Grass-fed beef tastes better than grain-fed beef, because cows are what they eat and with grass you get pollen and worms and other natural things instead of washed corn. I hate seeing free-range vegetarian fed chicken eggs. We let them out but still only feed them washed corn? What's the point? The point of free range is to let the animal eat a natural varied diet to increase the natural flavor not to be better for the environment.

Organic supporters need to make up their mind on what the goal is. Is it a more naturally raised and better tasting product or better for the environment? As you've stated, being free range takes more space and can be harsher on the environment than non free range. To me, organic and free range means a more natural product that tastes more like cow/chicken/pork is supposed to taste like (sorry Americans, that means "gamey"). If what you want is free range and organic to mean "plant based" then you exist in an alternate world. There is no such thing as free-range plant-based protein. Instead of complaining about organic farming come up with a different term that fits.

People eat grass?

[Anonymous Coward]

We already use an entire third of the planet's land surface to support livestock

And of that third, roughly 80% is pasture or range which is unsuitable for growing anything except grass. Good luck growing any other human consumable food on that.

Re:People eat grass?

[jensend]

You don't need to. Livestock require 8-20x more land per gram of protein produced than plant based protein sources. Switching entirely to plant based foods would allow returning >90% of that land to its natural state and growing crops only on the most suitable 10%.

(Of course, the shift in land use need not be entirely restricted to those lands; if livestock were abandoned the protein crops needed to replace them could be grown anywhere, not just on land formerly used for livestock. And your 80% figure is wrong anyways- it could be close to the total percent of that used for grazing, but most certainly not for the portion of that which is "unsuitable for growing anything except grass.")

Re:People eat grass?

[hey!]

It doesn't matter how much land it takes to create animal protein, not per se, not in relation to sustainability.

The Great Plains once has giant herds of bison roaming across them. Humans could eat those bison sustainably as long as they didn't take enough bison to disturb the equilibrium between bison and grass. Taking one bison out of the equation would simply cause the equilibrium to produce one more bison. Reducing the buffalo herd from 25 million to 600 on the other hand is a different matter.

What matters for sustainability is the disruption of natural systems, not the acreage.

Re:I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benef

[drinkypoo]

Ehhh, sounds good, we can use margin of error as an excuse then. I suppose it's just by margin of error that this company is too stupid to be able to figure out that not all birds are mistreated. And by margin of error, I'll not bother to do business with them.

Actually, you're both displaying ignorance, although yours is the more spectacular; it's a fact that the bread far outweighs the mayo, so caring about the carbs in the mayo is a jerkoff waste of time. Even a low-carb slice of bread will run you around 5g net carbs (carbs less fiber, which is indigestible.) The truth is that anything less than 1.0g can be reported as 0g by our nutritional guidelines, and otherwise the numbers are rounded. Therefore, something with 0.9g carbs is reported as having 0g carbs, while something with 1.1g carbs is reported as having 1g carbs.

Re:I’m sorry, what are the nutritional benef

[Anonymous Coward]

There are much better things to do with mayo than put it on bread.

Considering the products have similar nutrition labels and differ only on the one point, and Hampton Creek are the ones claiming theirs is healthier, their claims must be as miniscule as mine is being reported to be. They are a professional company and have an ethical duty to be honest. They are hiding simple facts while claiming their product provides a significant health benefit, which would have to be based on equal margins.

Either we're talking about margin or error, or we're talking about the margin Hampton Creek is using to defend their product. Since they are identical, who here is a liar? At least *I* won't cover up an obvious fact.

How much does an advertorial cost on slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the question everyone forgot to ask isn't it!?!

Re:How much does an advertorial cost on slashdot?

[Buck Feta]

That's the question everyone forgot to ask isn't it!?!

This question was in fact asked. Slashdot binned it because they don't want egg on their face.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[jensend]

Diabetes is actually less common in vegetarians than the general population, and diabetes has a strong positive correlation with overall meat intake.

The insistence that the type of carbohydrate doesn't matter to diabetes risk is absolutely false. Plenty of plant based foods contain sufficient calories without causing problems with blood sugar.

Protein intake in many first world countries, especially the US, is hugely higher than it has been in any other era of the world. People subsisted just fine off grains and beans for millennia, without the high incidence of diabetes that exists in today's age of high meat intake and high refined sugar intake.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[jensend]

I'm not saying "let's stop calling free range meat 'free range' and start applying that label to plants." If you seriously thought I was then your reading comprehension skills need a lot of work.

Most people who buy "free range" or "organic" food feel a moral passion about it because they think they're doing something positive for the environment, animal welfare, or both. They are dead wrong. The organic and free range food craze is not an environmental benefit but an environmental menace. That's what I was saying.

If your purchases of free range or organic food are only motivated by taste, then my earlier post doesn't really address you at all. But "tastes more like I think it's supposed to" is a lousy gluttonous excuse for taking actions that lead to ecological disaster.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[layabout]

Diabetes is actually less common in vegetarians than the general population, and diabetes has a strong positive correlation with overall meat intake.

The insistence that the type of carbohydrate doesn't matter to diabetes risk is absolutely false. Plenty of plant based foods contain sufficient calories without causing problems with blood sugar.

Protein intake in many first world countries, especially the US, is hugely higher than it has been in any other era of the world. People subsisted just fine off grains and beans for millennia, without the high incidence of diabetes that exists in today's age of high meat intake and high refined sugar intake.

here is one of many studies that says othewise http://www.todaysdietitian.com.... also, this vid helps understand normal blood glucose reaction to carbohydrate intake. I forget where is in the video but he does say something about how there is an excessively high spike at breakfast as a result of our traditional high carbohydrate breakfast. http://www.diabetes-symposium.... I'm willing to believe that diabetes is less common in vegetarians, I just wish there were better studies on the topic. I suspect it's the same mechanism as how I've been able to reduce my blood sugars through caloric restriction. I suspect that from a dietary perspective, vegetarianism is inherently inefficient and many of the calories consumed just pass through the body without being utilized. That is one possible explanation for why a lot of vegetarians are very skinny. One snarky question is are they self-righteous because of hunger or does self-righteousness lead to vegetarianism. At the same time, the-diabetic-vegans I have met are grossly obese, probably because of diabetes, and have untreated blood sugars running at a level that should have them hospitalized. Another thing about diabetes I've learned through experiences that the higher the carbohydrate intake, the more likely that insulin-based treatments are going to cause wide-ranging blood swings (i.e. 40 to 300 in two hours and back down again). Most the diabetics I've met have been willing to experiment, find that they can reduce their blood swings if they reduce their carbohydrate intake. The assertion that the type of carbohydrate doesn't matter is also experimentally false. You can test it yourself with a blood glucose meter. For me, most whole-grain products spike high and drop fast. There's a couple of exceptions such as barley which spikes high and stays there for 4+ hours, again, counter to conventional wisdom. I confirmed this multiple times with my blood glucose meter. My personal experimental results say I have to have, in the meal, no less than 18 cal per gram of carbohydrate if my blood sugars can stay in the normal range. This is not unusual. Many of the diabetics have the similar requirements for calories per gram of carbohydrate. I've yet to find a plant-based diet that will do this unless that meal is supplemented with 200 to 300 cal of oil. Diabetes is one of the few illnesses where the patient can verify, on their own, how successful treatment is if they're willing to follow a good measurement protocol. This protocol lets them determine which foods react badly in their body, the excursion of blood sugars as result of food and insulin intake and how modifications to food and insulin can reduce excursions, drop their A1c, and reduce the risk to diabetic complications. Sadly too much myth and magical thinking clouds effective treatment protocols.

Also, chickens can't be free range and organic

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Wait, is organic and free range supposed to be a better, that is tastier, product or just better for the environment?

While we're at it: If a chicken is free range it isn't organic. A free-range chicken eats wild bugs, and you can't certify that all the wild bugs that flew in ate an organic diet themselves.

My wife raises chickens, studies the issues extensively, and has a lot to say about free range, organic feed, organic chicken regimes, etc. They amount to animal cruelty. Some of the high points:
  - Free range means the chickens are exposed to predators and avian diseases spread by smaller birds.
  - Organic regimes forbid antibiotics and often vaccinations. A bird that catches some disease will either be dispatched to save the rest of the flock, or left to suffer and recover on its own without assistance - perhaps crippled - and meanwhile expose the rest of the flock. A number of poultry diseases are endemic among wild birds or prevalent in the enviornment. Young chicks are subject to coccidiosis and many of the survivors then live with damaged digestive systems. (Non-organic chicks are usually fed a coccidiostat in their early-weeks feed until their immune systems develop, or given a dose of antibiotic if the disease appears in the flock.) Marek's Disease, caused by a herpes family virus, is common. It produces partial paralysis, blindness, lymphoma, immune suppression, tumors, atherosclerosis, and a range of other painful and debilitating symptoms. Non-organc chicks are vaccinated against it. And so on.
  - Free range means the chickens are in large groups rather than individual cages with a handful of birds in each. Chickens can keep track of the ranking of no more than about a hundred other individuals, so life in a larger group is a constant series of battles to reestablish dominance. In small group cages, on the other hand, the heirarchy is worked out quickly and peace generally prevails (or relative peace, depending on breed). This is partiularly a problem with commercial egg-laying breeds, which are noted for intra-species violence and cannabalism.
  - Free range chickens are allowed to leave the barn in the day. But only the few who set up their teritory near the door actually get to leave. The rest are still effectively confined to the buildng in a mass of interacting birds.
  - Commercial feeds from big-name animal feed suppliers are tightly quality controlled and well tuned to the birds nutritional neefd an their taste preferences (so they'll enjoy eating it and thus eat as much as they should). Organic feeds are noted for dangerously poor nutritional qualities, from bad formulation choices, variation between batches, and the use of ingredients that quickly lose their nutritional qualities during storage. With their high metabolism, an under- or mal-nourished chicken will becomes a damaged and debilitated chicken in just a few days.v

I could go on...

Land not suitable

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Livestock require 8-20x more land per gram of protein produced than plant based protein sources. Switching entirely to plant based foods would allow returning >90% of that land to its natural state and growing crops only on the most suitable 10%.

Much of the land of the continental US is unsuitable for growing any crop suitable for human consumption, due to things like lack of water. The western range, for instance: Attempting to farm it would be an ecological disaster. Cattle, on the other hand, can make a fine living off it (at a rather low density - like four acres per cow) and ARE suitable for human consumption (and tasty!) when raised on what they chose to eat.

In fact, NOT raising range cattle on range land is ALSO an ecological disaster. US range land has a substantial infestation of invasive grass species that were accidentally introduced by European settlement. The native animals tend to avoid eating it, so it has an extra selective advantage over the native grasses and tends to squeeze them out. Cattle, on the other hand, prefer it - to the point of eating it almost exclusively when it's available. Thus they keep it under control. Meanwhile, any non-cattle attempt to eradicate it would amount to total defoliation, reseeding with native plants, crossing your fingers that the invasive species was wiped out, and repeating whenever it reappears.

Re:Egg subst battery farm "free range"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly too much myth and magical thinking clouds effective treatment protocols.
 
And so does be presentation.
 
Seriously, dude? Learn to write in paragraphs.