The Emperors New Facon
Concerns about the escalating climate emergency, personal health, and animal welfare has caused a lot of people to reconsider their eating habits. Polls show that about 70 percent of Brits are either actively reducing their meat consumption or wanting to do so. But because people have become so accustomed to meals being build around a meat protein centre, for many, plant-centric cooking presents real difficulties.
So, clever corporations have been launching one fake meat product after the other to make it easy for people to cook something that looks like what they’re used to.
Aggressive marketing efforts and various campaigns to get us to drop meat, has led to a broadly held misconception that simply because something is plant based, it is per definition healthy.
However, new studies are finding that this is by no means a given.
What is Fake Meat?
Meat substitutes, or ‘meat analogues’ as they are known in the industry, follow more or less the same formula. That is, some kind of protein isolate (either soy, wheat, or peas) that is suspended in a liquid that has been set with emulsifiers and stabilisers such as carrageenan, guar gum, methyl cellulose, etc.
And it is these artificial ingredients that are the cause for concern, because they have been processed to such a degree that when ingested our bodies don’t recognise them as food and therefore doesn’t know what to do with them. The hypothesis is that they are therefore deposit in the liver and our fat tissue where they can cause long term damage.
When you think about it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that replacing meat with a substitute containing strange, unpronounceable ingredients that your great grandmother wouldn’t recognise, would somehow be healthier than what they are replacing.
Most meat analogues are classified as Ultra Processed Foods, meaning they undergo the highest level of industrial processing like any other food item we would typically refer to as ‘junk food’.
Lastly, it’s also worth noting that many meat substitutes contain very high levels of sodium to make up for the fact that they are rather bland tasting. For example, Burger King’s ‘Impossible Foods Whopper, contain more salt the the real meat version.
Courtesy of The Telegraph
The Price of Fake Meat
The price of fake meat is another huge factor with regards to its impact potential. THIS’s bacon, for instance, costs £27 per kilo. Granted this is an extreme example, but do yourself a favour next time you are considering buying a meat analogue and check the kilo price, and it will probably astound you, because for that price you could buy the very best of ethical meat, which flavour and also health-wise is on a different order of magnitude.
Better for the Climate?
As it turns out, highly engineered meat substitutes carry about five times the climate food print than if the raw materials would be consumed in a lesser processed state. Add the
to that the reduced nutritional value that comes from turned e.g. peas into pea protein isolate. According to Marco Springmann, senior environmental researcher at Oxford University, "if you look at it purely from an environmental perspective, they would still make a big contribution to mitigating climate change, just not as big a contribution as moving to an arguably more healthy diet that includes plenty of fruit and vegetables, some nuts and seeds, whole grains, minimally processed beans and lentils."
Conclusion
It would seem that we have ourselves a classical emperors new clothes situation. You can almost picture your great granny opening the fridge and pulling out a pack of fake bacon. She turns it around to try and read the ingredient list only to exclaim: “what in god’s name is soy protein isolate and methyl cellulose.. and what is it doing in my bacon??!!”. She then puts a bit of it in her mouth, chews it, tastes it.. and goes: “that is absolutely awful.. why would anyone eat this??!!”.
Further Reading:
>>Why vegan meat substitutes can be worse for your diet than junk food<<
>>Vegan meat: The future of planet-saving plant-based eating<<
Listen:
>>The biggest failure in food industry history?<<
Watch:
>> Joe Rogan with Chriss Kresser: The Troublesome Truth Behind the Fake Meat Industry <<