Vegetarian

[Jimbo]

Many years ago, I recall someone writing that people should not eat ANYTHING that animals are, or have had, a part in producing. Well, that would eliminate a TON of plant-based foods, too, as insect pollination is necessary for many of them.

I knew a guy who was obsessively vegetarian (vegan?) and was so by choice, not because of any food allergies or intolerances, but because he thought eating any animal products, even a little, is really bad. He wasn't any healthier than anyone else, and tended to get sick a lot, and always seemed to injure himself doing minor things.

[David Jamieson]

My Father (RIP) was a vegetarian.

He was one of those "I won't eat anything that has a face" kind of vegetarians.
It absolutely was a moral choice for himself. he never bagged on anyone about their habits and we all ate
chicken and fish and beef and stuff around him.

When I think about it, that's a pretty calm and well disciplined approach.
Did I mention he practiced zen daily? I think the inward looking influenced a lot of his decisions
around how to live a morally upright life.

As I grow older, I am abandoning quite a lot of old dietary habits.
vegetarianism is quite alright by me in that sense and I imagine I will eventually and completely transition to it.
Just because it makes me feel better, if that makes any sense.

[GeneChing]

I've tried an impossible burger. It was pretty convincing, especially that raw bloody quality if you like your burgers rare (which I did). But they are too freakin expensive for me to enjoy.

The magic ingredient in Silicon Valley's favorite 'bleeding' veggie burger is under fire
Erin Brodwin
Jun. 8, 2018, 1:16 PM 66,093


The Impossible Burger. Impossible Foods

The Impossible Burger is a plant-based patty made by Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods with backing from Bill Gates.
The burger is available across the US, most recently in White Castle burger chains.

Environmentalists and journalists are taking issue with the burger's safety because of a key ingredient called heme, which is made using GMOs.
But the scientific research suggests that the burger is perfectly safe.

Today's veggie burgers can be described with a handful of delicious-sounding adjectives, but "meaty" isn't one of them.

At least it wasn't — until Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods began creating a meat-free burger that tastes disturbingly close to the real thing. The meat-like flavor can largely be attributed to an ingredient called heme — the magic spark that even allows the Impossible Burger to "bleed" like a real burger does.

But that magic spark may be poised to ignite a fire.

After opting to ask the Food and Drug Administration to review the burger's safety (something it was not required to do) in 2015, the company was taken aback by what it received: A long letter saying that the data they'd submitted wasn't sufficient to "establish the safety" of heme for human consumption. In response, Impossible Foods sent the agency more than 1,000 pages of additional research data to back up its claims that the burger was safe, and although the agency said it would respond in April, it recently extended that deadline to this June.


Melia Robinson/Business Insider

A handful of environmental activists have also taken issue with the burger.

But their issue with the burger isn't heme — it's the fact that the Impossible Burger is made using genetically engineered ingredients, or GMOs. Those concerns largely take the shape of the old and unsubstantiated claim that GMOs cause everything from autism to cancer, despite the scientific consensus that they are safe.

Still, several journalists at places like Grub Street, Bloomberg, and Food and Wine have glommed on to the recent controversy, saying they aren't sure the burgers are ready for prime-time.

But the science so far is clear on Impossible's product. Both heme and GMOs are safe to eat, according to researchers and several large, peer-reviewed studies.

"Heme has been consumed by humans and other animals for a long time with no issues," Robert Kranz, a professor of biology at Washington State University in St. Louis who's studied heme extensively, told Business Insider.

Heme, the essential nutrient you've never heard of


Melia Robinson/Business Insider

Heme is an essential nutrient in many proteins. It's also in just about every living thing on Earth.
In our bodies, heme can be found tucked inside of a molecule in our blood called hemoglobin. Heme helps ferry oxygen throughout the body, carries iron, and colors our blood red. For most of us, the majority of the heme we consume comes from animals.

But soy roots also contain heme — and that's where Impossible Foods gets theirs.

Still, soy roots only produce a tiny amount of heme, which initially presented Impossible Foods with a problem: They'd need to harvest roughly an acre's worth of soy plants just to get a kilogram of heme.

GMOs: The old villain that's hard to forget

Instead of wasting land and resources — something that would be antithetical to the company's mission to make a tasty meat alternative — Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown found a different solution.

But it involved GMOs, that old villain that everyone from environmentalists to conspiracy theorists love to hate, despite the scientific consensus that the ingredients are safe.

By tweaking the DNA of yeast in a process known as genetic engineering, Brown realized the company could turn the ingredient into tiny manufacturing hubs that would churn out heme. Admittedly, this wasn't an entirely novel solution: insulin, the compound that diabetics' life depends on to regulate blood sugar levels, is manufactured in much the same way, using GM yeast. Drugs, beer, and perfume are all frequently made this way, too. (Yes, all of these products are technically GMOs because of it.)

GMOs, heme, and a wave of sudden controversy


A Greenpeace activist displays signs symbolising genetically modified maize crops during a protest in front of the European Union headquarters in Brussels Nov. 24, 2008. Reuters/Thierry Roge

Once several activists began linking the GMOs and the heme in Impossible Foods burger to potential safety issues (none of which have yet been substantiated), the controversy grew.

In an article published in Food and Wine magazine in March, the author wrote that "excessive" heme consumption had been linked to colon and prostate cancer, citing a 2012 blog post in the New York Times.

But again, the science here is clear: no such link between heme and cancer exists.

That problem is that there is a plethora of studies linking red meat and cancer. Red meat also happens to be where most Americans get the majority of the heme they ingest. According to the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Health Organization, there is a strong link between red meat, especially processed meat, and cancer. The type of cancer with the strongest link is colorectal cancer, a variety of the disease that begins in the colon or rectum.

But no such link appears to exist for heme alone and cancer — potentially because the amount of heme you'd have to consume to reach "excessive" levels would be prohibitively high.

"Considering how much heme we are eating in red meat, I do not see any health issues arising" from putting it in a vegetarian burger, Nicolai Lehnert, a professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan, told Business Insider.

Studies that have attempted to isolate heme and study its link to cancer separate from red meat have also come up empty-handed, either finding no link or finding a negative one.

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In a 2012 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that involved a sample of nearly 90,000 men and women, researchers found no tie between heme iron intake and colorectal cancer.

"Our results ... suggest that zinc and heme iron intakes are not associated with colorectal cancer," the researchers wrote.

Iqbal Hamza, a professor of cell biology and genetics at the University of Maryland who runs a lab dedicated to the study of heme and is working on a heme-based supplement for iron-deficient people in developing countries, similarly concluded that the ingredient was safe for human consumption.

"I would have no qualms about getting heme from the Impossible Foods burger and I would have no qualms about getting heme from a plant based source," Hamza told Business Insider.

A 2011 study published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control also examined a large group of people in an attempt to suss out links between heme and cancer. They found none. In fact, they found a slightly negative relationship between the two things, meaning that people who consumed more heme were actually less likely to develop cancer.

"It's not a lack of evidence [linking heme to cancer]. There's evidence. And the evidence is for safety," David Lipman, Impossible Foods' chief science officer, told Business Insider.

THREADS:
Vegetarian
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff

[GeneChing]

I realize this is one of those neurotic reaction things like Straight Pride or White Pride, and that it's a parody publicity stunt from Arby's, but if you're going to really make fake vegetables out of meat, they should attempt to taste like the vegetable. Plus it's cheating to use the actual vegetable as part of the ingredients. That's like dipping an impossible burger in meat drippings.
This marrot will just taste like turkey dipped in carrots.

THREADS
Shaolin diet, vegetarianism and stuff
Vegetarian
Fast Food Nastiness

[GeneChing]

KFC first fast-food restaurant to introduce veggie burger in China
Inside is a palm-sized deepfried mushroom patty filled with melted cheese. Yay or nay?
by Natalie Ma July 4, 2019 in Food



KFC has just introduced its new mushroom burger on Wednesday, making it the first ever fast food chain store in China to provide a vegetarian choice.

The new burger comes with tomato and lettuce and a mushroom patty instead of meat. It does come with cheese though, so if you’re strictly vegan, this might still not be the burger for you.

Response has been divided online. Some said it is overpriced as a veggie bun while others said the cheese alone is worth the price.

Here is what it looks like in real life, according to a Weibo user who gave it a thumbs-down:



Shanghaiist went to sink our teeth into the burger, and here’s what we found:

The burger itself comes in a decent crusty bun, with a deep-fried mushroom patty that is covered in orange breadcrumbs. The crispy lettuce balances the taste nicely, but the ketchup and mayo sauce prevails. The patty itself doesn’t deliver much taste besides the cheese stuffed in it. The mushroom is kinda rubbery so we were left with more half-eaten mushroom than the bun towards the end. We give it 3 out of 5 burger buns for taste, but be warned: the texture of the unchewable mushroom might lead to a truly messy meal.

THREADS
Vegetarian
the Kentucky Fried Thread

[GeneChing]

Do we cut back on rice or meat? Or both?

Do we need an indie Climate Change thread?

The VICE Guide To Right Now
Feeling Sad About the Amazon Fires? Stop Eating Meat
The growing demand for meat around the world is directly linked to the Amazon fires.
By Edoardo Liotta
23 August 2019, 3:26am


A SATELLITE IMAGE SHOWS SMOKE RISING IN THE STATE OF RONDONIA IN THE UPPER AMAZON RIVER BASIN. AUGUST 15, 2019 © MAXAR VIA REUTERS

The struggle with “Climate Despair” is real. That is anxiety and depression caused by news of environmental degradation. Right now, for example, many have shared feelings of helplessness amid the ongoing forest fires in the Amazon. This disaster has been going on for weeks, and the fires have gotten so bad that the state of Amazonas declared a state of emergency earlier this month.

The problem, however, is not totally out of people’s hands. Studies have shown that the fires aren’t caused by natural occurrences, but by humans--our love for meat, to be exact.



The fires are caused by burning fallen trees to make way for cattle ranching, a growing industry in Brazil and the wider region. Data from the Institute of Environmental Research in Amazonia (IPAM) show that the top ten municipalities in Amazonia with the most fire occurrences also had the biggest deforestation rates this year.

The most practical solution people can adopt to help is to reduce--or stop--their meat intake.

Cameron Ellis, Senior Geographer at The Rainforest Foundation told VICE that because cattle require open spaces to feed and grow, ranchers clear vast lands by burning forests. These fires often get out of hand and “escape into surrounding forest, much of which is suffering from drought.” The fires grow and end up consuming areas with trees that have not been cut down.

Although logging (both legal and illegal) and other activities also drive deforestation in the Amazon, animal agriculture is the leading cause by far. The World Bank reported that cattle ranching occupies 80 percent of all converted lands in the Amazon rainforest.


SATELLITE IMAGES BY NASA SHOWING THE DEFORESTATION OF RONDÔNIA IN WESTERN BRAZIL FOR AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE RANCHING. THE LEFT WAS TAKEN IN 2002, THE RIGHT IN 2012.

But it doesn’t end there. The animals on these farms need to eat, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) also links the rainforest fires to the production of cattle food through soy farming.

Soy is the most important protein in animal feed, with 80 percent of the world’s soybean crop fed to livestock. So while soy may not destroy as much forest as cattle ranching, it is part of the underlying cause by enabling grazing.

Soy has become so lucrative that it doesn’t even have to deforest land on its own, which makes them harder to monitor. Fires are ignited to clear land for cattle ranching, which are eventually taken over by soy plantations. This handover happens because soy has driven up land prices in the region, allowing cattle ranchers to sell their plots to soy developers for larger earnings. With these, they expand their herds into larger plots into newly deforested land elsewhere, making the problem worse.

All this is done to keep up with the growing demand for meat globally, which is caused by population growth and increased affluence in developing countries. This keeps animal farms and soybean plantations locked in a vicious cycle where they depend on each other to grow.

“The livestock and agriculture sectors do not exist in isolation from each other. Rather, they are linked in two primary ways: they act as mutual enablers to access land within the Amazon, and they support each other through integrated value chains,” the WWF said.

It does not help that the current rhetoric of the Brazilian government favours development over conservation, incentivising ranchers to expand their pastures. Up to 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon is illegal, however.

The Amazon is now one of the biggest cattle ranching regions in the world, and it’s only getting worse. Brazil’s cattle herd grew from 158 million heads in 1996 to 219 million in 2016, becoming the world’s largest beef and poultry exporter.



Last year, Brazil exported 1.6 million tonnes of beef, the highest in history, Reuters reported. The number is expected to grow 1.8 million tonnes by the end of 2019, with China as the main export destination. Other major importers of Brazilian beef are Hong Kong, Egypt, Russia, and the European Union.

Ellis told VICE that less rain is falling now because there are fewer forests to capture it. If the deforestation cycle is kept alive, we might reach a “tipping point where the entire landscape converts from rainforest to savanna,” he said.

One person not eating beef for a year saves approximately 3,432 trees, so you are doing the earth a favour by skipping that burger.

Find Edoardo on Twitter and Instagram.

[GeneChing]

Rowan Jacobsen
Jul 31, 2019
This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry

Alt meat isn't going to stay alt for long, and cattle are looking more and more like stranded assets

There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” That was actually written by the Workshop on Nonviolence Institute as a summary of Gandhi’s philosophy, but regardless, it’s remarkable how often it accurately describes the evolution of causes, from legal cannabis to gay marriage. I’ve been thinking about that quote since I wrote my first piece about plant-based meat (or alt meat, as I like to call it) for Outside in 2014. Back then, we were firmly in the “laugh at you” stage. Beyond Meat, the first of the Silicon Valley startups to use advanced technology to produce extremely meat-like burgers, had been ignored for its first few years, but in 2014, it released its Beast Burger, which was treated by the press and public as a slightly off-putting curiosity. What was this stuff? Would anyone actually eat it? Ewwww.

That product wasn’t very good—I compared it to Salisbury steak—and when Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat’s founder, announced his intention to end livestock production, you could almost hear the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association laughing in the background.

But I didn’t laugh. I knew it would keep getting better and beef wouldn’t. And I thought the bar was pretty low. Sure, steak is great, but ground beef makes up 60 percent of beef sales, and most of it is more Salisbury than salutary, a greasy vehicle for the yummy stuff: ketchup, mushrooms, pickles, bacon, sriracha mayo. I knew I wouldn’t object if my central puck came from a plant, as long as it chewed right and tasted right. I suspected others might feel the same.

In the following years, Beyond Meat was joined by Impossible Foods, a more sophisticated startup with even more venture capital. Its Impossible Burger was way better than Salisbury steak. All the cool cats started serving it, from David Chang in New York to Traci Des Jardins in San Francisco. My conviction grew.

Part of the appeal of the new burgers is their smaller environmental footprint. Beef is the most wasteful food on the planet. Cows are not optimized to make meat; they’re optimized to be cows. It takes 36,000 calories of feed to produce 1,000 calories of beef. In the process, it uses more than 430 gallons of water and 1,500 square feet of land, and it generates nearly ten kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions. In comparison, an Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and produces 89 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Beyond Meat’s footprint is similarly svelte.

Yes, a good argument can be made that small-farm, grass-fed beef production (in places that can grow abundant grass) has a very different ethical and environmental landscape, but unfortunately, that’s just not a significant factor. America gets 97 percent of its beef from feedlots. And feedlots are irredeemable.

By 2018, sales of both the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger were surging, and the companies began to ink deals with restaurant chains. Beyond Meat got Carl’s Jr. and A&W (as well as supermarket chains like Food Lion and Safeway), while Impossible got White Castle.

I tracked down a White Castle shortly after the Impossible Slider arrived in the spring of 2018. I’d never been to a White Castle, so I ordered an Impossible Slider and a regular slider. The Impossible was...fine. About what you’d expect. White Castle steams all its meat, which is hard to get past, but with plenty of cheese, it went down easy.

The regular slider, on the other hand, was horrific. I peeled back the pasty bun and stared at the fetid shingle inside. It was appallingly thin and grimy. It made the Impossible Slider look lush and juicy. The bar for fast-food burgers is even lower than I thought. Nobody will miss these ****ty little brown things when they’re gone.

Perhaps this explains why the chains are latching on to plant-based burgers as if they were life rings. White Castle initially tested its Impossible Slider in just a few locations in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago in April 2018. It was such a hit that the company quickly expanded the program to all 380 outlets. “People are coming back for it again and again,” White Castle’s vice president, Jamie Richardson, said with a touch of astonishment.

They’re coming back at Del Taco, too, which launched a Beyond Meat taco in April. Within two months, it had sold two million, one of the most successful product launches in its history, so it decided to add Beyond Meat burritos as well.

And then there’s Burger King. The second-largest fast-food chain in the world rattled big beef’s cage by testing an Impossible Whopper in St. Louis in April. Resulting foot traffic was so strong that Burger King decided to serve the Impossible Whopper in all 7,200 restaurants, marking the moment when alt meat stopped being alt.

That was enough to get the meat industry to snap to attention. “About a year and a half ago, this wasn’t on my radar whatsoever,” said Mark Dopp, head of regulatory affairs for the North American Meat Association, to The New York Times. “All of a sudden, this is getting closer.”

The strategy, predictably yet pathetically, was to engage in an ontological battle over the term meat itself. Big beef successfully lobbied for a labeling law in Missouri banning any products from identifying themselves as meat unless they are “derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” (But this is wrong; the word simply meant sustenance for the first thousand years of its existence.) Similar labeling laws have passed or are pending in a dozen more states, most of them big ranching ones.

Obviously, none of this has stemmed the rise of alt meat. But it did make me think again of Gandhi (a staunch vegetarian, FYI). They ignored, they laughed, and now they were fighting.

This stuff, I thought, just might win.

This year is shaping up to be the inflection point when this becomes obvious to everybody else. Beyond Meat’s products are in 15,000 grocery stores in the U.S., and its sales have more than doubled each year. On May 2, it held its IPO, offering stock at $25, which turned out to be a wild underestimation of what investors thought the company was worth. It immediately leaped to $46 and closed the day at $65.75. That one-day pop of 163 percent was one of the best in decades, putting to shame such 2019 IPOs as Lyft (21 percent) and Pinterest (25 percent), to say nothing of Uber (negative 3 percent). In the following days, it kept ripping, climbing above $150, where it has stayed. The market currently estimates Beyond Meat’s worth at close to $10 billion.

Not to be outdone, that same month, Impossible Foods raised an additional $300 million dollars from private investors (for a running total of $740 million and a valuation of $2 billion) and announced it would be joining Beyond Meat in America’s grocery stores later this year. These companies are no longer little mammals scurrying around the feet of the big-beef dinosaurs. And they are gearing up for an epic head-to-head battle.

Both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods recently released new, improved versions of their meat. For the past week, I’ve subsisted on little else. It feels great. Both have the same amount of protein as ground beef (about 20 grams per quarter-pound serving) and less fat. Being plant-based, they also provide a healthy shot of fiber. Both get their unctuousness from coconut oil.

But the core of each formula is very different. Beyond uses pea protein, while Impossible uses soy. Beyond gets its bloody color from beet juice; Impossible uses heme—the same molecule that makes our blood red—to achieve its meaty color and flavor. This is its killer app. Beef gets its beefiness from heme. When you cook heme, it produces the distinctive savory, metallic flavor of meat. Since heme is normally found in blood, no veggie concoction has ever used it. Soy plants do make microscopic amounts of it, but not enough to ever use. Impossible Foods’ breakthrough was to genetically engineer yeast to produce soy heme in a tank, like beer. This GMO process is a deal breaker for some people, but it makes all the difference. The Impossible Burger is incredible, the Beyond Burger merely passable.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

The Beyond Burger comes as two premade four-ounce patties (packaged in a plastic tray wrapped in more plastic—strike one). They don’t quite pass as hamburgers. They’re too wet and too pink. They almost resemble finely ground salmon burgers. They cook to a satisfying toothiness on either a grill or a griddle, but there’s an inexplicable cellulose quality to the texture. (This is even more pronounced in the Beyond Sausage.) The flavor is also slightly off. There’s a hint of fake smoke and an earthiness I’m guessing comes from the beet juice. (My wife would argue that it’s more than slightly off; she has to leave the room when the Beyond Burger is cooking. But she also hates beets.) It’s not an unpleasant experience, just don’t expect the burgergasm you get from a quarter pound of USDA prime.

Impossible Foods, on the other hand, has delivered burgergasm after burgergasm. It’s shine-up-the-Nobel-Prize good. Not only does it taste like ground beef, it looks and acts like it, too. It’s truly plug and play.

That wasn’t true for the previous version. When I first wrote about Impossible Foods three years ago, I had to beg the company to send me one patty. It was hesitant. Back then, the burger was fussy. It didn’t work well on a grill, so you had to pan-fry it just right. The company made me do a Skype tutorial first, and when the micropatty arrived in a refrigerated box, with a special bun and special sauce, it was accompanied by pages of printed instructions. The burger was good, certainly the most meat-like plant patty up to that point, but it still tasted like a lite product—a little cleaner, a little less decadent, a little bit like filler.

This time, when I asked the company to send me a burger, a five-pound block of meat—clearly what it normally ships to food-service companies—arrived on my doorstep. No instructions, no hand-holding. It looked identical to ground beef, so that’s how I treated it. And that’s how it performed. I made sliders, kebabs, nachos, chili, Bolognese sauce, even a little tartare (note: the company frowns hard on this).

If I’m being honest, I find that I slightly prefer it to real beef. It’s rich and juicy, more savory, but still somehow cleaner and less cloying. Now when I go back to regular beef, I notice a whiff of the charnel house in it, something musty and gray that I don’t like and don’t need.

In the coming years, expect a lot of other omnivores to have similar epiphanies. Impossible Foods has performed more than 26,000 blind taste tests on its burger, which is on track to surpass ground beef in those tests in the near future. What happens then? Impossible has been laser focused on creating the perfect simulacrum of ground beef. But why? The cow never had a lock on gastronomic perfection. It was just the best we could do given the limitations of the natural material. Firelight was fine until electricity came along. Then things got really interesting.

Look for something similar to happen with alt meat. For now, it’s necessary to make people comfortable with the familiar, the way Steve Jobs loaded the early iPhones with faux felt and wood grain. But once people stop expecting burgers to refer to a hunk of flesh, the brakes on deliciousness will be released.

This will be generational. All change is. Most Baby Boomers are going to stick with their beef, right up to the point where their dentures can’t take it anymore. But Gen Z will find the stuff as embarrassing as Def Leppard and dad jeans.

As this shift accelerates, the beef industry will lose its last advantage—price. Most offerings made with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are about a buck a burger more expensive. But it’s inherently cheaper to make a burger directly out of plants than it is to feed those plants to an animal first. Beef is currently cheaper because of scale. Big food companies can negotiate tremendously reduced prices for feed, and gigantic factories and supply chains are much more efficient to run.

But the playing field is leveling fast. Last week, Dunkin’ announced a new Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich that will be just 14 cents more than the meat version. But more than anything Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods has accomplished, the true death knell for the cattlemen is how the mainstream food industry has embraced alt meat. Whole Foods just announced it will start selling burgers from the UK-based startup the Meatless Farm in all of its stores. Nestle is launching its Awesome Burger this fall. Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat producer, just debuted its own plant-based nuggets, with more products to come. Tyson CEO Noel White said he expects Tyson “to be a market leader in alternative protein, which is experiencing double-digit growth and could someday be a billion-dollar business for our company.”

If that quote isn’t enough to send chills down the spine of any meat producer, try this one from Perdue Farms chairman Jim Perdue: “Our vision is to be the most trusted name in premium protein. It doesn’t say premium meat protein, just premium protein. That’s where consumers are going.”

And that’s where these companies will go. Beef is a headache. It comes with a lot of baggage to worry about: antibiotic resistance, E. coli outbreaks, animal welfare, climate change. It’s the kind of icky biological variable that corporate America would love to leave behind—and as soon as beef becomes less profitable, it will.

Recent projections suggest that 60 percent of the meat eaten in 2040 will be alt, a figure I think may actually be too conservative. An estimated 95 percent of the people buying alt burgers are meat-eaters. This is not about making vegetarians happy. It’s not even about climate change. This is a battle for America’s flame-broiled soul. Meat is about to break free from its animal past. As traditional meat companies embrace alt meat with the fervor of the just converted, making it cheap and ubiquitious, it’s unclear if Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods can survive the feeding frenzy (though Impossible’s patents on its core IP may help), but at least they’ll be able to comfort themselves with a modern take on Gandhi’s wisdom:

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they sue you.
Then they try to buy you.
Then they copy you.
Then they steal your shelf space.
Then they put you out of business.
Then you’ve won.

Lead Photo: Yifan Wu

Beef isn't like coal. People don't really crave coal like they crave beef. So I doubt the industry will ever become obsolete. It does have to rethink how it functions. The math behind cheap burgers - something must be wrong there, something that we can fix.

I'm not quite vegetarian, but I stopped eating beef years ago. For me, it was a Buddhist devotional sacrifice. It's been really fascinating to me to watch this trend.

[GeneChing]

McDonald's Plant-Based Burger Trial Isn't a Slam Dunk, Analyst Suggests
The P.L.T. has "not been a blowout success thus far," an analyst says. What does that mean for the future of plant-based burgers at McDonald's?
By Mike Pomranz October 31, 2019


MCDONALD'S

Plant-based meats are arguably the biggest trend in fast food. And McDonald's is inarguably America's largest burger chain. So needless to say, the big question on many pundits' mind has been when is Ronald going to start selling a plant-based burger? It's a question that intensified this year when Burger King took its Impossible Whopper nationwide.

Last month, McDonald's partnered with Impossible Foods' top rival, Beyond Meat, to begin a test run of a new plant-based burger called the P.L.T. But short of letting any U.S. customers try it, the company instead trialed the burger at 28 locations around Ontario, Canada. Perhaps testing a Beyond Burger in America would have created too much hoopla, and Canada, while not quite as far away as Finland, where McDonald's launched a different fake meat burger, is a bit of a buffer from the U.S. Or, then again, maybe McDonald's has no deadset intention of ever bringing this burger to the U.S. Though, since McDonald's and Beyond Meat are both American companies, that's kind of hard to swallow.

Regardless, whatever McDonald's is planning with plant-based meat, a hiccup has apparently occurred: Yesterday, MarketWatch reported that sales of the P.L.T. aren't as strong as analysts had hoped. "A key question is whether McDonald's will partner with Beyond Meat in the U.S.," a Bernstein analyst was quoted as noting earlier this week. "Based on our channel checks with select McDonald's based in Ontario, Canada that are currently testing the Beyond P.L.T. burger, the initial feedback has been largely positive, although it seems that the trial has not been a blowout success thus far that justifies an immediate nationwide rollout across both Canada and the U.S."

Of course, not "a blowout success thus far" certainly isn't a failure. One could argue that blowout successes like KFC's meatless fried chicken test in one single location only did so well simply because of a confluence of publicity and scarcity, and doesn't correlate to national demand. And we shouldn't rush past the "feedback has been largely positive" part either. Still, part of the appeal of plant-based options is the excitement that surrounds them: Avoiding a lukewarm rollout is likely one of the reasons McDonald's has been slow to jump into the plant-based business to begin with. If that's the case, this talk sounds like a bad omen.

And yet, maybe this is just Canada being Canada. In July, the Canadian chain Tim Hortons added Beyond Meat items to its menus only to axe them by September. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Dunkin' also trialed a Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich in July and has just announced it is taking it nationwide. It could just be that Americans are more interested in plant-based beef than our neighbors to the north.

I reached out to McDonald's for a reaction to MarketWatch's report and received a reply from CEO Steve Easterbrook via an emailed statement cautioning that the trial was still in its early days. Easterbrook also indicated that while the Ontario rollout is indeed a limited run, it's less about timidity to enter the plant-based market and more about literally testing how the P.L.T. would be implemented while getting a read on the "flexitarian customer."

"We want to get the taste right, we want to get the marketing right, we want to get the operations right," he said. "So there's a number of important factors that we are learning quickly, and we think Ontario is a great spot, because it will give us a good read across North America frankly, but also into the developed markets in Europe as well [...] we think the read across will be beneficial and help us speed up our intelligence on this. So, more to come clearly, but it's an area of interest for sure."

Despite being the most successful fast food restaurant on the planet, McDonald's has a history of adding products people don't want. (I'm old enough to remember the Arch Deluxe!) So today's McDonald's may be warier of a big plant-based burger rollout than its competitors. And though the company is a late entry into the fake meat market, its commitment to the test phase means we're probably less likely to see a quick Dunkin'-style turnaround and a more measured rollout. If the Canada trial does turn out to be a bust, McDonald's plant-based burger timeline might get even slower. Either way, it seems the "when will McDonald's add a plant-based burger?" questions won't be going away any time soon.

UPDATE: Oct. 31, 2019: This article has been updated with a response provided by McDonald's.

I tried an Impossible Whopper. I figured I should support this movement. I was all excited because I haven't had a whopper in like a decade plus. But man, they're still nasty. I remember when I used to eat beef that I had to give up on BK because it gave me the runs afterwards. The Impossible Whopper didn't affect me that way, but I felt like I ate too much salt and too much grease for the rest of the day.

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[GeneChing]

KFC rolls out first plant-based fried 'chicken' with Beyond Meat – but we have no idea yet if it will come to South Africa
Kate Taylor , Business Insider US
Aug 26, 2019, 08:13 PM


KFC is getting into the alternative-meat game.
KFC

KFC is testing fried "chicken" made with faux meat, the chain announced on Monday.

The chain teamed up with Beyond Meat to make Beyond Fried Chicken.

The plant-based fried "chicken" will be available at a single KFC in the USA starting on Tuesday.

Whether it will ever come to South Africa is not yet clear.

KFC is getting into the alternative-meat game.

On Monday, the chicken chain announced it was testing Beyond Fried Chicken, in partnership with Beyond Meat. The plant-based fried "chicken" will be available at a single KFC location in Atlanta in the USA starting on Tuesday.

KFC said it would consider customer feedback as it decides whether to test the menu item at more locations or launch it nationally in the United States.

KFC in South Africa could not on Monday say if and when the experiment may come to SA.

In May, Kevin Hochman, the president of KFC's US business, told Business Insider he was meeting with the makers of plant-based "meat" because of the rise of interest in meat alternatives.

"If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said no, to be completely honest with you," Hochman said. "Because we're about fried chicken."

However, if the buzz around companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat translates into long-term customer demand, KFC will need to test a plant-based meat substitute in the US, Hochman said. The chain has already been testing vegetarian fried "chicken" in the UK.

Beyond Meat has recently announced deals with chains including Subway, Dunkin', and Del Taco.

"It's not that interesting to me that really rich people eat super healthy food. It's not moving the needle," Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown told Business Insider of the company's recent work with restaurant chains.

THREADS
the Kentucky Fried Thread
Vegetarian

[GeneChing]

Hot Dry Noodles: The Traditionally Vegan & Addictive Dish From Wuhan
By Sally Ho Last updated Feb 14, 2020


4 Mins Read
Whilst China and other countries around the world continue to battle the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, which the World Health Organisation recently declared a global public health emergency, fears about the spread of the coronavirus has been accompanied by a spike in anti-Chinese racism and xenophobia. Wuhan has been hardest hit with racist stereotyping and has been making international headlines, but many of us have forgotten the traditional Wuhan delicacy, which happens to be 100% plant-based.

A few words on racism


Source: Reuters

There are serious and substantiated concerns regarding the current novel coronavirus and its spread, but it has awakened prejudices, racist vitriol and stereotyping against people of mainland Chinese or Asian descent.

This not only contributes nothing to help quell the disease epidemic, it comes with the threat of overshadowing long-standing cultural traditions that all of us can appreciate. In particular, Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus, has come under attack internationally and from other cities and provinces in mainland China.

The internet is awash with criticism and misleading claims about the apparent thirst for consuming wild animals in Wuhan peoples’ diets, stemming from the reports that the disease emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan that also sold a number of live animals.

While the novel coronavirus has thrust the danger and cruelty of the wild animal trade into the limelight, the demand for wild animals isn’t limited to Wuhan, nor is it confined within the borders of China alone. In fact, the supply chain extends throughout the world, stretching from Asia, Africa and elsewhere, including the United States. It is a global problem that the world must tackle if we are to prevent future disease epidemics, not to mention the animal welfare and wildlife conservation issues that stem from the trade.

Hot dry noodles: the addictive vegan dish from Wuhan


Source: Zhihu

As a Hong Kong-based journalist hailing from Wuhan reminded us in a heartfelt open letter, it’s time to take stock and reflect on some of the traditions her hometown is known for, including the beloved local dish “Hot Dry Noodles”–which happens to be accidentally vegan and so delicious.

Re gan mian, which translates to hot and dry noodles, is the traditional dish of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. Also known as the “Wuhan noodle”, this dish has had a long-standing history in Chinese food culture for almost 100 years, and is unique because unlike many Asian noodle dishes, the noodles aren’t served in soup. Instead, the dish is served “dry” with the vegan-friendly alkaline noodles coated in a rich, thick and creamy sesame sauce and topped with fresh spring onions. While the main seasoning is sesame paste, sometimes, the noodles are also topped with pickled spicy radish, which also originates from Hubei province.

And true to Wuhan cuisine, which shares with its nearby Sichuanese counterpart, the dish makes extensive use of chillies. Chillies are deeply embedded within both Wuhan and Sichuan food culture because the regions face a humid climate, which can be balanced out with hot and spicy foods in traditional Chinese medicinal beliefs. While preparing the seasoning and sauce of hot dry noodles, Wuhanese people typically use chilli oil and fresh coriander to bring out both the delicious taste of sesame and give a kick of heat.

This dish is so significant in Wuhan food culture that it is a popular breakfast food in the city, often sold in street carts and restaurants across towns as early as 5am in the morning, all throughout the day until the evening, where the famous dish appears at night markets as a late-night snack.

Make your own hot dry noodles


Source: Woks of Life

“Wuhan noodles” calls for alkaline noodles, the most common type of ramen noodle available in most supermarkets across Asia, which are made out of wheat flour and kansui (alkaline water) to give its salty taste and springy quality. If they happen to be unavailable, they can be easily substituted for spaghetti (cooked al dente) for a similar texture and taste, or gluten-free versions to suit individual dietary preferences.

For the seasoning and sauce, hot dry noodles typically contain five spice powder, a blend of cinnamon, cloves, fennel, star anise and Sichuan peppercorns, sesame paste, sesame oil, light and dark soy sauce and salt. Once the sauce is mixed in to coat the cooked noodles, top the dish with a sprinkle of chopped green onions, pickled radish, chilli oil and coriander.

Lead image courtesy of Sohu.

THREADS
Noodles
Vegetarian
COVID-19

[GeneChing]

I'll still try this if it comes to my area.

KFC's New Plant-Based 'Vegan' Fried Chicken: Everything You Need To Know
Apparently it's still finger-lickin' good.
BY KORIN MILLER
FEB 27, 2020

MOSES ROBINSONGETTY IMAGES

Plant-based meat has officially infiltrated pretty much every fast food restaurant in the game. Burger King has the Impossible Whopper, White Castle has Impossible Sliders, Dunkin’ has the Beyond Sausage Sandwich, and, now, even KFC (a fast food chain that's literally all about chicken) has hopped on the bandwagon.

Recently, KFC started testing out plant-based chicken nuggets and wings—which they call Beyond Fried Chicken (a.k.a. fried chicken made with Beyond meat)—in certain parts of the U.S.

kfc
Verified
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kfc's profile picture
kfc
Verified
Who knew plants could taste like fried chicken? I did. Introducing KFC’s new @beyondmeat Fried Chicken. It looks like delicious fried chicken and tastes like delicious fried chicken, but it’s made from plants. Get KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken in Charlotte or Nashville before you miss out.

It was a BFD. One Atlanta restaurant sold out of Beyond Fried Chicken in less than five hours. People lined up before the restaurant even opened, and the drive-thru line wrapped around the parking low twice.

Now, KFC has expanded their Beyond Fried Chicken test to more than 70 spots in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, throughout February, according to a press release.

"We've really pushed the limits to develop plant-based chicken that I think will have KFC and plant-based protein fans saying, 'That's finger lickin' good,’” Andrea Zahumensky, chief marketing officer at KFC U.S., said in the release.

How exactly does this whole chicken-less fried chicken thing work, though? Here's everything you need to know about KFC’s new Beyond Fried Chicken.

What’s KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken made of?

KFC shared online that Beyond Fried Chicken primarily gets its protein from soy, wheat, and pea proteins.

Want more specifics? Here’s the full ingredients list:

Water, Enriched wheat flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Soy Protein Isolate, Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Enriched bleached wheat flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Wheat Gluten, Natural Flavor, Yeast Extract, and less than 2 percent of: Breadcrumbs (Wheat Flour, Distilled Vinegar, Sea Salt, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate), Inactive Yeast, Spice Extractives), Chili Pepper, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Modified Wheat Starch, Onion Powder, Pea Extract, Rice Flour, Salt, Spice, Titanium Dioxide (for color).

Yeah, it's long—but, plant-based or not, this is fast food, after all.

Is Beyond Fried Chicken vegan?

Here's the kicker: According to KFC, their Beyond Fried Chicken is 100 percent plant-based, but it's prepped in the same fryers as KFC’s actual chicken. So, it could get contaminated with residue or fat from that real chicken, and therefore isn't technically even vegetarian, let alone vegan.

Is Beyond Fried Chicken gluten-free?

KFC says they bread their Beyond Fried Chicken in a mixture similar to their popcorn nugget breading, meaning that the plant-based option is not gluten-free.

Real Talk: Is Beyond Fried Chicken healthy?

“When we talk about eating more plant-based foods, this isn’t what we mean,” says New York City-based dietitian Samantha Cassetty, RD. “Just like regular fast food, this isn't an everyday food.”

Jessica Cording, RD, nutritionist and author of The Little Book of Game-Changers, agrees: “Fried chicken is still fried chicken. Just because something is plant-based doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s healthy.”

“There’s some difference in nutrients, but it’s still fried protein at the end of the day,” says Cording. “If a regular part of your diet, fried foods—whether plant- or animal-based—can have a negative effect on your health.”

Plant-based faux meats are also often made with heavily processed ingredients and contain excessive amounts of sodium—neither of which are great for you, adds Cassetty.

Still, you’re not going to torpedo your healthy eating goals by treating yourself once in a while. “If you’re curious about plant-based foods and you want to give these a try, they can fit in a healthful diet,” Cassetty says. As long as 75 percent of your eats come from minimally-processed plant foods, such as beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, and avocados, you're good.

Does KFC offer other plant-based options?

As of right now, KFC doesn't have any other plant-based meal options on the menu.

However, certain KFC side orders, like green beans, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and sweet kernel corn, fit the bill.

KORIN MILLER
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more.

THREADS
Vegetarian
the Kentucky Fried Thread

[highlypotion]

I'm vegetarian since birth! I just love the animals hehe

[SteveLau]

First of all to be flank, I am not a vegetarian. Eating only vegetables is not the most healthy way. Nor it is most cost-effective for one to maintain good health, certainly not for athletic goal. I am quite an open-minded fellow, so I do not rule out the intake of the new Beyond Meat (artificial meat) type of food.

P.S. After more than a year of training program, I confirmed that nutrition intake was the problem that caused my failure to increase my muscle mass. So then I changed my program again. In about six months after taking protein supplement and more high protein food like meat, fish, egg, etc., I reached close enough my goal of 59 kg. of body weight.


Regards,

KC
Hong Kong

[GeneChing]

I'll try this when I get the chance.

Vegan Spam Took Over Asia. Now It’s Coming for American Menus
Now that OmniPork is available in the US, yet another major market of this budget meat has a plant-based Spam contender.
by TANYA FLINK

MAY 18, 2021

1,019 Shares
For a four-letter word with just six ingredients, Spam is a complicated food. American journalists have commented on its peculiar high-low appeal here in the States—Spam doubles as budget food as well as a pseudo-fine-dining trend. But as complex as our relationship is to Spam in the US, it carries even more weight aboard. Spam has become a staple in many Asian countries, but for the older generation, its presence offers an aftertaste of American imperialism thanks to several US deployments and subsequent occupations during wartime. Hong Kong-based OmniFoods is setting out to wipe that slate clean. Its OmniPork Luncheon (aka vegan Spam) erases the cruelty and complicated history of pig-based Spam, and now that it has launched in the US, OmniPork is setting out to satisfy our cravings in a more compassionate way. Here’s what you need to know about Spam and its vegan successor.


Chef Reina

The rise of OmniPork
The vegan world rose to its feet for a standing ovation when OmniPork launched in Hong Kong in 2018. The plant-based pork product was the first of its kind—a triumph of OmniFoods. This food-tech company falls under the projects of the Green Monday Group—a multinational sustainability organization founded in Hong Kong by entrepreneur David Yeung.

In 2020, the brand debuted its vegan luncheon meat with the intent to combat the popularity of Spam in Asia. While very much entrenched in Asian culture, the food-tech company responsible for creating this product is not Asian—it’s Canadian. OmniPork’s tagline boasts “Western innovation x Asian application.”

Yeung assured us that while the development occurred in Canada, many Asian Canadians were a part of the process. Yeung explained, “We are blessed with a very experienced food scientist R&D team who have an Asian background and understand how Asians apply meat in cooking differently. [Green Monday Group] is based in Asia so our direction on R&D from day one was to develop new innovations that will fit into our ways of cooking and eating.”

The Green Monday Group was explicit in its instructions to its R&D team. Not only did the product need to taste and feel like Spam, it had to smell like it, too. Yeung elaborated, “There is a fragrance that is unique about luncheon meat. It evokes childhood memories for many people. So getting that right, along with, of course, texture and nutrition [was] crucial.”


Maneatingplant

Spam and imperialism
There’s no argument that vegans take issue with animal-based Spam for a number of reasons. There’s the slaughter of animals, the degradation of the environment, social justice issues that come with CAFOs, and the detriment to human health. However, in Spam’s case, another pressing factor is of immediate concern: imperialism.

Created by the Hormel company in 1937, the original pig-based Spam (there’s a turkey option, too) is a blend of processed pork and ham, water, sugar, modified potato starch, and sodium nitrate. American soldiers brought it along during their wartime deployments and proceeding occupations as a convenient, calorie-dense option for sustenance. However, soldiers stationed in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other Pacific island nations didn’t always have a taste for the briny porky product, and it would eventually find its way into the hands of local communities, fed through the handouts American soldiers offered.


Tane

Spam in Asia
And so, native populations began to incorporate Spam into their cuisines. In South Korea, there’s budae jjigae; in Hawaii (not yet a US State during WWII), Spam musubi; and in Guam, Spam fried rice. And once occupying American troops left these regions, Spam didn’t fade away along with them—it exploded, morphing from a food equated with struggle and wartime to a bona fide delicacy. Today, South Korea is the second largest consumer of the canned pork product behind the US, and the tiny nation of Guam wins in Spam consumption per capita with a whopping 16 cans per person per year. Overall, Spam ranks sixth in the canned subgroup of Asia’s annual Top 1,000 Brands list and has become part of many Asian nations’ cuisines and integrated into Asian-American palates as well.


GOEN

Spam and high-speed slaughter
Fast-forward to today, and like so many other industrialized, processed meat products, Spam is under scrutiny. In 2015, a Hormel slaughterhouse was chosen to participate in a USDA pilot program that would abolish the cap on the kill rate of pigs. Before the program, slaughterhouses were restrained to killing 1,106 pigs per hour. Under the new Modernization of Pork Slaughter guidelines, this cap was lifted, allowing for unregulated slaughter at frightening speeds. Despite an Animal Outlook undercover investigation that documented severe animal abuse and workers scrambling to keep up, the program was finalized in 2019 and extended to all swine slaughterhouses nationwide. Hormel—along with other pork operations—is now killing pigs faster than ever with no consideration to the welfare of the animals or the workers. That’s a bad taste that cannot be chef’d up, no matter how many Michelin stars or James Beard awards the chef has.


Maneatingplant

Hope for the future
Despite this unregulated slaughter speed, pork production rates have unexpectedly plummeted in recent years, dropping 15 percent from 2019 to 2020. And given plant-based meat sales rose by 45 percent during the same time period, it’s reasonable to assume that vegan meat products are at least partially responsible for the decline in pork production. The pivot to plant-based seems to be due in large part to the increased accessibility of vegan meats like OmniPork.

Currently, OmniPork is available in over 300 restaurants across Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, Macau, and Hong Kong. Consumers can also find OmniPork in hundreds of retailers across these regions and some areas of mainland China. Like the Beyond and Impossible Burger incorporation into American fast-food culture, the OmniPork option gives customers the opportunity to curtail their meat consumption while still enjoying the foods and eateries they love. Afterall, as long as customers get their pork dumplings, it doesn’t matter if they’re made with plants. As long as the dumplings evoke the same sensory experience, most people probably don’t mind that they’re not made with animals.

If OmniPork can further curb consumers’ taste for meat, let’s keep that vegan luncheon meat coming. The US rollout of OmniPork is controlled to a tight 10 restaurants (see below), but there is a plan for a national retail rollout this summer. Given the juicy OmniPork bao, layered OmniPork-topped sushi, and sweet and sour bola bola OmniPork meatballs these restaurants are cooking up, it won’t be long until Americans become smitten with this vegan spam.

OmniPork launched in these US locations:

Los Angeles:
CHIFA
RiceBox
Little Fatty
MANEATINGPLANT
Ramen Hood
Morning Nights

San Francisco:
Shizen
Chef Reina

Honolulu:
GOEN Dining + Bar
Tane Vegan Izakaya

Tanya Flink is a Digital Editor at VegNews as well as a writer and fitness enthusiast living in Orange County, CA.