Comment by hbn
6 days ago
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers
Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils.
You may have a point about processing, but I think by talking about "most people" you have invalidated any future points you may be trying to make.
For example:
"single natural ingredient"
not every cow is only fed with grass, and what about that grass, has it been treated, etc...
also
Neu5Gc
Mammal meat contains it, Humans have lost the enzyme (perhaps over that time since "the dawn of man"), it causes inflammation.
Looking at chimpanzee diets, I don't think our common ancestor was regularly eating burgers. More likely insects and leaves...which do not contain Neu5Gc.
As a self-proclaimed "healthy person", I'm not regularly eating either of these, but unless I know where the meat comes from, I'm likely sticking to the non-inflammatory burger.
> Looking at chimpanzee diets, I don't think our common ancestor was regularly eating burgers. More likely insects and leaves...which do not contain Neu5Gc.
Chimpanzees eat plenty of meat. They particularly enjoy hunting and eating monkeys, for example.
> not every cow is only fed with grass, and what about that grass, has it been treated, etc...
the (low) possibility of mad cow always lurks in my mind when discussing things like this. I have a deep fear of prions.
The much more common scenario is the use of growth hormones in cows - to the point that pro athletes traveling/competing in Central and South America are instructed to avoid beef altogether as they later test positive in their drug tests for anabolic steroids.
I personally opt for meat over vegetarian options when given the choice to make sure I get sufficient protein (I do track and I struggle to get enough when eating vegetarian) but I still would vastly prefer more meat alternatives. I'm always very impressed by the Beyond options and I'm glad it's very slowly becoming more mainstream. I remember the first time I'd had an Impossible Burger was in San francisco about 10 years ago - a group of friends and I were talking about this "crazy meatless burger that still feels/tastes like meat" and we searched out a restaurant that offered it. The fact that national fast food chains are offering it now is indicative of the progress being made in society and normalizing the meatless alternatives.
> Looking at chimpanzee diets, I don't think our common ancestor was regularly eating burgers
Chimps literally eat other monkeys and even cannibalize other troops... They definitely eat meat.
The "dawn of man" was perhaps 100,000 years ago. Humans, in some regions, have been raising cattle for maybe 10% of that time. And for almost all of that 10%, beef was a luxury good eaten only on occasion except by the very rich. It was certainly not a staple food. Common people, when they ate meat, were much more likely to eat fish, sheep, and goats. Cattle were mostly raised for milk and as draught animals. There is absolutely nothing natural or ancient about contemporary consumption of factory-farmed beef, either in quantity or in the manner of production.
> And for almost all of that 10%, beef was a luxury good
This is simply not true. As soon as we were able, we ate almost all megafauna to extinction. Once we mastered pastoralism, peoples who engaged in it continued eating high-meat diets. Even for more settled peoples, going up to medieval or colonial times, beef or other meat was often present in a daily stew in some form.
You seem to think that the only way to eat a cow is to raise it. Humans have been hunting before a long time. Before cattle were domesticated, they were wild, and were hunted and eaten. So were other ruminants with similar meat flavors.
So yes, cattle (and their ancestors, and their relatives) have been human food since the dawn of man.
Not if you understand how Black Angus turns into that patty, or, more accurately, how Black Angus turns into Black Angus.
OTOH, plenty do attempt to source that single natural ingredient from somewhere that produces it as it was produced at the dawn of man. Unfortunately you'll find most such product claims are scams.
I stopped eating premium beef when I was old enough (5) to understand the meat packers' auction paid about the same for a dead cow we collected from the field as a live one. And ours were 100% field raised never barned, with few enough cattle rotating through fields that every field was primarily used to farm hay we sold to the mass producers.
IOW, can't get more natural, and can't get healthier cattle. If you wanted to eat one, you'd eat one of ours. And still, the packers didn't care if the carcass was alive or inexplicably dead.
"natural" does not mean healthy. "Processed" does not mean bad.
Something that feels and tastes like a reasonable substitute for meat but doesn't jack up my cholesterol is very much appreciated.
Diet has less effect on cholesterol than activity levels.
Eating cholesterol doesn't translate to cholesterol in the blood.
There are a lot of health conscious vegetarians who still like the taste of beyond burger. How is this so weird?
> the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man.
The fact that meat comes from a single source doesn’t make it automatically healthier, so is ricin, cyanide and polonium yet I wouldn’t include any of them in my diet. Plant based protein is healthier than its animal counterpart and this is proven by proper scientific studies, not by Tik-tok stars or nutrition “experts”.
>single natural ingredient
Unfortunately, it’s barely natural and there’s definitely more than one ingredient int he patty at McDonald…
I agree beyond is ultra processed. I disagree on the fact that it’s worse than most patty. Sure you have 100% organic beef patty, but in most burger places I got to, beyond still sounds like like the better choice, from a health point of view.
And let’s not forget the quantity of meat we consume, it’s too much anyway, yet another reason why a batons burger is probably better.
And finally, environmentally, also better than classic burger.
But it is true one could take a salad at McDonalds, that would be even better.
Modern industrial farming practices are so far removed from "natural" with how they are processed that an ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils is more far more "natural" by comparison.
If you want to simply go by societal resilience from biorisks then switching to more easily controllable substances like plant based meat for protein would be an absolute win.
I know a few fitness people and they've all moved past being overly worried about an ingredient list that includes words with multiple syllables. On the contrary, they usually seem pretty content to find out what all the oddities on an ingredient list mean.
Hamburger patties are processed, I don't know who y'all are kidding.
At the end of the day, red meat is bad for you. Processed red meat is in the same category as carcinogen as Alcohol and Tobacco. To put into perspective, diet coke is two categories lower. And it doesn't get much more artificial than that. Bacon is basically cigarettes in meat form, and hamburgers are just heart disease in a bun.
Believe it or not, starches and oils are genuinely healthier than meat. Meat is basically just bad for you, or at least most of it.
And before I hear more "dawn of man" stuff - uh, no. For most of human history, humans ate very little meat. It was mostly plants.
And, of the meat they did eat, it was nothing like the meat we have today. We eat extremely fatty farmed meat, they ate lean game meat. Farmed meat is a very new invention.
There is still lean meat today! Hamburgers are not it, though.
Same IARC group does not equal same risk. Group 1 just means the evidence is strong, not that the danger is equivalent. Smoking increases lung cancer risk by 2,000-3,000%. Daily processed meat increases colorectal cancer risk from around 4.5% to 5%. calling bacon "cigarettes in meat form" is wildly misleading.
Yes, I know that, my point is we know, almost definitely, that processed red meat causes cancer.
For many processes ingredients, like aspartame, we don't know. We're pretty sure it doesn't cause cancer. But from the way people talk about aspartame versus pastrami, you wouldn't know that.
And I stand by what I said about bacon. It's health detriments are much much worse than just colorectal risk - it heightens your risk of almost all cancers, similar to tobacco, due to inflammation and free radicals. And that's not even touching on heart disease, which is the more realistic concern.
It is good provocation even if it is poor analogy.
This is because bacon is more like cigarettes than most people assume, even if far less dangerous in practice.
Like another example is "sugar is poison." which is also structured as a factual equivalence and also gesturing at something real and also designed to land as a stronger claim than the evidence warrants.
Hamburgers are pretty lean. The meat is “processed” by mixing fatty cuts with lean cuts. So it ends up leaner than what the fat cut would have been.
And preservatives, and antimicrobial washes.
Hamburger patties are not very lean at all. 15% saturated fat is not lean. Lean is chicken breast or game deer.
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