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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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You don't seem to be taking nutrition into account. Meat is very good for you. Pea protein blended into a seed oil slurry isn't.

Meat, good for you? Probably. It's very nutrient rich, and the dangers lie in overdoing it or going for red meat or processed forms (at least when it comes to colon cancer).

I don't know if pea protein is bad, for some reason, and I remain unconvinced about the recent hubbub over seed oils.

I will find it hard to be convinced that the 27-ingredient hyper processed slurry being sold as a ‘burger’ is as good for you as either a steak or some good old rice and beans, but it’s fairly plausible that it’s not worse for you than a Big Mac.

It seems to me that the most replicable finding in nutrition science is that extremely processed foods(like soyrizo or the impossible burger, although also candy, Cheetos, hot dogs, Diet Coke, etc) are very bad for you, but that it’s impossible to define ‘processed foods’ well enough to cover the options and only the options. With that in mind I think we should be very cautious about vegan meat substitutes being healthy.

I suspect that it is not so much "processing" (why would blending up pork scraps and extruding them into a sausage shape change the nutrition) but specifically preservatives which are bad over time. Unfortunately, preservatives are usually introduced into processed foods to make them more consistent and less prone to spoilage, making them cheaper as well.

This seems plausible but IIRC there’s some noticeable trend discontinuities on it. Not sure though so don’t quote me.

In any case I suspect mass market vegan ‘meat’ will have even more preservatives than sausages and cheap ground beef do today.

Ground beef has preservatives? I had a quick look and I couldn't find any ground beef sold that contained anything else than literally ground beef.

Or do you mean ground beef products, like premade hamburgers?

I mean ground beef products and was using a catch all term for, like, McDonald’s hamburger Patties and stuff. Although, considering you’re in the EU, American food might have lots of preservatives yours doesn’t.

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