Or you eat meat, take care of what you in your body, and know these meat substitutes are a gimmick to put "health halos" on highly processed soy products that were formerly just sold to prisons.
For me, and I'm not sure how widespread this opinion is, it's not a health halo. I treat beyond/impossible burgers like I treat beef burgers: an occasional dietary splurge. I like them for a few reasons: more sustainably sourced, signalling with my pocketbook that alternatives are important, getting my kids ok with not eating meat occasionally (meatless Mondays sort of thing).
Yes that's what they're designed to do. Make you "feel" like you can contribute to meaningful solution not by pressuring large industrial polluters to do something but rather just make minor changes in your personal consumption habits.
I'm not sure why you're putting "feel" in quotes, voting with your pocketbook is a legitimate way of signalling to large industrial polluters to do something, right?
Not in the least. Consumerism is not a substitute for real policy.
Imagine if instead of freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln just instead made "Freedom Credits" that were issued to businesses that didn't use slave labor, but it allowed companies that used slave labor to purchase surplus "Freedom Credits" as offsets so they could claim they're making progress towards their ESG goals. Maybe it would become part of these companies advertising like "Fairtrade" has. The net result is that we would still have some kind of chattel slavery.
As ridiculous as this sounds, this is what we are doing when we defer to market based solutions to help nibble away at real policy issues. Also, consumer choices are already highly constrained by what the market bares.
I think you're mistaking me for Abraham Lincoln... I can't impose policy on the beef industry. Comparing the actions I took to the actions a historic US president took is not really appropriate commentary.
Millions voting with their pocket books can have the same impact; causing the industry to change because of reduced revenue. Especially if we can reach the tipping point where beyond/impossible becomes less expensive than beef.
In this analogy, Mark Rober would be your Abraham Lincoln, his video helped tip me towards eating more plant-based burgers, and has been seen 54M times.
Where I agree with you is that _policy_ is a much more direct and effective method of achieving similar ends. However I don't think eating less meat is comparable to carbon credits. The IPCC specifically lists it as a tried and true strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions.
The substitution of meat for other protein sources has real (albeit lagging) effects on the agricultural economy. Less people buying meat leads to less production of meat at scale, which in turn results in reduced deforestation (and potentially reforestation). Producing less meat leads to less greenhouse gas production at several points in the chain, most notably from reduced number of animals, but also during production and logistics. More forests contribute to carbon capture and biodiversity.
Probably the two biggest obstacles to consumer based solutions have been policy that subsidizes the cost of meat, and the cultural backlash to the idea of eating less meat (despite the many health + environmental incentives to reducing meat consumption overall).
Because it is a gimmick to make you feel like you're doing something, for the sole purpose of getting money from your pocket into theirs. You're not doing anything. The dr. feelgood insect and vegetarian "meat" products are heavily processed, requiring extra energy, fuel, and manpower.
Eating plant based meat instead of meat directly causes less animals to be factory farmed as demand is reduced. That reduces suffering, seems like something to me
You're moving the goalposts here, but neither the person I'm replying to nor you are really providing anything compelling about how unfit these are for consumption.
Wrong. Whether it's pea or soy, it's a distinction without a difference. They're substitutes that really offer no real quantifiable or societal health benefit that make people feel better about their consumption.
Protein is made up of different amino acids. If a food has all 9 essential amino acids humans need its called a "complete" protein.
It really does not matter, since presumably that is not the only food you eat. You need all the amino acids, but like any other nutrient, you don't need them all from the exact same source. As long as all the food you eat balances out the needed nutrients, you are good.
It'd be like saying, apples are unhealthy because it doesn't have literally every nutrient and if you only ate apples for the rest of your life you would be malnourished. Which is true but also a silly thing to say because nobody eats only apples.
There are a group of amino acids that the body has to get externally. There are a few veggies that do have all those amino acids, but I guess soy and peas don't
