It does seem counter productive to me, to market plant based protein as acting, looking and tasting just like animal based protein. I am waiting (not so) patiently for the media, markets and food industry to get behind and promote the petri dish rather than a sentient, resource consuming and waste producing animal to incubate the product. “One day, growing meat will be as mainstream as making cheese or beer”. Perhaps the NYT could accelerate awareness of such eating and investment options?
https://bistro-invitro.com/en/bistro-invitro/
https://www.memphismeats.com
https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2019/04/18/lab-grown-meat-companies-vancouver-canada/
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/made-in-canada-lab-grown-meat-a-possibility-after-grant-from-u-s-non-profit
8
How typical of humans that their turning away from the torture and killing of animals on a genocidal scale won't be caused by empathy or concern for suffering, but instead about desperately trying to preserve their own wasteful and destructive habitat a bit longer.
25
It is simply absurd clickbait to claim, as the headline to this article does, that "Fake Meat Will Save The Planet." If that is not self-evident, there is nothing that can be said to make it so.
The driving force behind anthropogenic global warming is the quadrupling of human population in just over a century coupled with a democratization of material expectations. Not only are there four times as many people consuming stuff but now, unlike in previous ages, most people believe it is their fundamental right to have as much stuff as anyone else.
Unless and until this reality is addressed, the rest is largely putting opium-laced band-aids on a shotgun blast to the chest. Sadly, not a single political candidate or pundit really addresses this fundamental issue. Nor have I seen any columns, let alone actual news articles, discussing this politically inconvenient truth in the Times. The "paper of record" would do better discussing those issues than claiming "Fake Meat Will Save The Planet."
24
Fake meat is not healthy for you. It is highly processed and refined. It often has unhealthy ingredients and is cooked in an unhealthy way. You are better off eating beans and rice.
29
I've told my sons it's perfectly valid to remain childless. I harbour no ambitions to be a grandmother.
23
There are so many ways that we, the fear-filled/want-filled locusts of the planet, with our voracious consumer appetites and our willingness to go around beating up whomever is portrayed as a "threat" by a fear-mongering media/pundit/political class are going to destroy ourselves that, sadly, I think that pretend meat ain't going to save nuthin, at least nuthin of any import.
10
Tim O'Brien wrote:
"...the Holocene, the Age of Man looks to be the End of Man. Perhaps in very short order."
PLEASE STOP IT. Humans are not about to go extinct. Now or any time in the future. We are far, far too resourceful for that to happen.
Please stop spreading scientific mush, especially in an otherwise great article.
5
I agree we must end factory farming, which "feeds" the animals and therefore the people who eat the animals, loads of unnecessary antibiotics, growth hormones and other nasty things.
(As well as being horrendously cruel to the animals).
BUT, the success of "fake meat" so far is a bit frightening. We can and must do better.
See: https://livingmaxwell.com/gmo-impossible-burger-glyphosate
The impossible burger and others like it contain glyphosate, the main ingredient of Round up herbicide and a KNOWN human carcinogen. WHY? I assume it must be profit-friendly in some way for these major companies to allow this.
(Glyphosate has been named in several major law suits of late, linking it definitively to Non-Hodgkins Leukemia, lymphoma, prostate, uterine and other cancers. See also: https://usrtk.org/pesticides/glyphosate-health-concerns/
see: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit/california-jury-hits-bayer-with-2-billion-award-in-roundup-cancer-trial-idUSKCN1SJ29F
17 European and other nations, including Germany, have banned glyposate. WE are one of the only major developed nations to still blithely use it everywhere.
We shouldn't knowingly consume it more than we are already.
11
Detroit , Chicago or Flint fake dogs?
I am still waiting for fake fois gras, fake snail, fake bloodwurst, and, most importantly, for fake head cheese. Until they become available, I will remain a vegetarian.
3
Most of this fake meat is gluten based. Yes, it does make it plant based but people with gluten intolerance, leaky gut, Celiac, or Crohn's cannot eat this.
3
"bleeds like meat"
Wow, what a very weird thing to say, I stopped reading there.
Haven't eaten meat for 42 years, and never lecture, or even imply lecture, folks about the topic. My issues are not others' issues.
8
States should encourage consumption of imitation meats in school lunches.
6
The world population has increased from about 3 billion in 1960 to almost 8 billion today (a doubling time of a little over 40 years, assuming exponential growth). U.S. population has increased over the same time frame from about 179 million to almost 330 million (a doubling time of just over 60 years). Imagine our children living in a world with 16 billion people, and a U.S. with almost 700 million. By the way, both India and China are getting close to 1.4 billion inhabitants.
It is time to stop thinking we can have as many children as we want. If you are the biological parent of more than two children, you are, personally, contributing to population increase.
As far as population and immigration are concerned, it's not a matter of race or racism, just mathematics. If we were to divide all of the land area of the Earth (including Antarctica, Greenland, all the deserts and mountains...), equally, amongst all the people of the Earth, each one of us would get about five acres (an acre is slightly smaller than an NFL football field, not counting the end zones). Now, imagine trying to get all your needs for subsistence from that five acres (food, clothing, shelter & materials, fuel and energy, mining...). If U.S. lands were divided equally amongst its citizens, each would get about 7.4 acres. In India, the number would be about 0.3 acres per person.
We humans, have already infested the planet to the point where the natural world can't survive.
12
513 comments and counting but no mention of the one presidential candidate who is basing his entire campaign
on providing 'real leadership on climate change'. That would be Washington State governor Jay Inslee. Serious climate change
observers should strongly consider supporting his campaign.
5
Because for once there is something not about him.... let’s not make this about him.
2
We need to be careful, as vitamin B12 is very hard to absorb from anything other than animal proteins, and it's not something you can supplement by swallowing a tablet. most folks won't want injections, sublinguals or nasal spray, and a sudden surge of anemias won't do much for our already overstressed physiology. and some of us, the thousands in the world with hereditary anemias like sickle cell and thalassemia, can't easily overcome the deficit that meatless diets would cause. in some parts of the world, numbers of children can't get by without animal proteins.
4
This would never work as a solution to climate change. If hypothetically all countries and territories were to stop eating meat or at the very least drastically decrease the amount of meat consumed this would only delay the inevitable by a small percentage. We all know that not every country or territory will consume less meat. Some people just won't want to give up meat as they enjoy the taste. Others like myself don't see this as being beneficial to anything . Cows might take a lot of water to sustain before butchering or chickens need to be given many injections to stop disease but this won't stop the big game which is political.
Politics and economies that depend on burnable substances or lumber companies should be more addressing than what most of us eat. Look, doing everything a person can do for the environment that a person can physically do is good for the sake of the planet but one more person not eating meat just won't take the problem away. Soy, vegan, or any plant based burgers only use simple ingredients such as water, soy, plant oils, and easy to produce vegetables. This would be easy to mass produce to the world if the entire world wanted these burgers.
Perhaps in the future when the changing environment is more addressing or when the food industry decides to mass produce these plant based patties on a global scale will everyday people decide to eat less meat on a daily.
Most of the water that it takes to produce beef is the water it takes to grow grain and hay, as well as watering pastures. Most of this water is simply, rainfall. A steer is only going to drink about 5000-6000 gallons of water before it is butchered, including what its mother drinks to produce the milk the calf is drinking.
I would like someone to tell me the source and nature of the damage being done to the planet by raising livestock.
2
Cows produce methane, abundantly, but if sea weed is added to their diet, they produce a lot less. The argument about meat having to be eliminated from our diets is not settled.
We also have a lot more food to eat and we eat a lot more food, too. Not eating so much would improve out health. Wasted food that is dumped to rot, produces methane. So do the organic waste from leveling forests.
It's good to start the conversation but we really don't what are the most useful solutions, yet.
3
As you are a confessed meat lover, I appreciate your effort here towards educating your readers. The quote above does not apply to me. I have followed a vegetarian diet for almost three decades and was raised in a home in which my parents provided the now fashionable Mediterranean diet, at the time, regarded as peasant fare.
American consumers have been led astray by agribusiness and the faux food manufacturing corporations marketing cheap, barely edible junk. So although I never patronize them and prefer to fix my own food at home, I am glad that Burger King and others are offering something else that might be accepted by more of their customers.
However, you have not mentioned the higher price of these plant based foods. Americans are used to cheap food and will balk at paying twice as much for fake meat. That doesn’t even take into account those who are in the lowest income levels where obtaining good nutrition for themselves and their families is a constant struggle.
3
"Where's the beef?"
(The question we all ask about the Trumpty administration.)
2
I've bee one of the 8% vegetarians in the US for decades, Frankly, I eat like a king. The Middle Eastern dips I made today -muhammara (with peppers, walnuts, pomegranate molasses, etc), hummus (with delicious sesame tahini) and a raw beet dip (from last week's NY Times food article)- are scrumptious and filled with protein and healthy fats. You don't need 'fake' meat to enjoy eating vegetarian. It's not hard to stop eating meat one or two more days a week
I'd also like to say 'whatever you eat, what's probably even more important, is what you do when you get up from the table to help our precious earth.'
13
Sorry Tim, but I'll have my Angus beef burger, medium rare, with cheese and bacon, on a toasted bun. Buon Appetito!
6
And you’ll have clogged arteries. Enjoy!
4
Hamburger should be cooked to 160 degrees F to kill the E. coli.
2
Love Egan's writing and this story.
The average household uses 100 gallons per person per day.
A family of three would use about 2000 gallons per week.
The figure stated in the article is incorrect.
Thanks for the otherwise great article.
1
Euch-fake meat
1
Finally! This discussion about our food system has been left out of the climate change debate for way too long. People think that driving a hybrid car and reducing plastic use is all they can do to slow or stop the juggernaut of climate change, but changing what they eat if far more important, not only for our planet's heath but also for the health of the human body.
9
We live on a very small spacecraft, in a very large universe, and there is not another one handy. If we don't get control of the human population in this world, we will destroy it. We inherited a paradise, and are turning it into a garbage dump and sewer.
The world population has increased from about 3 billion in 1960 to almost 8 billion today (a doubling time of a little over 40 years, assuming exponential growth). US population has increased over the same time frame from about 179 million to almost 330 million (a doubling time of just over 60 years). Imagine our children living in a world with 16 billion people, and a U.S. with almost 700 million. By the way, both India and China are getting close to 1.4 billion inhabitants.
If you are the biological parent of more than two children, you are, personally, contributing to population increase.
It's not cows whose population needs to be limited, but people.
5
Eat over-priced vegan junk food to save the planet. I'm sure that will offset all the coal power plants China is building in Southeast Asia and Africa, along with their and India's rapidly rising emissions.
I thought maybe he was kidding, but he's not.
7
These companies, like most, care first about their bottom line, not the planet. Until the carbon footprint is truly reflected in the price of everything we consume - from plane tickets to gas to tech gadgets to food - human behavior will not change. The only hope we have is policy from the top. Please stop with vegan/vegetarian moral superiority. It only alienates people from the cause.
4
Great point about not having kids. Why is this such a charged topic? Fortunately, many, many young people today are choosing this "alternative" lifestyle for many reasons including the environment.
9
Changing our farming methods can reduce ghg emissions while avoiding deforestation. A win win on climate change as explained nicely here: http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/forests-farms-global-carbon-sink-happening/
4
i am in inveterate meat eater. but i would be much happier if the meat i was eating was grown in a petri dish. the recent killing of millions of hogs in asia is particularly distressing.
3
3 million piggies and counting
2
Both my grandparents ate meat and both lived to 90. I mostly drink Kefir yogurt and eat chicken. But I love a good burger now and then. I'm very worried about the climate (and my body-I'm very healthy) but until congress gets on board I think were doomed.
1
It is estimated that in the early 19th century about 60 million bison roamed the Great Plains of the US and Canada. The current US/Canadian beef and dairy herds total about 45 million animals. Bison (buffalo) like cattle are ruminant animals: they have fourth stomachs and chew their cud. It's the attendant belching that causes most of the methane. Bison are much larger animals than cattle. So the amount of methane they contributed to the atmosphere must have exceeded that caused by today's cattle. If the buffalo were still roaming the Plains and we culled the herd for food rather than raising cattle, would we be arguing for eliminating the buffalo to solve the problem of human caused climate change? I doubt it.
There may be good reasons for people to eschew beef to improve their own health. I only eat chicken and fish. But laying off human caused climate change on ruminants consumed by humans does not appear to be one of them, from an historical perspective.
3
@M. Johnson check your figures. As of Jan 1, the cattle population of the US alone was 94 million over double your estimate not including Canada. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Cattle/inv.php
2
Better for the climate, better for the cows, better for our health.
5
If we make the switch to fake meat, a law requiring it to be infused with vitamin B12 would be essential to maintaining America's health. Few people are aware of how important this vitamin is, without which humans begin suffering nerve and brain damage within a few weeks. Meat is one of the most important sources of it, also fish, eggs and dairy. We used to be able to get it from almost any plant food, until we started washing them with chlorinated water, which kills off the microscopic flora live in the dirt coating plants and produce B12 in the guts of most animals - except man, who has decided he likes his food dirt free.
So unless we want to see a huge B12 deficiency in our population, we'll have to either supplement it in the fake meat, increase our intake of fish, dairy and eggs - or get used to sprinkling raw dirt on our food.
3
@Bill
Not just B12. Vitamin K2 as well, which is very important in many ways -- the best sources are grassfed beef and dairy products. Try googling "The Calcium Paradox" to learn more about Vitamin K2 (not to be confused with Vitamin K1).
4
You see the irony in this, don't you, Mr. Egan? People all over Asia, especially, have practiced very healthy, meatless, vegetarian diets for thousands of years. So why meat at all, that is, why "fake meat" when all one needs to do is eat a balanced vegetarian diet?
10
I am a US Expat living in Cambodia. Hmm I wonder why I tower over the locals, and look huge in my small 5’6” frame I blame the dreaded meat protein. As soon as I adopted the local food (Khmer food is amazing by the way, I noticed a significant drop in my weight; I went from a 34” waist to a 31. I am carrying less weight on my already small frame and have never felt better. Being bigger isn’t necessarily better, unless you have “size” issues about everything. I still eat meat, but limit it to fish, and chicken, and have never felt healthier.
2
It is absurd to claim as the headline to this article does that "Fake Meat Will Save The Planet." The driving force behind anthropogenic global warming is the quadrupling of human population in just over a century coupled with a democratization of material expectations.
Unless and until this reality is addressed, the rest is largely putting opium-laced band-aids on a shotgun blast to the chest. Sadly, not a single political candidate really addresses this fundamental issue. Nor have I seen any columns, let alone actual news articles saying this in the Times recently.
3
@Steve Fankuchen
Methane is an important component in global warming, as it has 2500 times the heat trapping capability of carbon dioxide.
1
I would have thought that something like the Impossible Burger would be greeted with excitement, but the comments on this article show otherwise.
Is it because this is a success of pure capitalism? Product and marketing innovation making it possible to have your veggie burger and enjoy it too? Evidence of the potential for free markets to respond to the threat of climate change, without having to rely on our dysfunctional governments?
Pessimism helps nobody. Something like Impossible Burger, at scale, is massively good for the environment. Instead of trying to turn everything into a parable about how Trump is the end of everything, why don't we take the win?
2
Most of the beef raised in Montana is on land that is not fit for production of vegetables.
1) In NE Montana we only get about 9 inches of rain per year. Raising vegetables to make "burgers" would require massive irrigation from Aquifers that could not be sustained. The aquifers could not replenish fast enough to keep up, and would collapse, NEVER to refill (destroying an otherwise sustainable resource). People from Oklahoma, Texas, and elsewhere, are familiar with this phenomenon.
2) Much of the land in Montana should never be broken (tilled). Working up the grasslands would end in massive erosion problems, not just from hilly terrain, but soil quality as well.
3) Working up hilly land up here, produces the potential for large areas of saline seep (try growing crops in salty land...some California farmers are familiar with this...salt can also come from the irrigation wells).
Bottom line...the best and most responsible use for some of our agricultural land is the raising of livestock.
7
@Razs
This is an important aspect of the situation. by Taking as a given that there is no reasonable alternative use for a portion of our land, our choices are either return the land to nature or use it approximately as it is used now.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect the USA would have to drastically reduce the consumption of animal products if the raising of livestock was limited to these areas. If we get our rate of consumption down to anywhere near that point, we can talk about what to do.
3
@Alan
What do you think about raising corn for fuel? About 40% of the US corn crop is used to produce ethanol.
Reminds me of a true detective story. A couple of good old boys in Greeley, Colorado burglarized a refrigerated container at a Montfort meat packing plant. It was at night and they filled their pickups with dozens of big waxed boxes. On the way out of the out they were busted. The Weld County sheriff’s deputies opened the boxes and they were full of steer rectums headed for the grinders. Hamburgers or dog food. The cowboys thought they had stolen prime steaks. They were angry and upset because they might have to go to prison for stealing steer anus’. Every time I read an E. coli hamburger story I think of those two thieving cowboys and wonder if they’re now vegans.
8
The animal/meat/dairy industry is pathetically cruel and turns animals into objects (meat/cheese/milk...) for profit with no concern for the pain and suffering of the animals. And people who eat meat are complicit in that suffering. I have been enjoying the benefits of a plant-based whole foods diet for several decades and have no plans to ever eat meat again. Absolutely no reason to. However, being the skeptic that I am, I have little faith that humans will stop eating meat. Especially humans in first world countries (USA) who have repeatedly shown their lack of concern and interest in making any kind of sacrifice to improve the planet's well being. People will continue to over-consume, use plastic, drive monster pick up trucks, guzzle fossil fuels, eat meat, have too many children, deny climate change, lower taxes on the rich, and support people like Trump. Although individual people on this planet often show great kindness and virtue, humans as a species are a menace to the planet and all other species who share the blue dot with us.
12
While the Gallup Poll shows that veganism is static in the population, other polls show that the numbers are growing, especially among 25-34 year olds, 25% of which identify as vegan or vegetarian. In any case, thank you for finally, finally quoting the Poore and Nemecek Science article in the NYT, and acknowledging that other than not having children, eating plant-based is the most impactful action we can take as individuals to lower our carbon footprint. The devastation to the planet caused by animal agriculture, especially industrial agriculture, is on par with if not worse than every other sector, including oil and gas. Yet scientists and environmentalists still look the other way when the subject is raised (if it's raised). I just attended my son's graduation at UC Santa Barbara, and the commencement speaker--a professional environmental scientist--waxed poetic about everything we can do except consume fewer animal products and improve our food systems. A real blind spot still. So thank you for your article.
6
@Carolyn Keen
I'm happy you were able to travel across the country for the important event of your son's graduation, but have to wonder if the 'professional environmental scientist' said anything about jet air travel ? Or was he like my sister, who enthusiastically praises a friend 'who flies all over the world warning people about climate change'. Say what ? (Maybe the friend should try Skyping instead . . .)
1
I tried an Impossible Burger at Lucky Burger in Chelsea a few weeks back, out of curiosity. I was blown away! Delicious
5
Actually, not having kids is the biggest thing you can do to save the planet.
But we're not allowed to say that.
281
@r a
It was a perfectly acceptable discussion back in the 1970's however. What happened ? And in the early 1990's I actually had a t-shirt which said, "It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy a battleship'. Now the military has become a totally sacred cow, regardless of all their errors and excesses and the fact that they are a huge contributor to greenhouse gases. I have seen a total of zero comments on this article referencing anything having to do with military contributions to global warming.
35
@irene
The military is a big contributor, but it is hard, at least for the USA, to make it less of one, because it is optimized to fight and meet its financial budgets. Applying environmental constraints to anything related to that mission would not only be expensive, but it could be terrible for morale.
To the original post, having children is not bad for the planet if one raises people eat almost vegan, not fly on jet airplanes, choose where they live reasonably and keep their cars and houses in working order as long as they possibly can. As Americans, losing population means low or no economic growth, a weaker military (that could keep dictators from ghastly environmental practices), and most of all a culture that increasingly sees life as a zero sum game. These are all worse outcomes than a few more mouths to feed.
@r a
Hear! Hear!
The religious and economists melt down with the mention of controlling reproduction in any respect, and certainly frank discussion of being childless.
Want to save the planet? Want to end global warming? Want Whales to survive and salmon runs to return and Monarchs to migrate to Mexico? Quit having kids. Problems solved. Well, maybe in a generation or so problems solved, but yes, problem solved.
29
I live in a rural area where farming is big and it has changed what I eat dramatically. I will never eat chicken ever again. If you see how 50,000 chickens are housed inside football field long "houses" or CAFOs as they are called, trucked to their death in the middle of the night, to a "processing facility" - it is horrid. Those $6 chickens - no thanks.
Cows consume massive amounts of water. 80 gallons of water to make a few pounds of hamburger meat - this is totally not sustainable.
We are killing our planet and we are killing animals in a barbaric way. Just start saying no. I have.
231
@Sarah99 Actually the article stated 660 gallons of water for one hamburger patty. The amount the average household uses in one week. Barbaric in more ways than one.
7
@Doggirl58
You are aware that almost all of that water (over the life of the animal) lands right back on the ground, in an agriculturally enriched form . . .
This use of numbers is highly disingenuous.
7
@irene You're right that the animal waste is enriching to the soil, but only if it has the time to break down properly and away from waterways. Unfortunately, the "enrichment" becomes pollution when the number of animals grossly exceeds the capacity of the land they're on to break down the waste, as is the case with the concentrated feedlots that produce most of the meat eaten in the United States. This is no longer the era of small ranchers and farmers producing food sustainably.
18
I know it's a sad situation, having a jerk like Trump sitting around our White House - probably burning cigarette holes into and getting hamburger grease stains all over the bedspreads - as if he owns the place....
... However, I couldn't help laughing after reading the caption under the tree planting ceremony photo.
2
A free ad for fake meat. You can do better, Egan.
1
It looks like the tree was dead at planting, not "later died". Notice the trees in the background are in full leaf, and the women are dressed for warm weather, yet the sapling Trump is pretending to plant (likely be through in one shovelful of dirt for the photo-opp) is leafless. Perhaps he had already touched it-instantly killing it
2
A meat-based diet is devastating for the planet, bad for people's health, and hell on the vast majority of animals raised for food. The only thing for a compassionate, thinking, responsible person to do is to eat a whole lot less meat, if not none at all.
6
As a farmer who raises pastured chicken and pork we use and greatly improve (and sequester carbon)on marginal land. There are millions of acres of land that can be used this way to produce nutrient dense food. I agree that feedlots, CAFOs and battery chicken houses produce crappy food and climate outcomes So does glysophate GMO laden corn and soy raised by corporate farms. Ultimately we have to make less people.
2
Alternative "meat" products claims that they the solution to planetary climate change should be considered bogus. Media needs to interrogate Beyond Meat's 'good for the Planet' vs.beef shoot-down claims. Labriculture’s widely touted climate change solution claims are being disproved. LEAP (Livestock, Environment and People) Program led by Oxford University - assessing the climate-change impacts of lab-grown vs. farmed beef - found that lab-grown meat could be worse for the planet. In addition to investigating these claim New York Times could take a deeper look at Beyond Meat's ethics. Starting with Seth Goldman. Former Honest Team founder whose sleight-of-hand "ethical" marketing built the brand on the back of poor Fairtrade farmers. Selling to Coke he cashed out with $100M+ while sharing 0% of this windfall with poor farmers. At Beyond Meat he inveigled into a "advisor" position - securing 4 rounds of pennies-on-the-dollar equity purchasing in part-funded by a Beyond Meat buddy $1M loan. With the +500% rise in Beyond Meat's share price, Goldman is again set to make up to $300M windfall ..... Questions: Are Beyond Meat claimed climate change benefits just another Goldman sleight-of-hand duping, and is it ethical for an individual- like Goldman - to misrepresent his Honest Tea brand's "do good pro-Poor" ethical conduct to become a Fairtrade Millionaire without sharing a portion of that wealth with the poor Developing countries farmers that enabled him to build the brand?
5
@Tell-it-like-it-is
Plenty of people have been vegan long before fake meats. They are tasty and a great way for people used to meat to transition without giving up the grilling etc. that surrounds their meat consumption. In a century, people may have no attachment to real hamburgers etc. and the market for fake ones could dwindle.
OK, I'm game. Where can I get a fake burger?
4
If you have BurgerFi in your area, I recommend their Beyond Burger. Reading this article made me crave one!
2
@Perry White, I'm with you! I'm going to find one and see if I can cut the meat down and hopefully out at some point.
All you "global warming is fake" republicans out there .. veganism doesn't mean anyone's asking you to hate plants more than love animals.
Just chill.
Our life habits have changed since we worked the farms and walked to places. No wonder obesity is on the rise.
Veganism won't kill you, try it.
3
Good idea, but many of these good ideas are a temporary band-aide. Until human overpopulation is strictly controlled, we will destroy our planet. At this point all countries should follow China's policy of no more then two children.
4
Does anyone else out there think that the headline for this article does us all a disservice? Wouldn’t something like “New Meat Will Save Us” be a better reflection on what is intended in the reporter’s premise? It may seem trivial...and some may argue (as the Meat industry already is) that we can’t even call plant based burgers and such “meat”. But “Fake” anything leads with a negative, as our current president has so cleverly shown us.
1
The byline on this opinion piece is flat our wrong.
Changing what we eat isn't the single biggest thing we can do.
Instead, the single biggest thing impacting climate that progressive dance around is population--control the number births. Each new human being born into the world is bigger contributor to climate change than animals raised for slaughter or coal or whatever else.
However, this would be a politically charged conversation. Who decides who will have access to procreation? Should the rich have more babies if they pay a carbon tax? Should everyone be subject to just a single child like China's earlier policy? Will mass sterilization be considered to save the planet?
I don't hear progressives talking about population. They just like nibbling around the edges of the conversation but their intellectual proposals are weak at best.
6
"More than 500 million years after life took hold on earth..." is not quite accurate. Microbial Mat Fossils are dated to 3.4 billion years. And if it weren't for the cyanobacteria of those ancient days altering the biosphere with over population (taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and filling it with oxygen), life as we know it would not have occurred. And in doing so, making the planet less habitable for themselves.
Geologic History repeating itself?
1
I have absolutely zero interest in these "fake meat" alternatives.
For one, they have a much higher level of sodium than actual beef. If you prefer to substitute some cholesterol in real meat and subject yourself to increased hypertension risk, these fake alternatives are a good way to go.
Furthermore, these alternatives are packed with soy. The hormonal changes elicited by this ingredients aren't well reported or researched for my comfort and I will stay away from it due to an abundance of caution.
3
Not completely true. Not all of them are soy-based and not all of them are high sodium. But it's not just about you.
6
It is absurd to claim as the headline to this article does that "Fake Meat Will Save The Planet." The driving force behind anthropogenic global warming is the quadrupling of human population in just over a century coupled with a democratization of material expectations.
Unless and until this reality is addressed, the rest is largely putting opium-laced band-aids on a shotgun blast to the chest. Sadly, not a single political candidate really addresses this fundamental issue.
6
The animals that are having the most profound, and irreversible, impact on the Earth and its climate are HUMANS. It would be impossible to raise enough beef for everyone in the world to eat as much as we do (not enough land area), but why do we have to stop eating meat, just because OTHER COUNTRIES have been so irresponsible about population control?
As far as population and immigration are concerned, it's not a matter of race or racism, just mathematics. If we were to divide all of the land area of the Earth (including Antarctica, Greenland, all the deserts and mountains...), equally, amongst all the people of the Earth, each one of us would get about five acres. Now, imagine trying to get all your needs for subsistence from that five acres (food, clothing, shelter & materials, fuel and energy, mining...). If U.S. lands were divided equally amongst its citizens, each would get about 7.4 acres. In India, the number would be about 0.3 acres per person. We humans, have already infested the planet to the point where the natural world can't survive.
Over half the people in the world live in “poverty” (over 5 billion, 15 times our entire U.S. population, exist on $10 or less per day), and we can’t solve that problem by allowing them to immigrate here.
WE HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO OVERPOPULATE OUR COUNTRY, just because other people have already ruined theirs with UNCONTROLLED POPULATION GROWTH.
4
It’s too sodium-laced to eat.
1
The extreme cruelty of factory farming, and animal agriculture in general, can become a thing of the past if people switch to plant-based meats, seafood, dairy, and eggs. There is great progress being made in each of those groups. Until these new foods are widely available (and many already are, such as plant-based milks), there is nothing wrong with eating traditional plant-based foods instead of animal-based foods.
5
Seeing how most industrial burgers, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and so forth hardly look or taste like real meat anyway, this is a fantastic development.
4
Fake meat, vegan/vegetarian diet good for the planet?
I wish some sort of balance would tip in society toward this type of diet. In fact I am not ashamed to admit to being totalitarian or at least willing to have society be much more disciplined than today when it comes to human beings and food. I am mostly vegetarian (still eat fish, dairy products such as yogurt) but wouldn't mind even being forced by law to embark on a nutrition program which is as scientific and as helpful to human health and the planet as possible. I've been eating veggie burgers for years, tofu, etc. But even eating healthy I still think I don't eat nearly as well as I could be and my discipline, care of food intake, is awful, I simply eat too much, I'm a wolf, a slob, chowing down too much at a sitting and then becoming a sloth, wasting time, energy, brain power digesting food. I wonder how much brainpower, common sense, creativity is wasted on poor nutrition/discipline with respect to food. Maybe humans are just irrational animals, incapable of controlling diet, reproduction, etc. How do the most reasonable people among us behave? I also wonder if vegans/vegetarians will become a persecuted minority group the more it becomes obvious that there is a strong correlation between these diets and personal health not to mention health of the planet. Since when has power in society ever been able to stand a minority group showing it up in any course of action, thought, practice, not to mention one profound?
Asia has recently killed more than 3 million pigs infected with African Swine Flu. In China, companies linked to criminals were trying to sell beef that was 40 years old and mislabeled. Our customs folks stops cargo from China because of rancid and infected meat and fish. Influenza originates from bird populations. Remember SARS and China’s attempts to hide the problem? Folks, a pandemic is in our future and it will likely come from livestock, probably out of China, where the government is incapable on monitoring practices of three-hundred million small farms that raise chickens, ducks, tilapia, catfish, pigs, shrimp, etc. Given the dangers of our transnational and opaque food supply, I’ll throw a veggie burger on the grill any day.
4
Why waste your time writing this article when you yourself know the best way to fight climate change is with real leadership, changing our political climate, and convincing enough Americans this is an existential threat to our existence to vote the climate deniers out of office. Spend every once of your writing energy on the topic that will actually get us out of this mess. Please stop shaming Americans for living in the system that we have built. Please write an article that might make a difference!
3
@Megan
Politicians eventually respond to the people. The opposite is less common and often involves a shooting war or another form of disaster response.
If people cut way back on jet travel and meat consumption, politicians will take a hint and move aggressively on policy areas related to power generation, electrification, recycling, etc.
A “Veggie Burger” is NOT the same as plant-based burger. Don’t know if the plant-based burger is healthy, but it sure does taste like a real beef burger. AND, even Veggie Burgers (unless you make them yourself, and you can), have a lot of preservatives, chemicals.
If you need a burger, have a good one, maybe once or twice a year. If you need a burger more often, the plant-based burgers are outstanding.
2
I'm pretty sure chicken and pork, grown in pens and eating grains, are much, much less harmful to the planet than the red meats, grown on pastureland.
It was recently determined that the U.S. will spend $400 billion in the next 20 years protecting its various coastlines from sea level rise, using a moderate (i.e. not a worst case) warming scenario. That's as much as we spent on the interstate, which arguably had a huge positive impact on our economy. This is just money down a hole, to protect stuff we shouldn't have had to protect. And, of course, after 20 years, those costs will increase dramatically. Bottom line: we really need to get a handle on this problem.
Attention Timothy Egan, climate change opinion writer. When providing evidence of climate change or global warming in an argument, I strongly suggest citing trends in values such as temperature, as opposed to stating a specific value, at a specific location, at a specific point in time. When you cite the specifics then someone will quickly counter your argument with the opposite occurring somewhere else at the same point in time.
Either that or get an expert to write these opinion pieces.
2
First, it should be known that the Frankenstein creation was not genetically engineered, but grafted from several different individuals. He had much more in common with organic apples and grapes (both of which are grafted onto root stocks) than with hybrids or GMO's.
Second, at what point is a product highly processed? And why the obsession on ingredient counts? How does this processing differ from buying the raw ingredients yourself for your favorite meal, then chop, dice, grind and mix them and finally subject them to the chemical transformations that is cooking?
So far I've eaten the Impossible Burger at Burgatory and at Red Robyn.
I haven't eaten beef since 1988, so I'm not authority on the subject.
All I know is that they were both delicious and went well with red wine.
Yum.
1
YES and NO. Yes, dumping meat from our diet will have a huge, positive effect on individuals and on the planet and its non-human citizens. No, it's just a pinprick compared to what's needed to save life on earth. What WILL save us is drastically reducing human reproduction. Even maintaining the current level of world population will soon lead to the end of life. I believe we now see the beginnings of higher social status for people with one or no children. Let's help this concept spread across our country and across the earth.
5
I love Impossible Burgers but I was surprised that they are very high calorie and have as much fat as a meat burger. So, yes, eat them, but know that the fat is there. (of course that's why they taste so good.)
As many people here have commented, a really conscious awake individual knows -- agri-business, damage done by the oil, gas, and coal industries, deniers of global warming, and just generally an attitude of "it's not my problem" on both sides of the equation is the biggest issue. The super rich fly in their private planes, the very poor eat burgers and fries at McDonald's or Burger King. Clean food is too expensive in terms of purchase by the very poor (even working poor) and too time consuming for the very rich to think about. (They don't shop, cook and clean up in any way on their own.)
The way to save the planet is for most people to understand that the planet needs saving. We are a long way from that.
2
There is really only one reason to eat meat, it tastes good. And there are an easy dozen reasons, including its carbon footprint, to not eat meat.
4
“I love a flank steak fresh off the grill, a leg of lamb seasoned and slow-cooked, a brat at a ballpark, as do most of us.”
As you are a confessed meat lover, I appreciate your effort here towards educating your readers. The quote above does not apply to me. I have followed a vegetarian diet for almost three decades and was raised in a home in which my parents provided the now fashionable Mediterranean diet, at the time, regarded as peasant fare.
American consumers have been led astray by agribusiness and the faux food manufacturing corporations marketing cheap, barely edible junk. So although I never patronize them and prefer to fix my own food at home, I am glad that Burger King and others are offering something else that might be accepted by more of their customers.
However, you have not mentioned the higher price of these plant based foods. Americans are used to cheap food and will balk at paying twice as much for fake meat. That doesn’t even take into account those who are in the lowest income levels where obtaining good nutrition for themselves and their families is a constant struggle.
3
most vegetarians, and especially vegans, i know do not crave the taste of meat in any form. they are actually put off by this source of protein. it is we meat lovers that need to be persuaded... i love vegetables, have no trouble eating meatless meals a few days a week... but it will be a long time before one of the Impossible burgers will sway me from craving a lamb chop or real hamburger or a loin of pork. i'd rather skip meat and go for real vegetables and not take my chances with soy -- which these days is also considered an "iffy" food substitute.
1
I am not vegan but most of my meals end up that way. So I must ask - why not just eat unprocessed plant food? Southern Europe and the Middle East boast many wonderful vegan main courses. Many Indian dishes are vegan if they don't contain ghee or yoghurt. Other cuisines also feature wonderful dishes without animal products. Simple cooked vegetables are sublime if they are fresh. Legumes and whole grains provide a healthy diet.
Vegetable burgers will never replace meat for me. I have only ever tasted one vegetable burger that I liked - a local restaurant produced a black bean burger with the dense chewy texture of falafel (which I also like.) Most of the vegetable burgers I have tried have a soft smooth texture which I find unpalatable with the traditional bun and toppings. I do enjoy tofu cubes, marinated and grilled, but I do not want those anywhere near bread. It is easier for me to give up meat and turn to the many delicious dishes out there that don't contain animal products. That may not work for others but...there is some really good non-animal food out there that is not processed. I have read somewhere that it takes 9 tries for a new food to become palatable.
3
I'm torn on this. This week my wife and I have eaten one meal consisting of delicious, prime, perfectly grilled beef steak and another of excellent, melt-in-your-mouth perfectly seared ahi tuna steak. We don't do this often (too often for many) and it doesn't always turn out so perfect. But they sure were yummy.
I feel guilty.
On the other hand. I am convinced that humans have turned the corner on extinction and daily it seems like it will come sooner than my previous gloomy prediction. And mankind has done absolutely nothing beyond lip service to address our environmental problems. It will now take such a herculean effort to even put off our extinction for a short while that it seems hopeless.
Population control is the heart of so many of our problems, environmental and otherwise and this issue is not only not being addressed. we have brainiacs in leadership positions, editors of this paper, even scientists who are worried that we are not producing enough humans. It's like saying you don't have enough gasoline in your house when it's engulfed in flames.
I live modestly and hate to waste anything. I recycle paper, cardboard, cans, bottles and plastic primarily because it makes me feel good and I don't think about where the "recycled" stuff actually ends up.
So I should quit the above vices since this is the most effective thing I can do to fight climate change? I'll think about it.
1
I became a vegetarian 14 years ago (in high school, to my parents' delight) due to concerns about animal cruelty. I didn't know it was better for the environment too. If you're considering cutting back on meat, there's more to vegetarian food than fake meats and tofu. But, just in case, most restaurants will substitute a veggie patty for any burger on a menu, if you ask.
5
As a Type 2 diabetic, I control my diabetes by lowering my carb intake to (around) 25 g per day. I am not overweight, my a1c is better than some non-diabetics, and so my diabetes has "reversed" as long as I continue to eat LCHF or low carb (which I have for 3 years+). One impossible burger patty is 29g of carbs and it surpasses my daily goals for total carb intake. Meat, on the other hand, has zero carbs. I do not take medication. I do not over-eat protein and I fast once a week. My calories come from: natural meat, low carb veggies, full natural unprocessed fats like olive oil, dairy like cheese, yogurt and very heavy cream. I have controlled my condition without the use of any drugs. The low carb way of eating focuses on fresh meat and fresh low carb veggies and natural fats. The impossible burger is processed food and so are most of its ingredients. It is high in carbs which will spike my blood sugar and wreak havoc with my insulin sensitivity. This won't work for me.
7
Study after study tells us the three worst things we're doing as individuals in terms of exacerbating climate change are our food choices (particularly meat and dairy), our transportation choices (personal cars and planes), and our reproductive choices (particularly multiple children per family). It may not be possible to avoid all of those things, but we can certainly cut back on our meat consumption, our airplane travel, and the number of kids we choose to have. No one is necessarily saying stop eating meat and going on vacation, but consciously cutting back will have a real impact. Saying these things aren't true or that your choices don't matter just because having to make a change is inconvenient or uncomfortable is not helping anyone and just makes you seem as ignorant as the climate denying, anti-science rubes we all roll our eyes at.
3
Would you rather eat a so-called "frankenfood" or support the artificial creation and torture of franken-animals? Chickens with breasts so large they can't walk (and with beaks chopped off), pigs with myriad health issues from hooves to organs, artificially inseminated cows forced to pregnancy and milking their entire dreary lives?
These are not animals that are captured in the wild, they are artificially produced and manipulated in unfathomable numbers yet still sadly sentient enough to feel the pain.
All of it propped up by subsidies that are prolonging the agony for the animals, the planet and people.
Stop the false comparisons. This is a no-brainer for any caring person.
6
Eureka! This article is right on the money! Finally... we are talking about the biggest cause of destruction to our planet: animal agriculture!!! So-called environmentalists who eat animals and their by-products must stop engaging in willful ignorance! We are 7.7 billion humans but we raise and kill in the range of 70 billion land animals for food every year, who eat a lot more than they produce as food. It's inefficient and wasteful! THEIR carbon footprint is our real problem! If you add in fish, the number is in the trillions! About 3/4's of all soy we grow is fed to farm animals! Meanwhile, children in the third world are dying of malnutrition! And, processed meat is officially cancer causing. And, heart disease is our leading killer, cause by arteries clogged with plaque/cholesterol, which comes from animal products. I hope we are finally waking up! Thanks to the marketplace, you can get vegan milks, meats, cheeses, ice creams. Switch over now please. We are running out of time!
2
@Jane Velez-Mitchell nope, biggest cause of destruction is the 7.7 billion people you mention. Also the primary cause of climate change.
2
If fake meat can at least drive the welfare ranchers on public lands (like Cliven Bundy and Dwight Hammond) out of business, then we'll have achieved something. In the meantime, native wildlife and watersheds on the lands we all hold in common are being decimated for the benefit of a few rightist cowpokes who enjoy sweetheart deals with the federal government -- yet still bite the hand that feeds them.
3
Good article except that life on earth began much earlier than 500 MYA in the seas. 500 MYA marks the point when life (plants) colonized the terrestrial environment.
2
I'm not a big fan of saving the planet for humans. I am a fan of saving the planet for all other creatures. Humans have shown themselves to be greedy, self-serving, violent, and generally destructive to plant and animal life as well as to non-living entities. Put simply, humans pollute and destroy what is beautiful and defenseless in Nature simply to satisfy their own self-centered, egotistical desires. The planet would be much better off without us. That said, if the suffering for animals can be reduced by eating non-animal food, so much the better. I'm not sure why we need fake meat when we can easily shift to a vegetarian diet, but of course being humans we want what we want, so nothing will stop us from satisfying our desires.
4
@Jack
Unfortunately, since the dawn of the nuclear power era, we have (hopefully) committed ourselves to 'saving the planet' for at least some humans, at least until all of those nuclear power plants are completely decommissioned and their radioactive waste deposited
in secure long term storage. Oh, and all the nuclear warheads have been dismantled. And the chemical weapons detoxified. And the biological weapons killed.
And . . . . so on. The least we can do is clean up our mess !
"The animal protein in meat, milk and especially eggs goes further in meeting our nutritional needs than protein from plants"
"Eat an egg a day in any form"
"It is a myth that vegetable fats are better than animal fats"
Fred Kummerow (1914-2017)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/science/fred-kummerow-dead-biochemist-ban-trans-fatty-acids.html
His own diet, he said, included red meat, whole milk and eggs scrambled in butter
1
It's hilarious watching meat-eaters scramble for reasons why they can't change their habits--they remind me of older smokers who are told they are going to die unless they stop smoking, and they keep on smoking anyhow. It's too hard to quit they say, right before they croak.
But we have to eat meat, others insist, it's unhealthy to live without it! Let me tell you: my children are aged 9 and 6, and meat has never passed their lips, they're vegetarian from birth. And buddy, those kids are ROBUST, and can live their lives knowing (i) they're helping to save the planet, and (ii) nothing was ever murdered to satiate their taste preferences.
It's all a matter of habit, people. The Beyond Burger is every bit as satisfying as a real burger. And if you don't change your habits, we're doomed.
2
@Todd
Many smokers have what would be defined clinically as an addiction. It is VERY hard, even the most dedicated, to quit without a lot of help.
Hesitation to quit meat is often about a perceived social stigma. There are vegans in the U. S. Senate and vegans in the NFL. That stigma is simply not what it once was.
Quitting meat...not really that hard.
1
Fake meat may save us, but before we can eat enough of this fake meat to save the planet, what is going to kill us or at least render us stupider, more unhealthy, and more violent than ever are:
a fake, toxic orange presidential apprentice, who is willfully ignorant, callously indifferent to human suffering, and has no idea what he is doing strutting around the Oval Office and in front of TV cameras making one bad decision after another;
fake unfair and unbalanced Fox and right-wing "news" designed to control and bend American viewers' minds in ever more ignorant and destructive directions;
and fake politicians pretending to care more about "the American people" (as Mitch McConnell always loves say) than big money and damaging special interests (e.g., the military-industrial complex, fossil fuel industry, the big polluters, the Kochs, Mercers, etc.)
In the meantime, maybe we can enhance our survival odds more quickly by not only eating fake meats, but by voting Trump and almost every Republican out of office in 2020.
I am not saying the Democrats are fabulous, but at least they are not lethal to people, foreign relations, living things, democracy, and the planet.
1
Thanks for this insightful piece. The animals and our planet also thank you.
1
Reduce population. That is the single most important thing to do for the planet. No obligation, only strong suggestion to have no more than two children.
2
In ten years or less, eating animal meat any other sentient being will be viewed as we currently view the usage of tobacco. The tipping point is here, watch and enjoy the change.
2
What about lab-cultured proteins? The technology is still being developed but per what I've read has a distinctly lower environmental footprint than conventionally-farmed protein sources and avoids the ethical complications of factory farming. Why no mention of this in your analysis, Mr. Egan? The soy-based fake "meat" products being offered right now aren't really 1-to-1 nutritional replacements for actual meats; they strike me as trendy but ultimately not practical solutions for the things they intend to replace (see: e-scooters, Twitter, etc.)
Going vegan requires thinking through multiple issues - which leads to more consciousness around new ways of doing things. Given the state of the planet, we need more thought and action. To anyone struggling with "what can one person do" dilemma, we can go vegan, teach our children veganism and send that message to US corporations profiting from exploitation of animals and workers. As Paul McCartney said - we would all be vegan if slaughterhouses had glass walls.
5
Folks, there's no better time to go vegan...for the animals, for the earth. It's easy. And there are so many amazing vegan options now, in groceries, in restaurants, everywhere!
7
I’m not sure that adding more highly processed faux food to the American diet is helpful from a health standpoint. I get the climate benefit that would flow if virtually the whole planet gave up meat consumption, but honestly...we can’t even stop poachers sawing off rhino horns because some of some superstitious mumbo jumbo, this despite the fact that they’re nearly extinct and heavily guarded.
No, it's not the meat, it is the way the meat is raised in factory farms, fed huge amounts of GMO corn which must be raised with huge amounts of petroleum and its byproducts. Unlike factory farmed beef, pasture raised beef uses much land unsuitable for raising food crops and actually sequesters carbon while building up the soil. None of these proposed "solutions" will do anything if the world continues to ignore the rapidly increasing population of the world that is draining every natural resource.
1
The idea of plant based burgers is great. The necessity of reducing meat consumption is obvious. Industrial meat production is cruel to the animals, bad for the land, bad for human health, and bad for the climate. That said, smaller scale agricultural systems that integrate animals and treat them well can be good for all of the above, and can even help sequester carbon in the earth. It’s called regenerative agriculture and it’s not based on ideas of purity, but what the earth actually needs to maintain fertility. Please see “Growing a Revolution” by David R. Montgomery for more research on this reality. So are there are nuances to this topic that can be easily missed. I believe most of these new products are not organic, and thus may be contaminated with herbicide and pesticide residues. I haven’t looked into that in detail however. Finally, I will always trust my local, small scale farmer, over any large business entity that is trying to sell me food. It would be realistic and good for the health of everyone to subsidize and encourage these producers over any corporate food sources.
11
Our gluttonous appetite is the problem. We can live much better on far less food, especially less meat. We don't need a substitute for meat.
6
"Industrial agriculture to produce meat is the coal-mining of food production. Producing a single beef burger takes about 660 gallons of water — equivalent to a full week of water use by the average household in the United States."
To say nothing of the facts that:
Livestock farming has a vast environmental footprint. It contributes to land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, acid rain, coral reef degeneration and deforestation. Nowhere is this impact more apparent than climate change – livestock farming contributes 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
And then there's the suffering of the beasties themselves.
4
"Industrial agriculture to produce meat is the coal-mining of food production." Thank you, Timothy Egan, great column! You have covered so many of our dying/killing landscapes ~ agriculture, politics, and lifestyle.
Personally, seafood was the only meat I ate for about 30 years, and dairy also made up a big part of my diet; after retiring to the South I began eating meat again. But a Tennessee tick bite made me allergic to meat from any hoofed animal and to all dairy. The allergist who diagnosed this said the condition used to be uncommon but was spreading. We can expect more of the worst with increasing effects of climate change.
The Beyond Meat burger was actually too 'bloody' for me, I'll stick with a grilled Portabella, Boca Burger, or try commenter @Paul's veggie burger recipe. Recently made chili using the 'beef' crumbles and it was delicious.
While I don't think quitting meat is a solid silver bullet to cure our planetary woes, it is major. But our problems also include plastic, fossil fuel, deregulation, political bad faith, human rights, health care, and willful ignorance.
We each need do what we can. Vote! and know that how we spend our dollars is a form of voting too. Columns like this are part of the solution. Speaking up in support of a livable planet, protecting air, water, land, and living creatures and ecosystems, recycling...I will do what I can. I couldn't look Grandson in the eye if I didn't.
Thank you again, and carry on.
3
I want to see plant-powered foods eliminate slaughterhouses. I want our species to include the animals at the core of an animal-based diet in their concept and practice of Mindfulness. I feel very sad seeing the animals skipped over cruelly in most discussions of the benefits of animal-free eating. The moral benefit of removing animal misery from our mouths is huge. All the benefits are real and urgent, as this article explains. Luckily, we are demonstrating our ability to create and enjoy wonderful new foods from which animals and their suffering are absent. Thank you for the encouragement.
6
The top few ingredients for both the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger are water, soy or pea protein and plant oils, nothing sinister. In characterizing such plant-based meats as "highly processed Frankenfoods hatched in a lab," he seems to have forgotten all the low-grade antibiotics routinely pumped into animals on factory farms; all of the genetic engineering used by animal agriculture today (Google "Belgian Blue" cow); and the feces and other contaminants that often contact meat due to unhygienic conditions at many slaughterhouses, exposing consumers to E Coli, salmonella and more. Sure, eating plants in their natural forms is always the most nutritious choice. But when you want the taste of meat, feel confident that these leading plant-based meats are close to natural.
253
@Greg Richards Impossible BUrger:
Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E), Zinc Gluconate, Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Sodium Ascorbate (Vitamin C), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2),
Vitamin B12.
Beyond BUrger:
Water, Pea Protein Isolate, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Contains 2% or less of the following: Cellulose from Bamboo, Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Natural Flavor, Maltodextrin, Yeast Extract, Salt, Sunflower Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Dried Yeast, Gum Arabic, Citrus Extract (to protect quality), Ascorbic Acid (to maintain color), Beet Juice Extract (for color), Acetic Acid, Succinic Acid, Modified Food Starch, Annatto (for color).
16
@Mary But you haven't even made a minor dent in Greg's (excellent) point. The nutrition question is not whether an impossible burger is healthy compared to a guacamole and mango salad with black beans; the question instead is whether it's healthier than the thing it is designed to simulate and replace -- in this case, a clump of red meat. In this case that gives the impossible burger an extremely low bar to clear, because clumps of red meat, which are laced with cholesterol, saturated fats, and carcinogens, in addition to the antibiotics and (yes) trace amounts of feces, are *unbelievably* bad for your body.
Another way to put this: If a bear is chasing you and me, I don't have to be faster than the bear to get away -- I just have to be faster than you.
15
@Greg Richards Belgian Blue is not genetically engineered. That's all natural.
1
That changing one or more items in our food selections is the best an individual can do to mitigate climate change, belies the most important fact of all: the solution is political. Votes to get rid of climate deniers and polluting partisans will be far more effective climate action than switching to plant based protein.
126
@Mike
Let's do both!
35
@Mike but since I'm not holding my breath waiting for a political solution, much needed as it is, I'll go with selecting less obnoxious food.
13
@Mike Yes, but this country can't seem to do anything politically or scientifically rational anymore. I'll take whatever we can get.
2
The meat that you chose not to eat in the US will be shipped overseas. As long as we allow industrial farming practices to continue, this will not stop.
125
@Mon
Oh yes it will.
Why? Because, not only will it become more and more resource/environmentally advantageous to shift to these meat alternatives, it will become more and more economically advantageous to do so - in real dollars and cents. It's a change that's inevitable now - it's just getting started - and I think animal factory farming will be mostly a relic within a generation.
12
@Mike Let's hope so. The practice should be embarassing to each and every individual that eats meat, including me.
8
I had an Impossible cheeseburger at a trendy riverfront restaurant in Kentucky.
It was fine.
If I never had another beef cheeseburger I won't have missed anything.
Fake meat alone may not save the planet....but it will certainly help.
168
Mr. Egan, I beg to differ. What will save us from self destruction? Satisfaction with what we have.
Regardless of whether or not we eat cows, pigs, chickens, et al, unless we reduce our overall consumption, we will consume ourselves out of existence.
Perhaps having more is fundamental to our DNA. The life and death battle with scarcity foremost all of the few million years our species has existed in one form or another has rendered us incapable of a replacement view of living.
Unfortunately, our economic model is based on perpetual excess consumption. One need only look at plastic in our oceans, landfills, and atmosphere to see one immediate danger of the unavoidable waste from our excess consumption.
Having more, no matter how much one may have, is our mantra. Personally, I cannot recall ever seeing an ad or a hearing of a business model that did not, does not, advocate for more, in perpetuity.
How much more, than we actually need, can we consume before the waste from this excess consumption turns our atmosphere (air, oceans, land masses) into a toxic mix that will not support the bodies evolution has given us?
Visit a landfill, walk through a collection of self-storage units, view a beach in New Jersey, look at a harbor during low tide.
147
@Orange County Voice
We lived in China for several years. When free plastic bags were banned, most people stopped using them.
However, waste plastic is a byproduct of overconsumption. In my many years in China, I never met anyone who didn't want more - whatever more might entail. Many, a great many, didn't have enough. The many that had enough wanted more.
I will argue that it is that incessant wanting more that is at the base of our life view. Maybe DNA from those hundreds of thousands of year of scarcity. Maybe we can overcome it before we consume ourselves out of existence.
I am not hopeful.
25
@Orange County Voice China is one of the last places on earth I would prefer to buy food from. Quality control?
8
Can't recommend this comment enough times, amen.
6
Went to a concert at Summerstage yesterday, where the concession stands offer Beyond Burgers. They sold out right away!
1
I wish Mr. Egan would have commented about the horrific existences of cows and pigs and chickens that is their lives in factory farms. Google for pictures of dairy farms to find out what a modern dairy farm looks like. Be prepared to be shocked senseless. Your child’s glass of milk comes out of cows with udders that are drainage ditches. Don’t Google search for images of factory cattle ranches unless you are prepared never to eat animal flesh again.
5
Looking at the picture of the Impossible Whopper, I can say that the burger looks fine. The toppings, on the other hand, look like typical Burger King quality. Awful.
1
Just as Indians here in India never really became comfortable with non veg menus even in 'American' fast food chains here, so Americans will not really adjust to 'fake meat' any time soon.
O please....There is no free burger. Next some one will start complaining that the increase in fake meat burgers is killing more of the worlds forests to make room for the plants that provide the oils (palm), leghemoglobin, etc. that are required to make the fake burger. Animals due all that processing naturally while providing the fertilizer to grow their own feed. In the mean time the artificial process of making fake meat takes a myriad of resources and the high energetic costs to acquire them. There is one surefire way to save the planet, MAKE LESS PEOPLE!
1
Electric vehicles? Electric vehicles work and will be cheaper than ICE vehicles if manufactured in the same scale. But the NYTs knows that. That is why the Times routinely publishes denigrating stories about electric vehicles and their favorite target Elon Musk. This is all to protect the profits of corporations who sell ICE vehicles and the oil industry.
If the NYTs wasn't against electric vehicles there wouldn't be so much false information in their articles on the subject.
Perhaps the farmers who grow beef are an easier target for change. Possibly because they are smaller individually and there are less corporate profits in beef production. But, pick any big industry and you can assume they own many politicians and have many supporters in the press.
1
I am so glad to see the NYTimes starting to get behind this shift to a plant based diet. This is nothing that educated people have not been saying for the past 40 years...But for the NYTimes, better late than never. Everyone wins with this change to a plant based diet: Humans, plants and the planet (Don't call it Vegan because the GOP will freak out). Food tastes are mutable, as evident by how different diets are around the world. Now how about your food writers giving us recipes that are in line with this new philosophy?
4
The dog (cat...) you love is emotionally the same as the cow you eat. We intuitively know this, most just don't care. In addition to the health and environmental benefits, the ethical ones should also be at the top of the list.
2
Somebody always loses. If your body turns carbohydrates (flour, sugar, etc.) into poison, these full-carb non-animal protein products will mean more horrible diabetic deaths. What these "agro-industrial" geniuses should be doing is making meat (beef, pork, poultry, etc.,) in the lab... nice steaks grown on petri dishes, but as always, all we have is stultified humans to save humanity.
2
I don't like the idea of fake meat. I am a strict vegetarian [as is my service dog] and the thought of looking at meat even though it's not meat- is the same thing as if it were real. So we need to let all the animals that live in nature run wild and be free and not to stick our forks into them. Anyone who eats meat even the fake kind should find another planet to live on because you don't deserve to be here with we vegetarians.
1
Maybe your minority of humans should leave? It would take far less resources to relocate a smaller group of people.
1
A vegan couple walks into a bar. How do I know? They told everyone.
5
@Teller
LOVE IT !!
1
Fake meat that looks like meat is utterly disgusting and doesn’t taste good no matter what you think you are eating. And it costs more than real meat.
3
—“The cautionary note is that we don’t have enough experience yet with the “secret sauce” that makes the new line of fake burgers taste so good. Both Beyond Meat, and Impossible Foods, the two darlings of alt-meat, use about 20 different ingredients in their patties. They are highly processed Frankenfoods hatched in a lab, not carrots pulled out of the earth.
Also, food panaceas in general don’t have the best track record. Remember margarine as a healthful alternative to butter? “Diet” soda makes people crave a big hit of real sugar water. Some granola is worse for you than an Oreo cookie.” Exactly!
Other than making people feeling better about themselves and their conspicuous consumption, I do question if this is just smoke and mirrors at work. All in, what is the true environmental impact, from start to finish, of these products? Are we really accomplishing anything important here or just shifting things and the means of production around? For all the talk about water usage and methane emissions, when one looks at the research closer and considers the complete environmental cycles, things are for the most part neutral, particularly when farming and ranching are done following sustainable practices.
Indeed, cruelty in raising livestock, a reflection of how human specie’s “narcissistic and superiority complex” and an extension of our proclivity of treating are own cruelly, which this does not address, nor it does address population, consumerism or distribution issues.
No, the best thing we can all do is stop having children and stop flying in airplanes. But no one will do that. So prepare for the flood.
4
@John population control is the Third Rail - no one dare touch it.
1
I'm sure that trump given his Big Mac consumption habit will have something to say about this. He may even put a tax on these meatless burgers in protest.
2
Yah.
But if you want people to choose it, you‘ll have to stop calling it "fake meat."
Find some delicious words to describe for what it is, not what it aspires to be.
1
Actually, not having children is the most effective thing you can do to halt climate change.
2
I agree with this.
Why fake eggs though?
That friendship tree did not die, it committed suicide. What a vicious, horrible thing Macron did to it. Hopefully, he will give it a posthumous Croix de Guerre. No living thing should be forced into a friendship with Donald Trump. Shame.
5
Leave it to a neoliberal like Timothy Egan to continue to propose "disruptive" capitalism as the solution. What does he think drove this crisis?
What a hypocritical article by this author. Claiming that fake meat will save us yet bragging about his love for meat and how vegetarians make up such a small percentage of the population, yet ignoring evidence that that number is climbing.
Blaming the president (who I do not support) for the climate catastrophe as opposed to the actions of individuals that could be easily changed - like waking up an eating less or no meat.
1
Another piece claiming to be about the fate of the planet fails to mention population growth.
1
@skeptonomist
There is little reason to think it does. The estimates suggest a peak population of around 11 billion in about a hundred years, that is not a wildly different number from today. If people live well, 11 billion should not cause disaster. If it does cause disaster, there will be fewer people...
The USA and other wealthy countries actually need more people. If one thinks our politics is nasty now, wait until a shrinking population causes GDP growth near zero for many years in a row. Unlike most other countries, we are not defined by a nationality so we can assimilate more people far more easily. This will create wealth, which will raise GDP here and elsewhere, causing women to have fewer children, curbing population growth.
It should all work out...
Sorry, Mr. Egan, I thought that headline was a joke!
Hawken's "Drawdown", says it better. Get a handle on refrigerants. They're dangerous. But more than anything: Educate young women.
I could've done without the political commentary on Trump. Completely unnecessary to the point of the article. A good editor (unbiased) would have weeded that out.
1
I hope Mr. Eagan (whose work I otherwise enjoy and endorse) will take a closer look at these Frankenburgers and their GMO/glyphosate-saturated ingredient issues.
Perhaps a discussion with GreenMedInfo's founder, Sayer Ji, will prove enlightening, if not more food for thought. If that's not possible, please check out a couple of articles on the website which raise some important warnings.
You really cannot fool Mother Nature.
1
A fake meat burger made in a science lab, come on. You must be a recent Beyond Meat stock owner.
1
I wish you had found a different word for veggie patties than "fake meat". We will never get a handle on our destructive ways until we change our consciousness. If we feel that eating less or even no meat is a sacrifice most people will just continue on their harmful way. It's a big ship to turn around and will happen gradually. Somehow we have to understand that life is worth living, enjoyable and joyful, when we are making decisions based on something other than our mindless, habitual appetites.
It is unbelievable that Timothy Egan manages to turn the ecological crisis into another advertisement for "disruptive" capitalism. This bring to mind the technology oligarchs proposing missions to Mars rather than learning to care for things and clean up after themselves. They ignore their role in creating these grave problems and unblushingly propose themselves and the horrible ideas as solutions. Timothy Egan does the same thing.
The long history of "disruption" is the problem, not the solution. It's time we learned to settle down.
Read Wendell Berry, not Timothy Egan.
I wish they could merge the Beyond Meat look and texture with the Impossible Burger taste. The result being the improbable burger.
1
Face facts. We are just one variation, one iteration of carbon. Our time will come whether or not we try to avoid the fact that life breeds on eating other life, plant or animal. Besides, those foliage patties still have to be raised (watered), cooked and disposed of. So while we try to make fruitless stabs at staying on the planet beyond our inevitable expiration date (self-induced, thunderbolts or otherwise), bare in mind that we will be back in another form ("rocks don't lie..."). Nothing's leaving the universe, Burger King-fueled or vegan chic.
2
To truly change an unhealthy habit (eating meat) it is best to start with small steps first. After discovering the Impossible Burger a few years back I was convinced that vegan burgers didn`t have to taste like cardboard and this one doesn`t. In fact it`s very good. Demand from Burger King has stopped my local supply but I`m sure when production is increased they will be available in your grocery store. The greasy "gut bomb" after effects from a beef burger just don`t happen with the impossible burger and it fills you up just as much. Glad to see Americans demanding healthier food choices.
1
You are so wrong. Without cattle and sheep grazing, western wildfires will be significantly worse. Cattle and sheep typically graze on land that can't be used for anything else. The water that is used in cattle production is eventually recycled and used again and again. The feed lots are in issue with beef so just purchase grass-fed beef. Don't believe me?? Here are the ingredients for one of the top selling veggie burgers: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E), Zinc Gluconate, Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Sodium Ascorbate (Vitamin C), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12.
2
There is no doubt meat eating is bad for the planet and bad for your health. This is a fact. However the ability for us to change is very hard and regardless of the facts, we humans will follow our habits.
Unless we put a financial burden on meat the waste and destruction will continue. Cigarettes are bad and they are now expensive. Meat is dangerous to all of us and we need to make it expensive and painful to purchase.
The constant advertising of big, juicy , triple burgers does not help. A warning should be added, bad for the planet and dangerous to your health as well as a tax.
1
Kudos for raising this point. Reduced reliance on animals is the biggest, easiest thing we can do to combat climate change. (Going vegan would be even better.) It's already very easy to do, and fake meats make it simple even for insistent carnivores.
It requires positive action and change, which is why this (and carbon pricing) so often get left out. Americans want to save the planet by doing exactly what they're already doing. Too many politicians are willing to let people believe that can work, though it is self-evidently untrue.
If we're willing to put a small amount of effort in - and refuse the blandishments (read $$$) of agriculture lobbyists - fake meat can do a lot to address climate change. And as a bonus, vastly reduce animal suffering.
2
This is some creative carbon accounting. I've been a vegetarian for 20 years but understand its carbon benefits are more than offset by my regular international flights (all for research, though I try to combine vacations when possible for efficiency). And all that is somewhat offset by my decision not to add a kid to the planet, which was a painful thought when I was 15, but is how I've managed to live with myself without stewing in guilt. Anyway, use carbon calculators.
That said, eating less meat is so freaking easy. I don't understand why more people don't check the "vegetarian" box for flights, conferences, etc. Just make it a habit.
Well, because some of us just dont like the taste of vegetables or most fruit.
Calling the number of vegans and vegetarians a "static number" is both historically correct and almost certainly wrong.
The data tells us it has been approximately that percentage for a long time. The data does not tell us that it is a law of nature or more likely than not that it will always be that way. If one looks at the percentage of people who smoked cigarettes, it was nearly constant for decades. Then something changed - we realized unambiguously that cigarettes were very unhealthy - and the percentage of cigarette smokers dropped at a fairly rapid pace for many years.
We have realized that animal products are bad for us, bad for the planet and still not-so-great for the animals or many of the people who work in the industry. Companies large and small are making giant bets on meat substitutes and similar products. Either these companies made these decisions without reading this statistic, or they thought that statistic likely did not represent the world in 2019 and beyond.
Data can be immensely valuable, but social data is so context-dependent it is wrong to treat it like a science experiment and in some cases it is little more than a distraction. In this case, the data largely describes a world that did not grow up with the internet, was minimally unaware of the downsides, had mostly mediocre meat and dairy substitutes and had few celebrity vegans. All of these factors have changed. Deciding that these will not matter is no less of a guess than deciding they will.
1
Well at least I won’t have to hear about locally grown minimally processed food any more. We got rid of the coffee nuts with their freshly roasted and ground beans and fresh water with Keurig machines with year old pods and week old water in the tank. With one big manufacturing plant it should be easy to control the salmonella and E. coli.
5
Another benefit of increased fake meat consumption may be the decrease in wrongful use of human antibiotics to prevent disease in industrial meat production, thereby reducing the risk that the antibiotics will no longer cure human infections. Another benefit would be slowing down the destruction of tropical forests (the lings of the planet) to make way for cattle ranching.
2
Let’s also keep in mind the damage to air and water quality due to greenhouse gases and harmful runoff from massive pools of animal waste on huge CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) farms. Check it out on Wikipedia.
Having made significant dietary changes for the environment, this article resonates for me. Unfortunately people tend to think one or two behavior changes will do it. I know someone who is a staunch advocate of ending plastic use - however drives an SUV, is pro-pipeline, shops incessantly online, order two sizes of an item and sending the one that doesn't fit back. Her activism around plastic is justification for a host of other 'non' green behaviors. Basically greenwashing.
It is hard to get people to do it all - but that said, we must give it our best shot.
I suggest we think like Buddhists - strive for perfection even if we cannot attain it. My tenets of environmentalism:
-drive less (way less)
-electric car (we gave up a lot of other things to buy one
which is perhaps a plus in its own right), transit, bike/car
share
- Eliminate plastic use - no bags, no coffee cups, no saran
-organic food where possible
-local food when possible (ie no asparagus in
September in Canada)
-sustainable water use from house to garden
-recycling as a last resort, reduction and reuse come first
-Reduce consumption, Buy less of everything. (I mean
how many pairs of shoes does one need!) which
could offset the cost of that electric car maybe???
-Travel less (this one is killing me!).
Attempt them all, as much as possible, it will feel like the right thing to do.
2
@CB reproductive choices? Having kids is the biggest threat to the environment.
1
Great reporting, as usual, a reminder of your book "The worst hard time", depicting the human hand (and a determined mind) in destroying a delicate ecosystem, giving rise to the "Great American Dust Bowl", and the untold suffering ever since when we abuse mother Earth, the only place we have and depend on, for our survival, let alone enjoyment. And now, your drive in considering a paradigm, becoming vegetarians for our health, and the planet's. It reminds me of a niece (in Gerrmany), a devoted vegetarian that won't touch even milk, eggs, etc, as the suffering animal exploitation is anathema in her mind. Actually, it sounds quite healthy to me, an omnivore like yourself. But, while you tackle animal meat as a culprit leading to a shortened life and a faster mental decline, let's mention a worse ailment afflicting us in plain daylight, the exorbitant amount of refined sugar we consume, especially in the form of 'sodas'. As to why we are not taxing more that industry for the harm it is causing (Diabetes, Hypertension, Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, etx, etc) is beyond me. We need to sit down and have a rational conversation (along with 'climate change', that Trump, in his malevolent ignorance, tries to deny), become caring human beings again, and find redemption by 'feelings' towards all other animals (our cousins), and aim towards becoming true vegetarians. The environment would applaud, no doubt about it.
2
From the perspective of saving the planet, the only thing we don't know is how much energy is required to produce the impossible burger, while we likely know what it costs in terms of water to grow the plant based products, probably what it costs to ship them, what does it cost to produce them? Likely it is still way less than what it costs to produce meat, but it would be interesting to know.
The other thing is that from a health standpoint, Beyond Burgers and Impossible burgers are not health food, while they obviously have no cholesterol, they are loaded with fat and still have a lot of saturated (if plant based) fat, so these should remain a treat rather than something your routinely eat. This is kind of like when they came up with the no fat food products, and people thought they were guilt free, turned out they were loaded with sugar and fat.
Still, I am glad for a lot of reasons that people are responding to this, that they are eager for meat alternatives. While my diet is overwhelmingly vegan (I eat meat literally once in a blue moon, dairy a bit more often), if we can get people off off the horrible factory produced meat that most people eat, if they eat 'real' meat that is free range sparingly and use plant based alternatives the rest of the time, it will be a win win
2
I'm reading all the posts by Evangelical vegans and just want to put out for the environmentally minded but less pious (fellow) carnivores:
- switching from beef to chicken significantly lowers your impact as a lb of chicken is much less resource intensive than beef
- cutting half of all meat or some other significant number still has big impact and once you start it's really not a big deal
I still love a homemade hamburger off the grill...it's just a lot less frequent than it used to be. And once you start it snowballs as you find stuff you enjoy eating.
In short, you don't have to go cold tofurkey.
13
@Jason
Chicken is not healthy, and if you look at how commercial chicken is produced you wouldn't be able to say it is a healthier alternative or less impact then meat. The commercial chicken industry is quite frankly disgusting, the chickens are raised literally wallowing in each other's wastes, and the waste produced by commercial chicken farms is a common source of water pollution. The purdue chicken advertising no hormones or antibiotics (which is to be honest a joke, they legally can't use them any more, it isn't like they chose to do that) is not healthy, it is overly fatty, provides too much Omega 6 and not enough omega 3. For real meat people should be eating free range chicken and grass fed beef products, eating those sparingly is more healthy and also is environmentally less impactful with water and the like.
1
This article is 100% incorrect and should be retracted. It is unscientific, based on a now retracted UN FAO report that incorrectly analyzed animal agriculture effects on climate change. Look up Frank Mitloehner,
UC Davis Professor, an air quality specialist, to learn more. Furthermore, a diet relying on highly processed foods and not on natural nutrient dense foods such as real meats is harmful to your health. The evidence for a plant based diet is poor, based on poorly designed epidemiologic studies promoted by Seventh Day Adventists and big agribusiness that gets a much higher profit margin by marketing plant products than it could from selling animal foods. Plant agriculture causes environmental devastation all over the world and releases large amounts of greenhouse gases. Well done holistic pasture management of livestock actually absorbs and sequesters CO2. If you want to help the planet, don't drive a gas car, walk more and demand walkable towns and cities, don't fly, don't but unnecessary things including constantly upgrading your tech, and eat real foods.
1
@Uyd
You believe that and I have a bridge to sell you. First of all, the meat most people are eating, that steak in your local supermarket, that fast food or restaurant burger, is not produced holistically, and it isn't even produced in a pasture, that meat is produced via factory farming, the animals live in pens, are force fed corn products and even bone meal from dead cattle, and to this day are pumped full of hormones and antibiotics to make them fatten up fast, and the meat is loaded with unhealthy fat, the antibiotics are a large cause for antibiotic resistance. Free rang beef is definitely environmentally and health wise more nutritious (if eaten sparingly),but the reality is that represents a tiny fraction of the meat eaten. A lot of meat is being produced in South America, where they cut down rainforest to increasing grazing area, and the cycle continues.
As far as meat being healthier, it isn't just small scale studies backing up a mostly plant based diet. The so called "blue clusters" where people live to ripe old ages not seen elsewhere all feature mostly plant based diets, and they aren't doing it taking statins and heart drugs and getting treated for cancer and heart disease, they get them at rates well below the typical. Valter Longo made the point it isn't genetics alone either, that time and again, people from areas that eat plant based diets who move to places where they eat meat based diets, end up with shorter lifespans and all the health ills.
3
I have been a faithful lacto-ovo vegetarian for thirty-five years, am happy, healthy, and feel good about my small contribution to decreasing global warming and minimizing the exploitation of animals. Perhaps, someday, I'll go full vegan, but the taste and protein of a nice omelet and cream in my coffee are my little compromises. The important thing is to always consider how what we eat, buy, and do impacts our environment, and act accordingly.
8
Fake meat is a plus for the environment if it is used mostly by meat eaters. It is a negative for the environment if it is used mostly by vegetarians. In other words, in the realm of vegetarian products it's among the worst for the environment, even if it is better than real meat. I have cut a lot of meat out of my diet, not by eating fake meat, but instead by eating less meat.
6
@David
I think that is a valid alternate, though what I would love to see is people who still eat meat sparingly when they do eat meat eat grass fed beef and free range chicken. The factory farmed meat they sell is not healthy even in small quanities.
1
Eat what you want to eat and i will eat what i want. When i die there will be one less carnivore
Nobody mentions the lectins contained in plants like peas. They can cause all sorts of degenerative autoimmune responses that are usually initially mistaken for something else. Another perverse outcome is that while eliminating cows might reduce methane emissions, billions of people farting away from diets containing indigestible polysaccharides from legumes will far offset the benefit.
6
@stan continople
Care to cite serious studies that back this up? First of all, eating a plant based diet does not necessarily cause people to fart all the time, that is a myth. People who routinely eat plant based diets don't get the gas you are talking about, because their gut bacteria adjusts to it, I have been eating pretty much a totally plant based diet for several years now, and have not had that problem; ironically, I am around some people who eat a very heavy protein based diet centering around meat products, and they produce a lot of gas.
As far as degenerative autoimmune responses to lectins, that occurs only in people who are genetically susceptible to that, it doesn't affect the overwhelming majority of people, it is like saying no one should eat gluten because 15% of the people have celiac's.
2
"Until we have real leadership on climate?"
leadership comes from the people -- at least, in theory, it's supposed to ... in a democracy. this is a democracy, right?
we'll have real leadership when the people who are convinced by the science, fear the anticipated consequences and are determined that change must occur inform themselves, speak up, and announce that change is necessary.
yes, traveling less, eating less, throwing away less food, installing solar panels, retrofitting homes, using hybrid vehicles, taking public transportation, eating less meat ... all these things help.
but nothing contributes so much as letting your exasperation, expertise and reasoned arguments be heard at breakfast, lunch, dinner, work, home, recreation, public and private encounters.
speak up now to the people around you. it matters simply to have you say, "it's real, it's happening, we have to act now."
1
Why do we live in a time in which recommendations for a simple, doable action that is beneficial to the person doing it are rejected and scoffed at because they "don't solve everything?"
Another name for the Anthropocene Era is the Whiney Era.
Eat less meat. Here's an alternative to help you.
It's that simple.
And there's still plenty of room to talk about every other change that would be beneficial.
4
I appreciate this article, Mr. Egan. I think it's safe to say most readers of this column care deeply about halting climate change. But I also think it's safe to say that, for most of us, that "caring" doesn't result in much action, beyond maybe voting for a Democrat every four years or using cloth bags at the grocery store instead of plastic.
Those are very important things to do for the planet -- but also ridiculously easy ones. Last I checked, actually "caring" about something means *being willing to give something up* for it.
The climate science showing the devastating effects of animal agriculture is every bit as irrefutable as the climate science showing that global warming is real. We can't very well ridicule the Republican Party for simply ignoring climate science if we are ignoring that same science ourselves -- and leaving animals on our plates.
1
The 8 percent vegan/veg number might increase quite a bit if u add veg wannabes like me who have drastically reduced consumption of animal products. I could easily be vegan with just a few really good plant based alternatives (like the one described here). I’ve found some and always looking for more.
1
Everything helps, and this will if enough people slow down on their red meat consumption. I’m not a vegetarian; I still eat some fish and chicken and occasionally red meat if served. My digestion is better without the red meat and I know it is healthier for my body. Cutting back is doing something; especially if you eat a lot of red meat.
Substitutes work and there are also many excellent non meat dishes. If you’ve ever read about the American slaughter houses or driven past the feed lots, it’s an ugly scene.
1
It feels as though most of my paycheck goes to various animal rescues, yet my dirty little secret is that I eat meat. I'm a guilt-ridden carnivore, with no excuse except that it seems like too much effort to be vegan when you work long hours, yada yada yada. I also have the luxury of not seeing how these animals are slaughtered, which should probably be mandatory viewing before one consumes an animal. So I welcome fake meat and am completely on board. On a side note, I've been drinking Diet Coke since it first hit the shelves, and it has never caused me to "crave a big hit of real sugar water." What's the deal with that?
2
This is all good, but hasn't it been established that having fewer children is the single best thing an individual can do to help the environment? Why do we see so few articles about this? I almost seems as though it's taboo to even mention this matter in public discourse.
8
@Sarah you won't see article on it because that is the third rail. No one wants to talk about reproductive choices. The environmental toll of having even one child is 58.6 tonnes of carbon each year.
1
There must be some secret to preparing a Beyond Meat burger. I got two patties from the grocery store, very excited to try them out. It smelled awful while cooking on the stove and tasted like soggy newspaper. I threw it out after one bite and never cooked the second one.
I am a vegetarian who cut out meat precisely because of the environmental impact of commercial farming. I miss hamburgers desperately and hope we do crack this code some day.
1
@Thad Go kill a 400 pound cow elk out near Cimarron New Mexico. There is a closer place out of Tinnie, NM (west of Roswell) but they do not have hunts every year. Get a .30-06 rifle w/scope and join The Range at Austin (indoors, 100 yards) for instruction (if you need it) and practice. If you like hamburgers you will just love elk burgers.
I was so excited to try the new beyond beef burger. Finally an alternative to my mushy black bean burgers that I am constantly trying to perfect.
then I read the label on the burgers
20 grams of fat?? say what?
$12 a pound?? say what??
highly processed? come on......
back to my mushy black bean burgers.
3
@joan Stop worrying about the fat! The bun that you're probably eating with the burger is loaded with carbs and is worse for you.
I do my part. I eat elk, whitetail deer, wild hogs, dove and quail that I kill. I am not part of the veggie agriburger business that loads the ecosphere with pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
1
I think the most interesting thing about the "alt-meats" is the fracture that it's creating among previous allies, while making new alliances among people who in the past were anti-GMO.
The burgers are great, and if people eat them, fine. That's a great option to have. But they are not going to replace nice barbecued ribs any time soon.
3
I make this point whenever stories claim there is something that will "save us." The problem is not supply, it is demand: too many wanting more than the planet can sustain. We are at this point because of technology, e.g. the Haber-Bosch process which enabled the mass-production of plant fertilizers and made it possible for agriculture to support a larger population.
2
There were 2 billion people on the planet when I was born. There are almost 8 billion now, and I'm not THAT old.
Until we deal with that problem, all the other sensible things we do to confront the very real issue of impending climate change devastation, like eliminating meat from the diet, will be like hurling pebbles into a hurricane to stop it.
4
Soon enough, we’ll be able to grow real meat, from the best tasting sources, in Petri dishes.
The tech is there, but still too expensive. While possibly less healthy than vegetable based burgers, the land use and ghg emissions benefits will be myriad.
1
@RjW My point as well, exactly. When the technology improves, the cost comes down and we remove the ethical and environmental concerns from human carnivorism (it's all grown in labs using existing cell lines), what's left as the argument against meat consumption?
1
Egan is wrong. Ground beef isn't sold for profit; it just needs to be sold at cost. No one turns cows into meet for ground beef. Its the most undesirable part of the animal. The demand for meat is pushed by the better cuts of the animal, tenderloin etc. As long as ppl want those cuts and there's no substitute, there will be no change. All that will happen is the ground beef will be wasted. This isn't to say go ahead and eat all the meat you want. To really change the demand you have to cut out the best parts of the animal. If there was a fake tenderloin steak that was just as good, this could make a difference. Unfortunately, Egan isn't informed enough to talk about this in any real depth.
2
For me (a vegan wannabe) a beef alternative like described here does the trick to get me off cows entirely. I don’t crave a tenderloin over a hamburger; I just crave meat
"Industrial agriculture to produce meat is the coal-mining of food production."
Yes. It is also unaffordable for those not now getting much meat, which means an awful lot of the world. In fact, meat prices can be pretty steep even for those of us who do get meat.
So this could accomplish two things, 1) help the environment; and 2) feed people better.
If you are interested in the environment, but self satisfied with your food, think of others. Many will be persuaded by their stomachs as much as by their deep understanding of global warming.
An army marches on its stomach, even if it is helped by some high ideals.
See this in the broader terms. It will help to get what you want even in the narrower terms.
@Mark Thomason
Actually, the sad truth is that because of various government policies crappy meat has become the basis for a lot of poorer people's diets. People are eating cheap processed food and fast food because it is cheap, and if you look at the price of meat versus the price of produce in terms of real dollar cost, meat is a lot cheaper than produce, for poor people in the US produce is often too expensive, when they can get packaged foods and fast food that is cheaper (the obesity epidemic is not people gorging on t-bone steaks, it is people eating processed and packaged and fast food that is cheap, calorie dense, that they can afford).
While Egan is totally right about the climate impact of conventionally raised beef - which is 97% of what's out there - he is totally wrong about the other 3% of the beef in the marketplace which is 100% grassfed raised with no corn ever.
Peer reviewed studies have shown that managed grazing has the potential to reverse climate change by sequestering carbon in the ground. Likewise, methane is not a problem when cows are fattened on pasture eating what nature intended: grass, not corn.
Regenerative grazing is the best solution out there, so educate your self about it and then vote with your food dollars.
3
@Ridge Shinn: cows are supposed to eat grass, not corn. Corn makes them SICK, and they only survive through medicine and antibiotics!
2
@Ridge Shinn
You are correct, and alternative to plant based burgers might be if people at less meat, but ate grass fed/pasture raised meat. The problem is people have gotten used to bigger is better and eat meat regularly, and the problem is that the grass fed beef is an order of magnitude more expensive. 80% lean hamburger meat that is not grass fed is a couple of bucks a pound, you buy grass fed that is going to be 6 bucks a pound. That steak that is like 3 bucks a pound typically, is close to 7 if grass fed. Grass fed beef at those kind of prices (and I am citing supermarket grass fed beef, god help you if you go to Whole Paycheck to buy it at 15 a pound). An ideal answer would be for people to eat most of their diet based on plants and then having a relatively small percent of their diet be based on grass fed beef......likely that kind of diet would be as impactful on the environment as eating Impossible Burgers and the like.
I'm down for that but I have to have cheese on my burger... so does that now negate the gains of not eating actual meat?
@Mark Crozier: I am sure Egan the vegan wants you to eat fake artificial cheese made from soy!
Good times! (NOT)
1
This is, if you'll pardon the expression, hogwash. The problems with meat (methane gas, pollution, toxicity and more) all stem from industrial agriculture and its model of more faster at any price, including the well-being and health of the animals and the people who eat them. Animals are soaked in antibiotics, fed hay (or much worse) instead of grass, crowded into inhuman, disease-ridden slaughterhouses. Grass-fed, free range cattle actually replenish grasslands. Check this out before falling for fake meat composed of soy which in itself is a phytoestrogen disturbing hormone levels, not to mention a major factor in the disappearance of the landscape in which it's grown.
2
@free range: cows are ruminants. They are meant to eat grass. It is natural for them to eat grass. They don't like corn, and only eat it if forced to do so. Corn actually makes them sick, requiring medical care & antibiotics.
So, why corn? Corn is very fattening. It fattens them up quickly for market.
We need to make it mandatory to raise cows on GRASS.
Solves all of these problems, plus if we deport every illegal alien....the meatpacking plants will return to being UNION SHOPS, with safety laws enforced and good humane livestock practices.
2
@Concerned Citizen I agree with what you're saying about corn vs. grass but the bit about deporting every illegal alien and meatpacking plants will return to good humane livestock practices is absurd. first of all, for the most part they're not illegal aliens, they are refugees. asylum-seekers. seeking asylum from what? seeking asylum from their violent countries whose corrupt rulers have been supported for two centuries by the US government. and second, the meatpacking plants are run by people whose only concern is the bottom line, no matter what ethnicity their workers belong to.
While I think it's great that we've come up with a fake meat that's a realistic replacement for the genuine article, the notion that it will "save us" is misguided on several fronts -- and not simply because of a lack of leadership on climate change.
Not mentioned in the article is the reality that an "Impossible Whopper" has nearly as many calories and grams of saturated fat as a "regular one": enough to singlehandedly comprise 40% of the total recommended daily allowance of the latter for an average diet. Fast food has become one of the single biggest threats to global health -- and speaking of which, one should also keep in mind that fast-food chains have now spread throughout even the developing world, including areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. Further, the vast majority of fast-food orders contain nutrition-free side items like lab-engineered French fries and corn syrup-laden soda.
Fake meat may help (but, again, not "save") us in an environmental context, but at the expense of likely worsening the already huge problem of "fast food nations" with skyrocketing levels of obesity (particularly among children), heart conditions, diabetes and nutritional deficiencies -- most of all among lower-income families with minimal access to fresh produce and other types of healthier foods.
1
Thank you for this column, Timothy Egan. We will get there, sooner or later, with viable meat substitutes. After all, we won't be around much longer if we don't. It all comes down to what we want for ourselves. And we all want to live. That will always be the principal driver for animal-rights activism and sustainable stewardship of our planet.
1
Hey, if you choose to eat the Frankenfoods, that's your choice. It's a free market. Just don't kid yourself you're helping the planet. The science on that isn't nearly as clear as this article claims.
For example, a recent study using field measurements of methane pollution in the production of ammonia-based fertilizer (used in half of American farm production) showed previous estimates of methane pollution were off by a factor of 100. Since methane has 85X the greenhouse gas impact as CO2, that's a big change. In fact, it means that the fertilizer industry alone creates 4X the GHG impact that the EPA had estimated for all American industries. Conclusion: we don't know nearly as much as we need to know to make the kinds of claims Mr. Egan makes.
The FAO says we only have 60 more years of harvesting food from the land before our topsoil will be gone. Even if you believe Mr. Egan, you have to wonder how much relief that should bring us.
We now measure well above 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, and we're on our way to much higher levels. Mr. Egan's solution:
Let's just pollute less!
I find that totally unsatisfactory.
We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to pass on a healthy planet to our children and generations to come. Food can be part of that story: regenerative agriculture has already shown it can store CO2 in the soil while producing healthy food. Pass me another plate of that, please!
4
No, fake meat will not save us. Neither will electric cars, driving less, recycling more, solar panels on our roofs, or anything else, until we address the elephant in the room no one wants to acknowledge or talk about: population growth. Our human biomass increases by 220,000 each day, 80 million each year. We add another California and Canada combined every year. To have any meaningful impact on our pathway to self-destruction we need world-wide recognition and action, through far better family planning, far better education (especially for girls and young women), and, as another commenter said, removing the Global Gag Rule that keeps vital family planning resources from those who really need it. Getting rid of our current incompetent and disastrous administration will be a good start.
19
GMO yeast and methyl cellulose-based burgers will not save the earth from humanity. Not even close. I thought this article was going to be tongue-in-cheek humor, but it was laughably serious.
2
The meat industry is prepared to counter all the sensible points in this article. Oprah found out the hard way that the meat industry will haul you into court if you speak unkindly about meat. After that trial, the meat industry stepped up their game by persuading some state legislatures to pass laws making some derogatory comments about meat a crime.
2
@William The fossil fuel industry is no different. Of course there will be fight back and misinformation campaigns, but that's why we read the New York Times -- to get the straight gen.
Just one problem - the meat substitutes are high in carbs and sodium. These are the last things Americans should be adding to their diet. And they certainly aren’t healthy options for diabetics and people with high blood pressure.
5
@Chuck Fraser
Meat substitutes like beyond burgers and the like are designed as treat meals, the way fast food should be. I realize that these days the American Diabetic association is pushing meat as the answer for diabetics, but the reality is that most diabetics and people with high blood pressure are that way because they are obese. When I hear someone saying 'those carbs in plant based foods are bad for you' I want to scream, because people who eat plant based diets (mind you,not talking Impossible burgers) generally lose weight and the type II diabetes disappears. Type II diabetes is not caused by carb consumption, it is caused by excess body fat that blocks the insulin response, people who go on reasonable plant based diets usually end up seeing their diabetes go away, those who go Keto eating a lot of meat and fat lose some weight, but in the long wrong the diabetes does not go away because they have too much body fat.
@Chuck Fraser They are not high in carbs. The Beyond Beef burger has two net grams of carbs. Read the labels.
@Andy Marx the Byond BUrger has 5 net grams of carbs:
Amount Per Serving
270Calories
% Daily Value*
31%Total Fat 20g
25%Saturated Fat 5g
Trans Fat 0g
0%Cholesterol 0mg
17%Sodium 380mg
2%Total Carbohydrate 5g
11%Dietary Fiber 3g
Sugars 0g
Protein 20g
0%Vitamin A 0 IU
7%Vitamin C 4mg
2%Calcium 20mg
30%Iron 5.4mg
Trends in plant-based meat are really encouraging, but what about fish? What's happening to wild stocks around the world is terrifying, slave labor is used in Asia to collect shrimp, and farming is problematic in several ways. Any company that develops a plant-based scallop or tuna would be a smash, in my opinion. And if a "pseushi" bar ever opens in New York, I'll be one of its first customers.
2
It is chic and fashionable to drool over a meatless hamburger patty.You know what would be even more helpful- a carbon tax to hasten better fuel economy and electric cars, an investment in solar energy ,ditto manufacturing of wind turbines and use of geo-thermal energy.Something that mimics what we are already used to is an easy “fix” for a complicated problem and gives us the impression that we don’t have to work hard.Mitigation of climate changes will be more challenging than a moon shot.
11
@JANET MICHAEL What about a combination of all of the above? There is no single magic wand. However, solutions DO exist in every sphere -- energy generation, transport and now food production.
2
As a curious vegetarian, I bought a 2 pack of Beyond Meat burgers and they weren't bad (with enough condiments).
What turns me off is the amount of PACKAGING for 8 ounces! A 7x9 inch plastic tray (#5, not recyclable), 2 squares of waxed paper, plastic shrink wrap around all of it, wrapped in a cardboard sleeve. I won't be buying it again until it's sold in an unglamorous chub.
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@AZ SheltonSaladin
Very good point. Thank you.
They aren’t marketing to you, a vegetarian. That’s why they have been so successful. You already are doing your part to cut meat consumption. They are marketing their product to people like me who consume meat. Beyond places their burgers in the meat section, which is brilliant. I would be turned off by any whiff of “vegetarian”. Hope that makes sense.
Agreed. Wasteful packaging.
Small things help, I guess. For sure it makes my vegan friends think they are superior. But, what about cars? Factories? Flying in planes? Seems to me that it’s just as American to think how we do our daily can change the world. It can’t. But, awareness is good, changing how we middle class white folks eat is, maybe?, helpful.
2
Science food is a fake dream. Only by producing on such a massive scale could it compete with farming. And on that scale any bacterial contamination would be disastrous.
Industrial farming works great until nature catches up with us. Ireland’s potato famine, the coming demise of the one banana that’s grown, bees are threatened worldwide, water and soil contamination by pesticides, herbicides.....all necessary for monocropping.
And, regarding taste, industrial farming brought us supermarket tomatoes and food starch, sugar and salt in processed foods as substitutes for taste. Taste, when the goal is such massive production, is a grill, not a goal.
A better goal would be healthier eating, less meat, better as more diverse vegetables and fruits.
5
To save ourselves, we have to figure out how to civilize our leaders. Enough of us want and need to lord it over everyone else, and to obtain the power to do so, they don't care if they steamroll other people or the planet. Until we figure out how to protect our assets and institutions from these types of people, we will keep spiraling downward.
The rest is just a management problem. We know how to do that.
That said, I'm a vegetarian sympathizer. I eat small portions of meat occasionally; most days I eat none. My wife, on the other hand, believes that a meal without meat isn't a meal, and I can't change her mind. A convincing substitute would help a lot.
1
You have this wrong. Fake meat relies on vast monocrops. We need holistic farming. Animals are part of biological communities and necessary on farms. Check out the Savory Institute, the Omnivore's Dilemma, Joel Salatin (a meat farmer in Virginia), and others. Check out Permaculture (and my farm @grevlingard) So you are saying that monocrops that rely on fossil fuel and chemical fertilizers are going to save us. Ha ha. That's not funny. I wonder how much investment Monsanto and Bayer are making in fake meat companies. I bet it's a big number.
8
@Gregory Scott Nass: Can you feed 10 billion people without a vast food industry? Or do you propose converting that vast industry to holistic permaculture? That type of food is currently a boutique industry for the relatively well off. I don't know if it can scale, but it would be worthwhile to try.
Of course, the 10 billion people is a bit of a problem too.
There are 7 billion more or less now, but predictions say that there will be 10 billion soon enough.
2
The planet cannot support 10 billion people. That’s plague of locusts time.
@Karen Green: Agreed. I was channeling the English in me and deliberately understating the magnitude of the problem. Population growth is THE big problem for ourselves and the environment.
YES and thank you for this clear environmental analysis of meat-eating. I'm a long time vegetarian and new mostly-vegan. I have loved dairy for along time (oh... cheese...). But dairy is part of cow agro-culture. So as you reduce the amount of meat you eat (especially beef, the meat with the highest impact on our climate), please also reduce the dairy you eat. I haven't stopped eating all dairy, but I know the great reduction I have made in my dairy consumption is one way I can use personal choice to reduce climate change.
1
I love my vegan diet and so does my husband. There are several good reasons to eat plants instead of meat. We started eating vegan about 12 years ago for my husband’s health and to lose weight. His cholesterol dropped 50points to below 199 in just a few months -no statins for us. He resisted the change until he saw the difference in his health and weight. I love that we’re doing something that benefits the planet as well as our own health. We’ve enjoyed experiencing new foods and he has always been an amazing cook, so he has experimented with recipes. It’s been fun for us. When we travel or don’t have an alternative, we will eat fish and in France, we can’t resist the cheese, but I believe we are healthier for the change. My oldest son and his wife are committed vegans as well and successful body builders. It doesn’t have to be expensive either, one just needs to be creative.
13
Check the sodium content on your vegan patties. My wife is vegan but I’m not. Vegan and restaurant food high in sodium. Personally I’m trying to stay off medications so sodium is always on my radar. My advise is learn how to appreciate the multitude of flavors a variety of vegetables offer. No need to grind them up while adding sodium based flavor enhancers. Plain Vegetables offer much to our eating habits
7
@thomas jordon
That is why things like the Beyond Burger are meant to be treats you eat sparingly, it is not supposed to be a regular thing, same with restaurant food. All processed/packaged foods tend to be loaded with sodium (salt). The key is to not eat processed foods and most people eating plant food diets do not eat 'tofurkey' and the like, they eat plant based meals they produce themselves. The only vegans who eat the processed crap tend to be the young, 'hip' types, who also think that eating french fries at mcDonalds is healthy and the like, they will eat the fake meat and the rest of the processed crap, but most vegans, young and old, also are for eating clean as well.
I'm all in favor of saving the planet, but the water use stat looked a bit light to me:
"Producing a single beef burger takes about 660 gallons of water — equivalent to a full week of water use by the average household in the United States."
Best estimate I could find was that the average American uses between 80-100 gallons per day. Multiply by seven days and the number of people in a household and it becomes a much bigger number.
Of course, it doesn't mitigate the statement that it takes 660 gallons of water to produce a single beef burger. But when people sense that you're playing fast and loose with numbers, the credibility of your argument becomes questionable.
2
@Steve Williams
Plus, I would guess that about 95 % of that "660 gallons of water" in the burger ends up back on the land in the form of urine and cow pies -- a problem for the industrial model of farming but a bonus for grassfed beef growers.
Much of the "household use" water ends up in the sewer, where it will need several layers of treatment before discharge. We need to re-think how, where and why we use our potable water resources . . .
@Steve Williams
Your stat is wrong,and I think I know the confusion. The per capita use of water is 80-100 gallons a day, but that is not per person. Per capita includes all the water use in a day, that includes water used by factories, farms, feed lots, etc, they sum that up, then divide it by the population.
In terms of drinking water, they tell you count on a gallon of water per day per person. After that, it is using the toilet which these days is a gallon or less per flush so let's say 10 gallons to be generous, and maybe another 10 for washing..........no way a person uses 80-100 gallons a day. The 660 gallons a week includes this, plus things like watering lawns, gardens, washing the car, laundry, etc.
A vegetarian for 40 years I learned long ago NOT to lecture people about their meat eating habits. At diner parties I do my best to be unobtrusive about not eating the meat offered. If someone asked my question is - "Are you thinking of becoming a vegetarian?" if so I'll engage; if not there is a chance the conversation is pointless.
Many smart and kind friends of mine who eat meat ignore well-established facts, on both the suffering of animals or the effects of meat eating on our planet.
I've no advise on how to change peoples hearts or minds - only a long history of frustration evolved into accepting that personal responsibility is sadly lacking.
4
@Sharon: unless people around you are barbecuing live human babies....what they eat is none of your business.
Just as what you eat is not my business. I have friends and family who are/were vegan or vegetarian, and I accommodated their requires within reason and did not try to argue them out of their eating habits.
You are not going to get people -- omnivores! -- to give up eating habits that are intrinsic to our species.
@Concerned Citizen
Let me reiterate... on second thought I will take my own advise, why bother it's useless.
War, some would say is also intrinsic to our species.
I just said this to my family this week, if the US wanted to cut greenhouse gases 50%, all they have to do is quit eating meat, TODAY. Guess what no takers, except for what 5% of us.
4
The problem with many vegan alternatives to meat and cheese is that they are designed to taste like meat and cheese and in doing so, offer very little nutritional value. They aren't saving the earth if they don't sustain the species.
1
I wonder what the carbon footprint of fake meat is compared to real meat.
The long list of ingredients in fake meat might translate into a higher carbon footprint. Or not. Does anyone know the answer?
5
Thank you for this, Mr. Egan. As a vegan of over 15 years I've been talking to anyone who would listen for years about this.
In addition to amazing fake meat options there is an endless variety of other plant-based meals and recipes to choose from: vegan pizza, vegan lasagna, all kinds of pasta dishes (diary-free cream sauces can be made with ground almonds or cashews, nutritional yeast and any dairy-free milk - for just one kind of recipe) vegan chili, vegan stir-fries, the list goes on and on. Basically, any recipe can be veganized, and made delicious.
Switching to plant-based foods might taste a little differently at first, but our palates do adjust, to the point where anything with meat, dairy and eggs becomes unpalatable, especially when you're also informed about what goes on in slaughterhouses (and all dairy cows end up in slaughterhouses when they are "spent").
5
We're not strictly vegetarian and certainly not vegan, but we do observe "meatless Mondays" as promulgated by Paul McCartney who has been a vegetarian for decades. It's easy and a ritual we enjoy. Otherwise it's just fish and chicken, and many days we are "half vegetarian" because we don't focus on meat with every meal. We rarely eat beef, substituting grass fed bison instead, but rarely. Bison has less fat than turkey. We also installed rooftop solar, so I guess we're all in.
1
It isn't just meat vs. no meat, or meat vs. fake meat. It's cheap, industrially produced, unsustainable meat vs comparatively expensive, humanely produced, sustainable meat. Properly managed, pasture-fed cattle and sheep can be a means of sequestering gigatons of greenhouse gasses. But sustainable farming methods are more time and labor intensive, and so the sustainable product is more expensive. But it's out there, even in Publix supermarkets here in Lee County Florida that eats and votes red, red, red. For those who insist on eating meat, look and you'll find it. Use your money to support the type of farming we all say we need and want, because cheap meat comes at too high a cost to the planet and people.
Nothing Trump or anyone else does translates into an individual not being accountable for his or her own actions.
4
I work in Big Ag, have for years, and can report, quite simply, that the business model is fundamentally broken. I know from industry contacts that Bayer deeply regrets the Monsanto acquisition as they watch thousands of plaintiffs lawyer-up for their day in court on the glyphosate fiasco. And glyphosate is only the tip of that iceberg.
Water quality, surface and groundwater, is deteriorating rapidly all across farm country as decades of Ag chem dousing of fields and pastures slowly poisons the water on which we all rely (hint, eat organics - I do and have for decades). Large scale farm and ranching practices are certainly profitable on paper and perhaps in the short term, but industry experience is clearly demonstrating that they are not sustainable in the long run - the collateral damage is simply too large.
The fake meat option is a sane, and likely sustainable, response to all that - much less resource depleting, etc. Other, similar departures from the norm are already in development in Big Ag R&D departments around the world. Stay tuned.
It's time to acknowledge that the way we've been doing it simply ain't workin', folks - or as they say in my industry, that dog no longer hunts. Holding onto a broken business model is suicide - think coal - so embrace the change, it's coming.
13
I was a vegetarian for years. Even in childhood, growing up on a small family farm, we only ate what we raised, so lots of fruits and vegetables. However, I now suffer autoimmune diseases (yes, plural), and my functional medicine doc/certified nutritionist had me completely switch up my diet. No grains, sugars, legumes, nuts/seeds, or nightshades. Just organic, free-range meats and vegetables. Terribly expensive and time-consuming to shop and cook ALL meals, but I lost 30 lbs - of water/inflammation. My health is managed. I am a functioning, productive adult. Stress and pollution - our entire modern way - take their toll on so many - the rise of autoimmune diseases is indicative. Ethically, I don't want to eat animals, but my choice was to be miserably bedridden or do my best to be healthy and ethically source my food. Vegan just does not work for everyone.
4
And if you can't stop eating meat altogether, cutting down is helpful too! It's not (necessarily) an "all or nothing" proposition.
3
My understanding is that these Frankenfoods are actually no healthier than eating the real thing. Better for the environment, sure, but they should be given the "healthier" halo. They are intended to be more environmentally-friendly, not to solve the issues associated with "unhealthy" diets.
Personally, I just find it easier to eat less meat. The notion of "fake" burgers, turkey, etc. is not something I can really wrap my head around.
4
Let us count the ways we avoid dealing with the real issue. Too many people! Let us suppose that we avoid eating any animal products (ignoring the fact we are metabolically omnivores and like to eat meat). We will have to devote increasing areas of land to increasingly intensive agriculture to try and feed increasingly unsustainable populations. I don't defend factory farming but do we want to give up the historically balanced old fashioned and sustainable mixed farming to try to postpone the inevitable by one generation? two? And remember that traditional farm animals are not wild animals. It is not as if we can free them to roam. If farmers don't keep cows for milk and meat, there won't be any cows at all. Humane, sustainable, mixed agriculture to feed a sustainable human population is the only thing that has a future - assuming of course, that the human species HAS a future.
6
According to online calculators, reducing my annual driving lay 4,000 miles has twice the benefit of going meatless.
3
"They are highly processed Frankenfoods hatched in a lab, not carrots pulled out of the earth."
Egan doesn't know what's in this fake meat, nor does anyone but the manufacturer. And he is extolling it nonetheless?
This seems irresponsible.
The price of grass-fed beef has been going down to the point where I buy it, and I'm the world's biggest cheapskate--the burger is $5.99/pound every day at Walmart. In the Midwest, deer are plentiful, and so my hunter friends provide me with venison at no charge. The price of beef has crept up in recent months, why I can't say, but it's gotten harder to find sirloin steaks for $3.99/pound, which once was easy, even though the meat itself is almost devoid of taste.
Michael Pollan has done an excellent job of pointing out the economics and environmental issues involved with industrial production of meat, but we live in a changing world. It seems to me that folks are moving toward more sustainable models that involve eating meat, which shouldn't be surprising, economics being what they are and us being omnivores.
My guess is, it won't be long before someone uncovers the horrors of fake meat and we are all a-twitter about what's actually in the stuff. If something tastes too good to be true, it likely is.
2
What exactly " Producing a single beef burger takes about 660 gallons of water ..." mean? And other similar comparisons made in the original source? In order for this kind of "scare" to have any meaning, we also need to know how much rainfall we receive in the life of a cow before it becomes a burger. This is fallacious reasoning at its best!
Now, I don't mean in any way that we should raise and kill those animals for food with no control. I am merely talking about tangential reporting with apparently large numbers to scare people off. There are many other ways to make this point.
2
Is there room here for an easy burger recipe that tastes really good if you are not attracted to "mystery fake meat"
1. gently mix a can of black beans with onion, pepper, seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper and chili powder
2 add bread crumbs/panko to bind and mix by hand or pulse in a Cuisinart just a little
3. form burgers and put in fridge to sit for 1-2 hrs
4 dredge again in some panko and saute in a pan 2-3 mins each side with neutral oil
,5 melt cheese on top if you want, add your own fixings on a toasted bun.
No mystery here and its good. Even my carnivore teenage son will eat it.
241
@Paul. That’s what I do! I grow my own black beans and recommend cooking several cups of beans at a time and freeze extras for future meals. Always sort through all grains and legumes for stones or occasional bad pieces. I think one bite on a stone, and a broken tooth, will turn people off vegetable based diets and return to meats. The cost of making your own burgers is around $ 00.10 - 00.25 each. Factory made vegetable burgers are a little pricey and not as good as homemade.
25
@Paul
An old meatloaf recipe can be modified to work with beans, too.
4
@Paul this one sounds good. It sounds as though it would have the density I would look for in a vegetable burger
2
My wife and I are among the 8% who are vegan/vegetarians. Since adopting this diet 3-4 years ago we have noticed that it is increasingly easy to find items on restaurant menus that meet our needs and that there are more and more options available in grocery stores. For those who are environmentally minded but cannot afford to convert their homes to solar or afford an electric car, this is an easy way to help solve global warming AND enjoy a whole new menu!
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@WFGERSEN
I suspect most of us add to global warming by our various means of transportation esp, planes than any other thing that we do or don't do.
What has happened with TVP? Texturized vegetable protein. Where do we get these statistics about 60 gallons of water in one almond, or 360 gallons in one burger... and PS water gets recycled.
1
@Auntie Mame
Water gets recycled as rain and since those don't come on command it would be a good idea to manage our fresh water better than we currently do.
12
@WFGERSEN
It's easier now to be vegan than it's ever been. 30 years ago, I had to go down a long list of checks - "I'm strict vegetarian - no meat, eggs, cheese, butter, etc." About 10 years ago, the occasional waiter would say "Oh, are you a vegan?" Now, it's easy to eat out in many places, and even the regular supermarkets stock vegan foods. It's a good time to be vegan for all sorts of reasons.
18
Unfortunately, Soy is the number one plant that is genetically modified to be saturated with Round-up (a hormone disrupture along with soy) and is a known carcinogenic. Meat may kill the planet and humans, but soy causes a lot of health problems too and can also lead to early death in humans.
I would think that peas or beans, not genetically modified, would make a better meat substitute.
2
First, much of the TP’s singling out soy is based on awful or non-existent research. Second, Beyond Meat doesn’t use soy or gmo’s anyway.
1
I don’t think even fake meat can save us at this point. We are doomed by our apparently built in compulsion to believe that we are superior to other life, and that we are here for some “reason”--a reason involving supernatural beings. We simply do not care how many other species must suffer or disappear so that we can put a vegetable with a thick skin (banana?) in a plastic bag and then into another one along with a plastic jug of milk (with a handle no less), in order to carry it out to our SUV, to drive home to our vinyl-sided house, etc. I haven’t used a carrier bag of any kind, or consumed flesh, for over 30 years, or said a prayer, for over 30 years, but as you say, that’s about 8% of us--not enough to make a difference.
My only hope at this point is that we disappear before this beautiful blue dot becomes another Mars.
231
@Pundette: "We are doomed by our apparently built in compulsion to believe that we are superior to other life"
I believe that we are doomed because some of us need to feel superior to everyone else, and they end up in leadership positions. The damage that they do to get there and stay there is what's preventing progress.
Feeling superior to other life forms is a problem, but I think we're making progress on that front. We appear to be going backwards on the leadership front.
23
@Pundette
"My only hope at this point is that we disappear before this beautiful blue dot becomes another Mars."
We love to eat meat and we love to breed. They have both worked very well for us, making us the dominant life form on earth. But now they are both working to kill us. Ironic, isn't it? So ... can we adapt? That will be the central question for the future: that is, whether or not we have one.
15
@Pundette "We are doomed..." This kind of negative thinking is unproductive.
It is, I believe, an undeniable danger to our environment, and thus to our future, to eat meat, drive an ICE car, overpopulate the planet, or use energy generated by coal plants.
However, there is something even more dangerous than these things: negative thinking. If you don't believe that we can switch to sustainable foods, electric transportation, and renewable energy, then we never will.
10
Won't hurt any of us to eat less meat. Unless of course the chemical components end up killing us.
I'm a big fan of Beyond Meat. In fact I had one of their burgers last night for dinner.
Dispatches from the Midwest where the weather this year is more like spring in England. It's nearly July and last night the low temp was 53F. I love it. But boy is it freaky.
1
No, fake meat will not save us.
Drastic modification of current agri-business farming practices might help us. Mandatory conservation measures of an extremely wide variety might help us. A massive fuel tax might help us (easiest way to curb motorized vehicle use). Restrictions and modifications of trade in respect to overproduction for non-US use of goods and commodities might help us (sorry to say but if parts of the world overpopulate but cannot feed its population, it is not up to the rest of the world to 'rescue' them). A swift kick to this global gag rule would do amazing wonders as abortion and, probably more importantly, contraception could be made available world wide (a far better idea than feeding the multitudes).
Put it this way: the US has a huge appetite. Be it meat or veg or fruit, we'll eat it, and eat a lot of it. To magically rid the country of meat might stall the path of destruction we are on, but it will only stall, and that can only be conceded with an acknowledgement that local meat production everywhere will continue (that's actually a good thing), and were meat production actually outlawed, well, consider prohibition.
It would not work because it will not happen.
Now, if one wishes to stop all the hog/etc. farming that ends up on foreign plates, that makes good sense. Let them deal with their own pigs. But even that move will take monumental effort to achieve.
But fake meat will not save us. Meat production alone is not the problem.
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@DKM
You're right that it will take lots of changes to the status quo. The author didn't say that fake meat alone will save us. He said that it's currently the way for an individual to make the biggest impact.
I'm all in for the Green New Deal and its offshoots.
37
@DKM All fair points, to which I'd only add that fast food hasn't been solely an "American problem" for decades now. The likes of McDonald's and Burger King have spread throughout most of Europe - to such an extent that nations such as the UK now have obesity levels as high as those in the US - and East/SE Asia as well. They've even progressed into parts of sub-Saharan Africa, which also happens to be where they're proliferating the fastest. And even "Impossible Whoppers" are almost as high in calories and saturated fat as the original versions.
Fake meat not only won't save us; it'll also potentially worsen an already-bad public health crisis.
2
@DKM
No single 'solution' will save us.
But this is something the individual -- meaning the person reading this article, and the people to whom that individual might communicate its contents or suggestion -- can do NOW.
Eat less meat. It is good for your health and good for the planet.
Somehow you scoff, and say that what needs to happen is that government has to do something that affects complex regulations and impose taxes.
If you reject individual, doable actions that are beneficial to the person doing them, and recommend INSTEAD your insights on what you recommend, followed by an admission that ultimately "it will not happen," well.....
Welcome to the self-defeating thinking of the Anthropocene era, barely a blink in the cosmic eye.
11
A vegetarian of over 25 years, the first time I tried an Impossible Burger, I had a very difficult time eating it. It tasted, looked and smelled so much like meat that I kept doubting it really wasn't.
Still, it will take a lot more than a Beyond Meat burger to save us. In fact, nothing short of a complete overhaul of how we live and our entire economic system will 'save' us, and even that is a long shot. Take this is--if everyone else on the planet ate the way the average American does, we'd literally have no rainforests, as it would require grazing vast swaths of forested land to contain the meat and dairy industries animals. That and the subsequent methane emissions would bring our world to its knees much faster than is already happening.
Further, Americans aren't attuned to going without, not even a little bit. The global north has ramped up the carbon content of our atmosphere so much, the global south is barely surviving in parts. Our oceans are choked with plastic. Deserts in Africa continue apace. Sea level rise wipes out island nations on the regular. Americans? Don't care.
Even as dozens of people died from heat in India last month, Americans still have the temerity to call global warming a hoax. Even as thousands of people in Central America flee their homelands because they can no longer grow food in their barren farms, Americans want to send them back, to what--die?
I'm sorry, Mr. Egan. Americans are morally bankrupt. Nothing can save that.
305
@Regina Valdez. As a vegan, I had a similar experience with the Impossible Burger.
On the one hand, I applaud any steps that lead to less cruel animal exploitation. So if fake meat cuts into the beef industry, great. But I share your concerns about Americans being willing to give anything up. Most “liberals” I know claim to be concerned about the environment etc., but are gleeful participants in the foodie culture of bacon in everything and chicken and waffles, and wouldn’t dream of running their air conditioners a little less of it made them sweat or be even the slightest bit uncomfortable.
66
@HRD
Most "republicans" I know don't even consider it an issue. They gleefully ignore science while they feel entitled to all the comforts they can get. Sacrifice isn't in their vocabulary.
Of course, that's nonsense. The republicans I know have a wide range of views on many topics, some I agree with and some I don't.
I certainly wouldn't claim to know all of their views or pigeonhole them with broad declarations.
15
@landsw I'm not sure what world you're living in. In mine, the Republicans I know would not trouble themselves for a moment with sacrifice to save the planet.
18
I was a vegan for five years and am a vegetarian for life. I did not become a vegetarian because I had a particular love of animals. Quite frankly, I am terrified of animals. I was once even chased by a bear when hiking alone in the woods. No, I turned to a plant-based diet years ago when I was studying African history and there was a devastating drought in Africa. Somehow I started reading a copy of "Animal Liberation" and when I read that the grains that went to feed livestock could prevent famine, I thought the choice was obvious.
It is such a minor price to pay - to stop eating animals. Today there are so many tasty and easy to prepare plant alternatives. There really is no excuse. Aside from the obvious big three advantages - reducing carbon emissions, preserving the environment, and not hurting other sentient beings, there are personal benefits.
A plant-based diet reduces cholesterol, eliminates constipation, lowers weight and increases energy. It is so good for you that in itself it is worth it. But when you add all the benefits to animals, the planet and to your community- well, it's a no brainer.
And before any carnivores respond, I would love to know what your health stats are. Carnivores love to shout the loudest but they often die the youngest. Too much cholesterol and too much bad mojo. But seriously - all kidding aside:
Go vegetarian. No animals will be harmed in the making of your meal and the air will be much lovelier to breathe.
420
@Liz. I am afraid so many people are unwilling to pay even a minor price.
17
@Liz I totally agree except one point: eating dairy has harmed billions of animals. The dairy industry is horrifying, starting with separating newborn calves hours after birth. The boys are crated for their entire miserable, compassion-less short lifetime of a few weeks to be killed for veal while the girls are separated to continue the cruel cycle. Dairy cows are constantly impregnated and then ground up for dog food when too old or sick to reproduce. Our food system needs a long hard study and reform as the many harms we put on our planet and its sentient beings is unsustainable as well as truly horrifying.
82
@Li z I do have to mention that after years of a mainly plant-based diet for preference and environmental reasons my husband developed a form of dementia. It turned out to be a vitamin B-12 deficiency. Now that folic acid supplementation masks the deficiency on screening tests and the screening tests aren't done routinely it's a totally reversible problem that can be missed easily.
31
Eat real vegetables, eat yogurt, eggs, cheese, wheat germ nuts and grains. They're really good, healthy, sustainable and environmentally sound. Let the animals roam free.
7
@Ellen F. Dobson
"Letting the animals roam free" sounds so romantic. But domesticated farm animals cannot 'roam free' unless they are on very large, managed rangelands. If for example one of the cows we (used to) raise had gotten loose, ended up on the highway, and been hit by a car (think black cow on a dark night), we would have been liable for the damages. Domestication is a trade-off: protection and care for the animals in exchange for sustenance for us. Properly done, both animals and humans benefit. Most of the animals would not survive in the wild, and could do a lot of damage in the process of dying off.
1
@Ellen F. Dobson: yogurt, eggs, cheese -- all come from animals.
1
Give me a vege burger any day. This stuff is chemical soup. Bleeding bacos.
I have been a vegetarian since 1976 and I do not mythologized the burger. I would, however, like to be able to stop at a Burger King while traveling a highway and have something to order. Still “impossible” because bk will be cooking their veggie burgers on the same equipment as the beef burger. Should you think that I am “impossibly” finicky, would you eat a beef burger cooked in the same pan as their “rat feces whopper”? Same deal for we vegetarians. Get a clue Burger King!
3
Fake meat is similar to electric cars. Start walking instead of sheathing yourself in a thousand pounds of steel and plastic. Eat beans instead of indulging a penchant for ersatz animal flesh.
2
Beyond Meat does not use GMO’s. Shocked you made that mistake. Not to mention that most meat would qualify as a “frankenfood” too.
Is it possible to more perfectly conform to the liberal stereotype than walking into a sports bar to watch women's soccer and order a veggie burger?
What will all those Green Bay (Meat) Packers fans say?
2
Changing our farming methods can reduce ghg emissions while preventing deforestation. A win win on climate change as explained nicely here: http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/forests-farms-global-carbon-sink-happening/
1
Condoms will save us. Short of fewer humans, the world is doomed. Cancer rarely ends well for the host.
20
I've been a committed vegetarian (with a once-weekly dose of salmon) for the last three years, and I do not miss meat at all. (As to having a burger that bleeds like the real thing ... no, no, no! thanks!) We cook most of our own meals, and I have a killer recipe for a black bean burger. It holds together, doesn't turn to mush, and has a dash of chipotle powder. Top with chipotle aioli, or tomato or avocado, and well, I assure you, I do not miss meat.
6
I became vegan eight years ago because of what I understand to be negative effects of a heavily animalized diet, the inhumanenous of raising animals for food and the effect of their emissions upon the earth’s climate (and biosphere).
So far, I am satisfied with my diet and it’s effects upon me.
However, if humans continue to increase in numbers, we will continue to damage the biosphere.
The 800 lb gorilla in the discussion is a species that often acts irrationally and doesn’t seem willing to learn how to improve its behavior.
So, I am pessimistic about the quality of life for humans in 50 years, even with major advances in food and energy technology.
13
Excellent. Spot-on.
1
Egan's argument seems something like a head fake. Staking out a position as someone close to the imagined Times reader who stops at a bar to watch, but not enjoy, the women's soccer match, he tries to convince us that we can do our part if we simply order fake meat supported by Big Ag. He invites us to join him in a hearty round of feel-good back patting. But a nagging question lingers after the last mystery lump has gone down. How does any of this change the fact that Americans' per capita emission of green house gasses, at approximately 15 tons, places Americans among the worst people in the planet? Now, the I.O.C.C gives us only 12 years to cut carbon emissions in half in order to prevent the world from heating more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Anything hotter will set off horrific feedback loops that will take the world well above 2 degrees, endangering many of the earth's species and much of the human population. All of this is irreversible, which is why more and more scientists are predicting a century of hell coming down the pipes. I don't eat meat and welcome others to jump on the vegan bandwagon, but don't imagine that having a fake burger in the bar with Tim every once in a while creates any semblance of legitimate grounds for claiming to be a good global citizen. You're just taking a break from the relentless American task of paving the highway to hell through BUSINESS as usual. But, hey, you might as well enjoy your burger.
2
Wow Timothy Egan, a whole column about animal-free burgers and you never get around to telling us how much protein is in the new burgers compared to the old.
4
Socialism isn't taking away our "hamberders"....physics is.
There's an easier way to save the earth than energy-intensive fake meat: stop having kids.
With this Green New Deal I hope there is an incentive for not having children--like free nursing home care as you're put out to pasture...or put into fake meat.
9
@Allentown
Green Deal, or not, our Ponzi economic system requires a degree of population growth to remain healthy. The US is nearing ZPG and some nations are already there. Also, witness Japan with a shrinking population where the economy has contracted. In any event, while our planet's population grows, albeit unevenly, we are going to have to adjust our capitalistic system accordingly or witness meager retirements and a collapse in our ability to provide for the elderly.
Yes, population control is important but equally, many nations, particularly those with wasteful consumer economies, increasing debt, and lack of savings will increasingly have to accept that migration and immigration are going to play a larger role in their economic well being.
1
@Charles That's a great population science approach. But I'm not looking to save our economic system...I'm looking to save every other species on earth from man. If we can somehow survive and not kill off the seas, sand and sky at the same time, bonus. I'm admittedly skeptical though.
1
No, thanks you can keep your vegetable burger. I will stick with real beef!
@James Try one. I was shocked at how tasty it was. And I didn't feel bloated afterwards.
This is ridiculous. Agriculture emmisions only make up 9% of greehouse gasses, animals are less than half of that 9%. Monocrop farming of vegetables is much worse for the atmosphere than cows. Try focusing on what makes up the largest percent of carbon emissions? Like fossil fuels? Stop driving everywhere. Stop running bitcoin. Stop going on cruises. Stop eating vegetables and fruits that were shipped from somewhere warm and where the grow naturally. Those will have a much greater impact on saving the environment than destroying people's health with processed fake meat.
4
@jny243 It's not ridiculous to try and reduce any and all forms of greenhouse gas emissions.
2
Unfortunately, Mr. Egan, fake meat won't "save the planet" (itself an absurd notion coming from the mind of a species it cares nothing for). The two fake meat companies you mention here use either GMO soy or Canola oil to produce their patties. Those two crops have done more damage to our ecosystems than probably anything else in the last 30 years.
4
For thousands of years poor people have learned how to make delicious foods with little or no meat. We don't need fake meat, just more imagination.
7
I want to buy these products, but was disappointed to find the quantity of packaging they’re wrapped in; and since the beyond burgers came in packages of only two patties, a family dinner with them left take-out quantities of garbage in its wake. Could the silicone valley whizzes behind these things solve that problem too please ?
6
The global warming we cause now may actually save humanity 1000 years from now.
Since the gravity of the moon can move the earth's oceans with ease, just consider how large the effect of the earth's molten, circulating core might have on the glaciers IF the core ever became unstable as it does every 100,000 years or so.
Why doesn't the left ever mention the current state of flux the earths core is going through right now?
Follow the money to be made.
Google: Magnetic North shifting. Magnetic north is moving north toward the actual north pole.
The glaciers are adjusting to the shifting magnet north as it has moved over 100 miles in the last 100 years.
There is a new ice age coming.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/11/26/true-polar-wander-trigger-ice-age/#.XQzP-ohKjIU
National Geographic shows the movement but fails to mention the movement of the magnetic north.
The moon moves the oceans
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160408-climate-change-shifts-earth-poles-water-loss/
Its a bit silly for Timothy to keep blaming Trump for all the ills of the world when I am sure he knows where the root cause lies. Trump is the symptom and not the disease. The disease lies squarely at the Business Roundtable, Financial Services Roundtable and other lobbying organizations that are funded by CEOs, the new 21st century moguls in America and the World. These worthies gifted us Trump, Obama, Clinton etc. Trump looks bad vis-a-vis Obama but Obama lacked courage to take bold steps because of these same CEOs who did not want the stock market to suffer and their stock options and million dollar pay packages hurt. Perenially, Democrats turn a blind eye and deaf ear to people employed in the fossil fuel industry, especially the coal mines. How about giving them a helping hand? What exactly are generations of coal mining families who know no other way of subsistence to do? Cheer Democrat inclusive policies on LGBTQ, Women's Right to Choose and easier ways to Immigrate to America? As long as fossil fuel industries provide employment, we cannot have a realistic plan to tackle global warming. The government has enormous power to move markets. When the Pentagon started pumping billions of dollars into internet and computer security, the market really took off. Similarly if the Government opens the spigots on technology to combat global warming we can wean enough people off from fossil fuel industries and hence weaken it.
1
The protein quality of these items made from peas, vegetable oils and fillers is quite poor. Fake meat will not save us, only deteriorate our general health. Next up on the menu: insects. A real and nutritionally complete super food; just don't look at your dinner plate...
2
@Joe
One of the great myths of the Standard American Diet is that we need hundreds of grams of protein. We don't. The majority of protein we consume cannot be absorbed through the digestive process and exits as waste.
But the ones who are really dispelling this myth are the increasing number of world class athletes who are either vegan or vegetarian. They are saying that their performance has actually improved after giving up meat protein. And they are reducing their risk of a host of chronic diseases associated with meat protein.
2
Any kind of intervention to slow down the climate change process is welcome. Being vegetarian helps the planet and fake meat products certainly fill in the gap for people that want to turn vegetarian but have a hard time getting over their craving for the taste of meat.
4
The Age of Man means transition of a species from survival to freedom space. Hunger and fear are two most dominant forces to drive man to eliminate challenges of survival. Technology almost achieved that goal in early part of twenty first century. We are now transitioning to age of freedom and it is boundless - freedom from violence by developing nuclear bombs, freedom to harness infinite energy to create comfort, freedom to create infinite wealth by exploiting Mother Nature , and list goes on and on. The challenge for freedom is not objective technology - the third party science. The challenge for this freedom is a technology that is based on first party empirical science. Till today, we have invested very little in this project - Veggie Burger will not take us much farther from our current foolishness.
7 years ago I went all vegan. Initially for health (proactively). But am now especially thankful to not be complicit in the the nightmarish lives - and deaths - of so many horribly confined and suffering animals. (And please don't tell us about all the happy free range animals: they're a small minority). Eating flesh is testimony to the savagery of the human beast. And yes, saving the planet from extinction, and the seas from fish depletion, is not a bad reason to go vegan also. (And my health is just fine - actually more than fine - thank you - as confirmed by annual physical exam and lab test results).
5
If I'm gonna eat less meat, I'll eat less meat. I don't need DNA edited frankenfood.
We know just enough about DNA to do crazy things, but not enough to really know the long range effects.
DNA is the product of a billion years of evolution.The relationships between DNA and the rest of our bodies and the world is mostly mystery right now. The infinite relationships make it impossible to know the side effects of our experiments.
Imagine that words and paper could make things come into existence, and then we gave a two year old a typewriter. That is humans with DNA, almost randomly, and without any thought to consequences, causing things to come into existence workout taking the time to understand the true relationships between life and the coding that makes it happen.
There may be very good reasons some things we wish for don't exist. We shouldn't be so desperate to change the world we evolved into over millions of years.
8
Vegan fake food is not the answer to anything. A chemical plant, through the magic of "food science," can twist soybean protein into any shape and color you want, but it does not make it food.
Instead, the US should reform agriculture along European lines.
Instead of paying farmers to grow genetically engineered corn and soybeans with chemicals, and then using chemical plants to make it into something even MORE foreign, how about raising cattle on pasture land like human beings have been doing for 10,000 years in Europe?
Pasture grazing is environmentally friendly in a way that 10,000-acre chemically managed soybean farms will never be.
Visit Burgundy and see beautiful herds of cattle that have been producing milk and cheese and meat since before the Roman empire. See grapevines that are varieties dating back more than 1,000 years. Beautiful vegetables that have been grown organically since, well, forever.
But no, this is not a vision that vegans want because their ideology is that animals cannot be used for, well, anything. Vegans would have us eating chemical concoctions and dying of cancer in 100 different ways rather than eat the food that we are actually designed to eat.
13
@Tom B. Remember, veganism will be no more than quaint afterthought if we're not here on Earth to reminisce.
@Tom B. The cost of those traditional agricultural practices and much lower supply are incompatible with the way americans eat. There is an expectation about the price of animal protein for the majority of the american market.
4
I'm not a vegetarian (yet), but probably 75% of my meals are now vegan in nature. And I LOVE it.
And there is something really nice about biting into a burger and knowing you won't end up with something really gross in your mouth. You know, that weird gristle or bone fragment or other mystery substance that brings your meal to a premature end.
And if you can have your burger and the planet, too, all without gratuitously creating unimaginable suffering for other sentient beings, why would you not???
21
Since cavemen in animal skins with clubs brought home the bacon, Jim Egan, man has eaten animals and fish and learned how to grill them all on fire. One doesn't have to be a vegan or vegetarian to appreciate the deliciousness of vegetables, fruit, Earth's flora. A meatless Rome (or Planet Earth) won't be built in a day. Will giving up meat save the planet anytime soon?
Industrial agriculture and slaughterhouses provide meat (fauna of all kinds) for our American table. Whether or not eating beef causes early death (along with smoking cigarettes, etc.) is beyond the scope of our diets. In the end, Death, a mightier movement than fake-meat burgers in our go-to take-away and grub joints, comes for us all.
Sooner than we can imagine, the Holocene Age of Man we're living through will wreak devastation on our planet. If wars and clashes by night continue apace under this weak and worst "strong man" president, we're in for it. Doinald Trump survives on Mickey D burgers and freedom fries fried in beef-lip fat. A prediction: "fake meatballs" won't help save our planet.
Today's Americans (and humankind throughout the world) are cavemen in modern dress. We're all Neanderthals under the skin who don't get that we're already experiencing the Sixth Extinction on Earth.
1
Fake meat will not save the planet. Growing real food (pastured livestock) contributes very little to GHG compared to energy and travel. Come on NYT. The world doesn't need more fake food—it has plenty already.
6
@drroth
Sorry Roth, the science tells a different story. Cattle raising is an enormous source of GHG, specifically methane, which is even more damaging than C02.
The last figure I saw found transportation and cattle raising to generate almost equal amounts of GHG.
But cattle raising is also destroying the Amazon and with it the planet's lungs. Whether we like it or not, cattle raising is in the long run, unsustainable.
11
@Drspock I believe you believe what you say. But it isn't the truth. Read GHGguru and GrassBased on twitter for details.
Anyone who’s eaten a tasteless hockey puck that’s supposed to be a veggie burger knows this is something different. It tastes great! That’s what will change the way people eat. The fact that it also helps the planet is the caramelized onion on the bun. I’m a convert but it’s getting harder to find the Impossible burger.
4
@Rmski77...Try White Castle or (coming soon) Burger King.
Having lived through the eras of being told that butter is unhealthy, margarine is healthy; eggs are bad for you, no, they're good for you; fat is bad for you, no the fat isn't as bad for you as the sugar that replaced it; I wonder how long it will be before studies come out that there's something bad in the "fake meat." Also, where does the land come from to grow the plants to produce the fake meat? The American West? Good luck with that. Maybe we can get another dust bowl going.
3
Fake meat will save us -- the planet and our souls. I would argue that most meat today, whether chicken, beef or pork, is raised inhumanely, with no concern for the animals involved. Profit trumps our humanity every time we sit down at the table. The planet will be a better place, and we will be better people when plant-based "meat" becomes the norm. And by the way, I'll have the small fries with my Impossible Whopper.
19
Humans are omnivores. Many of the nutrients that humans need are either not found in plants at all or not in the quantities needed for health. Proteins, essential fatty acids (note the "essential" designation), iron and other minerals are found in the proper quantities and easily assimilated by human digestion. The issues isn't the consumption of meat, but how the meat comes into being. For example, cows are ruminants. They need to move about and graze on grass to be healthy. Locking them up in feed lots makes them sick. Feeding them grain makes them sick and produces methane flatulence. The solution to that is to return to properly raised animals, not eschewing the animals.
8
I gave up beef and pork a long time ago. I still eat occasional chicken and I really like fish. I also soak and cook up a bag of beans every week. I change off as to what kind. This is a great budget and environmentally conscious way to cook. The beans can be used many different ways---salad, burritos, burgers, savory hot meals, etc. and paired with a whole grain will give you a complimentary protein. Beans taste good. Give them a good chance. And for Brak fans, I love beans, woo woo woo, I love beans, how about you?
4
And don’t forget about special interest groups and the advertising industry running conflicting articles counter to your narrative to sow doubt in the whole idea. It is a mess.
2
Had my first beyond meat burger - not half bad!
3
In the United States unhealthy diets pose a greater risk of early death than unsafe sex, alcohol, drug and tobacco use combined. While early death in the US is a positive thing for climate as well as reducing health care costs. Along with going vegan as a variation of the 'crying Indian' approach to the environment: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/03/climate-change-requires-collective-action-more-than-single-acts-column/1275965001/
A mouth-watering column, Mr. Egan, something that seems to be usual with you.
Too many years ago to count, I tried not eating meat. I bought into the notion that red meat was the ante-room to cancer. My efforts to tilt at the windmill lasted a week. I returned to the thick, juicy burgers with a voracity that a crocodile might have envied.
But as the years since have multiplied, I have found myself feeling guilty about all the animals that I have eaten. I've never loved chicken, and the occasional visit to Colonel Sanders was "no biggie." But underneath it all, I knew, but didn't want to face, that these animals that I consume suffered awful deaths. I rationalized it, like most people do: "I wanted it."
But it's a short jump from "I wanted it" to "don't do it," as with climate change. This is serious business and there's no need here to go into the deforestation that out-of-control fires claim, or the farmlands lost to flood tides once unthinkable in America's main agricultural arteries. This menace should not be about politics but politics is all about money and the president is determined to use that leverage to keep the one percent in pocket change.
We do not inhabit a finite planet. It's astonishing how short-sighted climate change deniers are. They have no thought for their posterity, leave alone ours. They think they can abuse our living spaces with impunity and pay no penalty.
We elect two servings of stupid, so stupid is not only what we get; it's what we deserve.
5
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18: Another great comment from you—leaving aside your recent words about that Harvard reject.
As I tell my meat-eating friends, it’s not about the animal deaths—we all die. It’s about life. That’s something factory farmed animals don’t have.
7
Yet another idiotic anti-meat column that ignores the fact that agriculture is a drop in the bucket of over all contributions to climate change according to the EPA; fossil fuels massively dominate the problem. Meat contributes less that 2%. Dr. Frank Mitlohner of UCDavis has done extensive work on this issue. We need less mono-culture. Such anti-meat nonsense is promoted by big-food that has turned our nation into one of obesity and disease. Cows graze where crops don’t grow. Go grass finished if that makes you feel better, but killing off beef will advance the destruction of humanity. I’m eating meat which nature intended; and as an elder I take no meds and remain very healthy.
2
Can you order it rare? And does it then taste rare? Just wondering...
@Brian Harvey - I am mean to waitstaff when I order my veggie burger "medium rare." They just write the order down and...
Eat your vegetables and grains. They taste great and are good for you and the planet. While you talk about the amount of water required to make a beefburger, you do not mention the resources needed to make a fake burger nor do you mention the cost. If fake burgers replaced all beefburgers, what would that industry look like? Easier and better to eat your vegetables and grains, rather than an overprocessed fake burger. In the long run, we must have population control to effectively combat global warming and other problems associated with too many people.
I always learn a lot from you, Mr. Egan. Can’t wait to have me a fake burger.
3
Transitioning to a post-hydrocarbon world is one thing, but citing climate change to dictate what people eat Is another. This has simply gone too far and is turning into hysteria. Faux meat tastes awful. Hands off my hamburger!
2
Stopping or reducing your flying is by far and away the most effective way to reduce your carbon footprint. Your eating habits are a mere blip compared to one flight across the Atlantic
4
Eating fake meat instead of Whoppers is great, but for those who still cook at home, it is quite easy to make your own veggie burgers. Delicious recipes for black bean burgers can be easily found online. This is much less expensive than buying fast food. What's up with the "fake blood" deal? Some Americans are so weird - you really need to pretend you are eating meat??? Our greed and unwillingness to give up even a little of our wasteful, selfish "lifestyle" will be the end of us all.
6
Sorry, Timothy Egan, eating fake meat is not the biggest thing we can do to save the planet. Having fewer or NO children is. I can't believe in this day and age Americans are still having three, four, five children or more. Every one of those children will grow up to drive a car, occupy a house, consume resources, probably reproduce, and take up space formerly used by wildlife. We need real leadership on slowing global population growth. Everything else is noise.
20
It won't be a complete success story until they make cannot-tell-from-real "bacon".
I was a vegetarian for almost a decade, Boca Burgers and other pure vegetable burgers are not edible in my book. Both the Beyond and Impossible actually taste good, can be cooked on a grill and satisfy that desire for beef. That is what caused me to not be vegetarian any longer. With foods like these, I can make that switch again.
5
@Joe Sabin: And until we can by Impossibles and Beyonds to cook at home, try Morningstar Farms Prime Grillers. If I ever started eating meat again, I would still buy Prime Grillers.
3
@Bluebeliever We are Morningstar fans. I can buy Beyond Beef in my grocery store and health food store.
1
@Joe Sabin: Haven’t been able to get it here. Yet.
1
The human species is overrunning the planet. We have twisted the ability to produce more and more food per acre until it cannot be twisted further. Almost every country's population needs to limit growth. Put simply, if the population of deer in an area exceeds the food supply then the weaker ones starve and predators cull the herd. We want to believe that humans control the planet, but we don't. Unlike the deer, we do have the knowledge and science to prevent our own "culling of the herd".
Remember, the planet won-not the dinosaurs.
9
Thanks Timothy but no thanks. You eat it. I tried fake meat and don't care for it although I did well with Beyond Meat stock. That said, I like real meat but don't eat enormous amounts of red meat for health reasons. I love red meat once in awhile but mainly stick to chicken, turkey and fish although some current research questions whether white meat is any healthier than red meat. If you had properly researched the topic before writing this piece you would be aware of a number of things. Among them are: 1) most of the methane produced by cows comes from the front end through belches, not the back end as you would expect; and 2) the amount of metnane emanating from cow belches can be significantly reduced by mixing seaweed in with the feed given to cows. The latter has to do with enzymes produced, kind of like what Beano does for humans who eat beans. This research has been done at UC at Davis and other universities. The research can readily be located using Google search. I suggest you read it.
1
I became vegetarian while working in a basic sciences lab. For medical development, animal cruelty could be considered a necessary evil.
Animal cruelty is not necessary to meet my dietary needs, or to provide good tasting food.
I also realized, while working to help care for the local stray cat population in my city (and do some TNR), that it was crazy that I cared about these animals so much but not other animals equally. I'm not saying I'm going to go out and adopt a bunch of cows, but the least I can do is stop killing them.
It took me another 5 years to become vegan. I tried last summer, lasted about 2 months, and went back to vegetarian. Starting my med school rotations made being able to control all my meals a little difficult, and I wasn't fully in the right mindset to make it work. I am now 3 months into my second attempt and I see this sticking.
There are so many meat and dairy replacement products, and so many websites and books publishing vegan recipes and tips that it is not difficult to find a wide variety of foods to keep things from getting stale. And restaurants, at least in the major cities, are doing a great job. Yesterday, while studying for one of my exams (which I'm taking in about an hour), I was able to go online, place an order for a vegan buffalo chikn' pizza from a local pizza place, and eat that while I studied (no, not the healthiest, but saved me the time of cooking).
Its animal friendly, and good for the environment. Why not do it?
26
I grew up eating meat. Became vegan 30 years ago because I love animals.
I don't miss meat or dairy at all.
You can try Impossible Burgers at White Castle (the burger chain). White Castle also has more traditional veggie burgers (made out of veggies).
20
I’ve been eating Boca Burgers for many years. They are all vegetarian and delicious. There are vegan varieties and varieties laced with cheese. I have one for lunch most days on a toasted bun with all the fixings. Find them in the freezer case of your grocery store.
17
Kudos to you.
As a vegetarian for over twenty years, though, I have to say the "Beyond Burger" grosses me out - it tastes too real. There's even fake blood that comes out of the burger.
I can only hope that as companies start making these gory atrocities they allow some way for vegetarians to identify them on menus. When I had the Beyond Burger at a restaurant, it was just listed on the menu as a veggie burger. So I fear the companies are, ironically, trying to capture non-vegetarians in a way that is alienating and inconsiderate of vegetarians who simply don't like the taste of meat and want to avoid it.
13
Nothing will save us. In all of biology the most successful under the current conditions dominates the landscape, until such time as the current order reaches beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. Once over the peak of the curve it's time for regime change at the top.
Unless changing what we eat is going to reduce the population the carrying capacity will impose hard limits. Every living thing exists with this tension. No amount of tinkering, coupled with hopeless hubris, is going to preempt biology. We will procreate until we do ourselves in. It has always been that way, save for rocks from space type scenarios.
Talk about saving the planet is just silly. The planet is fine.
5
I’m all for anything that reduces consumption of meat, but if all they have to offer is a hamburger, well then those have been out there forever. Vegiburger or cow burger, I’m not eating that. Do Americans eat anything but burgers?
2
I agree with many others who are pointing out overpopulation as a major factor. Unless we can in some way control that I'm not sure we'll ever get there.
As for eating meat I became a vegetarian at 46 (I'll be 70 in a few days). Having grown up in the 50's/60's on "meat and potatoes" (Ohio) I thought it would be difficult. While I did and do sometimes crave a hot dog or burger but the "fakes" have been enough to satisfy that occasional craving.
I also abandoned the car around the same time and commuted 22 miles a day on a bike for a little over 20 years, come rain, cold, heat, even a light snow.
51
"Fake" meats are made from REAL food.
The next step is to skip the corporatization of food and eat the beans (and legumes (peas), and grains). Don't forget your variety of fresh fruits and vegetables and drink water.
23
@exhausted by it all, I don't eat any processed foods or meat of any kind. With that said it took me time to completely transition from the farm girl I was raised as to the vegan adult I am today. Any way people get to a point of not eating meat should be encouraged.
7
The more interesting development will come when we can grow actual meat in a lab instead of a farm. It'll become commercially viable within a decade.
4
As a farmer, I can tell you this: growing vegetables, tilling the soil to put them in rows, keeping the ground open for annual crops, is, BY FAR, more deleterious for my land, for the watershed, and for my ability to sequester carbon in the soil.
By contrast, growing perennial pastures and putting grazing ruminants on them, is, BY FAR, more effective in improving my soil health, allowing water infiltration, reducing run-off, and producing a very stable, low-cost and healthful product -- grass-fed beef.
Please do your research. You can ditch the feed-lots and buy direct from farms that are providing an actual solution to climate change -- and eat the world's best foods. But only if you make an effort to find us.
Start your search with Gabe Brown, Allan Savory, Allen Nation, Gene Logsdon. Or go to Acres USA Conference this December in Minneapolis. We have the solutions! We need the wisdom to go after them.
116
@francis peter industrial farming is definitely the issue. There is a stretch of highway in the Texas Panhandle that everyone who eats meat should have to bike through to get an idea of what goes on on these farms. Just driving through was a nightmare, with the stink going on for miles. The inhumane conditions, the stressed out meat, very bad karma.
51
@Francis Peter So true. And those 660 gallons of water per hamburger do not disappear into the ether. The water consumed is returned directly to the earth, is gravity filtered through the soil, and is eventually dripped into the aquifer as renewed/clean water.
My family's small PA farm went from market crops to dairy to beef to fallow over the past 120 years. The land is like many miles of green fields that have returned to forest in PA, NJ, and NY.
Anyone can do some more research by hopping on I-80 outside of NYC and driving West for an hour and then 10 more hours with eyes wide open. By the time you reach South Bend you should have seen plenty of naturally irrigated and fallow green fields where sheep or cattle could happily graze. America seems crowded and busy when you live in the crowded sections. But, it does not take much effort or imagination to to realize that we have thousands of empty farms where livestock could graze on the grass that grows naturally and drink from the water that falls from the sky.
23
@Francis Peter except then we would still be consuming an animal that doesn't want it's existence to end on a plate. And how many acres do you need to feed each cow? And how would it ever be possible to feed the earths populations with grass fed cows. There is not enough land space on the entire globe for such an undertaking.
27
Timothy, January 2020 will mark my 40th anniversary as an ethical vegetarian.
Back in the day, I was greatly impressed by the argument that it took 10 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef - that and the disturbing realization that my loveable, adorable family boxer might be looked on as dinner by human beings in certain parts of the world, and how I couldn't in good conscience participate in a system where we arbitrarily distinguished between domestic and farm animals as sources for nutrition.
Here in the present, that 10 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef remains a major driver of global hunger and now climate change - and thus, at least for me, an excellent argument for more human beings to switch to an at least partial plant-based diet.
Obviously, some people indeed do better eating a more traditional diet - but nobody needs to be eating as much as animal protein as Americans do today.
I must say, however, that I have not been that impressed by the most recent entries in the fake meat sweepstakes. I've had both the Beyond and Impossible Burgers in restaurants, and, especially after they are loaded up with all these condiments and buns, they taste pretty much the same as my old favorite Morningstar Farms Grillers Prime burger given the same treatment - but cost a whole lot more.
If this new fake meat is going to be prohibitively priced, its impact will be limited.
12
The real taste in food comes from creative use of spices. There are many ways to combine the myriad spices available to us in varying proportions to create alluring dishes. Meat or vegetables or legumes or grains are the base that helps transport these delicate flavors and tastes. The key is to master the use of spices; it doesn't matter what the base is.
11
This is a great idea, unless you are allergic to soy, legumes etc
You write: "more power to the plant dog and soy burger".
Yes, but just be cautious where your soy is from. Soy farming is one of the main drivers of deforestation of the Amazon. American-grown soy is superior from a climate perspective as it (generally) doesn't drive new deforestation.
Unfortunately, it should also come as no surprise that the "trade war" with China is only making things worse, as Brazil ramps up exports of soy (mainly to China) to compensate for the large drop in exports from American farmers (down 49% year-over-year, as quoted below).
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3010480/us-china-trade-war-has-been-boon-brazils-soybean-farmers-can
11
@Dwarf Planet
Whether here or there, feeding the beans, legumes, grains, to people, rather than animals, DRASTICALLY reduces the acreage/water required.
16
@Dwarf Planet yes, but 75% of that soy goes to feed livestock, in a wildly inefficient food system that emphasizes human consumption of animal protein.
3
@exhausted by it all
Yes, THIS is the point. Thanks for making it!
Saying that most soy is fed to animals, is not an argument against eating soy directly! (See commenter HRD, also responding to Dwarf Planet.)
Most if not all of soy products for humans are organically grown, too.
1
Grass fed beef is not only healthier, proper grazing improves the soil and carbon footprint.
Do more homework.
20
@Amy Morris
Depends on which homework you choose. There's studies and findings supporting/refuting both sides of the debate.
4
@Amy Morris right on. As the saying goes "It's not the cow, it's the how".
3
@Amy Morris
But the VAST majority of beef is not "grass fed". And there simply isn't space enough to "grass feed" all the cows we consume.
That is the whole point!
46
I see that various vegetable oils are an ingredient in some of these products; if they are there to lend texture, would they not be hydrogenated? And, is there a word for that?
2
“The China Study” by Dr. Colin Campbell, Oxford, Cornell, and China was so thorough and well-documented, I switched to a virtually meatless, whole food, plant-based sufficient protein diet. He found a link between serious diseases, like cancer, and too much animal protein. “Blue Zone” high-longevity areas show minimal red meat consumption probably accounts for added years of health, among other factors.
I routinely buy the products cited in your article. I am environmentally conscious, so these products just make it easier to live a healthier and more ethical life. I do not crave meat anymore and that surprises me. I wish I had bought the stock when the IPO launched. Remarkable upswing in stock price.
14
I tried a beyond meat sausage recently at an A&W. Needs a bit more spice but pretty good, overall.
4
There are 2 graphs, one is horrifying and the other is comforting. The first graph is human population growth, it is growing vertically and we are killing the planet as we room straight up.
The second graph is innovation, and it too is growing straight up. The two innovations that give me hope are this one about meat replacement and the 60 Minutes piece recently about Marshall Medoff/Xyleco making a replacement plastic as well as fuel from plants.
We may innovate our way out of this mess but we also need to talk about a common word from the 1970's that you never hear anymore: overpopulation.
52
@Will Flaherty The world population was growing exponentially but the rate is now decreasing. In advanced societies, population growth is negative. In fact, in every society, as people become wealthy beyond basic needs they start producing less people. It is clearly possible that we could reach a stable plateau
3
@Dr B
The world population in 1950 was 2.5 billion and today in 2019 it is 7.3 billion.
The projected world population in 2050 will be 9.9 billion people. In one century the world population will quadruple. That is wholly unsustainable.
11
Please read where while the wealthier countries produce less population, the poorer countries do not...as is true in families. Also, o.ne of the main contributing factors in wars, I.e. Syria, is the large population without means of employment which initiates uprisings.
9
Once again the real culprit goes unnoticed, the driving force behind climate change is as it has been for more than two hundred years, US, too many humans, that’s all there is to it. Eating fake burgers may make you feel noble (and full) but isn’t going to mitigate the unstoppable force of what we humans have unleashed on the planet, ourselves and particularly our descendants, we are not able to technologize our way out of this mess, technology is how got into this in the first place.
I apologies for seeming perhaps a trifle dystopian in my outlook but I have been studying and thinking about this for decades and observing the changes which are occurring all around us. The differences between 70 years ago and now are astonishing and this is just a brief snippet of the whole picture which I have seen in my lifetime and the changes are accelerating.
So again, don’t pin your hopes on “fake burgers”.
Cheers y’all and good luck!
20
The author mentions vegetarians and vegans. I'm one of a large number of flexitarians. We eat lots of meat free food, very little red meat, lots of veggies and fruit.
In a way electric vehicles are flexitarian. The electricity the run on may have been generated by wind, solar, hydroelectric, natural gas or even coal.
Some plant foods consume huge amounts of water to produce. Some plant foods are high in saturated fats.
We live in a complex world where, hopefully, thousands of changes, some big some small, will lead to big change.
6
I do love the meatless products created by the companies referred to in the article, but I think a more important component is that we generally need “less” of everything. As a species, we are omnivores, which can include the consumption of animal based proteins...and a reasonable amount of butter, sugar, and other over-maligned (natural) food products. The flavor palate and pleasure is wonderful....in fact the best. A piece of beef, pork, chicken or fish with Bernaise is perfect, Yum! but just little bit, is all we really need. When restaurants serve, and we order, 24 oz steaks with a bucket of sauce, this is a burden on our food production industry, our world and frankly, obscene, given food inequity for underserved populations. Let’s eat less in volume, share more and enjoy more.
10
During the FDR administration the belief was "fake hormones will save us".
Today, millions are chronically ill or have died prematurely because the "science that will save us" back in 1939-1975 was simply wrong. Giving pregnant women the equivalent of 500 birth control pills a day was science. Today it would be attempted murder.
Bacon burgers must be beef and pork not estrogenic soy by product, brown rice and salt substitute.
I am not an experiment. You should not willingly be one too.
4
@Robert
Robert, you should definitely be one to go straight to a whole-food plant-based diet: beans, rice, veggies and fruits. That's perfectly healthy--and delicious! Some people might want an occasional plant burger (Impossible is only one brand) to liven things up.
You mention estrogenic soy. Soy contains phytoestrogens that occupy estrogen receptors and are protective.
Meat, milk and eggs contain natural hormone cocktails, not meant for humans but to promote the animals' own young life. Milk contains large amounts of growth factors (to bring a calf to cow in record time) that are correlated with cancer promotion, especially the reproductive cancers (breast, ovarian, and prostate).
I have been "experimenting" with plant-based eating for almost 30 years and couldn't feel better!
2
This might--MIGHT--work if things like the impossible burger become cheap enough and common enough to skew the math. Many of us were hoping for that with electric cars, and that may still happen. In the same way that digital cameras have replaced film cameras because they were ultimately cheaper and much more convenient, electric vehicles hold enormous promise for reliability (no oil, water, transmission, radiator, fuel pump, oil pump, water pump, spark plugs, air filter, oil filter, etc.) and there are enough charging stations around.
We're all going to get used to some changes so it is encouraging that alt meat is being met with such enthusiasm. This is exactly the kind of thing that can at least slow down climate change.
4
@David R
We need the government to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel, meat, and dairy industries and start subsidizing industries that are better for us and the planet.
2
A change in diet can save your life. I know this first hand. Advised that I needed open heart surgery to replace clogged valves, I opted for a vegan diet instead, guided brilliantly by one of the respected MD's who tote the vegan banner. It worked and I am a "new" person and happier man.
There are hundreds of plant-based products other than Impossible Burgers. Italian sausage, pepperoni and more. Asian cookbooks are troves of vegan recipes. As a Southerner, I already knew I didn't need meat for Monday's red beans and rice ritual.
Whenever I am offered a Big Mac or something similar, all I have to do is look at the obese adults and grotesquely overweight children at church or the movies to realize the power in the words "no thanks."
58
Good article, but poor title: if it was only that easy. Not one single solution will save us from an imminent environmental disaster. Less animal and industrial agriculture the way it is done today will definitely go a long way to help us fight the climate cancer (we are beyond simple change - change implies we have time, cancer not so much).
It is not only the environment we need to save, we need to save ourselves from ourselves: poor eating habits is the main cause of chronicle diseases and premature deaths. This also greatly contributes to high healthy insurance costs (making it less universal than what it should).
Changing eating habits is an extremely complex subject. Fake meat will not be the single solution, but it is helpful, a step in the right direction to a more plant-based sustainable diet.
8
It won’t, though. Until huge companies are brought to account for the business practices that are killing us there is little hope - it’s a simple matter of scale. Fake meat is a good thing, both ethically and environmentally, but saying it will “save us” places the onus once again on the individual rather than where it belongs, as well as distracting from the only thing we can really do: protesting the businesses that are destroying the environment and challenging what’s left of our governments to do something about it.
6
@P Yaeger
It's not true that the "only thing we can really do" is protest (how often do you do that?) or challenge (how many letters and phone calls do you write/make?) or vote (how often do we get to do that? a couple of times a year?)
The one thing we all do is to decide what goes into our mouths and our bodies 3X a day. Most of us are lucky enough to have almost complete control of what we buy and eat. And don't tell me it's too expensive: plantbasedonabudget.com
1
Thanks for your sharing your opinion piece. There are studies in peer-reviewed literature exploring the impacts of switching from “animal” crops to direct crops for us to consume (e.g plants to eat directly) - and the results suggest what would be a large decrease in our collective footprint (lower inputs for irrigation, fuel to plant/harvest, less fertilizer,...). For comparison sake, a life cycle analysis is needed for meat alternatives - are inputs lower, and are there unintended outputs that result in negative consequences?
An aside but an important one - I don’t see the point in referring negatively to POTUS in the article. All that does is turn off a large bunch of folks on a topic that is important for us all to really think abut our collective impacts.
3
@Durelle Scott
"For comparison sake, a life cycle analysis is needed for meat alternatives - are inputs lower, and are there unintended outputs that result in negative consequences? "
Good question. I was curious, too. Here are the numbers Impossible Foods publishes on that topic:
Kg CO2 Equivalent
Burger: 30.6
Impossible burger: 3.5
Difference: -89%
Land Occupation m2/yr
Burger: 62
Impossible burger: 2.5
Difference: -96%
Water consumption liters/yr
Burger: 850.1
Impossible burger: 106.8
Difference: -87%
More at the link:
https://impossiblefoods.com/if-pr/LCA-Update-2019/
The numbers are shocking. The burger is good.
21
Will Tuttle's excellent book, The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony details how the choices Americans and people make about food these days degrades the planet, the air, the water, the land; destroys human health and rains horrendous cruelty down on our fellow creatures who share this beautiful Earth.
"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty wit which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do . . . . It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it." Albert Schweitzer
28
@Earthling
Unfortunately, concern for animals is not the motive behind the beyond meat industry. The motive's (partially) worry about climate change - and then only because it is finally hurting Homo sapiens, in form of flooding, wildfires, etc.
If animal suffering had ever been a factor, we would have had these meat replacements 40-odd years ago. Diet for a Small Planet came out in the 1970s.
2
If only to no longer participate in the horrors of factory farming, all carefully hidden from the public, it is well worth it to no longer go near meat and dairy. I can hardly wait for the day humans have killed themselves off from the planet and the animals will once again be free. What goes around comes around.
12
You can’t wait for humans to kill themselves off? And you are what? Sorry. A little too extreme.
3
While they are certainly strong environmental and humanitarian advantages to replacing the beef industry (it this ever happens, it is doubtful that it will happen soon enough to save us), we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking these products are necessarily healthier options. Some still use 'heme', the substance found in real meat that gives it flavor and the substance that is also related to its colon cancer risk. Some 'fake meat' products even contain more heme than natural meat, thus raising the cancer risk. When we report on these products or promote them, we should be clear about the risks as well.
6
@Kevin
"There is an association between high intake of heme iron sourced from meat and increased risk of colon cancer."
-Wikipedia
With several caveats, this IS concerning.
1
I think the operative phrase is "high intake" -- I changed to a vegetarian diet in 2016 to make my tiny impact on the environment. I enjoy a Beyond Burger or an Impossible burger once or twice a month, and it stems my meat cravings.
I think that these products are aimed at getting meat eaters to eat just a little less meat, and I'm all for that.
3
Reducing human numbers by one-child incentives is not an option?
33
@Newell McCarty Over population is the root problem of all our human worries.
5
@Newell McCarty
ZPG will happen. Not a matter of 'if'', only 'when'.
1
@Pete less painful to plan a reduction.
I took a brief look at the source article in Science, and I could not find any reference to comparisons between the GHG reduction potential for other actions vs. switching to a plant-based diet. Militant vegetarians like to cite global statistics which do indeed suggest that the agricultural sector is the largest producer of GHG emissions. However in the U.S., transportation far outstrips food production as a driver of climate change. This is explained simply by the fact that our lifestyle results in much more air travel and travel in single-occupancy vehicles than in the rest of the world.
I am not a scientist, but in the research I have been able to do using credible sources on the internet, depending on where your electricity comes from, you can reduce your personal carbon footprint from 10-40 times more by switching to an electric vehicle, than by switching from a meat lover's diet to a meatless diet. And about 80% of this dietary benefit can be achieved simply by cutting out red meat.
Mr. Egan does a disservice to the planet when he urges a meatless diet on Americans over the much easier and more effective lifestyle change of switching to an electric vehicle.
6
@David Cohen
A Times article that compares foods in terms of causing global warming and polution:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/dining/climate-change-food-eating-habits.html
2
@David Cohen
Both, and additional behavior/lifestyle changes, will be required for any chance of long-term human viability.
6
@David Cohen
It's rather elitist to say it's "much easier" to switch to an electric vehicle than to eat a plant-based diet. And as someone else comments, we should do both if we can. Everyone can switch to plant-based.
For documentation of the effect of animal agriculture on generation of GHG, look at "Livestock's Long Shadow," issued in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which concluded that animal agriculture causes 18%, more than all forms of transportation combined (13%). That number was later boosted by a Worldwatch estimate, which was challenged. But the significant impact of animal agriculture was recently re-examined and confirmed; it's covered in a 4/30/19 article in the NY Times that's cited by another comment on your comment (@ Dhg)
Going veg doesn't require permission, legislation, or a big up-front cost: you just do it. You enjoy immediate benefits to your health, the planet breathes easier, and so do the animals. What could be better?
3
You claim that diet soda makes everyone crave a big hit of real sugar water. I've been drinking calorie-free dinks since they came into existence. It's a major way I keep my weight down (BMI below 19). Perhaps people who do have that problem have other motivations for going for the sugar.
20
@Susan: yeah that made no sense to me either. Maybe it is Mr. Egan's problem -- that diet soda makes him crave real soda?
I grew up with a diabetic mother, and I remember what a godsend Tab (the first, simply awful diet soda) was to her. I grew up drinking Tab, so when the diet sweeteners improved, and diet drinks no longer tasted like battery acid....I kept on drinking them, even though I am not diabetic and technically don't have to do so.
Now in later life, I am grateful not to crave nor desire sweetened soda -- it's pretty fattening and bad for your teeth! -- and I find them far too sweet for my taste anyways.
I suppose its a vice, but a pretty mild one -- the occasional ice-cold can of Diet Coke Zero I consume, mostly in the summer -- but considering I don't smoke, drink alcohol or gamble....I'm gonna let it go.
1
Before one makes such sweeping judgments, it might be a good idea to get some counter-arguments. Please investigate the excellent refutations of the EAT-Lancet initiative and the role of ruminant agriculture in preserving and recovering range land by Allan Savory and Peter Ballerstedt.
18
@Dulf
For a rebuttal of Allan Savory's theory, watch "Cowspiracy," a thorough and very well-made and engaging film on the environmental reasons to go plant-based. It's on Netflix:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80033772
4
Terrific news. I became an accidental vegetarian a few weeks ago (went almost two weeks before it dawned on me that I hadn't eaten meat - and I've just kept it going). Now the challenge is widening my scope beyond my three routine dinner recipes (a dense, delicious lentil salad, a home copy of Wholefoods kale salad and a Sicilian-style rapini omelette). I feel great, lost weight fast and feel better about my tiny role on the environment and killing of animals. That said, I'm not finding many appealing alternatives. The news in this article is so promising - and just snapped my wobbling commitment to vegetarianism back into place. Thank you.
66
@Cass, it was similar for me. After my son went vegan (no animal products at all) two years ago it was a challenge at first to find tasty food to make. He didn’t care, he had his staples and is very low maintenance. But gradually I got into exploring recipes and there are lots of options. Vegetarian is so much easier (because it includes dairy). I stopped eating meat over a year ago and don’t miss it at all. It was just a lazy habit. Google recipes. Protein is in virtually everything and we don’t need as much as people think. Good luck. It does feel good to help the environment in this way.
34
@Cass Wonderful for you! I can say after a year of veganism, that your tastes adjust. I no longer crave fatty or dense foods. It’s not that hard to adjust our tastes with a little commitment. In my experience, it’s much harder to give up smoking, which I still crave after 15 years.
Turn to social media for plant based food ideas. Instagram is full of pictures of appealing and easy to prepare plant based meal ideas.
8
@HRD
There weren't many vegetarian cookbooks when I gave up meat in the early 1980s. I learned what to cook at home by going to ethnic restaurants (Chinese, Thai, Indian, some Italian) and copying (in my head) the dishes without meat. I eventually built up a recipe file (also mostly in my head - I'm an intuitive cook) and the variations keep me and hubby very healthy. Of course, no one needs to do that now - tons of web sites, more friends who have already made the switch who can advise, and LOTS of veg cookbooks. But dining out is also great inspiration.
8
There’s another way in which fake meat helps to neutralize Trump: He is the embodiment of cruelty, and cruelty is impossible to avoid when raising animals for food in industrial quantities.
Most people get along by trying not to think about the details of where their food comes from. That’s not a healthy way to live.
250
@Charlie B
I agree about the cruelty.
I also agree that most people don't know or care to know where their food comes from. No excuse anymore. The videos and stats and scientific studies have been out there for years, and more people are now talking about them and facing the facts. (Personally, it's been in my head for 30 years - stats like how much water it takes to bring a pound of beef to market, etc. It took 30 years to see it in major newspapers!)
And there's no excuse anymore about the political system. Perhaps one good thing about #45 is that Americans can no longer ignore what's "under the hood" in government. If it can allow someone like DJT to ascend to the highest seat in the land, and stay there (so far), there must be something wrong with the system. And that something was there a very long time ago.
24
@Charlie B
Thank you for this comment!
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@Charlie B Trump is all fake meat. 100% of him.
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