If you are a low/no meat eater, how do you feel about meat imitations?

@failures art,

failures art wrote:

Why is this stupid?

Thomas asked.

Thomas wrote:

Yes, sure, but ... as a foodie, how do you feel about meat imitations?

that's how I feel about it

I didn't see the point of them when I was vegetarian or vegan. Still don't.

Your point about having something to stand around the grill for doesn't cut it for me. Bring a bunch of veggies and throw them on the grill - and fight off anyone who wants your grilled radishes or corn or garlic.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

Just read F.A. on organic yeast as a source of B12, that's interesting.

I know. Cool huh? It's pretty easy to find in fact. Try doing a google image search for nutrition labels or go look in your kitchen.

Total Raisin Bran

http://www.totalcereal.com/images/overlay_nutrition_raisin.png

B-12 doesn't come from meat, it comes from bacteria. It's actually quite abundant, it is just the way we clean our produce that often reduces it. Sources like nutritional (or bakers) yeast is a really easy source of it.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I don't know if anyone has found a non-animal source of B12 in the years since I knew about this; doubt it.

Animals are not the "source" of vitamin B12. Bacteria that live inside of most non-human animals are. Because these bacteria are easy to grow in culture, they are the chemical industry's preferred source to mass-produce Vitamin B12 from. Hence, the Vegans' Vitamin B12-problem is trvial to work around: just take a multivitamin pill every day.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

failures art wrote:
What to plants need to grow?

among other things - they need fertilizer of some sort - whether that is animal-based or chemical , they need fertilizer

I realize it was Failure's Art who had asked. Still, this point is irrelevant to the question if eating plants instead of meat is good for the environment. After all, consuming animals isn't an alternative to consuming plants. It's a means of consuming plants—and an inefficient one at that, because we consume them through an extra, wasteful link in the food chain.

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@Thomas,

So, is it via fungi or bacteria or both?

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@farmerman,

The design argument you are using is the implication that our structure reveals what we must eat. Our structure reveals what we can eat. Our digestive track can digest cardboard, but I don't think we should take this as evidence that cardboard is a necessary part of our diet. Does our structure better handle meat that is cooked or raw? One of the reasons we've been able to handle meat is because we cook it and kill off bacteria. We aren't like most animals that eat meat that can handle it raw. Structure doesn't support that meat is healthy for us, only that we can digest it (with assistance).

Animal products are not necessary to fulfill dietary requirements.
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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

among other things - they need fertilizer of some sort - whether that is animal-based or chemical , they need fertilizer

Crops need fertile soil. Fertilizer is a means to return nutrients. I think this is perhaps one of the most important areas of research in terms of finding more sustainable farming practices.

ehBeth wrote:

that's one of the reasons I've become interested in learning more about the zero-waste approach - animals/plants/fish/bacteria etc, all working together

If I could find a good Ontario source like Polyface Farms, I'd be a happily smug eater of meat and veg.

And I'd be happy for you taking steps to improve your personal ecological impact. I'm happy for anyone meat eater or otherwise who makes even single daily decisions that are more eco-friendly.

It seems that the smugness you'd feel is the kind of smugness I'm being accused of by Set.

ehBeth wrote:

The CBC piece I linked earlier in the thread is still my favorite 'bit' about Polyface and Joel Salatin, but this isn't bad coverage of a talk he gave in the area

http://www.jonathanfritz.ca/education/an-evening-with-joel-salatin-of-polyface-farms

Cool read. There is a few farmers that get showcased in the movie Food Inc that practice zero waste farming. They sell local and are still able to offer competitive prices with industrial farms. I think this is a good thing.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

I didn't see the point of them when I was vegetarian or vegan. Still don't.

Your point about having something to stand around the grill for doesn't cut it for me. Bring a bunch of veggies and throw them on the grill - and fight off anyone who wants your grilled radishes or corn or garlic.

Fair enough. These products fit some people's likes. Others perhaps, not so.

Also, grilled veggies do sound better, I'll give you that.
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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

So, is it via fungi or bacteria or both?

Osso, why don't you refer to your own Wikipedia link under "Synthesis"? It lists numerous ways to produce Vitamin B12 without animals. All of them involve bacteria. Some of them also involve fermentation, which may or may not involve yeast. They're not saying.

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My opinion:
I don't like fake meat. I'd rather have NO meat than the fake stuff.

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@Thomas,

Ok, thanks, I will.

This afternoon and now evening I've been involved in trying to understand how to transfer some of my file folders (say, favorites on architecture) and some of my bookmark tabs (say, flogs, my word for food blogs) over to delicious.com. This way, if I have a computer melt down, I don't lose all my files and bookmark bar yet again. I'm struggling at it, since I think if I transferred them willy nilly, I'd break the website (besides, they only allow x amount of mb at a time).

So, as a respite from actually trying to solve this file transfer problem, I started putting my recipe and food/health files in order, so that I can tag them properly on Delicious, and ran into this article:

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/04/which-veggie-burgers-contain-neurotoxin

Naturally, I've no idea of the rigor of the article content, but saved it as interesting, re hexane.

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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

It seems that the smugness you'd feel

(pssssssst check yer funny bone, that was by way of poking fun of you AND Set)

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I was going to say that VEGEMITE qualifies as a meat substitute -albeit a disgusting one!- until I remembered that one of its constituent ingredients is pulverized termites. They have to be considered 'meat' I guess.

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@ehBeth,

(I was joking too. I'll check into my funny bone though. Perhaps it's brittle from a calcium deficiency because I stopped drinking milk? Laughing

)

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I feel like since I mentioned that article about hexane I should post the two bean burger recipe in my files..

Burgers will Translate into Dutch Ingredients (white bean sliders, black bean burgers)

Homemade black bean veggie burgers

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I didn't accuse FART of smugness--i accused him of being unable or unwilling to see both sides of the question.

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The question of whether or not meat-eating is more efficient cannot be resolved by ipse dixit. A definition of efficient in this context would help. One need eat plants in their billions to get the protein derived from eating one steer. Does a steer on good grazing land require more or less acreage to provide that protein than does growing the plants necessary to provide it? (That's a legitimate question, i don't know the answer, and don't intend to accept the dictum of FART or Thomas without some back-up.) Eaten in reasonable quantities, a steer is very likely more beef than one person would eat in a year, so the acreage used becomes a significant question. How many acres of land would be required to produce enough soy beans to produce the tofu which would be the equivalent of the protein available from a single steer?

All of which is why i mentioned the cost to the environment of soy bean farming on an industrial scale. Even having resolved the question above about the true efficiency of the production of protein, you would still have the problem that commercial soy bean farming has a very high impact on the environment from soil erosion, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, plus the "carbon footprint" of the mechanized farming equipment used. It is at this juncture that i would accuse someone of smugness--in this case, Thomas for saying that the production of meat is less efficient, without addressing such questions. Even if it could be established that protein can be more efficiently produced from plant sources, the question of environmental impact involves more than just the number of square feet required to obtain the result.

As a post-script, yes, i understand that feed-lot livestock are an entirely different equation.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

A definition of efficient in this context would help. One need eat plants in their billions to get the protein derived from eating one steer.

How about surface area of plants harvested per calorie of food consumed? (Substitute "protein mass" or similar nutritional values for "energy content of food" as necessary.)

Setanta wrote:

Does a steer on good grazing land require more or less acreage to provide that protein than does growing the plants necessary to provide it?

More, because the steer does not synthesize those amino acids by himself. He gets them from the plants he eats.

Setanta wrote:

How many acres of land would be required to produce enough soy beans to produce the tofu which would be the equivalent of the protein available from a single steer?

Wikipedia, which you may or may not trust depending on their soucres, has run this calculation. It finds that the yield of a field, as measured in acres of edible protein per acre, is 356 lb/acre for soybeans and 20 lb/acre for beef. In the case of tofu, it'll be less than that because one pound of edible protein in soybeans will produce less than one pound of edible protein in tofu. But I'd be surprised if the loss is 1:17, which is what it would take to make the yield for beef worse than for tofu.

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OK, so far so good. How much value to you assign to the amount of chemical fertilizer used on that acre, and how much value to you assign to the amounts of chemical herbicides and pesticides used on that acre--in regard to what they do to the environment? What value do you assign to the Illinois River, killed by the silt run-off from soy bean farming? What value do you assign to Aquia Creek, which, when i saw it in the late 1980s, was dying from the plant bloom from the argicultural run-off of chemical fertilizer?

How long is that acre sustainable producing grass for grazing, and how long is it sustainable for producing soy beans?

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@Setanta,

20 lb per acre is ridiculous. I raise 12 cows that net out at 750 lb per, and I raise em on rotating 3 pastures of 6 acres each. So Im raising about 500 lb per acre. Wherever they got the 20 lb per acre may be if wed raise cattle in ARizona or Utah, but not Pa.
Also, the winter comparison for soybeans to meat. I rotate my pastures and get a few cuttings of hay off these fields for winter fodder, also soybeans cannot be grown in soils less than 55 degrees F.
Wiki is not my main source of ag info. I usually go to Lancaster Farming Newspaper on line.

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If you are a low/no meat eater, how do you feel about meat imitations?

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