Diet

Is Artisanal Fake Meat the Next Trend?

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The company’s chopped “chicken” is made with pea and wheat protein, herbs such as sage and thyme, and salt and pepper, without preservatives, additives, or artificial flavors or colors. “I think that in the plant-based category, there’s so much innovation and so much excitement going around with what we can develop in a lab and what science can really add to the category,” Song says. “But at the end of the day, this is ‘We’re in the food space,’ and I think people are forgetting that this needs to be food.”

Still. Not. Meat.

Read the entire article and decide for yourself.

Why do you need food that pretends to be something other than what it is?

The GMO Problem in Fake Burgers

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For starters if you need a primer on fake burgers read the following Epicurious article:

Everything You’ve Ever Wondered About Meatless Meat, Explained

And for the GMO angle read the article below:

Earth Watch: It’s Not the Cow, It’s the “How”

While at the grocery store I saw these in the refrigerated section next to the beef.

VegNews.SmithfieldVeganMeatLine

Photo: courtesy of VegNews.

Earlier this year a veggie magazine got pretty pumped about this meat free burger (see link below).

World’s Largest Pork Producer Launches Plant-Based Breakfast Patties, Burgers, and Meatballs

But with nary a word on the downsides.

Of course I picked up the package despite the pricey price tag of $6.99 for two patties.  The list of ingredients was too long to read.  My mind immediately said “highly processed” and I skipped the list.  Instead my eyes saw the deeply discounted price of $0.99.  Ninety nine cents.  Less than a buck.  I didn’t buy any.  No one else in the store seemed to be buying any either.

An earlier post of mine focused on meat alternatives in fast foods.  My conclusion was and is fast food is fast food whether prepared with meat or with a meat alternative.

For the moment this is still a free country (I live in the US).  I am not going to tell anyone what to buy or what to eat.  I’ve eaten both of the leading brands of bleeding plant based meatless burgers.  Both tasted fine but after digging in a little deeper I won’t be buying or eating any more of these plant based bleeders from any major corporation.

It’s better to make your own veggie burgers.

 

 

How Do Beyond and Impossible Burgers Stack Up From a Health Perspective?

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Fake Meats! Full article at this link.

Ethical and environmental issues of meat production aside, it’s difficult to ignore the number and nature of the ingredients necessary to reproduce the taste and texture of a single-ingredient food. Aside from water, just about everything in the Beyond and Impossible burgers is highly processed, and many ingredients bear a striking resemblance to those often found in foods considered responsible, at least in part, for the current epidemic of obesity and chronic disease affecting numerous populations around the world.

Improving fruit and vegetable intake attenuates the genetic association with long-term weight gain

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Conclusions

Genetically associated increased BMI and body weight could be mitigated by increasing fruit and vegetable intake, and the beneficial effect of improving fruit and vegetable intake on weight management was more pronounced in individuals with greater genetic susceptibility to obesity.

Improving fruit and vegetable intake attenuates the genetic association with long-term weight gain

Eat Nuts Every Day

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Boosting daily nut consumption linked to less weight gain and lower obesity risk

Increasing nut consumption by just half a serving (14 g or ½ oz) a day is linked to less weight gain and a lower risk of obesity, suggests a large, long term observational study, published in the online journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health.

Journal Reference:

Xiaoran Liu, Yanping Li, Marta Guasch-Ferré, Walter C Willett, Jean-Philippe Drouin-Chartier, Shilpa N Bhupathiraju, Deirdre K Tobias. Changes in nut consumption influence long-term weight change in US men and women. BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health, 2019; bmjnph-2019-000034 DOI: 10.1136/bmjnph-2019-000034

Eat Nuts

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Eating nuts linked with lower risk of fatal heart attack and stroke

Eating nuts two or more times per week was associated with a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality compared to consuming nuts once every two weeks. The connection was robust even after adjusting for factors that could influence the relationship such as age, sex, education, smoking, and physical activity. Nut intake was inversely associated with the other outcomes but lost significance after adjustment.

How the carnivore diet works. — Nutritional revolution

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Reading Time: 5 minutes So apparently Paul Saladinos and Mikhaila Peterson have recently been talking about me on a podcast. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast, and I probably won’t. But apparently it had something to do with my statements that the benefits of the carnivore diet are caused by calorie restriction. So I will…

via How the carnivore diet works. — Nutritional revolution

Some clear thinking on this topic and should be shared with anyone who has a firm unshakeable opinion in the superiority of their personal beliefs on the ideal human diet.

Thank you Kevin.

Plant Protein Linked to Longer Life

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Plant Protein Linked to Longer Life

Link above is to NEJM Journal Watch article.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this large prospective study, higher plant protein intake was associated with lower total and CVD-related mortality. Although animal protein intake was not associated with mortality outcomes, replacement of red meat protein or processed meat protein with plant protein was associated with lower total, cancer-related, and CVD-related mortality.

JAMA Internal Medicine article (Free abstract)

Note: Study focused on Japanese adults.

Low-Fat Dietary Pattern among Postmenopausal Women Influences Long-Term Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, and Diabetes Outcomes

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Conclusions

Reduction in dietary fat with corresponding increase in vegetables, fruit, and grains led to benefits related to breast cancer, CHD, and diabetes, without adverse effects, among healthy postmenopausal US women.

Source: Low-Fat Dietary Pattern among Postmenopausal Women Influences Long-Term Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, and Diabetes Outcomes

Plant‐Based Diets Are Associated With a Lower Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease, Cardiovascular Disease Mortality, and All‐Cause Mortality in a General Population of Middle‐Aged Adults

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Plant‐Based Diets Are Associated With a Lower Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease, Cardiovascular Disease Mortality, and All‐Cause Mortality in a General Population of Middle‐Aged Adults

In this community‐based cohort of US adults without cardiovascular disease at baseline, we found that higher adherence to an overall plant‐based diet or a pro-vegetarian diet, diets that are higher in plant foods and lower in animal foods, was associated with a lower risk of incident cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular disease mortality, and all‐cause mortality. Healthy plant‐based diets, which are higher in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, tea, and coffee and lower in animal foods, were associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and all‐cause mortality.

Our study is one of the few studies that used data from a general population. Prospective studies of Seventh‐Day Adventists in the United States and Canada found that vegetarians had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and all‐cause mortality compared with nonvegetarians.4 The EPIC (European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition)‐Oxford study of vegetarians, vegans, and health‐conscious individuals reported that the risk of incident ischemic heart disease and deaths caused by circulatory disease was lower in vegetarians than nonvegetarians.5, 24 However, these findings were not replicated in population‐based studies in Australia and the United States.6, 13 Notably, a prior study that used data from a nationally representative sample administered a brief questionnaire that assessed the frequency with which participants consumed specific types of animal food (red meat, processed meat, poultry, or fish or seafood) to characterize participants’ dietary intakes.6 Such dietary measurement may not have adequately represented dietary patterns on the basis of abundance of plant foods relative to animal foods. The plant‐based diet indexes we used in this study captured a wider spectrum of intake of plant foods and animal foods, leveraging the available dietary data, and allowed us to move away from defining plant‐based diets strictly based on exclusion of animal foods.