TLDR: lots of salt and artificial flavourings. But a lot of interesting chemistry goes into it too. There are annealing steps, and many other processes I don’t understand.
Getting pretty sick of this “vegan fake meat bad” fear mongering. Just because it’s artificial does not mean it’s harmful, or at least more harmful than something natural, and vice versa.
Also, artificial flavouring does not automatically mean that chemical doesn’t exist in nature. It just means we didn’t extract it from a biological product and instead synthesized it from the ground up. It could very well be the exact same compound that give the food being mimicked its flavour. For example, benzaldehyde smells and tastes like almonds, so it’s mass produced as an “artificial almond flavour”. Surprise surprise, almonds actually contain benzaldehyde and “all natural” almond essential oil is nearly all benzaldehyde, pure enough that chemists sometimes use it as a cheap source of reagent! And obviously there are artificial flavours in vegan meat substitutes, it’s not like they can just extract it from real meat and still be vegan!
Real meat is rotting flesh, which may have traces of antibiotics, growth hormones, bleach in it. Let’s not act like animal flesh is wholesome. https://theconversation.com/chlorine-washed-chicken-qanda-food-safety-expert-explains-why-us-poultry-is-banned-in-the-eu-81921
Exactly. And I trust a plant based product processed in a highly controlled facility with some artificial compounds synthesised in an even more highly controlled facility, way more than meat cut out of a pen of obese animals crammed together, with not even enough room to avoid shitting and pissing on each other.
In the most deprived parts of the world, yes, safe food is just not available. But most of the world does not have these problems.
It’s the USA, generally not considered deprived, where meat is likely to be tainted with growth hormones, chlorine, antibiotics, as byproducts of food being treated as a commodity to be made as cheaply as possible.
That’s what I’m saying. Lack of access to a basic quality of food sounds like deprivation to me.
But this is already off topic.
Nothing mentioned in the article (or my TLDR) is necessarily bad.
My local burger place has Beyond patties as an option. I tried it once and… it’s not for me. The taste is what it is, it tastes a bit different than beef, but it’s by no means bad. Trouble is, my digestive system does not seem to like Beyond burgers . Nothing serious, mind, but whenever I ate a Beyond burger, I got flatulence that lasted for some hours.
The same place also had another vegan patty available, which was, from what I can tell, beetroot, beans and something else mashed together and it was awesome and filling. Unfortunately, they removed it from the menu last year.
Probably the salt. You could test if crisps or popcorn or such have the same effect.
Or try drinking lots of water with it.
Crisps and popcorn don’t have the same effect, but I haven’t tried the water thing. I’ll try it next time, thanks for the suggesion!
Also, there are many many types of food intolerances. It has so many ingredients, you might be intolerant to any one of them.
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