I doubt you’ll get much traction on that. Meat is delicious. We’ve been eating meat as long as the human race existed and I don’t think there is anything you can say or do that would get the majority of the population to give it up.
While you may consider it a 1 to 1 replacement, and while I’ve no doubt it’s gotten closer to real meat than it was when impossible burgers first came out, I don’t think it’s an identical product and am unlikely to switch. I also may be wrong in this, but as far as I know, it only replaces ground meats and processed meats like burgers and chicken nuggets. It isn’t a product that can replace steaks, roasts, shanks, or ribs. There is nothing I enjoy eating more than a prime rib, and there just isn’t going to be a plant based replacement for that.
As a fellow life long heavy meat eater with a picky palate, I can attest that impossible ground meat is genuinely indistinguishable from animal ground beef. If you were served a dish containing it without being told it wasn’t animal meat, I think you would be hard pressed to pick up on it.
I have tried many, many alternatives, including TVP, Soy curls, beyond beef, etc. They all had an off flavor that I found unappealing unless heavily masked. Impossible’s current formulation has none of those drawbacks, and requires no recipe modifications to obtain perfect results. They do have a steak-bite now, which is also extremely good, but they do not make a full sized steak product. For that, you could try Meati, which is made from mushroom, and is also very good in my experience.
Meat is delicious. We’ve been eating meat as long as the human race existed and I don’t think there is anything you can say or do that would get the majority of the population to give it up. I don’t think it’s an identical product and am unlikely to switch. There is nothing I enjoy eating more than a prime rib, and there just isn’t going to be a plant based replacement for that.
I’m probably not saying anything here you don’t already know, but I still want to emphasize that unless the earth becomes rapidly depopulated by an insane amount on a timescale that would require genocide to achieve, the reality is that the quantity of meat we farm to make it affordable for average people is simply incompatible with a live-able biosphere.
The meat of it is, we realistically cannot prioritize the pleasurable minute flavor or texture of a particular foodstuff if doing so results in the destruction of organized human civilization as we know it, along with the extinction of tens of thousands of species and plants.
If we as a species reject a low-emission plant based alternative that is 95% similar to the the planet destroying and horrifically unethical animal based product purely to get that last 5% of the experience, then… Those people are choosing death in the same way a smoker chooses to smoke, but instead of just killing themselves, they doom their children and the rest of humanity with them.
We have to be willing to make concessions to survive the future we have made for ourselves. Animal meat unfortunately must be one of the concessions.
You’re 100% correct. And it’s dismaying that people that agree change is needed will still buckle down and say they’re unwilling to change. How do we proceed if people that recognize the problems refuse to adapt in ways required to solve them?
This is exactly what I’ve been saying in my other posts. Yes, we need governments to regulate companies to make them do the right thing, but if not farming cattle is the right thing, companies want to sell cattle products, and consumers want to eat cattle products, in what world is the government going to do the right thing? Education and attitude adjustment that acknowledges the need for change is prerequisite for anything to improve.
There is a big difference between abolition/outlawing and regulation. Regulation would be putting into place standards for raising them to minimize impact and restrict the quantity.
Most research I’ve seen regarding minimizing the impact of cattle production were funded by meat producers themselves, and thus have a conflict of interest. Their behavior is not dissimilar to big oil trying to greenwash fossil fuels with ‘clean coal’ or ‘clean natural gas’.
So far, there is no way to continue the current scale of meat production, especially red meat, while keeping global warming from getting worse at the expense of billions of impoverished in areas where global warming will hit hardest. Even ignoring the green house gas emissions it requires, it also has an unchangeable requirement for extreme water usage, which is incompatible with a world rapidly approaching peak water.
The only viable option would be to reduce the production of meat to such a degree that only the rich would be able to afford it at all (as demand will not decrease with lowered production). It is genuinely impossible to legislate that reality, as the voter base does not want meat to become like caviar, a spice for the rich, even if it means saving civilization.
That legislation would only be possible under an authoritarian dictatorship, and even then, that dictatorship would be risking an open rebellion, but with enough willing guns, they could force it through.
The problem is, living under a dictatorship is absolute hell in itself, and it would be far more preferable for the population to willingly reduce their meat consumption on their own. That is why ultimately consumers making the choice themselves at the supermarket would be the most ideal scenario.
I desperately hope people eventually make that choice, as I can’t help but feel like the dude in the Newsroom, or Don’t look up, where people will perhaps even acknowledge things are bad, but be unwilling to sacrifice any aspect of their current luxuries or lifestyle whatsoever (which is somewhat ironic, considering our media for over a century glorifies self sacrifice to save others).
I doubt you’ll get much traction on that. Meat is delicious. We’ve been eating meat as long as the human race existed and I don’t think there is anything you can say or do that would get the majority of the population to give it up.
While you may consider it a 1 to 1 replacement, and while I’ve no doubt it’s gotten closer to real meat than it was when impossible burgers first came out, I don’t think it’s an identical product and am unlikely to switch. I also may be wrong in this, but as far as I know, it only replaces ground meats and processed meats like burgers and chicken nuggets. It isn’t a product that can replace steaks, roasts, shanks, or ribs. There is nothing I enjoy eating more than a prime rib, and there just isn’t going to be a plant based replacement for that.
As a fellow life long heavy meat eater with a picky palate, I can attest that impossible ground meat is genuinely indistinguishable from animal ground beef. If you were served a dish containing it without being told it wasn’t animal meat, I think you would be hard pressed to pick up on it.
I have tried many, many alternatives, including TVP, Soy curls, beyond beef, etc. They all had an off flavor that I found unappealing unless heavily masked. Impossible’s current formulation has none of those drawbacks, and requires no recipe modifications to obtain perfect results. They do have a steak-bite now, which is also extremely good, but they do not make a full sized steak product. For that, you could try Meati, which is made from mushroom, and is also very good in my experience.
I’m probably not saying anything here you don’t already know, but I still want to emphasize that unless the earth becomes rapidly depopulated by an insane amount on a timescale that would require genocide to achieve, the reality is that the quantity of meat we farm to make it affordable for average people is simply incompatible with a live-able biosphere.
The meat of it is, we realistically cannot prioritize the pleasurable minute flavor or texture of a particular foodstuff if doing so results in the destruction of organized human civilization as we know it, along with the extinction of tens of thousands of species and plants.
If we as a species reject a low-emission plant based alternative that is 95% similar to the the planet destroying and horrifically unethical animal based product purely to get that last 5% of the experience, then… Those people are choosing death in the same way a smoker chooses to smoke, but instead of just killing themselves, they doom their children and the rest of humanity with them.
We have to be willing to make concessions to survive the future we have made for ourselves. Animal meat unfortunately must be one of the concessions.
You’re 100% correct. And it’s dismaying that people that agree change is needed will still buckle down and say they’re unwilling to change. How do we proceed if people that recognize the problems refuse to adapt in ways required to solve them?
This is exactly what I’ve been saying in my other posts. Yes, we need governments to regulate companies to make them do the right thing, but if not farming cattle is the right thing, companies want to sell cattle products, and consumers want to eat cattle products, in what world is the government going to do the right thing? Education and attitude adjustment that acknowledges the need for change is prerequisite for anything to improve.
There is a big difference between abolition/outlawing and regulation. Regulation would be putting into place standards for raising them to minimize impact and restrict the quantity.
This is nitpicking. All of the same points apply to reduction of quantity as they do abolition.
Most research I’ve seen regarding minimizing the impact of cattle production were funded by meat producers themselves, and thus have a conflict of interest. Their behavior is not dissimilar to big oil trying to greenwash fossil fuels with ‘clean coal’ or ‘clean natural gas’.
So far, there is no way to continue the current scale of meat production, especially red meat, while keeping global warming from getting worse at the expense of billions of impoverished in areas where global warming will hit hardest. Even ignoring the green house gas emissions it requires, it also has an unchangeable requirement for extreme water usage, which is incompatible with a world rapidly approaching peak water.
The only viable option would be to reduce the production of meat to such a degree that only the rich would be able to afford it at all (as demand will not decrease with lowered production). It is genuinely impossible to legislate that reality, as the voter base does not want meat to become like caviar, a spice for the rich, even if it means saving civilization.
That legislation would only be possible under an authoritarian dictatorship, and even then, that dictatorship would be risking an open rebellion, but with enough willing guns, they could force it through.
The problem is, living under a dictatorship is absolute hell in itself, and it would be far more preferable for the population to willingly reduce their meat consumption on their own. That is why ultimately consumers making the choice themselves at the supermarket would be the most ideal scenario.
I desperately hope people eventually make that choice, as I can’t help but feel like the dude in the Newsroom, or Don’t look up, where people will perhaps even acknowledge things are bad, but be unwilling to sacrifice any aspect of their current luxuries or lifestyle whatsoever (which is somewhat ironic, considering our media for over a century glorifies self sacrifice to save others).