Recently alternative meat sources like beyond meat and impossible burgers have
been making great head winds towards widespread market adoption towards the
end of 2019 they began partnerships with several
prominent companies testing alternative meats in their product lines with
alternative meats moving into the marketplace it's worth asking are they
even better than traditional meat especially when they're served alongside
your McDouble don't forget to Like and subscribe and let's jump in there are a
lot of people who have very strong feelings about fake meat some say it's
great since its production can completely bypass large-scale animal
slaughtering while others say it's taste and texture can never replace the real
thing alternative meat has been tried for a long time John Harvey Kellogg yeah
that Kellogg developed meat replacements from nuts grains and soy way back in the
1800s and during the world wars meat shortages led to a popularity in
creating fake meat dishes from a variety of nut and plant-based sources at least
in recent years the resurgence and fake meats have been spurred on by two
companies beyond me and impossible foods well the general makeup of both
company's product lines are similar they get their protein from very different
sources beyond meat from Peas well impossible foods are soy based so our
plant burger is better well it depends what you mean by better in terms of
nutrition not exactly as you can see plant-based burgers have
more fiber and about the same amount of total fat but have a lot more sodium and
depending on which brand you get may have less protein so while they're
healthier in some aspects they're less healthy in others and on the whole not
significantly healthier well some of these burgers may have less protein one
thing to keep in mind is at least in the US and Canada people eat way more meat
than they need to on average adults require 50 grams of
protein a day but in the US and Canada the average dog consumes more than 90
grams per day so even if a plant-based burger has a little less protein that
isn't an inherent deal-breaker at best there's no clear winner in terms of
nutritional content between plant-based meat and traditional me especially at
places like McDonald's and Burger King where you're washing down your burger
with a large fries and Diet Coke but not everyone eats alternative meat
because they think it's healthier many have more moral justifications the
burger industry has a problem and it's these guys specifically this part cows
fart and they fart a lot an individual cow releases about a hundred kilograms
of methane per year a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than co2 spread across
the nearly 100 million cattle in the u.s. that means cows proves the weight
of 30 Empire State building's and methane every year and that's before you
consider all of the other greenhouse gases involved in the raising feeding
slaughtering packaging and transportation of meat before it gets to
your grill overall livestock accounts for 15% of total worldwide greenhouse
gases every year meanwhile beyond meat and impossible foods faux burgers have
less than half that carbon footprint although to be fair a plain old bean
patty has a tenth of footprint so there's still better alternatives today
alternative burgers are about 30% more expensive compared to traditional
burgers but part of that can be solved by basic supply and demand plant-based
meat makes up only 1 percent of the market but as that grows economies of
scale tell us that the per unit cost will start to go down and it's predicted
that in the near future plant-based meat will actually be cheaper than
traditional meat and it's not hard to see why to get a pound of meat you need
to wait 18 months as a cow grows whereas soy and Pia harvesting times are
only 2 months and basic thermodynamics tell us that plants will always be a
much more efficient energy source compared to any herbivore and as time
goes on and more money is pooled into plant-based foods their textures and
tastes are likely to continue to come in line with traditional meat potentially
stealing away many meat eaters so it looks like cows days on the shelves may
be numbered even if the texture and tastes are never 100% perfected it's
hard to imagine once plant-based meats are cheaper than their alternatives they
won't cannibalize the meat industry then maybe cows will become like horses but
once prevalent species the humanity we retired after finding better
alternatives well that's it for today's episode don't forget to share your
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always more to learn