vegetarian go-tos

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lumo said:
Processed things, fake meats, vegan cheese or vegan butter are not my thing either.
Some vegan dishes that I had recently and enjoyed.

Roasted maitake and walnut bolognese, mafaldine pasta, herb oil
Cauliflower barbacoa, cranberry beans, avocado, pickled red onions, cilantro.
Grilled artichokes and baby eggplant with escalavida vegetables, tomato fondue, marcona almond and sherry gastrique
Confit sweet potatoes, black lentils, swiss chard, raw apple relish, maple vinegar, chervil
Braised celery root chasseur, thumbelina carrots, tomato, mushrooms, creamy polenta
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sounds great!

problem is...our teens might go for that second one sans the cilantro but not for anything else
 
Jovidah said:
What's wrong with mushroom risotto?! As long as it's well made...
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Exactly! I love a good, well made, mushroom risotto—but I’m referring to the gloppy, not well made stuff that’s often occupying the ‘vegetarian’ slot on menus at non-Italian restaurants.
 
lumo said:
Processed things, fake meats, vegan cheese or vegan butter are not my thing either.
Some vegan dishes that I had recently and enjoyed.

Roasted maitake and walnut bolognese, mafaldine pasta, herb oil
Cauliflower barbacoa, cranberry beans, avocado, pickled red onions, cilantro.
Grilled artichokes and baby eggplant with escalavida vegetables, tomato fondue, marcona almond and sherry gastrique
Confit sweet potatoes, black lentils, swiss chard, raw apple relish, maple vinegar, chervil
Braised celery root chasseur, thumbelina carrots, tomato, mushrooms, creamy polenta
Click to expand...
I’m also not a fan of overly processed products, …except for the occasional hotdog, SPAM, and sometimes American cheese on cheeseburgers.
 
Won’t be trying this vegan SPAM.
CD11A4EA-FDA1-46F3-8527-7E192351C800.jpeg
 
for a while now I've been reading the ingredients list of meat surrogates....and I must confess that I'm baffled....did someone calculate the carbon footprint of this stuff? I'm pretty sure that when we take into account the amount of deforestation the soy production brings and include all other ingredients there may be little difference with organic meat.
 
MarcelNL said:
for a while now I've been reading the ingredients list of meat surrogates....and I must confess that I'm baffled....did someone calculate the carbon footprint of this stuff? I'm pretty sure that when we take into account the amount of deforestation the soy production brings and include all other ingredients there may be little difference with organic meat.
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It depends on what you're comparing it to. My hunch is that most of the footprint is in all the processing it requires to start to approximate meat. Soy in itself is not necessarily a great example considering soy is also used to feed animals. To make a fair comparison you'd have to look at the yields / conversion rates (how much kg input product is needed to yield a kg of protein), but I guess you won't be able to easily find those for the meat surrogates. Then comparing it to meat it depends a lot on what you're comparing it to.
Organic meat can actually have a higher carbon footprint than industrial because the animals live longer; that means more food, which means higher footprint. They also get more space, which in the end means you divide the carbon cost of the facilities through less animals. A lot also depends on what animal you're comparing it to; people campaigning against meat always love to compare against beef... that's because beef is the meat with pretty much the worst carbon footprint of all animals. If you compare to chicken you get a drastically different story as chickens have a far more favorable conversion ratio of fodder to protein.
My bigger concern honestly with all these replacement products is that they're all just ultraprocessed crap that's likely to not do your body any favours.
 
Jovidah said:
It depends on what you're comparing it to. My hunch is that most of the footprint is in all the processing it requires to start to approximate meat. Soy in itself is not necessarily a great example considering soy is also used to feed animals. To make a fair comparison you'd have to look at the yields / conversion rates (how much kg input product is needed to yield a kg of protein), but I guess you won't be able to easily find those for the meat surrogates. Then comparing it to meat it depends a lot on what you're comparing it to.
Organic meat can actually have a higher carbon footprint than industrial because the animals live longer; that means more food, which means higher footprint. They also get more space, which in the end means you divide the carbon cost of the facilities through less animals. A lot also depends on what animal you're comparing it to; people campaigning against meat always love to compare against beef... that's because beef is the meat with pretty much the worst carbon footprint of all animals. If you compare to chicken you get a drastically different story as chickens have a far more favorable conversion ratio of fodder to protein.
My bigger concern honestly with all these replacement products is that they're all just ultraprocessed crap that's likely to not do your body any favours.
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I agree wholehartedly!

I just wondered aloud what a proper comparison would show, not even wanting to venture into how the comparison would look like (call me lazy).

although, is more food in a longer lofe a higher carbon fooprint? plants grow when you clip them, so theu store more carbon over time.
AND; Soy does not grow locally, it has to be shipped...
 
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MarcelNL said:
for a while now I've been reading the ingredients list of meat surrogates....and I must confess that I'm baffled....did someone calculate the carbon footprint of this stuff? I'm pretty sure that when we take into account the amount of deforestation the soy production brings and include all other ingredients there may be little difference with organic meat.
Click to expand...
In the grand scheme of things, carbon footprint size between foods are probably a drop in the bucket compared to cars, electronic devices, factories.

Carbon footprint calculations can be really complex, admittedly it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around it.
My approach these days: 1] eat organic when I can—some things I’ll buy organic, while other things not; 2] cutting down on meat portions, typically to the size of a deck of cards; 3] avoiding heavily processed foods and chemical additives like MSG, etc.

TBH, fake meat ingredients scare me.
5694CAA1-30BE-4BC5-A24F-CABC3EBC9F21.jpeg
 
Thank you for posting that, as I’m sensitive to a few of those ingredients. I can’t be alone in this. We’ll all be eating ground up people eventually anyways.
 
Soylent Green is people!

Had a pretty tasty impossible burger when Monty's Good Burger opened, place even smelled like a greasy diner. Then I read into what it's made of and the process, never again. It'll also never gonna make it to my kitchen or menu, it's a seasonal, house ground veggie burger or a wagyu burger with bacon.
 
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DitmasPork said:
In the grand scheme of things, carbon footprint size between foods are probably a drop in the bucket compared to cars, electronic devices, factories.

Carbon footprint calculations can be really complex, admittedly it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around it.
My approach these days: 1] eat organic when I can—some things I’ll buy organic, while other things not; 2] cutting down on meat portions, typically to the size of a deck of cards; 3] avoiding heavily processed foods and chemical additives like MSG, etc.

TBH, fake meat ingredients scare me.
View attachment 277283
Click to expand...
Jovidah said:
It depends on what you're comparing it to. My hunch is that most of the footprint is in all the processing it requires to start to approximate meat. Soy in itself is not necessarily a great example considering soy is also used to feed animals. To make a fair comparison you'd have to look at the yields / conversion rates (how much kg input product is needed to yield a kg of protein), but I guess you won't be able to easily find those for the meat surrogates. Then comparing it to meat it depends a lot on what you're comparing it to.
Organic meat can actually have a higher carbon footprint than industrial because the animals live longer; that means more food, which means higher footprint. They also get more space, which in the end means you divide the carbon cost of the facilities through less animals. A lot also depends on what animal you're comparing it to; people campaigning against meat always love to compare against beef... that's because beef is the meat with pretty much the worst carbon footprint of all animals. If you compare to chicken you get a drastically different story as chickens have a far more favorable conversion ratio of fodder to protein.
My bigger concern honestly with all these replacement products is that they're all just ultraprocessed crap that's likely to not do your body any favours.
Click to expand...
Worked with some fake meat producers in the past and many of them are actively involved in pushing locally grown organic legumes which is very good, not least in terms of carbon footprint. And if we look at what impact the foods have on soil management, then the impact is huge. For example, well managed organic beef should have a negative carbon footprint. But let’s not get into that discussion. Anyway, what they want is tasteless legumes to extract just the proteins. And the thing with tasteless legumes is that they’re tasteless because they lack many of the minerals etc that would make them taste like something, which again is partly due to the plant soil interactions being limited. Then you need complex processing to create a taste that is similar to meat. Healthy for people and the planet? Definitely not, but tasty legumes are, and many legume-based dishes have been mentioned here. They also give our knives some work. But I think that’s the thing, people here like cutting while most people are happy if they don’t need to use a cutting board.
 
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