:walter-breakdown:

  • AHopeOnceMore [he/him]B
    ·
    1 year ago

    But they're also largely full of shit on that.

    "Haven't tested" refers to the critics' own incompetence at reading food safety reports where they try to characterize a soy isolate containing "other proteins" as untested. Beans are plants, they're full of other proteins. The report says that the isolated leghemoglobin has trace proteins from the beans from which they derive. We eat soybeans, that shit isn't untested, it's a whole food.

    Pesticides: they referred to herbicides but it doesn't really matter because both apply to every single industrially produced plant. Has nothing to do with fake meat in particular. The backlash to glyphosate is characteristic of folks getting led around by their noses, as it's one of the least toxic herbicides regularly sprayed on plants. While we should be advocates for sustainable and regenerative and safer (particularly for ag workers) production of food, these particular callouts are absurd in their myopia.

    Carcinogenic food dyes: an interesting thing about testing mutagenicity of a chemical (we are all made of chemicals, as are plants and other animals) is that they are basically all mutagenic, i.e. carcinogenic, at high enough concentrations. Every single food you eat contains chemicals that are mutagenic, even if you grew it yourself on pristine soil with no chemical additives, because the makeup of the plant itself (or animal) includes mutagenic chemicals. The real question is about how mutagenic, and at what concentrations, and what the exposure is. There is peroxide (mutagenic) in basically everything you eat, but generally at low concentrations where it doesn't matter. Drink purified peroxide regularly and we have a different story. I'm not finding much other than the always-misleading "natural flavors" ingredient to indicate that the additives mentioned in the video are in the fake burgers, but the video mentions caramel color so I'll describe that. It is... burnt sugar, largely indistinguishable from burning your own sugar, like when you cook a sauce with fruit or sugar in it. The difference is that it is chemically burned at pressure, and sometimes with chemical additives at very low levels. It has been widely tested and is not of particular concern. Don't chug 3 liters of the pure stuff every day and you should be fine.

    The caveat to all of this is the existence of regulatory capture (bourgeois control of the state) and relying on a food additive company to noy fuck you over anyways. This is a risk we all take when eating any foods with additives, which is most of them at the grocery store. It also isn't exclusive to food additives. The produce, dairy, and meat sections all have the same problems of regulatory capture, lack of safety testing, and unsafe conditions for workers. This video tries to paint the consumption of animals as old and natural and safe, but animal products have basically all of the same problems and some of their own as well, like parasites.

      • AHopeOnceMore [he/him]B
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yep. There are a bunch of "food science" variants but a common one is using sulfuric acid and pressure to do it rather than just heat. The acid is washed out and it ends up being no different than doing something like caramelizing onions, chemically (actually the onions have more sulfates).