Plant based food

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

- Secondly, it's big business with big profits. Greggs for example are now so drowned in profits that their workers are each being given a £300 bonus. Almost unheard of for actual workers as opposed to bonuses for the CEO/directors echelon.

Greggs is a classic perfect balance sheet/ business.
It is to the penny, correct and accurately recorded. With no black holes. Tony quotes it as an excellent model when looking at their figures and profits, especially as there aren't really many like it about.
Very well run.

[Suelle Profile Website]

If the pundits are correct, and in the foreseeable future eating real meat won't be an option unless you are very rich, then that is the reason why 'fake' meat-tasting plant-based products will be needed. People who like meat won't want to live on tofu, soy granules and bean stews.

The only flaw in the proceedings might be getting these new products down to processed food mass-market prices before they are necessary for everyone, rather than just a choice for those who don't want to eat meat.

[jeral Profile]

Yes Suelle. Mind you, things like string cheese and surimi crab sticks have been made stranded for years at the cheaper end of the market so if anything it's surprising that it's only just been adopted for fake meat.

In the future, I imagine that artificially grown meat, currently successful to a large petri dish size, could be developed to a viable extent with enough investment.

A possible downside: Beetroot is now a fairly typical addition to the new fake red meat. I wonder if beetroot cash crops will soon oust other crops, as did sesame seed crops for burger buns.

Oh for a crystal ball eh?

[karadekoolaid Profile]

First animal farming is not sustainable when the farmed food input is many times more than the edible output per pound weight of eventual grown animal (statistics aplenty). The writing's already on the wall re diminishing arable land, especially as prophesied climate change flooding might be relatively imminent.

- Secondly, it's big business with big profits. Greggs for example are now so drowned in profits that their workers are each being given a £300 bonus. Almost unheard of for actual workers as opposed to bonuses for the CEO/directors echelon.

The truth is that people don't want to give up eating meat for as long as they can both get it and afford it.

Jeral: I do not understand what you are trying to say in the first paragraph. Animal farming not sustainable? try visiting Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and the good old US of A, and see how much "arable land" is available. MILLIONS of square miles.Despite the doom-mongers predictions, there´s going to be meat available on this planet for many, many years to come.
As for big businesses with big profits, I wouldn´t actually describe Greggs as " Big Business. A very well-run business, yes, but profits of 82 million in 2018 are hardly "big business", when compared with Unilever, Nestlé, Mondelez, Heinz, etc.
Meat is going to be available for a very long time.
Personally, I´m happy with my 95% veggie diet, which is so much healthier ( in my opinion) than my kids´obsession with BBQs, sausages and pork!

[Pepper Pig Profile]

This is QI.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... -fake-meat

[jeral Profile]

karadekoolaid, if I may and taking your points roughly in order:

There's disquiet that if all the grain grown for animal feed was used for food for humans there'd be less hunger in the world, due to animals needing to eat far more than their resultant food volume provides. I know that in a money-driven global economy nothing's simple but the disparity is inescapable.

If the USA et al's huge tranches of land suffer drought, there'll be little growing to be eaten by man or animal. I did see a TV prog recently whereby they'd reintroduced bison to spread seeds after experimentally re-cultivating and seeding some previously dead areas, although no good without rain. Sure mountainous landscapes suit ibex and goats etc but hardly in a quantity to replace intensively farmed animals.

At the moment, free-from foods tend to be expensive due to small scale production (fair enough). It's typical for smaller outlets to create niche market products then the biggies replicate them (and squeeze the initiators out) which it now is doing. Pricing ought to be cheaper due to economies from large scale, but prices tend to stay nearer to the higher level, hence higher margins.

As to animal farming in the UK, it remains to be seen if EU and international post-Brexit agreements keep animal farming sustainable monetarily, or not, irrespective of eating changes and climate changes. The UK is nowhere near being self sufficient foodwise, as we know.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

While current methods animal farming are not all sustainable, there are places such as parts of Wales and Scotland, also a lot of the eastern Mediterranean for example where the land can be used to produce food in the form of hardy sheep or goats or deer but would be too steep, rocky and dry to support the cultivation of food plants.

It’s no a binary situation, none of these conundrums are

[jeral Profile]

Scotland and Wales are the ones most concerned about post-Brexit as the sale price needed could easily be undercut by imports from farmers getting subsidies in the EU and/or the US applying minimal standards.

Tory governments aren't keen on subsidising business (except banks), even essentials like infrastructure and food, so we shall see if more UK farms will give up, as many already have. I truly hope the gov't doesn't insist they sink or swim after we've fully left the EU.

Multi storey hydroponic plant structures are one option, although they don't seem to have caught on here yet.

In the longer term carnivores might be viewed with the disdain shown to scavengers and cannibals especially as newer generations might only know fake meat by then. I don't doubt there'll be howls of protest in the shorter term to sustain meat production. On the other hand, if humankind is seriously reduced by weather events or famine, animal herds might start to increase by living wild naturally again so will meat diets will be of elephants, badgers/beavers etc or even insects? "Normal" changes with the times.

[Badger's Mate Profile]

If humanity carries on as it is doing, more and more people consuming more and more resources, whilst those most responsible are claiming they're saving the planet, there might not be any elephants.

[dennispc Profile]

It’s no a binary situation, none of these conundrums are

Spot on Sue, as usual. Another facet of the debate is the current estimate we will run out of top-soil in 60 years.

George Monibot did an interesting article in the Guardian; making an edible pancake from flour made by doing clever things to water.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ave-planet

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Another facet of the debate is the current estimate we will run out of top-soil in 60 years.

I've been following one of James Wong's Twitter threads, apparently that's not even what the paper that is cited as the source says, some areas of soil are at risk of turning into a dust bowl but others may even be improving

https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1 ... 59680?s=20

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Another facet of the debate is the current estimate we will run out of top-soil in 60 years.

I've been following one of James Wong's Twitter threads, apparently that's not even what the paper that is cited as the source says, some areas of soil are at risk of turning into a dust bowl but others may even be improving

https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1216294251065159680?s=20

[dennispc Profile]

Happy to be wrong if James Wong says. I don’t know how scientific Scientific American is but they published an article about 60 farming years left in 2014. In May last year the New Scientist says that idea it’s a fantasy.

There’s a lot of research about soil depletion or degradation.

Looks like the government is doing something.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51128709

[jeral Profile]

Might as well throw dearth of insects which pollinate things into the mix too. Why not insist on bringing back hedgerows? They don't have to carve fields into chequerboards but could be in long strips or stripes so that bulky machinery could still go in straight lines. Oh, and ban Round-up type weedkillers completely!

(My usual broken record rants.)

[Pepper Pig Profile]

This is rahther apposite.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... lant-vegan

[Pampy Profile]

Yes - very pertinent. I've also heard that lab-grown "meat" can be as unsustainable as the real thing, because of the resources needed to produce it.

[dennispc Profile]

Thanks Pepper, there was a similar article in yesterday’s Times. It’s good that there’s now a debate though I hope it doesn’t get used by some to do nothing about changing life styles.

I note the article uses the same word, ‘binary’, as Sue posted recently - it’s complex.

If commercial bees were no longer used, nor pesticides etc., other insects would eventually take their place but the transition period would be a bit tough.

Not sure if I’ve posted this before but from 2000 to 2007 methane levels were pretty stable and then shot up. Current research suggests it was due to sudden surge of water in Sudan’s southern marshland. Rice production also produces methane. Complex indeed.

James Cameron one of the producers of ‘the Game Changers’ runs a vegan food factory, so I’d be aware of that if I watched it. Lewis Hamilton may reduce his methane foot print through diet but earns his cash in highly polluting activity.

One of the UK”s EPIC - Oxford’s studies produced this chart.

cf diets.jpeg

[Stokey Sue Profile]

This is rahther apposite.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... lant-vegan

I’ve been avoiding that, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Joanna Blythman

Happy to say I think that’s one of her very best pieces, and for once we agree!

[jeral Profile]

It's up to consumers to look at what they're buying. Theoretically, as endless ingredient labels are meaningless, so reliance remains on flashes like "Healthy" "Plant-based" "Low fat" etc.

Perhaps each and every ingredient should show why it's there, e.g. flavour, glue, mouthfeel, preservative, bulking agent (ha ha) or whatever. Since there wouldn't be room to describe them all accurately, maybe having to would mean they stopped using unnecessary ones? I suppose it could result in bubble packs with a yard of cardboard behind, or writing as small as the US constitution written on a grain of rice - or they could just use fewer.

The environmental problem of deforesting for cash crops is decades old. Officially acceptable "sustainable" growth is rather after the horse has bolted as presumably crops will be sustainable once forests have already been cleared.

Trees are in the news with Trump saying at Davos he wants to plant trillions and Johnson now saying 100million. Have either figured out where exactly, especially in the UK when HS2 would decimate miles and miles of "nature"? Maybe the get out of jail free card is the questionable insistence that "carbon offset" (or net zero) will do.