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Re: When Vegan Is Not Enough!

PostPosted: Wed Dec 19, 2018 11:09 am
by JeffN
Not only is It not enough, is just got worse

This is exactly why that while the “vegan” movement may have benefit to the animals and perhaps some for the environment, it will not be about healthy food

In Health
Jeff

The Vegetarians at the Gate
Many vegans want to destroy the modern food system. Investor Chris Kerr wants to use it to take plant-based products mainstream.
Bloomberg
12/19/2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... t-the-gate

“Yet even as Kerr tirelessly promotes vegan eating, he’s exposing a tension at the heart of the boom. For decades, veganism has been rooted in the counterculture and in rejection of the animal-derived, heavily processed, sodium-laden pathologies of the modern food system. Yet for the diet to enter the mainstream, it will almost certainly have to be companies in that same food system, using many of the same practices, that bring it to mass-market scale. To go truly global, in other words, vegan foods must be financialized and industrialized. And Kerr wants to be the guy to do it.

“But with the same companies that dominate the existing food business moving to do the same with vegan products, some activists and nutritionists fear there’s a real risk of replicating many of that industry’s existing problems. The most obvious pertain to health. In principle, an animal-free diet can be more healthful than a carnivorous one—lower in cholesterol and calories and higher in fiber, magnesium, and several key vitamins (though nutritionists often recommend supplements to make up for deficiencies in others). But many of the most heralded vegetable-based products may be worse for you—or at least not much better—than their conventional equivalents. The Impossible Burger, made from wheat, soy, and potato, is more calorific than a lean beef patty and contains seven times more sodium, though no cholesterol. One tablespoon of coconut oil—the main ingredient in Numu, the New Crop-backed mozzarella substitute—contains almost the recommended daily limit for saturated fat.

The underlying concern is that the rise of Big Vegan will give plant-based eating a hard push in the direction of so-called hyperpalatable foods, calculated to encourage addiction by flooding the brain with the pleasurable effects of fat and salt. New food technologies can undoubtedly make some difference, but there’s a good reason that vegan diets, which in their traditional form tended to be light on flavors humans are hard-wired to desire, have never before been popular.“