The Hypocrisy Of The Anti-Faux Meat Brigade
Its raining articles on the “dangers of fake meat” on the internet
Back in the early 90’s, when scientists first made the revelation that one could have their burger and their rainforest too, environmentalists and vegans were an overjoyed lot. And an exhilarated sense of achievement gripped the air. Who could have ever imagined that you could get the very same tender deliciousness of a piece of meat, with all its succulent juiciness and flavourful emami without artificially inseminating, and killing billions of animals every year, or bulldozing football fields of precious rainforest?
Back then no one could have imagined replicating the texture of meat utilizing only plants or the tissue of an animal. It was something that had never been done before, or something that people had tried doing and always failed.
However, as the years went by and many variations of fake meat kept coming out, people started asking questions. Questions on the healthiness of the product and its nutritional values to be precise. While on the one hand, fake meats started to represent the very real possibility that we could one day forever be rid of animal products, on the other it created a whole new army of meat eaters who would make it their life’s mission to call out the unhealthiness of fake meat wherever they could.
This new band of consumers have made a solemn vow to swear off all fake animal products from their lives. Never mind that the meat they’ve been eating since decades has been anything but the real deal. No. It’s vegan burgers and imitation meat that has to be inspected under the microscope for failings in the health department. Never mind that real actual meat gives millions…..no billions….of people diabetes and heart disease everyday.
It’s Beyond burgers and Impossible chicken nuggets with all their artificial ingredients, fillers, sodium, and preservatives that are giving this lot sleepless nights at home.
You know what should be giving you sleepless nights? Animal cruelty. We murder billions of animals every single day on this planet and no one bats an eyelid. But the moment someone develops an alternative to it using plants and lab derived ingredients, everyone loses their minds.
Why the hypocrisy?
First, let’s take a moment to analyze the meat which the public has been eating since the past few decades for comparison. (spoiler alert: It is anything but natural).
Let’s take beef for example. A cow is first artificially inseminated to become pregnant so that she can successfully be turned into a milk machine for humanity for the rest of her life. Thats artificiality strike 1. This process is repeated so many times until she can finally no longer fit to give birth, and so off it is to the slaughterhouse! A fine reward for feeding humanity with the milk of your offspring all your life. During the entirety of her lifetime on the planet, which is spent either lactating or giving birth, she is pumped with a range of antibiotics and hormones to increase her milk yield. Even her feed is altered to maximize milk production and weight gain for slaughter when it finally comes to it. So that’s artificiality strike number 2.
Through enough birth cycles, she is selectively bred to produce more milk than her calf would ever require. So today almost all cows on the planet that have been selectively bred will, by default, produce more milk than their calves need. That’s artificiality strike number 3.
And lastly, what about all the preservatives and artificial ingredients found in processed meat products which constitute a huge chunk of animal products sold to consumers today? That’s artificiality strike number 4.
So there you have it. It’s the same thing for any animal product on the planet unless you’ve only been buying from family farms or eating only organic, which is a measly drop in the ocean as far as mainstream meat production is concerned. There’s nothing “natural” or normal about the way humans have been consuming meat since the beginning of industrial agriculture. We’ve been consuming “frankenmeat” since decades. It just took replicating the very same thing in a lab using plants for people to realize it.
Here are 3 articles on the first page of google search for “mock meat frankenfood”:
Now here’s the only article I found online which analyzes this hypocrisy in detail:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90808821/the-meat-you-already-eat-is-fake
“Detractors of alternative proteins have dubbed cell-cultured products “frankenfood” — a pejorative term that plays into the narrative that meat alternatives are “unnatural,” “synthetic,” or even dangerous. Polls show that plenty of consumers don’t want anything to do with “fake” meat, preferring the “real thing.” The problem with this line of reasoning is that the conventional meat on the market today is a far cry from the “real” and “natural” product consumers imagine.”
“Today’s chickens live in near catatonic passivity. They are so large that their bones, ligaments, and tendons are unable to support their own weight. The idea that the chicken consumers eat today is “natural” is a fantasy.”
Go to the average supermarket and there’s only frankenfoods aisle after aisle, for as far as the eye can see.
Chips, biscuits, fizzy drinks, candies, cereal, breads, coffees, teas, cakes, pastries, wafers, chocolates, granola bars and trail mixes, waffles, doughnuts, cookies, cake mixes, instant noodles, non-alcoholic beverages, alcoholic drinks, ice creams, jellies, bugers, pizzas, and sausages, and on and on and on, I can go on with the number of frankenfoods that can be found in the average supermarket.
Oops, error 404. Real food not found.
And they’re not just found there. They’re there because there’s a demand for them and people are into them. Make no mistake. Our entire modern day civilization is based on frankenfoods. That’s exactly what the entire processed food industry is about. Producing food for entertainment. And what happens when food turns into entertainment? Health goes right out the window doesn’t it? Its why we are a nation of diabetes (India), obesity and heart disease (USA), or cancer (Australia). Just take one look at the above picture of a supermarket and what do you see?
I’d implore you to pick out one natural food item from the above image.
But I know you’re too busy scanning the label of a plant-based meat product with a magnifying glass to check how natural it is.
