Beyond Meat’s meatless chicken strips made from soybean and pea proteins.¹

The whole class of meat alternatives has taken off, and by the looks of that burger photo at the bottom of this post, has gotten rather sophisticated. Meat substitutes are manufactured from plant molecules and engineered to taste like animal products. The Economist just profiled their rise:

Silicon Valley Gets A Taste For Food, The Economist, 7 March 2015

Why are they taking off? Businesses see a market:

The idea of making such products is attracting entrepreneurs and venture-capital firms who think that the traditional food industry is ripe for disruption because it is inefficient, inhumane. … “Animal farming is absurdly destructive and completely unsustainable. Yet the demand for meat and dairy products is going up,” says Patrick Brown, founder of one such startup, Impossible Foods.

The meats’ developers say their products are healthier than the real thing. I imagine that claim has its detractors.

The companies have different approaches, but they share the ambition of creating new plant-based food that they say will be healthier, cheaper and just as satisfying as meat, egg, dairy and other animal-based products—but with a much lower environmental impact.

Are they healthier than the meats they imitate? I don’t know. But I’ll venture they’re not healthier than the plants they come from. Why not go to the source and eat the plants?

The problem is many people shun vegetables and prefer to eat meat or dairy products. Dr Brown and others think the solution is to mimic the taste of meat and other animal-derived foods with plants and take the animal out of the equation. … “We want to have a product that a burger lover would say is better than any burger they’ve ever had,” says Dr Brown.

These foods are ultra-processed. They’re several steps removed from using lentils and chickpeas to make veggie burgers:

Scientists break down plant materials and extract individual proteins with functional properties that can, for example, make foods firm up or melt down during cooking or baking. … An extruder rapidly heats, cools and pressurises a mixture of proteins and other ingredients into a structure that mimics the fibrous tissue of muscle.

Raw strips of Beyond Meat’s chicken-free protein before they are cut and grilled. – AlJazeera

Impossible Foods’ meatless hamburger uses a manufactured “ground beef” that looks, cooks, and tastes like the real thing.

To the right is a photo of Dr. Brown’s meatless hamburger.

In terms of nutrition, the patty’s protein content may be slightly higher than that of a conventional burger and have at least as many micronutrients. Because it is made from plants, it will not contain any traces of antibiotics, hormones or cholesterol.

What do you think? Have you or would you eat them? Who do you think their market is? I’ll admit, they don’t appeal to me.

¹Ingredients: Water, non-GMO soy protein isolate, pea protein isolate, amaranth, vegan chicken flavor (maltodextrin, yeast extract, salt, natural flavoring, sunflower oil), non-GMO expeller-pressed canola oil, non-GMO soy fiber, carrot fiber, contains 0.5% or less of: white vinegar, spices, salt, molasses powder, garlic extract, hickory smoke powder, onion extract, lemon juice concentrate, evaporated cane juice, dipotassium phosphate, titanium dioxide (for color), potassium chloride, paprika extract. (6 strips contain 5 grams fat, 3 grams carbohydrate, 20 grams protein, 120 calories.)

The diet that set the stage for people in Okinawa living into their 100s, experiencing some of the healthiest longevity in recorded history, was one of either a poor agricultural society or one bearing the hardships of war.

As to the former point:

[Okinawans’] energy deficits are supported by historical reports of periodic crop failures that occurred in Okinawa in the early 20th century and a long history of marginal food supply.¹

As to the latter point:

Near the end of World War II, in 1945, the US Army and Marine Corps invaded Okinawa with 185,000 troops. A third of the civilian population were killed; a quarter of the civilian population were killed during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa alone.

Before the 1960s, their diet was lower in calories and lower in the more expensive calories of meat, fish, dairy, and fat than the diet of today’s Okinawan population, but not by choice. In recent years the number of centenarians in Okinawa has declined (“the Okinawan mortality advantage has all but disappeared except in older cohorts (aged 65-plus)”¹), as their diet has become more Westernized, more flush with meat, fat, and dairy food.²

Here is some data on the diets of Okinawans in 1949 (when those in their 90s today would have been in their 30s), with a comparison to mainland Japan where average and maximum lifespans were lower:

89-year-old Zen-ei Nakamura from Okinawa. From National Geographic.

Okinawans ate a very low fat, high carbohydrate diet: 85% carbohydrate, 9% protein, 6% fat.

The foods they were eating? Mostly sweet potatoes (4 to 5 cups a day), brown rice (about a cup a day), vegetables, and legumes (mostly soy which was their principle protein source). About those sweet potatoes:

The Okinawan sweet potato, with a caloric density of 1.0 kcal/gram [rice is more caloric at 1.5 kcal/gram], has been the main carbohydrate of the Okinawan diet from the 1600s until approximately 1960, accounting for more than 50% of calories.¹

The foods they weren’t eating? Not much fruit. Not many nuts or seeds. Not much oil – at 2% of calories, it works out to less than a teaspoon of oil a day. And hardly any animal foods. Fish, at 1% of total calories was about one 3-ounce serving a week. All other meat, including poultry, worked out to one small serving a month. One egg every two months.

The foods they ate had a low caloric density but a high nutrient density. That kept them lean but fit.

Micronutrients? They weren’t getting enough of several. Vitamins D, B2, B12, and zinc were consumed at just 2%, 45%, 27%, and 62% of Japan’s RDA.³ It didn’t stop them from living long lives, with good quality of life. Maybe we can retire the phrase, “Are you getting enough ____ ?”

They enjoyed low rates of coronary heart disease and several cancers:

Their diet began to change in the 1960s, so did their weight:

The BMI of adult Okinawans remained stable at a very lean level of approximately 21 kg/m2 until the 1960s. During the 1960s the Okinawan adult BMI began to rise. This was coincident with a shift to consistently positive energy balance.

Was the Okinawans’ traditional diet a primary factor in their longevity? I think so. One thing you can say for certain, it didn’t impede long life.

¹Caloric Restriction, The Traditional Okinawan Diet, And Healthy Aging: The Diet Of The World’s Longest-Lived People And Its Potential Impact On Morbidity And Life Span, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2007
² Nutrition For The Japanese Elderly, Shibata et al., Nutrition and Health, 1992
³From Wilcox et al.: “Okinawa is located at a subtropical (26.4◦) latitude and subjects would likely have manufactured enough in vivo vitamin D from sunlight to meet RDAJ.”
Photos of Okinawans from National Geographic. The video stated that Okinawa now has the highest rate of obesity in all of Japan.

The barn owl has large wings relative to its body size, wings that produce even more lift with their curved shape. Those wings allow the owl to fly slower and with fewer beats than other birds.

Here’s a flight comparison of a Pereguin Falcon, a Greylag Goose, and a Barn Owl:

I just came from Marion Nestle’s blog post, Dietary guidelines shouldn’t be this controversial, where she says that people should “eat foods from animal sources in moderation” and that this is “plain common sense.”

So, I’m wondering… how much animal food do people think constitutes “in moderation?” Animal food includes all meats (beef, pork, lamb), poultry, seafood, eggs (muffins, cakes, and most baked goods), and all dairy products (cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, butter).

[yop_poll id=”7″]

Robert Cheeke is an athlete. He’s eaten a plant-based diet since he was 15. Thirteen years ago he debuted his website, Vegan Bodybuilding which is still going strong.

Here’s what he looks like now at 35 years old:

He’s tweaked his diet over the years. In a recent article* he describes giving up eating so much plant-based “protein” and…

In 2012, I said goodbye to processed foods and supplements for good, and allowed real food to fuel my athletic endeavors.

I am currently stronger than I have ever been in my life, performing lifts that few people my size are able to manage.

When I look at him, knowing he sculpted that body on a diet of plant food, I’m skeptical of the adage that meat builds muscle. Does it? Perhaps people forge such robust bodies in spite of all the meat they eat, not because of it.

Cheeke said:

There is a collective fear among Americans and people around the world that if we’re not eating animal products, then we won’t get enough protein.

I think he’s right.

By the way, whenever I talk about eating plants, people think I mean kale, or broccoli, or spinach. I don’t. Not only. You can’t survive on a diet of greens. Eating plants means eating starch … potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and pumpkins; all manner of grains like wheat, rice, corn, oats, millet, quinoa, barley; all manner of legumes like chick peas, green peas, lentils, black beans, kidney beans; and starchy fruits like bananas. Whole populations have thrived for generations on these foods.

* An Athlete’s Journey from Vegan Protein Addict to Plant-Based Whole Foods

McDougall’s fat-free Moroccan Red Lentil Soup.

This was a metabolic ward study, very controlled:

To Reduce Body Fat, Eating Less Fat May Be More Effective than Eating Less Carbohydrate, Endocrine Society Annual Meeting, 5 March 2015

“Calorie for calorie, reducing dietary fat results in more body fat loss than reducing dietary carbohydrate when men and women with obesity have their food intake strictly controlled,” said lead study author Kevin D. Hall, PhD, senior investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.

“Ours is the first study to investigate whether the same degree of calorie reduction, either through restricting only fat or restricting only carbohydrate, leads to differing amounts of body fat loss in men and women with obesity,” Dr. Hall said

The authors studied 10 men and 9 women with obesity.

All participants were admitted to the metabolic ward of the NIH Clinical Center and resided there 24 hours per day. All food eaten was strictly controlled and the daily activities of the participants were monitored.

It was a crossover design so each group ate each diet for 6 days. From BBC:

Half were placed on a low-carb diet of 30% carbohydrate, 49% fat and 21% protein.
The rest were placed on a low-fat diet – 72% carbohydrate, 7% fat and 21% protein.

7% fat is a true low-fat diet. It’s about the amount of fat the traditional Okinawans ate, the people who are known to live long and healthful lives.

Compared to the reduced carbohydrate diet, the reduced fat diet led to a roughly 67% greater body fat loss.

I ran across this report by the CDC this morning:

Breeds of Dogs Involved In Fatal Human Attacks In The United States Between 1979 And 1998, Journal of the American Veterinary  Medical Association, September 2000

Of the deaths reported by dog bite in that 20 year span:

Pit bull-type dogs and Rottweilers were involved in more than half of these deaths.

Chuck flew in this morning for a nut. I really don’t know how he stands it … 9 inches of snow, 5 degrees and no heater.