I guess you could say that I'm just one step away from being a vegetarian. I eat the beef that eats the grass.
And that's about as close as I want to get to this whole plant based “meat” craze. By the dictionary it's not meat if it's not an animal product. Plain and simple!
I'm not going to grill my salads, so why would I ever grill my grass just because it comes in the shape of a patty and is supposed to taste like beef.
If I were to ever give up my meat, it would only be because the alternative was proven significantly healthier for me. That is certainly not the case for the plant burgers. Among the ingredients beyond the peas and rice proteins are maltodextrin and gum arabic. Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide which is a carbohydrate, but it has a glycemic index of 130 which is twice that of natural sugar. Among its non-food uses are as an insecticide. It doesn't have a toxic effect on the insects, but rather coats them and suffocates them. One can only imagine what it will do to our arteries.
Gum arabic is just the hardened sap of an arabica tree and is used as a stabilizer in many food products. But it too has many interesting non-food uses including in lithography or printing, in paints, and in making inks. One might as well eat your newspaper then.
then there are the unnamed “other ingredients” which include the spices, and probably various chemical compounds, used to make the burger taste somewhat like meat.
I'll be glad to eat my salads, but I want a real slab of meat on the plate beside it, not instead of it.
Frank Likely is a retired Anglican minister who lives in Springhill.