Eating at a lower trophic level reduces your energy consumption and therefore your pollution output. If you are able to do that with foods that are close to the general macro and vitamin content of a burger, and it tastes about as good (or identical, as I see at times), then shouldn't it be an ethical imperative, given what we know today about climate change?
I mean, I know that humanity will survive climate change, I have every hope & belief, but the earlier that we work on it, both individually and collectively, the better off we'll be. This whole thing about "individual health" is just more tragedy of the commons, especially when the quality of health of the food is so similar - both will get you equally obese.
If we are talking about health and human welfare, there exists a lot of lower hanging fruit than concern about the miniscule differences between beyond meat and that which comes from cattle, but the ecological arguments that can be made are undeniable - impossible and beyond blow beef out of the water.
"Water, Pea Protein Isolate*, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Protein, Natural Flavors, Cocoa Butter, Mung Bean Protein, Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Apple Extract, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Sunflower Lecithin, Pomegranate Fruit Powder, Beet Juice Extract (for color)" vs "Beef" is a minuscule difference?
Do you realize that there are many scary-sounding chemicals in a cow's digestive system too? That's not even counting things like artificial growth hormones and antibiotics. Beef is a processed food too. You could feed a lot of these same ingredients to a cow to get beef. How is that really better? One processing system is repeatable and auditable. The other says moo. I'm not saying the organic ambulatory processor is worse, but we need to get past assuming it's better.
I mean, I know that humanity will survive climate change, I have every hope & belief, but the earlier that we work on it, both individually and collectively, the better off we'll be. This whole thing about "individual health" is just more tragedy of the commons, especially when the quality of health of the food is so similar - both will get you equally obese.
If we are talking about health and human welfare, there exists a lot of lower hanging fruit than concern about the miniscule differences between beyond meat and that which comes from cattle, but the ecological arguments that can be made are undeniable - impossible and beyond blow beef out of the water.