It's hard out there for a vegan

I eat partly vegan. And due to my American upbringing, I love burgers and hot dogs. Read this:

Numerous recent studies tell us that ultraprocessed foods are worse for us than we realized. Many of these are vegan: The list of highly-processed chemicals in Beyond or Impossible is a mile long. Impossible has: soy protein concentrate, soy leghemoglobin, coconut oil (highly-saturated; bad for you); textured wheat protein; methylcellulose, cultured dextrose, food starch, and modified yeast extract. My vegan LightLife hot dogs have soy protein isolate, yeast extract, 'natural flavor,' and glutamic acid, along with a couple of gums.


Morningstar's black bean burger is pretty good: They're mostly beans, rice, onions, and oil. But they have some ingredients from a lab: soy protein concentrate, wheat gluten, and calcium calceinate.

So, if you are a burger and hot dog lover, good luck. I note that grass-fed burgers have only one ingredient. BUT, even grassfed beef has saturated fat, and a lot of it. I may turn from vegan burgers, partly back to grassfed beef and partly to bean burgers.

I want to go vegan, but not where it's gonna hurt me.

Kettle chips are pretty good, but they have yeast extract and natural flavor. No one knows what 'natural flavor' is.

Dave's Killer Bread (21 Seeds) is pretty good: the only lab chemicals are "enzymes" and wheat gluten and organic cherry powder.

Any lunchmeat with preservatives (Spam, sliced ham and turkey, whether preserved with sulfites/nitrates or 'natural' stuff like celery or cherry powder), and most vegan faux sliced lunchmeats) are very unhealthy and should probably be prohibited. This includes salami, pepperoni, sausages...

So it is worth it to do some cooking with "whole" ingredients. Instead of preserved sliced turkey on a sandwich, I should make tuna salad, or buy a cooked chicken (organic, free range), or cook a turkey, and cut off thin breast slices to freeze then use in sandwiches.

Maybe the vegan food science can give us healthy vegan ingredients for stuff like burgers and hot dogs. Maybe sell them in brine, instead of adding preservatives that cause cancer? Or leave out the preservatives but sell them only fresh-frozen (in single-serving portions)?



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