Show note at keith snow.com Unless you're living under a rock you've been exposed to the non-stop drumbeat of the fake meat town criers. Fake meat is being touted in every single media outlet on earth; social media, online newspapers, magazines, podcasts like this one, websites, trade shows-heck I'm sure they are flying banners on the fourth of July somewhere pimping Impossible burgers, probably around LA or Long Island! Industry sales of fake meats have zoomed past 1 billion in 2020 and they are growing fast. They are expected to reach over $10 billion in annual sales in the not-to-distant future. Who is buying this stuff? It's not all vegans, I'm sure some unsuspecting meat eaters have picked up some of the "trust-the-science" burgers in the meat section of the supermarket. In my opinion, the taste is rather insipid and I remember spitting out a sample of one while doing a tasting in a restaurant I was running recently. Yuk, they tasted disgusting. These fake meat pimps have sausage, chicken nuggets, chicken patty, burgers, "soysage" crumble, fake shrimp, tuna, etc. Popular brands include: Beyond Meat Beyond Meat & Sausage Impossible Burger Tofurky Field Roast Quorn-nuggets Gardein fishless filet and on and on…… Investors in the space include Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Temasek, Horizons Ventures, CPP Investment Board, Louis Dreyfus Co., Bunge Ventures, Kellogg, ADM Capital, Danone, Kraft Heinz, Mars, Tyson, SOSV, Viking Global, Thiel Capital, Generation Investment Management, Mayfield Fund, and Techstars. One of the major sectors of the growing fake meat gold rush are companies specializing in fermentation. Fermentation companies focused on alternative proteins have raised more than $837 million in venture capital funding, starting with the first GFI-tracked investment in 2013. Eighty-five percent of this funding was raised in 2019 and in the first seven months of 2020 alone. The $274 million raised in 2019 is nearly five times the capital raised in 2018. Source-Good Food Institute These fake meat Barrons want to eliminate animal agriculture in all its forms from industrial feedlots (good riddance!) to backyard chickens to hogs and even all types of fishing. The global elite is not satisfied to reach a few billion in sales and buy a yacht and retire on a private island, no, they want to decimate all forms of protein that interfere with their fake meat revolution. In short, they cannot be trusted. Remember, competition is a sin! These "marketers" use all kinds of "data" to promote their healthy alternatives to meat, they are rife with statistics about how amazing these products are for the environment, how much they taste like real meat and other unsubstantiated claims that sound really nice. In my opinion, any product that has so much "science" and so many ultra-processed ingredients cannot be called food. The following quote came from the founder of Whole Foods Market-John Mackey, "If you look at the ingredients, they are super highly processed foods," Mackey told CNBC, "I don't think eating highly processed foods is healthy. I think people thrive on eating whole foods." The debate over the health of fake meats is raging and anyone who speaks out is quickly demonized by the creators of such food. Just shut up and do not learn how this stuff is produced. The components to make fake meat; soy, corn, peas, etc. are planted into degraded soils that are heavily sprayed with herbicides like glyphosate and others so this crap is NOT good for humans. Studies show 0.1 ppb (parts per billion) of glyphosate can kill precious gut bacteria in humans leading to all sorts of auto-immune diseases and conditions such as SIBO (small intestinal bacteria overgrowth) and SIFO (small intestinal fungal overgrowth) which are present in the vast majority of us Americans, hmmm I wonder why? "that the Impossible Burger tested positive for glyphosate. The levels of glyphosate detected in the Impossible Burger by Health Research Institute Laboratories were 11 X higher than the Beyond Meat Burger. The total result (glyphosate and it's break down AMPA) was 11.3 ppb. Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb. "We are shocked to find that the Impossible Burger can have up to 11X higher levels of glyphosate residues than the Beyond Meat Burger according to these samples tested. This new product is being marketed as a solution for "healthy" eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous. Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to destroy gut bacteria, which is where the stronghold of the immune system lies. I am gravely concerned that consumers are being misled to believe the Impossible Burger is healthy." credit-Indian Health Journal The Problem with Monocropping The legumes and grains that make up both conventional livestock feed and most meat alternatives are farmed in industrial monocultures, large areas of just one species that are simple to maintain and harvest. While monocultures take less labor than biodiverse farms, they are environmentally intensive to maintain, with a heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In recent decades, food scientists have developed more sophisticated, lab-based ways of changing the textures and flavors of foods. Unlike earlier plant-based foods, the latest generation of meat alternatives are ultra-processed, meaning that they are made almost entirely from isolated ingredients like protein concentrates, purified oils and extracted flavorings containing no whole-food ingredients. When these ingredients are put through high-tech, proprietary processing, food companies can produce imitations that come much closer to the tastes and textures of animal meat. foodprint.org Of course, they never mention that these "foods" are made with mono-cropped industrial agriculture products like soy, corn, peas, etc. Comparing a chemical agriculture system to a CAFO's (confined animal farm operations) may sound positive but it's really not much better. If you have traveled along I-80 through Nebraska you will pass a few enormous CAFO's where cows are trapped in dirt lots that are destined for burgers. These feedlots are abysmal and the smell is nothing short of disgusting. Animals wade through rivers of manure and are crammed together in highly stressful situations that lead to sickness. Neve fear, the antibiotics are just fed to them daily to keep them from getting too sick before slaughter. So why do vegans not want to eat meat? There are many reasons people turn to plant-based foods and stop eating meat. Some do it for ethical reasons that are motivated by animal abuse, the widespread use of antibiotic-laced feeds, frightening slaughterhouse practices, removing calves from their mothers within days of birth, and so on. Environmental reasons also top the list of why people stop eating meat. I believe the answer to this is Regenerative Agriculture as I opined in another episode. Animal agriculture is a destructive practice for the environment in all its forms. Confinement operations cause air pollution, water pollution, and require so much acreage to grow food that is turned into silage. Many doctors believe eating animal protein causes sickness and disease and therefore they advocate for plant-based options. This is very controversial and I do not believe this for one minute, especially as more and more research come to light showing that strictly plant-based diets are not for everyone. Why do people turn to over-processed fake meat? What is a better solution? When people go plant-based they usually try to replace foods they once loved like burgers, cheese, milk, etc. This often leads to people becoming junk-food vegans. Stores are filled with alternatives to meat, dairy, fish, etc. Most are not healthy. Instead, the approach I recommend is to fashion a diet from whole foods like potatoes, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, fruit which is much healthier than junk food vegan products. However, I still firmly believe that most people will do better without excessive grains or sugar-laden vegetables or fruits. I could (likely will) do a whole sho just on this topic. Resources For This Episode: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/chipotle-is-ignoring-beyond-and-impossible-s-fake-meat-in-favor-of-creating-its-own-and-experts-say-it-s-a-brilliant-move/ar-AASvqP5 https://foodprint.org/reports/the-foodprint-of-fake-meat/#section_4 https://navdanyainternational.org/fake-food-fake-meat-big-foods-desperate-attempt-to-further-the-industrialisation-of-food/ https://gfi.org/press/1-5-billion-invested-in-alternative-proteins-in-2020-including-a-record-435-million-in-the-next-pillar-fermentation/ Support this show by visiting Keith Snow.com/support