Beyond Meat, Beyond Bad, Beyond Burps

For a while I was eating Beyond Meats. The meatless “meat”. I thought it was good for me and good for the environment. 

As for good for me, well it’s not. Here’s the nutritional information I found, when I looked at it a bit more closely:

☝My spreadsheet from information on the web☝

Compared with real beef, Beyond has more calories, more fat, more sodium, more carbs and yet less protein than the same amount of real beef. 

Clearly Beyond Meat is not better for me. In fact, in every important measures Beyond Meat is worse for me than is real beef. Look at that Sodium! With heart issues that I have, I’m supposed to keep sodium consumption down. And yet in Beyond it’s 4.67 times the amount of Sodium than is in beef!

If it’s not better for me, is Beyond Meat nonetheless better for the environment? We now know how bad cows are, with their burping and farting adding to methane to the atmosphere. But Beyond, or Impossible Meat which I also ate, are not innocent. Between them they need lots of land for monocultures like Soy and Beans. This cuts down on carbon-absorbing trees. 

Overall, they both claim lower GHG emissions than the raising of real beef. But the sustainability company, Qantis International, has shown that regenerative beef farming results in growing meat that is carbon negative, not just carbon neutral. That growing beef can be made to net absorb GHGs -- in short, they can be better than meatless meat. It’s the technology, innit.

I read that Denmark and Ireland have a tax on cows, to try to cut their emissions. And New Zealand is considering the same. What I don’t get is how can a tax reduce burps and farts. Though I know that there’s some new cattle feed ideas out there that can reduce cattle’s methane emissions. Part of the regenerative beef farming gig. 

For now, for me, if I want a burger, I go for real beef. As in beef-beef. As in beef from cattle.

And yet, still, and RELATED: “Big Veganism is coming for you”.