plant based alternatives are pretty good for reducing calories or inflammation in my experience.

Ultra processed foods are unsurprisingly (but disappointingly) still bad.

  • BakedGoods
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    6 months ago

    Does it though? I can easily get information on the origin of both vegetables and meat right in the store. I have no idea where all the ingredients in plant based meat substitutes come from or where they are processed.

    • lemmyng@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Yes. Farm animal raising requires several years, over which you need water and food for the animals, and over which the animals produce methane and CO2. Plants usually take one or two seasons to go from planting to harvesting - soy for example takes about six months. There are very few crops that require more than a year to grow, and none of those are staple foods.

      The math is overwhelmingly in favor of plant based foods when it comes to environmental impact, at least until lab grown meat is ready for mass production.

      • BakedGoods
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        6 months ago

        My question was if these extra steps of ultraprocessing are taken into account here. If the corporation manufacturing meat substitutes source all their ingredients from the cheapest places and have them processed all over the globe just to eventually be shipped to the supermarket, that’s a whole lot of extra emissions.

        • lemmyng@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Those are one-time emissions though, vs meat industry where the animal emissions are continuous, both from the animal itself and from sourcing the cheapest feed from all over the globe.