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BYND Beyond Meat out of main

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Actually, the devil is more in the details. My degree was pretty much just studying metabolism, and as an M.D. as well I had to work side-by-side with several dieticians (they built meal plans for all my diabetic patients), who had their opinions on this as well. The following is a good summary article, and I pull out the ingredients below that should really give you pause:

"Here’s the full Beyond Burger ingredients list: water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, beet juice extract."

Canola oil and refined coconut oil are the ones that really REALLY should give you pause - especially if they have been "heated" or "cooked" prior to adding them in. That's how you "partially hydrogenate" an oil. And to be clear, partially hydrogenated oils are worse for you than natural trans and saturated fats.

Salt, potassium chloride - these are plainly, salts. And like everything else, the devil is in the details here. Anyone with high blood pressure should be looking at the quantity here, and seeing if it within their daily limits (given intake of other foods as well).

Nutrition labels tell all. Compared to a lean patty, there is more saturated fat, and a ton more sodium.
View attachment 798240

Eat it if you want to feel better about not harming an animal. But don't think that it is better for you, it's not. And it's probably a little bit worse.
The saturated fat in Beyond burgers is all from plants. There is no cholesterol. Plant fats do not cause heart disease. In fact, they are protective. Olive oil is a good example of plant fat which is 76% monosaturated and has been shown in multiple studies to reduce the incidence of heart disease.
I'm sure you know that beef saturated fat and cholesterol is a major contributor to heart disease and some cancers.
All fats are different. Plant fats are mostly healthy. Animal fats are mostly bad for your health.
Plant
 
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The saturated fat in Beyond burgers is all from plants. There is no cholesterol. Plant fats do not cause heart disease. In fact, they are protective. Olive oil is a good example of plant fat which is 76% monosaturated and has been shown in multiple studies to reduce the incidence of heart disease.
I'm sure you know that beef saturated fat and cholesterol is a major contributor to heart disease and some cancers.
All fats are different. Plant fats are mostly healthy. Animal fats are mostly bad for your health.
Plant

The "Cholesterol is bad for you" is way overblown. Data from the 1990s and 2000s that promoted this have turned out to be just false except for a select few (one in a million) people with genetic mutations to the LDL receptor. Additional information has shown saturated fats and trans fats are much worse for you than cholesterol. This is EXACTLY why we have nutrition labels that break down the types of fats, and they were introduced after our refinement of the scientific data progressed to understand the damage these fats can do in the diet.

Canola and particularly coconut oils are not healthy oils. Coconut oil is 80-90% saturated fat (that's why it's white and semi-solid at room temp). They do, however taste yummy and that's why they are used in processed foods.

Plant fats do not cause heart disease.
Sorry, but this statement is false. See below. Coconut oil is no-bueno on heart health.

Please go back and look at the nutrition labels. The Beyond is NOT better for you than a lean patty. Facts are facts, and the nutrition label boils it down to the important facts. Lean animal ground beef has some cholesterol, but it has less saturated fat, and WAY WAY less sodium, which I see you didn't address in your reply at all. 380mg is a LOT of sodium. No one on a "heartwise diet" would be eating the Beyond Burger for that reason alone (except on a cheat day), as minimizing sodium intake is crucial to reducing blood pressure and thereby heart disease.

I trained with the guys that literally won the Nobel for the discovery of Cholesterol (Brown and Goldstein), and they will tell you that unless you have a genetic mutation that prevents you from properly metabolizing cholesterol, it's saturated and (more so) trans fats that will kill you.

Great articles here:

As a board-certified physician, I stand by my claim that these highly-processed meat alternatives are no better for your health than a traditional lean burger. The dieticians I worked with in practice had the same science-based viewpoint.

Again, if ethically you want one of these because you don't want animals harmed, have at it. But the health argument just isn't on solid footing.
 
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The "Cholesterol is bad for you" is way overblown. Data from the 1990s and 2000s that promoted this have turned out to be just false except for a select few (one in a million) people with genetic mutations to the LDL receptor. Additional information has shown saturated fats and trans fats are much worse for you than cholesterol. This is EXACTLY why we have nutrition labels that break down the types of fats, and they were introduced after our refinement of the scientific data progressed to understand the damage these fats can do in the diet.

Canola and particularly coconut oils are not healthy oils. Coconut oil is 80-90% saturated fat (that's why it's white and semi-solid at room temp). They do, however taste yummy and that's why they are used in processed foods.


Sorry, but this statement is false. See below. Coconut oil is no-bueno on heart health.

Please go back and look at the nutrition labels. The Beyond is NOT better for you than a lean patty. Facts are facts, and the nutrition label boils it down to the important facts. Lean animal ground beef has some cholesterol, but it has less saturated fat, and WAY WAY less sodium, which I see you didn't address in your reply at all. 380mg is a LOT of sodium. No one on a "heartwise diet" would be eating the Beyond Burger for that reason alone (except on a cheat day), as minimizing sodium intake is crucial to reducing blood pressure and thereby heart disease.

I trained with the guys that literally won the Nobel for the discovery of Cholesterol (Brown and Goldstein), and they will tell you that unless you have a genetic mutation that prevents you from properly metabolizing cholesterol, it's saturated and (more so) trans fats that will kill you.

Great articles here:

As a board-certified physician, I stand by my claim that these highly-processed meat alternatives are no better for your health than a traditional lean burger. The dieticians I worked with in practice had the same science-based viewpoint.

Again, if ethically you want one of these because you don't want animals harmed, have at it. But the health argument just isn't on solid footing.
You really need to research fats more. The nutrition label saturated vs unsaturated are very crude buckets that mislead.
Coconut oil raises HDL and has lots of easily metabolized and healthy monosaturated and medium chain triglycerides (HDL is good cholesterol).
Same for Canola oil is monosaturated and polyunsaturated fat(healthy).

OTOH, meat is bad for you:
A significant number of large observational studies have linked meat consumption to a higher chance of developing heart disease (24Trusted Source, 25Trusted Source, 26Trusted Source, 27Trusted Source, 28Trusted Source).

Finally, you should know about the Mediterranean diet which has been shown in numerous studies to have low heart disease and cancer risk.
It consists of primarily plants, olive oil, and fish with very small amount of meat.
 
You really need to research fats more. The nutrition label saturated vs unsaturated are very crude buckets that mislead.
Coconut oil raises HDL and has lots of easily metabolized and healthy monosaturated and medium chain triglycerides (HDL is good cholesterol).
Same for Canola oil is monosaturated and polyunsaturated fat(healthy).

OTOH, meat is bad for you:
A significant number of large observational studies have linked meat consumption to a higher chance of developing heart disease (24Trusted Source, 25Trusted Source, 26Trusted Source, 27Trusted Source, 28Trusted Source).

Finally, you should know about the Mediterranean diet which has been shown in numerous studies to have low heart disease and cancer risk.
It consists of primarily plants, olive oil, and fish with very small amount of meat.

ROFL. OK doc. Or is it scientist?

I'm going with Harvard over you on this one:

"You can find claims about a host of health benefits related to coconut oil. They are largely unsupported by scientific study. It's supposed to be good for digestion, boosting the immune system, keeping the brain sharp, and too many other benefits to list.

Among the most widely stated health claims concerns coconut oil and heart disease. It is said that coconut oil is good for the heart. That might seem surprising since it contains more than 90% saturated fat, the type that is considered unhealthy. Saturated fat tends to raise LDL ("bad") cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol levels correlate with risk of heart attack and other cardiovascular events. (For comparison, butter is closer to 60% saturated fat.) The American Heart Association and other groups have consistently recommended limiting intake of saturated fats. If coconut oil is truly heart-healthy, it would represent a major departure from the "limit saturated fats" advice."

Harvard doctors and scientists (and this doctor), say you are wrong. Coconut oil is NEVER an oil you will see on the Mediterranean diet. At least not a diet put forth by an actual dietician (fad garbage doesn't count).



And just as you are trying to accuse me of "lumping all saturated vs. unsaturated" fats together is crude, your statement that "meat is bad for you" is even broader and more crude. Just because it ORIGINALLY came from plants doesn't mean that it CURRENTLY represents anything like a plant or the nutritional benefits of said plant.



But hey, it's these kinds of arguments (the internet armchair quarterback knows better than the board-certified doctor with a Ph.D. in molecular biology and studied metabolism ad nauseum) that makes me not regret for one day my decision to retire and get away from the raft of internet experts out there.
 
Are we pretending people don't add additional salt to Beyond Meat patties when cooking?

Seriously. Apples to apples comparison please, stop trying to cheery pick and evaluate for yourself "do I perhaps have a bias here I need to acknowledge?".
Clearly you do by the overblown concern over sodium. If a person likes a certain level of saltiness then less or no salt would need to be added to the Beyond than regular burger. If a person has to closely monitor their sodium levels then yes they should take that into account. No one is suggesting that either a Beyond or regular burger should be a daily food item.
 
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Are you saying YouTube doesn’t have useful informative videos? Where do you get your most current information from?
Sincere apologies for the snark as I assumed you were being tongue-in-cheek. Of course there is useful information on YouTube. I'm sure if there is a good, reliable professional source making videos about diet and health, those are quite informative. My experience is that there is more misinformation in that format (purposefully "engaging" video) because that's a better way to keep subscribers. There are the so-called "health bros" that take small exploratory studies and do their own observational meta-analysis of them in their heads to reach some entirely invented conclusion. That was more of the kind of thing I was imagining.

I don't care for video in general. The only things I occasionally watch on YouTube are foreign language and instructional guitar videos, along with the rare "here's how to replace the soldered on battery in your Zojirushi rice cooker" type of video. And I almost always try to find that in a text only format.

I get my health information from my doctor, or if there's something absolutely fascinating in an article, from the study that it references. Articles are frequently just as bad as "health bros" as far as sensationalizing the results of studies.
 
Sincere apologies for the snark as I assumed you were being tongue-in-cheek. Of course there is useful information on YouTube. I'm sure if there is a good, reliable professional source making videos about diet and health, those are quite informative. My experience is that there is more misinformation in that format (purposefully "engaging" video) because that's a better way to keep subscribers. There are the so-called "health bros" that take small exploratory studies and do their own observational meta-analysis of them in their heads to reach some entirely invented conclusion. That was more of the kind of thing I was imagining.

I don't care for video in general. The only things I occasionally watch on YouTube are foreign language and instructional guitar videos, along with the rare "here's how to replace the soldered on battery in your Zojirushi rice cooker" type of video. And I almost always try to find that in a text only format.

I get my health information from my doctor, or if there's something absolutely fascinating in an article, from the study that it references. Articles are frequently just as bad as "health bros" as far as sensationalizing the results of studies.
I really only trust the scientific literature for health information. Even then you have to read the studies carefully to see exactly what they are testing and what the results show. Most of the time these are very narrowly defined.
Lots of news outlets report on the results of studies and often they get it at least partially wrong. A good news article will have a link to the actual paper and you should follow that.
Sites like YouTube are full of people popularizing health information and they often gloss over important details or even distort the results.