I love hearing about all the cool stuff coming out, but I still have a major concern that these might be the same as highly processed food that we have now and are pretty bad for you. The idea of shifting to vegan only to pour processed food into myself is unappealing. Anyone here with more knowledge able to shed light on this?
> Anyone here with more knowledge able to shed light on this?
I don't think anyone can answer this question. It's not completely clear whether all highly processed foods are bad or what makes them bad.
However, I suspect that most vegans (as opposed to vegetarians) are not primarily choosing this diet for health reasons, and many health experts still consider eggs to be bad because they are high in cholesterol, so this may not necessarily be a huge issue.
One clearly established specific reason for harmfulness of processed food is that it is more likely to contain microplastics and forever-chemicals, because the more you process food the more it is in contact with plastics and chemicals. See for example https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201...
Just processing food doesn’t make it bad for you. When people say processed food is bad for you, I think they’re just generalizing about the big food corporations.
If you are picking a vegan diet for only health reasons you would avoid preprocessed mock meats and junk food and consume a whole food plant-based diet.
If you are picking the diet primarily due to environmental concern or animal welfare, then these vegan products have a similar profile to omnivore diets except with additional fiber.
Do you eat bread? Bread is processed. Cheese is processed. Ground beef is processed too.
"Processed food" is bad when it means "remove all the fiber and most of the protein and keep the carbs, saturated fats, sugar, and salt in proportions 10x higher than in while foods" -- the tasty unhealthy parts, and then don't even balance it on with a vegetable on the side. The problem with processed food is that it makes it easy to get a terrible balance of macros with too much of the wrong parts.
It's not bad to build whole foods from components.
I specifically stated highly processed foods as I’m aware that many foods are processed in order to extend their shelf life, rather than exist in the first place (e.g. we bake all our own bread, biscuits but it’s not realistic to make Mars Bars at home) so I’m really looking at foods that only exist due to refined processing techniques that alter the food in various ways.
Highly processed foods - in my book - exist primarily for taste and texture, not for nourishment, and my concern is the same about anything that burns money and time trying to replicate meat or eggs. I admire the Adrià brothers when they created liquid olives but pushing culinary boundaries for a select few is not the same as putting food in a supermarket for mass consumption.
As you say, it’s easy to get the wrong balance with processed foods - but I don’t see nutrition getting a higher priority than taste and texture!
Bread is a great example of a processed food. Depending on the bread you are extracting out fiber (enriching), adding in elements to modify texture (yeast or baking soda/powder), restoring nutrients (B vitamins), oils, enhancing shelf life with enzymes, vinegars (acetic acid), pectins, securing in freezer burn resistant plastics.
The level of processing is up to you and your preferences, same thing for vegans.
This stuff still costs about $0.50 to $1 per egg, compared to "bad" eggs that cost $0.10 (probably subsidized, but even pasture raised eggs still costs under $0.50 each.
That is an unfair comparison. Eggs are subsidized by the USDA in the US which allows overproduction and economies of scale effects (reduction of purchase price), but increases environmental harm (industrial farming).
You are paying the price elsewhere however due to environmental effects, antibiotic resistance, and zoonotic diseases (e.g. bird flu).
Aren’t those basically what they put onto Japanese $5 convenience store bento boxes? Those probably are not vegan kosher but that would be the only difference.
