| ▲ | jessetemp 2 hours ago | |||||||||||||
It doesn't need to be cheaper than the cheapest meat to be competitive. If there's some social or moral incentive to avoid real meat, that adds value to plant based alternatives. Fungi protein sounds cool though. I would totally add that to my diet. But I also think insects are an underutilized protein source, so I might be an outlier | ||||||||||||||
| ▲ | adrian_b 2 hours ago | parent [-] | |||||||||||||
Even when your personal budget would allow spending more for food, a price that is higher than that of meat is a serious red flag, indicating that it is likely that such a substitute for meat has greater environmental consequences than producing meat. There are 3 reasons for avoiding meat. One is the ethical reason, because during the last century meat production has transitioned everywhere to using methods that can hardly be considered anything else but continuous torture. There are also certain health risks associated with meat and there is also the reason that the real cost of meat may be greater than it appears to be, due to negative environmental consequences (i.e. pollution). If some kind of protein extract or some kind of fake meat is more expensive than real meat (per protein content), you can be rather certain that the negative environmental consequences are worse than for real meat, because the higher cost is likely to be determined by the consumption of more energy and of various kinds of chemicals during the production of the meat substitute. | ||||||||||||||
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