I was looking into algea/spirulina for B12, but found some sources indicating it is not a bioavailable form of B12, and also prevents real B12 from being absorbed.
I'd be interested to know any counter research to this.
> almost all algae revealed vitamin B12 analogues instead of the real thing. Analogues are not only ineffective, but also potentially dangerous. Most researchers have consequently dismissed algae as a B12 source and recommend natural B12 supplements as a safe alternative
> In order to properly understand the discussion about the B12 content of algae, it is important to first take a closer look at analogues. Also known as pseudo B12, analogues are molecules which are so chemically similar to real B12 that they bond to the same transport molecule. In contrast, however, they have no vitamin effect on the body whatsoever. This is detrimental to health, as only real B12 that is bound to this specific transport molecule can be used by the body.
Complete B12 supplementation is going to set you back literally 0.1 cents per year. All B12 you'll ever take in your whole life is not even worth 10 measly cents.
Just some supplement for thought to consider before changing your diet for that.
But don't forget that some older individuals, such as myself, lose the ability to easily absorb B12. And a B12 deficiency is not a pleasant thing. Somewhat along the lines of the onset of Parkinson's or ALS. Consequently I take a single tablet every morning that provides over 200,000% of the recommended daily dose...
Well, if you go in on bulk B12 with some friends at $1k/kg, I guess you could limit it to 10¢. In reality, more accessible supplements run me closer to $5/month. I'm fine with that. Risking a deficiency isn't worth $5/month, and I don't have an efficient or viable alternative.
Why not just take B12 produced with microbes (= most supplements)? Those are considered vegan. Trying to get B12 from algae sounds unnecessarily complicated, considering our B12 has in all of our history been of microbial origin.
But I also wouldn’t shun algae just because they occupy some B12 transporters. There’s all kinds of metabolic tradeoffs with every kind of food, and we are designed to tolerate that. Most metabolic pathways are 4-5x redundant IIRC.
Was considering what it would be like to eat like 6 grams of spirulina for 2g of EPA, versus that in one teaspoon of fish oil (high EPA type).
But got stuck on the B12 blocking stuff. I wonder if your point is true that there's enough redundancy it doesn't matter. It would be nice if it was easier/cheaper to get bloodwork to do some experiments with this kind of stuff.
Interesting about the omega 3. Maybe the oil is also less likely to get rancid if it’s still bound to the plant.
Re testing, the article you linked has another article linked on the same site: https://www.b12-vitamin.com/analogues/
They mention MMA testing here (you could get one as part of the Organic Acids Test at „The Great Plains“ lab for example), but that’s quite expensive ($299 right now). It’s maybe the most accurate B12 test out there. Technically, it’s a test by proxy.
If you are currently serum B12 deficient, then there’s probably not that much to worry about, because the B12 analogues in algae also won’t be absorbed properly (maybe due to a lack of intrinsic factor). Supplemental methyl- and adenosyl-B12 don’t have that problem.
These researchers seem to think Spirulina improves the health of b12 deprived mice: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31502254/ - the result looks pretty solid to me.
The same group tested Chlorella in another paper, same result.
For B12? You do know that animals don’t produce B12, but microorganisms (that can be found in soil and untreated water) and that farmed animals eat B12 supplemented food?
So no, people don’t need meat. Not for B12, or for proteins or for iron or for anything else.
Do people want to eat meat? That’s a different story.
If you want to turbo optimize your life and give up caffeine so your body can absorb non-heme iron be my guest. It’s far simpler to eat as omnivores as humans were meant to be, especially with so many factors on the scale against your favor.
Humans weren't "meant" to eat any single way, for what it's worth. We have the good fortune of possessing exceptionally flexible diets, but we can survive readily on many variations of what's possible.
Something people frequently overlook (or are unaware of) is that in much of the world, animal agriculture utilizes B12 supplementation. This is part of why there is B12 in commercial animal products. Without that, B12 levels in commercial animal products would be lower. Further, people who eat animal products aren't guaranteed to avoid deficiencies.
The idea that we "need" meat is thoroughly debunked by decades of excellent, high-quality research. What we "need" as far as B12 goes is essentially less sanitary environments; we (and animals we ate) used to get enough from food and water which wasn't clean by current standards.
For me it makes no difference whether I consume animal products or not. I’ve consumed no animal products in about five months now, and aside from needing to spend a bit longer looking at labels when I first started, now I know what I’m doing I spend no more or less time on food.
I take a big multivitamin in the evening and that’s it.
Excess liver consumption is a risk factor for vitamin A toxicity though, and the B12 amount varies wildly. Red meat consumption also increases cancer risk. It’s safer to take supplements from a reputable source.
Theres probably lots of cheese that you could say the same about that is well enjoyed. That said, I don't know if the whale skin I had could be called "good" to my taste. It was beluga I think, from the Canadian arctic. What was striking though was how sour it was and the strong taste of ascorbic acid. With a very chewy texture.
It's technically correct that we need some animal products. The big one I can think of is crude oil. It's from animals long dead and also used to make plastics. Not sure if we count insects as animal products but the work of bees helps pollinate our crops. We don't eat the bees but we do take advantage of them and breed them to go around and pollinate crops.
IIRC that's mostly from plants and algae, and definitely can be substituted with things made purely from plants and algae.
However, I was replying to someone who said specifically "meat", and crude oil isn't meat.
> Not sure if we count insects as animal products but the work of bees helps pollinate our crops. We don't eat the bees but we do take advantage of them and breed them to go around and pollinate crops.
If you're that expansive, humans are also animals, and we also rely on each other's labour.
Very true, but you know idealism, denial and delusion is a thing. Many will literally die rather than come to terms with the 'fact' that every human (without exception) needs some animal products.
To the best of my knowledge, the last time I consumed any meat (which is what you're agreeing with to begin, even though you later say the much more general "animal products" which includes milk), was on a 2015 trip to Kenya, where the cook somehow randomised the ingredients in everyone's sandwiches (I asked for a "cheese and pesto" sandwich, my cheese was switched with someone else's chicken), and the time before that was 2009, where my vegetarian lasagna was switched with someone else's beef lasagna.
Even with those accidents, twice in 13 years doesn't seem like a "you're delusional if you think you can go without" kind of a thing.
Also, full on vegans are a thing. I'm not one (cheese is too tempting), but it's not crazy like breatharians or whatever.
I feel obliged respond. I'll try and put a short useful response. ( It becomes a little tiring to give an elaborate, well thought out response when one repeatedly encounters what one sees as irrationality).
- I have _never_ see a vegan thrive (health wise) in the long run.
- Many 'honest' vegans admit occasionally binge eat animal products - in your case cheese.
- May 'vegans' lie outright
- There are lot of ex-vegans out there, some of them who were truly committed. Search for them on the web and you will find them.
- https://www.beyondveg.com/ has information from people who probably tried being vegans from the sixties. Grandpa may have some wisdom that you may not be aware of.
Vegan doesn't mean automatically being healthy. Vegan is mainly about being cruelty free as much as possible, as killing and exploiting animals is cruel.
By adopting a plant based whole food diet you can be healthy and at the same time reduce your carbon footprint and damage to our biosphere.
Just don't eat Pringles and drink Coke all day (technically being vegan).
All of that data is suspect. About 2 decades back I used to believe that that at lest some people can thrive without any animal products.
If you thought that a large number of experts (docs in this case) collectively cannot get it wrong , you are I have a different judgment to our fellow simians....
What data? I didn’t mention any data… and you didn’t you either btw.
I posted some examples negating your absolute statements.
Do some ppl need animal products because of medical reasons? Peobably.
But claiming that humans needs animal products to live and thrive is quite the statement. Several national health organisation say otherwise. They say a plant based diet can be healthy with careful planning. Are they wrong as well?
Some other anecdotal evidence… myself. I’m on a animal product free diet and did some blood work… my doc says I should continue doing whatever I’m doing.
>But claiming that humans needs animal products to live and thrive is quite the statement. Several national health organisation say otherwise. They say a plant based diet can be healthy with careful planning. Are they wrong as well?
Yes they are. If consensus is your only way you determine if a piece of information is correct, they you and I can never agree.
>Don't call me a vegan. I'm vegetarian. That means choosing no meat, no more, no less.
Partially my fault in the way I phrased my sentence. I was referring to vegans in general. Not you in particular. ( buddy, where's the benefit of doubt, if you assumed I did not know the difference?)
>I'm older than I think you think I am. And both my grandfathers died before I was born.
If you occasionally eat animal products you will survive(or even do well), Again my point is lost, my point being that there is more than a little to to be learnt from people who have attempted veganism for decades.
The delivery of my message may not be perfect or even crude, but the bare minimum information is there, including the link I put, where you will end up spending days if you are not familiar with aspects of nutrition. Look past me - and I'm sure if you are skeptical enough of any conventional nutritional wisdom, you will learn a _lot_ .
I recently bought some red dulse from a seaweed farm on the Oregon coast (Oregon Seaweed in Garibaldi, Oregon). Bought it right from the farm. The guy who was growing it said it makes a great bacon substitute. I tried frying it up and while it didn't taste much like bacon to me (maybe I needed some liquid smoke?) it was an umami bomb. I had it in a sandwich and it was actually pretty good.
Not as a substitute for something else, but as a snack on its own, for which there is no substitute. Unfortunately prices have nearly doubled in a little over a year.
If you want the high-end take on this, check out the Spanish Michelin star chef, Angel León. He is known as “chef del mar”, making novel dishes with the plants from the ocean.
In Chile is common to eat Cochayuyo, a type of kelp without air bladders [0]. Some people are dismissive about its taste, but personally I love it on my Charquicán [1].
It is very cheap and readily available at most fish markets through all the country.
Algae has what I sometimes call the "hempseed problem": it tastes awful. Hempseeds are highly productive, nutritious, and smash almost every other whole plant food on the crucial protein:fiber ratio, coming in at 12:1. The only problem is, you have to eat them.
Japan pretty much identified every kind of seaweed that you can eat without puking a thousand years ago and the list is not long. A tablespoon of spirulina is a great way to ruin a smoothie, never mind that it mostly comes from the disappearing Lake Chad.
So it's heavily processed, and it could certainly get into food products that way, but nobody will notice — or care — that they're eating algae-derived food products. If you doubt that, just look up where xanthan gum comes from, or consider that Aspergillus niger is the primary source of citric acid.
I eat shelled hemp seeds pretty much every day at this point, but even when first trying them I thought they tasted pretty innocuous, and very easily overpowered by the rest of the dish. I put it in quinoa salads and butternut squash stews all the time (at the point of consumption, I never cook them into the stew). Have never had anyone tell me there was a rank flavor in the mix either.
Maybe my mistake was trying to cook them into the stew. But you have to eat quite a bit to get a significant amount of protein — about six tablespoons for 20 grams. So if you just put a spoonful into a salad I'm sure it's fine, but it's not functioning as a source of macronutrients. For comparison, poppyseeds are, in principle, a great source of calcium, but you can't use them that way.
I see now, I wouldn’t want the majority of a dish to be hemp seeds.
I’m eating them for a topup of omegas in a nice balance. And not too much, just enough to cover the surface of the bowl, which is still a few tbsps. A salad for me is mostly quinoa and chickpeas so I’d rather get my protein from them. Somewhat similarly, lentils and other beans in a stew.
We already eat various forms of algae. Some are quite nutritious, some give us tummy troubles, some at excellent sinks for CO2.
I'm very curious if we could mass manufacture something like algae and then pyrolize it to get fuel and solid carbon to sequester.
If we find some good ideas for kelp, there's whole coastlines whose kelp forests have been decimated. We could start propagating and sustainably harvesting it and provide an incredibly rich coastal habitat.
Why not both? A few years ago I saw a promising project focused around floating containers with algae and oysters that also provided valuable habitat for fish
> I'm very curious if we could mass manufacture something like algae and then pyrolize it to get fuel and solid carbon to sequester.
For a while I was interested in algae biofuels. IIRC, the problem is other life tends to get in and eat the algae you want while blocking the pumps and filters you need to maximise growth.
(But I've been out of that loop for a while now, so for all I know some random YouTuber has found a solution).
I looked into this for a few minutes when a huge algae CO2 scrubber in am airport was discussed a few weeks back. The short is that it does close to nothing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33173230
It's too bad because one of my weird dreams would be to have a vat of genetically modified algae in my house that removes CO2 and turns into some kind of Soylent.
Yeah! I was thinking "ah the room isn't sealed, nor is the house for that matter" but I can probably get interesting measurements with a simple CO2 meter.
If you try to measure CO2 usage, be aware of the fineprint in your sensor, depending on the sensor it may just take the lowest reading over some period and self calibrate (incorrectly) as normal air CO2 concentration (~400ppm)
Automatic CO2 Baseline Calibration (ABC)The ABC algorithm continually tracks the sensor’s lowest reading over a fixed time interval and slowly corrects for any long-term drift (as compared to the expected fresh air value of 400ppm). The ABC period is 15 days, during which the ABC function default is always on.
While real sea-grown algae might be light what will happen is the same as with modern animal and plant farming: animals are fed corn which makes their meat sub-par nutrientwise and most of the soil for plants is depleted.
So if we now grow algae in "reactors" their nutrient profile will be artificial and out of line of their natural counterparts, thus making them no better than any other modern highly processed food, so we might as well stick to rice and potatoes in that case...
What do you mean sub-par nutrientwise? In terms of average health outcomes, does grassfed beef show a significant benefit compared to feedlot finished beef?
I've seen no direct studies. But there seems plenty of evidence that the fatty acid profiles between the two are very different. And the profile in grassfed is closer to in line with what is currently recommended.
Arguing about whether hydrogen bombs or fission bombs look prettier while radioactive fallout rains down. The conclusions the same: cancer and death, but with sides of obesity, antibiotic resistance, pandemics, and climate change.
For these reasons, eating meat is both irrational and immoral because it's suicidal and omnicidal.
It is sort of possible that if we optimize for yeild, the nutrient value of the algae might decrease. I remember a veritasium video where they showed how increase in CO2 caused plants to grow faster but have less nutrient density
> So if we now grow algae in "reactors" their nutrient profile will be artificial and out of line of their natural counterparts
This is wild speculation. Plenty of scientific research shows that farming plants, algae, and producing fermented food in a controlled environment can be even healthier than "natural" food.
I love the seaweed that you sometimes get in restaurants (rarely where I live, unfortunately). But the article makes me a bit skeptical, it doesn't mention any downsides at all, it sounds more like a marketing piece than a balanced assessment.
I don't even know what questions I'd have to ask, off the top of my head I'd like to know what the risks regarding eg mercury and microplastics contamination are. Also, would we be eating 'wild' algae, or would they be farmed? I guess it'd have quite different implications both ecologically as well as nutrient-wise.
> "Distribution of metals and metalloids in dried seaweeds and health risk to population in southeastern China (2018)
Most sources report levels low enough to not cause health risks, but eating large quantities ( > 5g day ) is probably not the best idea, and it should be tested for lead, mercury and cadmium (industrial waste sources). Arsenic and iodine are also naturally accumulated in seaweeds, particularly iodine, which while a necessary trace element, can be dangerous in high concentrations.
People have posted some Soylent Green jokes; but no joke, the real-life Soylent company added algae to their drink in 2016, and it caused some illness, eventually being removed:
I've had the pleasure of having freshly harvested spirulina. It was buttery and wonderful and rich, eating a few grams felt like a big slice of chocolate cake.
Eating algae is not a compromise or a burden, it's a fabulous luxury we should all experience.
I was also surprised the first time! I've got nothing to sell here, that's just my experience.
I've had delicious rich chocolate cake and delicious rich spirulina, on a spirulina farm, that I had harvested earlier in the day. I spent several years studying microalgae & running bioreactors, until the pandemic threw a wrench into things.
Feel free to interpret chocolate cake as a metanym for a rich, filling food, I didn't mean to say they were similar in any regard other than that. If cake is an unhelpful comparison for you for whatever reason, disregard it, it's not important.
Nah it’s like when an American goes to Europe and then comes back and won’t shut up about how American bread is so sweet. I just can’t take it seriously. No offense to you personally.
Spirulina Is much happier warm. Harvesting is kind of boring. Got a 5 gallon bucket topper with a fine mesh strainer for engine oil. Scoop out a bunch, flush repeatedly with fresh water, you get a green gelatinous cake that doesn’t taste like much (tofuish?)
Seaweed is a staple ingredient in Korea. We eat it in all sorts of ways. I remember being shocked by the smell of rotting seaweeds on a Welsh beach. Never saw it happening in Korea. We eat those!
I really like the roasted seaweed snacks. They taste a bit like fish. I've even recently bought some seaweed chips to put into my rameyon. We enjoy Korean food. Kimbap is one of my favourite snacks especially with danmuji.
As soon as someone says X tastes like Y I get a little suspicious. Can't we just come up with a new notion of X unto itself so we all don't have to pretend that X tastes like Y?
This reminds me when I was in kindergarten, the most popular diet/health supplement are some green/blue tablets which are claimed to be made of some sea plants or algae called Spirulina and with multiple benefits.
I think Amway is still selling those tablets in some countries now.
I've considered eating algae as an alternative source of DHA with less risk of microplastic contamination, but I've had a hard time finding definitive evidence of what types of algae contain significant levels of DHA.
love foraging seaweed and eating it in a bunch of different things. large scale consumption of it is pretty difficult unless you're somewhere that conveniently has both a lot of good stuff locally and has a food culture that knows how to prepare it. cooking with eg kelp is not trivial. there are probably lots of interesting industrial and processed seaweed products that could be very good, especially the animal feed applications, but i think these kinds of articles overlook the very real problems associated with building cuisine from ingredients that aren't widely adopted.
For an article claiming that algae could replace other food sources, this does not contain any information in support of this claim.
Any article that proposes a new source of proteins should mention which is the protein content of the new food, and more importantly, which is the amino-acid profile, i.e. which is the limiting amino-acid. Also a price estimation per amount of contained protein must be given.
The problem with vegetable proteins is that they are combined with starch or fat, so the ratio of protein content to energy content is low. For most kinds of vegetable proteins, separating the proteins raises the cost above the cost of meat.
It is likely that when algae are produced, they contain mostly proteins and little starch, unlike the seeds of cereals or legumes, and this is good. However the algae consist mostly of water, so they must first be dried, to be comparable to cereals or legumes.
To be useful as a food, the cost of dried algae per amount of contained protein would have to be less than the cost of legumes per amount of contained protein.
This might be possible, but until now nobody has offered for sale algae at such a price, but only at much higher prices, where they are not competitive as a staple food.
Supposing that it would be possible to reduce a lot the costs of producing algae, they still could not replace the cereals as the cheapest source of energy in food, but they could replace the legumes and the meat as complementary sources of proteins.
However, until now nobody has shown practically how such a cheap production could be achieved.
I've read that one of the reasons that thyroid cancer is so prevalent in east Asia is due to seaweed consumption. Seaweed has 10,000x times the iodine of other food products, and a percentage of that iodine is potentially radioactive. I don't have a source so take this with a grain of (uniodized) salt.
Edit: since, I'm getting downvoted, here's a study:
Then you keep the seaweed for 90 days and it's not radioactive anymore? Iodine 131 has an 8 day halflife, which means it's gone <1/1024 in 90 days. It decays to stable xenon 131 which gets vented.
Which also makes the hysteria against uniodized salt also look like a qanon conspiracy theory.
I'm unaware of any conspiratorial hysteria regarding salt. I only thought that I'd mention something I had found while researching causes for thyroid cancer, which I got while living in east Asia.
Additionally lobster were at one point in history seen as vermin, to the point where there were laws about how often they could be fed to prisoners because it was seen as inhumane to feed them such low quality food. But now lobster is seen as high cuisine.
That's quite dumb. Shrimp actually clean the water by feeding on waste. I'm sure other crustaceans do it as well to some extent. I only have shrimp in my aquariums which I've branded as the cleanup team specifically because they keep my tanks clean.
There was a mid sized scam by a company praising algae as the future in Germany a few years ago.The company claimed that they would soon produce huge quantities of algae for nutrition, cosmetics, fuel, etc.. They collected money from private investors (which how they did it was illegal), but they had nothing but a small prototype that did not even work well, is was all smoke an mirrors. A very nice but gullible friend of mine lost about 5000€ in that.
Since then I am VERY sceptical about articles praising algae as the next big thing.
I won't eat bugs, lab grown meat, algae, or any other experimental food until the rich do it first, and do it consistently, not just once as a demonstration.
My logic is simple. If the rich don't embrace an innovation, it tells me that the innovation is either not what it's cracked up to be, that it gives a poorer quality product than the traditional option, or that the rich think the innovation is for suckers or the poor. If that's the case, I'll stick with the traditional option.
I'm probably rich at least on a global scale, and I have always eaten algae because it's part of several regions' cuisine, including my home place in Europe.
So go ahead, you can eat algae too, it's not a new experimental kind of food.
If plenty of people are already doing it, why is the article titled with the question of whether we should start doing it?
It's because the article is talking about making it more of a primary source of nutrition. It isn't even the primary ingredient in sushi.
So, if the rich (and politicians) start eating it as a primary source of nutrition, then the commenter to whom you were replying might consider it similarly.
Because they are trying to sell the idea to the western countries. But macroalgae culture is a standard business in China and Japan since thousands of years.
I had eaten it, the green are good, salty when fresh and a little bland after cooking it, the red are a little bitter with a medicine aftertaste. You should use it sparsely in kitchen. Is more a spice than a main dish.
The main problems are that climate change removed 90% of the Laminaria forests here in the last 20 years and that the red algae are harvested and sold for pharma and industry, so aren't really available to harvest to the common people. You need a permit for this. The culture is also complicated here.
"Seaweed" is a rather ill-defined term in English that regroups a lot of different algae. Nori is made from red algae, that are included under the term seaweed.
Should be used for marine weeds [upper plants with flowers], but the term refer to algae that are a different category. Some algae are plants. Other are neither plants, animals or fungi and have their own category.
In the year 2022, the cumulative effects of overpopulation, pollution, and some apparent climate catastrophe have caused severe worldwide shortages of food, water and housing. There are 40 million people in New York City alone, where only the city's elite can afford spacious apartments, clean water, and natural food, and even then at horrendously high prices. The homes of the elite usually include concubines who are referred to as "furniture" and serve the tenants as slaves.
Within the city lives NYPD detective Frank Thorn and his aged friend Sol Roth, a highly intelligent analyst, referred to as a "Book". Roth remembers the world when it had animals and real food, and possesses a small library of reference materials to assist Thorn. Thorn is tasked with investigating the murder of the wealthy and influential William R. Simonson, and quickly learns that Simonson had been assassinated and was a board member of Soylent Industries.
GMO algae and kelp are what we should be growing and sending to the bottom of the ocean in massive oceanic farming operations to remove carbon from the atmosphere (bio CCS).
I cannot understand how it is possible that the phrases like "food security" instead of "hunger" became used widespread organically seemingly out of nowhere. Genuine question, can someone explain that to me without resorting to some sort of conspiracy theories?
I first heard about it in an economics podcast about food deserts so I figure it came from that realm.
The entire planet is 3 missed meals away from total anarchy. The reason it is prominent (IMO) is that any politician who fails to deliver on food may as well dumpster the rest of their platform. Ensuring the acquisition and availability of food is every country's #1 priority, and "food security" covers all of the political and logistical and agricultural activities that need to happen for that priority to be delivered.
I could ask why use the term "Hunger" rather than "Starvation" or "malnutrition" etc.
Food security I think of as a measure of the risk associated of available nutrient supplies not being adequate to meet the need (not the market demand, as that may differ) of people in a particular locality.
Hunger is an end state feeling in a human-being when they feel the need to eat.
You can have terrible food security and no hunger if there is tremendous risk of mass starvation due to small unforseen disruptions in supply, but there is existing supply and forecasted supply to meet demand if all goes well.
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out a common statistical manipulation - extending an axis far longer than is at all relevant to the data, creating a misleading interpretation of a slope.
Note how both are ~equivalent for a majority of the time, barring 1943 - 1951 (slight edge for food security) and 1960-1970 (larger lead for 'world hunger'). At 1970, food insecurity takes and maintains control.
This is likely because it - as discussed in the rest of the thread - encompasses more, and is a more useful term for scholarly discussion.
Right around the time when the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome and other elitist think tanks / NGOs were founded to push globalization, development and such ideas.
So, to clarify, I am not arguing that food insecurity and hunger are two separate things (even though to me it still sounds like some sort of newspeak). My question was more about the speed with which that term became deployed everywhere.
I think it’s more likely that you just didn’t notice it.
My lay observation is that “food security” has been the standard term in non-profit/NGO contexts for at least 15 years, while “hunger” is still colloquial. My guess for why is precision.
Maybe it's the same Euphemism Treadmill that George Carlin performed[1] about, how "Shell Shock" evolved into the softer, jargony "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"
I think "shell shock" vs. "PTSD" is a poor example of euphemistic language. The name "shell shock" is just inaccurate and misleading. It's a product of the poor understanding we had at the time. It would be confusing to explain how someone got shell shock from sexual assault, for example.
The intermediate names Carlin mentions, however, are absolute euphemistic bullshit. "Battle fatigue" and "operational exhaustion" were strictly rebrands with the intent of minimizing the problem.
Hunger, in the strictest sense, is about a lack of calories.
This made sense as a metric to track, when the issue was almost entirely people who starved to death. Now however, first in the developed world and also in many developing countries the issue is also calorie quality, usually a lack of access to non-junk foods. You can now be both malnourished and obese.
Nation states don't get hungry. Similarly to 'target neutralization' being called inhuman description of murder, both terms are about exactly what they say they are.
People being hungry near you is an 'individual problem', but with police intact you're roughly fine (under assumptions). If your country is facing food security crisis, it will likely spread to other domains and you are not fine.
For motte-and-bailey reasons. Food insecurity in my country means not being able to access food in "socially acceptable ways". It has nothing to do with hunger, it means collecting money from the govt or food stamps etc. But when invoked, it's meant to convey that a large fraction of people are going hungry, incidentally often calling for an expansion of spending which would also not reduce food insecurity because by definition it's not "socially acceptable". Better wages and employment addresses it.
Maybe the distrinction comes from the West where food charities help out with food for hunger, but they aren't in danger of starving to death like many 3rd world countries.
My guess is that recently lots of people have come to associate hunger with their own failed attempts at losing weight rather than with poverty and desperation. Saying that you want to "end hunger" is not a message that will resonate with them.
Perhaps -- my guess -- its the recognition that they are fundamentally two different problems.
Hunger of the previous generations was mostly due to countries not having enough agriculture or imports to feed their population.
Today with modern farming and agriculture methods, hunger is mostly a distribution issue, rather than a we don't have enough food issue, so now food security is used as a more general term. My hunch is driven by -- may be getting the exact specifics wrong - that countries like America throw away enough food daily to satisfy much of the remaining world hunger.
Same reason cops say shit like "this particular individual" instead of "this person". People think being wordy makes them sound sophisticated.
To those saying that "hunger" refers specifically to a physical state, we used to have the term "world hunger", and we obviously weren't talking about the planet itself being hungry.
I've eaten 4.6g of spirulina in the last 24 hours in the form of the Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness smoothie. No taste issues to speak of. I for one welcome our new algae overlords.
Only got through a few paragraphs before the paywall. Theoretically, from a "big food chain" perspective, it is true that eating algae directly at the bottom of the food chain is more energy efficient, since each link in the food chain only transfers about 10% of its energy upwards. But the reality is not that simple. China tried to implement the consumption of chlorella during the famine years decades ago, and it proved to be a complete failure.
I love all these whacky avenues people take when eating just plants is a very low foot print option available to almost everyone.
We don’t need to eat crickets, we don’t need to eat algae, we don’t need bioreactors for growing meat.
I think the main reason we don’t hear more about just how goddamn efficient a bowl of lentils and rice is, or oatmeal, is because it’s not sexy. You just can’t make a start up on beans and rice.
Which is a shame, because beans and rice are healthy and tasty. And also are one of the avenues to save the planet.
> I think the main reason we don’t hear more about just how goddamn efficient a bowl of lentils and rice is, or oatmeal, is because it’s not sexy.
No, we don't hear about it more because it's not healthful. If it were, the human digestive system would be like that of cattle, but it's not. You can feed everyone carby, fibrous meals, but that's not optimal and not even necessarily better for the environment.
The reason algae is proposed as a way to feed people is that it's not dumping a bunch of carbs, fiber, and incomplete protein down everyone's gullets. Humans don't need to be consuming these things, and there's drawbacks to diets that aren't based on what our species developed to primarily consume over the last 4 or so million years. There's aspects of algae that are preventing it from being a serious food source across the world, but if those roadblocks can be overcome then it can be a game changer because of where it can be grown and what kinds of nutrients it's capable of producing.
In the present, there's no good reason to believe that "everyone" needs to eat more plants and less meat. Meat is a part of the atmospheric carbon cycle, just as are crops. On the contrary to what you're suggesting, and putting aside the fact that fossil fuels are being used throughout livestock and agriculture, individuals can eat whatever they see fit for themselves.
Lentils and rice are a complete protein. While they don't provide 100% of the nutrients you need, if you throw in a few green vegetables you'll be absolutely fine.
Crops use something like 1% of the resources to grow that meat does. It's not just about where carbon is stored, but land and water usage and where carbon is produced (cows fart. a lot.). Overall plant-based diets are far superior for the planet than meat-based diets, and contrary to popular opinion they don't have to suck.
There is token research that creatine supplements are especially beneficial for vegans, and creatine isn't the only thing mostly found in animal-based foods. Given nutritional sciences has a history of being a rollercoaster ride, maybe it isn't the best idea to make wild claims which don't mirror how the world behaves at large.
Water and land usage is also A: grossly overstated (you can't grow anything except grass on most land) and B: cited as something against all meat when chickens, goats, ducks, geese and pigs use far less of both. At that point, substantiate or correct your statement to 'beef'.
>A: grossly overstated (you can't grow anything except grass on most land)
The overwhelming majority of soy grown globally is fed to livestock. That's definitely does not fall under your category of "can't grow anything except grass on most land".
"More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products"
The proportion is lower for corn, but only because a huge chunk is being used for fuel. If we exclude that, it would still be the overwhelming majority.
Well, it's roughly 80% of the soy that we grow and it's what animal feed is made from.
You could feed it to cows, in which case it gets turned into cow and fertiliser, or you can let it pile up and rot, emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide and methane.
> Lentils and rice are a complete protein. While they don't provide 100% of the nutrients you need, if you throw in a few green vegetables you'll be absolutely fine.
Sounds like the South Indian Sambar with rice meets this criteria.
Sorry, but lentils are pretty much the closest thing to a single food that meets all of a human's nutritional needs in existence. If you pair lentils with a small amount of spinach and eggs that gets you there.
Your comments about what "people" were designed to eat also sounds pretty ignorant, since we're not genetically homogenous for starters. Most humans of European descent have evolved for seasonal carbohydrate consumption, which is why they make you fat in excess (good luck surviving a hard winter lean). The only people who really shouldn't be eating carbs are indigenous people from very cold areas with a primarily marine diet. There are pockets of indigenous Americans from desert regions who don't do fantastically with carbs either, but those people mostly have issues with a caloric surplus in general.
Seaweed is a better food (and habitat) for fish than humans. We should create artificial reefs and forests to feed fish, then sustainably harvest fish from those manmade "farms".
>Your comments about what "people" were designed to eat also sounds pretty ignorant, since we're not genetically homogenous for starters. ...
Source for this? I don't doubt that there are groups with genetic adaptations to food (eg. genes for lactase persistence), but I'm not aware of anything for carbs.
It's not about a specific gene that says "you can/can't digest carbs" rather it's many variants of metabolic genes that dictate what hormones get triggered and what pathways get upregulated in such a way that eating carbohydrates causes fat gain/causes thermogenesis.
Beans + rice is easily the most common meal on the planet, as the cheapest complete protein source around. We live in a bubble, never mind saving the planet
On the “complete protein” concept, by a famous popularizer of plant-based protein-combining[0]
——
There is no need to combine foods at individual meals.
“In 1971 I stressed protein complementarity because I assumed that the only way to get enough protein ... was to create a protein as usable by the body as animal protein. In combating the myth that meat is the only way to get high-quality protein, I reinforced another myth. I gave the impression that in order to get enough protein without meat, considerable care was needed in choosing foods. Actually, it is much easier than I thought.
With three important exceptions, there is little danger of protein deficiency in a plant food diet.”
Why did you quit there, leaving the 3 exceptions as a cliffhanger!?
> The exceptions are diets very heavily dependent on [1] fruit or on [2] some tubers, such as sweet potatoes or cassava, or on [3] junk food (refined flours, sugars, and fat).
Animal protein still seems to be of higher quality. Even among rich vegans in first would countries, the children comparatively less developed compared to their peers.
A quick Google search reveals that beans are not a complete, since they lack several essential amino acids.
Edit: correction, it appears that soybeans are the exception. But when one thinks of having a serving of "beans and rice", soybeans are unlikely to be the bean served.
That's why it's the beans+rice combination that's complete, because they're complementary in composition.
But the truth is that you don't need to eat them in the same meal, and most people don't have a shortage of grain in their diets if they aren't going out of their way to make it so. Porridge in the morning and lentils at lunch and you've done it.
Surely you can just eat more beans until you get enough methionine to satisfy your protein synthesis needs. We are not (yet, in the western world) at the point of having to eat a starvation diet (where the amino acid profile is actually important, since you are trying to eat as little as possible).
My mistake, I had blindly dismissed rice since it is commonly known to be a nutrient poor food. But several sources confirm the parent post and your comment are correct*. It's also too often repeated that a vegetable based diets will be lacking essential amino acids which seems like a gross falsehood now if you can get there with two wildly available plants that make up a common low-cost meal. I am baffled by the disconnect.
*I don't cite the source since I am unsure if there are caveats or if the claim is controversial.
I think the disconnect is that for meat you don't have to think about it. When it comes to plants, suddenly you have to know something about what you are eating. There are plenty of plant diets that are viable, you just have to research a little bit.
Everyone always mentions beans and rice, but Potatoes by themselves are a complete protein. Some of the essential amino acids aren't found in high quantities in potatoes, so you have to eat a lot of them if you go that route. They are missing some vitamins and minerals as well, so you have to add sweet potatoes if you don't want scurvy.
I feel the opposite, as soon as I start supplementing with whey protein or adding meat I put on muscle and weight, but with mostly beans/rice/lentil diet I have consistent energy and stay light.
I think the "protein" obsession we have currently (even my milk carton brags about protein content) might be dialed back in the near future. It came from the weight lifting community, and lifting weights is one of the least healthy and functional ways to stay in shape. Hopefully we view hiking and doing physical activities as being "in shape" soon versus going to a gym to do a bunch of isolated movements with weight.
In my 20-30s, I was a long distance cyclist which required a high carb diet and I had persistent belly fat. Now I primarily lift weights and eat a high protein diet and I have lost all the belly fat and as an added bonus, my posture is no longer perma-hunched.
Which version of you would have done better at something like... running around with your kids at the park? Or running a mile to catch a train?
My main point is that defined abs and a giant chest and arms have little to do with health and performance, but the body-building culture has convinced us all that they do. It got ridiculous in the 90s when Arnold and Stallone were portrayed as heroes good at everything due to their big muscles, when the reality was that Arnold needed help wiping his own ass when he was at his biggest.
But if your goal is attracting a mate or intimidating other males bench press and bicep curls are your path.
I am also coming from a place as someone who hit 315 on bench in my mid 20s but felt like an old man.
Technically, I would have been far more injury prone running during my cycling days because of the terrible imbalances due to "mono sporting" as a cyclist. And I am not a musclebound gym rat now either. I spend more of my exercise time walking than anything else these days.
Not trying to sidestep your point here though and I understand and agree with what you are getting at re: over focus on lifting.
Eating too much protein is quite difficult if it's not processed. The same goes for fat. It's why people can lose a lot of weight quickly on the keto diet. You put on weight or feel hungry when eating carbs because they can't satiate your hunger.
I don't kid myself. I know the feeling of being hungry when I'm supposedly full. I know the feeling of being sleepy after a big lunch. If you stop eating carbs you get neither of those things.
The obsession with protein is rooted in the fact that your body hungers for protein, and eating whey protein is definitely not the healthiest way to consume it.
Actually, the problem with tofu is that it has a very high fat to protein ratio. If I were to get my protein from tofu, I'd take in way too many calories from fat.
The processing in tofu is merely blending of soy beans, filtering and curdling, unless cheese is in the same category for you, I'd say that particular millenia-old foodstuff is not in the same category as Beyond Burgers or hot pockets.
There is you just don't care to learn and are stuck in your own ways. That's fine, but don't act like it's not possible because it is and it's not hard.
It's not hard to understand. Meat tastes good and is satisfying to eat, and is the preferred centerpiece of many cultures' meals. So there is a market to find substitutes that will have the same appeal. Not that I think crickets or algae fill the niche, but at least people are trying something. Vegetarians saying "why doesn't everyone eat just plants, I do it" are ignoring culture and projecting their narrow view onto others
Huge swathes of the human population doesn't eat that much meat, India being my go to example of delicious vegetarian food spanning a very very long time.
Also, can you imagine the positive impact on health and well-being?
Also, my impression is that at least in the U.S. there isn't a shortage of farmable land. It's just that most of it is used to grow corn and soybeans, and most of the corn is being used to feed cattle and make ethanol.
I think a lot more work needs to be done to show how tasty plant-based foods can be. Anecdote: growing up, I hated brussel sprouts b/c we ate them boiled; now I love them oven-roasted. Salads can be amazing if a bit of effort is put into them (more than just iceberg lettuce and dressing).
In addition to changing to roasting, and depending on how old you are, brussels sprouts may have literally been different when you were a kid [0]. Dutch biologists worked to alter the sprouts we eat and have changed the bitterness. That's why they've had such a renaissance. I never had them as a kid, but I distinctly remember my brother making them at Thanksgiving around 2010 and we were shocked at how much we enjoyed them and couldn't figure out why they had such a bad reputation in pop culture.
(micro)-algae can be a really good source of long-chain omega-3's (EPA/DHA), which are otherwise difficult to get in a plant-based diet.
While beans and rice are pretty damn good (or what I tend to do, beans and potatoes) it definitely isn't complete nutritionally and there is pretty important stuff that's missing or there isn't enough of (EPA/DHA, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, etc).
Variety is also good just because of allergies and oversensitivites to certain foods and even just taste preference. Just about anything is better for the planet than meat!
Being from the land of great red and green chile (spelled correctly), I love legumes/pulses! I’d mix them with rice more but potatoes and wheat (tortillas) go with my metabolism much better.
I also love falafel though and find the texture close enough to a burger for my uses.
Edit-nonetheless the mock up stuff is fun and fills needs. Love me some “benevolent bacon”.
It's like the phenomenon of businessmen and politicians preferring to dazzle the public with implausible gadgetbahn concepts, instead of opting for presently-existing trains, of the various types that actually exist.
The concrete existence of train technology causes the ball to get pushed further than the the 3D render stage to the far less exciting endeavors of drafting up projects, gathering political support, securing funding, doing environmental impact studies, battling NIMBYs in court, and may end up undercutting the bottom line of auto manufacturers that could make campaign contributions, and won't line up the pockets of visionary consultants writing reports on how other solutions to car traffic and long commutes could be dreamed up.
Being vegetarian is extremely unhealthy, drives the obesity epidemic, and is far more likely to cause individuals to become depressed. Good luck getting heme iron, carnitine, carnosine, taurine, creatine, B12, Vit D, and DHA in a meat free diet.
I would totally imagine a beans and rice drive-through focused on getting healthy family dinner for lowest possible price. Call it “Bowls” and allow upsells on toppings.
That's great if you live in a part of the world where you can grow lentils and rice.
Even down south here at 57°N it's still more ecologically sound to eat meat and potatoes, because potatoes grow pretty well and tough heathery grasses and sedges grow pretty well, and we can't eat those but sheep can.
you eat so many bugs all the time, ground up in food. this dismissive old crank attitude is ignoring simple truth. also a lot of the world happily eats bugs as a delicacy. they’re not whacky, you’re being quick to frame something you don’t know much about as dismissible.
Only relatively low footprint. You're underestimating the fossil fuel consumption needed in the form of ammonia (for fertilizer), farming equipment (smelting for steel, also requires coke from coal), transport, manufacturing, plastics (greenhouses, packaging), etc. This is all essential to feed the world, and there's nothing low footprint about it. Btw, compare the consumption needed for a tomato/100g vs chicken, and you'll be surprised.
All of this is a moot point if demand were to stop growing, and that will only happen when population does. Another accelerant is that as more of the world is lifted out of poverty, demand increases. All of the increases in efficiency and swaps for green energy are outpaced by demand, and will continue to be.
Btw, immigrants are not moving to the 1st world so they could consume less. They're going to eat meat, buy gadgets and single family homes. In fact govt policy is counting on it (that's what a GDP increase means, more consumption). Reduction in overall meat consumption helps, but you shouldn't bet on it to end, nor is it the most exacerbating source of emissions (plus, I hope, seaweed infused feed could trivialize methane emissions as it rolls out).
The alternative to lower demand is a staggering transition away from fossil fuels (only like 15% of fossil fuel consumption is for electricity), but that will probably take awhile. Lowering immigration rates would marginally help (probably not as much as people think) but that would be unpopular anyway. It's simultaneously "just" to pad the numbers of those consuming like Westerners (literally what "a better life" describes), and a moral imperative for the same concerned class to pressure Westerners to avoid consuming arbitrary things, or in general. Regardless, increase in consumption will arrive in the rest of the world.
I think expanding access to contraceptives worldwide is probably the greenest possible thing that can be done right now. That's not coming from a perspective of anti-natalism either. EDIT: use your words if you disagree, like adults. If you can't even elucidate how, you should question your premise.
you know, some people were really squeamish about eating aquatic roaches, and they were reserved for penal colonies...but over time the public at large started to love them, they also gave them better names, like "crabs" and "lobsters".
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness"—say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane,"—say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
[...]"
(Not sure that blowing up the biosphere, literally so when considering geological timescales, is a better alternative...)
All of the people who are saying they'd never eat it and will stick with their beef/chicken/pork are the same kind that said hell no to EVs. They'll die out and the world will adapt to a changing food economy just as we did with the changing fuel economy.
EVs are barely making a dent into the problem, even coupled with everyone going fully vegan (a pipedream). The economy still continues to occupy any new room available under "we must grow" incentive.
You'll die out with the others at this rate of token changes.
I've wondered if the move to get rid of livestock to reduce wasteful resource consumption can just be focused on getting rid of beef. Poultry cultivation is far less water intensive than raising cattle. If everyone just ate chicken and pork that would be a significant improvement.
I also have beef and also vegetables and fruit. Plenty of space on my table for all of them.
About algae, there are a lot of different vegetables of all shapes, consistency and colors. The only difference is that in nature algae grow under water instead of under the rain. Considering how many of our vegetables are farmed without even seeing the rain once in their life, that's a non problem.
We had explained yet here why this point of view is incomplete and wrong.
If you provide antibiotics to a cow they probably will fart less, but also will grow poorly and will not produce good milk. Cows need their gut bacteria to liberate the nutrients in their food and remain healthy.
Many macroalgae have antibiotics as chemical defenses so feeding cows with it is the same as feeding cows antibiotics. Its ability to eat cellulose will be destroyed.
Even worse, this algae they evolved to use chemical defenses, so they grow slowly and only in a narrow ring around the continents. If some thing grows slowly, to harvest it at large amounts will destroy the resource in no time. Is a totally non-scalable plan.
Feeding cows with Chondrus is a false solution. If we try this path I predict that we will soon hit a dead end.
Feeding cows with Spirulina would fall into a different situation and maybe could work (but Spirulina is contaminated and spoiled easily).
Eating seaweed and bugs sounds a lot better than starving to death? Especially since in both cases they appear to be just intermediate sources of nutrients that will get turned into innocuous food-a-likes like burgers and bacon. Sure, the cynical take is no one would willing eat them straight up (though obviously nori is around sushi, hijiki is in soup etc.) but I am not too put off by the idea...
False dichotomy. Just like green anything. Kill the planet or go back to pre-industrial living standards. How about no. Why not use our talent and resources to find ways to increase the standards of living while also improving their affordability and lessening their impact on the environment.
I'd be interested to know any counter research to this.
> almost all algae revealed vitamin B12 analogues instead of the real thing. Analogues are not only ineffective, but also potentially dangerous. Most researchers have consequently dismissed algae as a B12 source and recommend natural B12 supplements as a safe alternative
> In order to properly understand the discussion about the B12 content of algae, it is important to first take a closer look at analogues. Also known as pseudo B12, analogues are molecules which are so chemically similar to real B12 that they bond to the same transport molecule. In contrast, however, they have no vitamin effect on the body whatsoever. This is detrimental to health, as only real B12 that is bound to this specific transport molecule can be used by the body.
https://www.b12-vitamin.com/algae/