/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.19656290]

How the hell is meat cheaper than plant-based meat substitutes when it takes a thousand calories of feed to produce one calorie of beef? There's no way that should work on sheer thermodynamics. Is it because of subsidies for meat? Economies of scale? Some other factor I don't know about?

[Anonymous No.19656317]

I have an empty bag of mcdonalds and a pile of cum-soaked tissue equidistant from my face. Currently the mcdonalds bag is more fragrant

[Anonymous No.19656325]

>>19656290
>why is a simple commodity that's been around for years cheaper than a complex system of manufacturing with many contributing factors that rely too much consumer confidence to turn a profit
Makes grug think

[Anonymous No.19656330]

>>19656325
It's simple, but on sheer thermodynamics it takes way more energy. I mean, sure, the manufacturing process must add some energy requirement, but a factor of a thousand???

[Anonymous No.19656331]

>>19656290
chemicals are expensive

[Anonymous No.19656338]

>>19656330
The company that founded beyond meat recently went into involuntary administration so I guess we won't be eating ze bugs after all

[Anonymous No.19656425]

>>19656290
have you ever seen how big a soybean farm is? that's a rhetorical question you dumb fucking weeb, holy shit kys.

[Anonymous No.19656445]

>>19656290
Mongo like meat
Mongo eat meat
Mongo just pawn in game of life.

[Anonymous No.19656452]

>>19656290
>not factoring in the caloric value of oil and energy used
In reality it costs trillions as many calories to make our food as calories we get out of it

[Anonymous No.19656457]

Feed is cheap if you have a good local feed and seed

[Anonymous No.19656766]

>>19656290
What about the field mice that get killed for your crops?

[Anonymous No.19656784]

>>19656452
Why hasn't anyone come up with a vitamin-infused, non-alcoholic gasoline? Save us the trouble of this whole eating thing.

[Anonymous No.19656881]

>>19656784
trying to create a soylent adjacent meal replacing substance ends up becoming too cost inefficient against just having a balanced diet

[Anonymous No.19657276]

>>19656290
Meat is cheaper than plant based alternatives because it's free to have a cow born into existence. Yes, it takes thousands of calories of feed to produce perceptually smaller amounts of beef, but that feed is inedible to humans. That's why it's so cheap. It is in no demand to humans aside from farmers providing it to their livestock. Plant based meat alternatives are made from industrial byproducts (hydrogenated oils), s o y products, and pumped full of flavorings and coagulating agents. Cows eat grass and all sorts of other junk that's basically all byproducts or things sold in abundance. Cows are able to digest cellulose, humans can not. If you tried eating cow feed then you'd become violently ill from the inflammation it causes in your GI tract. It will quite literally cut you up internally. Cows magically turn inedible (to us) grain and grass grown on arable land into two of the most nutritionally dense foods: milk, and beef.

[Anonymous No.19657304]

>>19656290
herbivorous animals can process food that we can't and turn it into food that we can. those many thousands of calories that go into making a single serving of meat come from sources that are so insanely inexpensive as to be negligible. after all, if we could process the foods they could, there wouldn't even be a food industry, because we'd all be able to survive by grazing like cattle. you're using the same retard logic that vegans do when they say shit like "if gorilla eat nothing but plant and is stronger than man, why man need animal protein to build muscle?". you're not a cow or a gorilla, simple as

[Anonymous No.19657306]

>>19656290
>Economies of scale?
yes. thanks for your retarded fucking thread

[Anonymous No.19657314]

>>19657276
This is a dumb argument because if people ate less meat, they would also grow less "inedible" grain and more "edible" grain. Obviously. It's not like inedible grain just spawns into reality, it occupies agricultural space that would otherwise be used to create food for humans in a much more efficient manner than raising livestock for slaughter. I don't think you actually believe this stupid thing that you said, you're just trying to be creative, and kudos for that.

[Anonymous No.19657333]

>>19657314
no, probably 50+% of the people on this board would buy into and believe the dogshit slop youre replying to. this board is particularly stupid but it applies to the average consumer as well. just no frame of reference to critically examine anything they eat

[Anonymous No.19657338]

>>19656290
Shut your fucking pie hole you little slut and quit asking dumb questions. Just eat the goddamn burger and like it goddamnit!

[Anonymous No.19657340]

>>19657314
>It's not like inedible grain just spawns into reality
what is grass for $200 Alex

[Anonymous No.19657344]

>>19656290
Meat is heavily subsidized by the government so it's cheaper. Plant-based meat isnt. Without the subsidies, plant-based meat might be cheaper.

[Anonymous No.19657349]

>>19657340
>what is grass for $200 Alex
A thing that occupies zero agricultural space, anon. Pastoralism is widely regarded as the only truly sustainable form of raising livestock for meat. Anyway, that comment was saying that inedible feed-grade grain doesn't pop into existence, and instead is factory farmed on land using labor, land, and equipment that could simply made food for humans instead.

[Anonymous No.19657369]

>>19657314
>it occupies agricultural space that would otherwise be used to create food for humans in a much more efficient manner than raising livestock for slaughter
that's not what you asked tho. you're just changing the question because your original question was so easily answered that you look like a retard for asking it. but to answer your new, equally retarded question, there's such a thing as "demand". pricing isn't determined by a rational, systematic plan designed to maximize efficiency. it's determined by a variety of objective factors, one of which is how many people WANT a thing and how much they're willing to pay for it. most people aren't satisfied eating nothing but grains like feudal peasants, and are willing to pay a few dollars for some meat

[Anonymous No.19657388]

>>19657314
>planned farms can produce food more efficiently than capitalism
Sure, what could go wrong

[Anonymous No.19657405]

>>19657314
Growing grass in a field takes basically no effort or money compared to raising any sort of food crop. Most cattle eat primarily grass for most of their lives, then spend a relatively short time in a feedlot being bulked up with grain/beans and so on. Some of course are grass fed the entire time. And cows can use more of most food crops than humans can. For example, with corn people can only eat the kernels; cows can eat the whole damn cobs, stalks, and leaves from a corn plant if you chop them up. Leftovers from other crops (like wheat stalks) can also be fed to cows.

Then there is ethanol to consider. 40% of the corn grain in the US goes into making ethanol for fuel, which leaves a ton of extra leaves, stalks, and cobs left over, which of course end up as cattle feed; likewise the distillers grain left over from after the ethanol has been created is also incorporated into animal feed. Other parts of cattle feed are made from the left overs of soybeans after their oil has been extracted. So basically a ton of what cows eat is leftovers from other processes, or uses more of the plant than humans could.

Now, a ton of grain & beans do go into making pig, turkey, and chicken feed. With those animals you could produce more food that humans could eat using the same farmland used to produce their feed. That said, those creatures have really good feed conversion ratios, much better than cattle which is a big part why their meat is so cheap, cheaper than fake meat that needs a bunch of processes to make.

[Anonymous No.19657407]

>>19657369
I'm not OP moron. And the rest of your post just boils down to "meat is good even when we have to cram shit grade feed into the mouths of cows that don't walk more than 100 feet their entire lives because capitalism" which actually isn't an argument and an appeal to virtue through markets. It's a pointless non sequitur and the only appropriate reply is to ignore it. I pointed out a factual error with an agricultural statement and you said "economics exist". That's not really a conversation.

[Anonymous No.19657409]

>>19657276
You can say soy here, retard.

[Anonymous No.19657413]

>>19657314
>edible grain
no such thing
crayons are technically edible too but they aren't food

[Anonymous No.19657423]

>>19657405
>Growing grass in a field takes basically no effort or money compared to raising any sort of food crop.
That's true, and it's why a higher percent of beef should be from cows that are grass fed.
>Most cattle eat primarily grass for most of their lives
This is very untrue. It would be very good if it were true, but it's not. Grass is only a very small fraction of the overall beef industry.
>So, how significant is the grass-fed beef industry in America? About 4% of U.S. beef retail and food service sales is comprised by grass-fed beef with a value of roughly $4 billion. About $3 billion of that is unlabeled grass-fed beef that is sold as conventional beef, making data gathering on these products difficult to obtain. Conversely, about 1% ($1 billion) of the total beef market share is grass-fed products that are labeled, handled and marketed as such, of which more-consistent data is available.
This is actually a pretty good post and accurate for the most part, but we disagree on how much of the market is grain fed. For the most part, cows raised for meat are kept in small pens on dirt lots, being fed corn and grain in troughs and rarely allowed to roam around in the barren landscape. Pastoralism makes good use of inedible and otherwise unusable vegetation, but shrinking the beef market to only grass-fed beef would mean a massive reduction in total beef products.

[Anonymous No.19657425]

>>19657413
the gluten thread is down the hall

[Anonymous No.19657431]

>>19657349
>sustainable
Do you even know what that word means? Whats not sustainable about cows eating grass on arable land? Will it make the land barren? Or youre saying we dont have enough land to feed cows and people?
You people are seriously incredibly, unfathomably dumb. And stuck so far up your own ass that you dont see the world as it actually is

[Anonymous No.19657471]

>>19657423
You are correct that purely grass fed cattle are only a small portion of beef cattle in the US; however almost all beef cattle spend the first year or so of their life in pastures, nursing for the first few months then eating grass after weaning. Then they typically spend several months on a feed lot. I should have phrased it as 2/3rds or so of their life in pasture, about 1/3rd in the feed lot.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance/

[Anonymous No.19657475]

>>19657425
the only true foods are foods able to be eaten in their raw state, everything else is filler

[Anonymous No.19657483]

>>19657407
i am not a proponent of factory farming or even capitalism. i'm described reality as it is to answer your question. i didn't offer my opinion of how things would work in an ideal world, because that isn't what you asked, you illiterate fag

[Anonymous No.19657485]

>>19656881
Not to mention almost every single attempt at that doesn't taste well, at all. Not even by adding some of the strongest artificial chemical flavours still safe for human consumption we have right now. A soylent equivalent is not coming anytime soon. Not because it can't be done or because it is overly costly, but because nobody, unless they are actually dying or in risk of hunger on an hourly basis, would eat daily.

[Anonymous No.19657530]

>>19657471
This is true. "Corn fed" cattle actually spend most of their life eating grass

[Anonymous No.19657576]

Something else to consider is that the crops grown to feed livestock are specifically chosen for yield, how well they fatten animals up, and ease of industrial harvesting/processing. The plants going into fake meat are chosen to try to meet specific flavor & texture profiles, and thus probably fall somewhat short on the yield & ease of processing compare to the stuff animals eat. The company making fake meat also needs to keep their recipe consistent; change it too much and it might end up tasting really bad. Which sucks if the specific plant they need for their recipe spikes in price. Livestock producers do not have to worry about it tasting the same, and can buy whatever feed has the best price for weight gain ratio at the time.

The plants going to feed animals are also going to have less stringent requirements for quality/contamination than human food (think stuff like allowable #insect parts, mold contamination, etc), as people start getting angry if they find too many bug parts in food, while some extra insects ending up in the chicken feed is no big deal; the chickens don't care and eat bugs when given the chance anyways.

[Anonymous No.19657599]

>>19657276
This was the post I was waiting for.

>>19657314
This is the response I was waiting for.

>>19657405
This is the response to the response I was waiting for.


City slickers have big ideas, but quickly show how ignorant they are to the reality of the world. This is my newest cow. She is for milk not meat. I will massage her teats every day some time after she gives birth to relieve the pressure from the 5 gallons of milk she produces for me everyday and make beautiful dairy products from it.

[Anonymous No.19658490]

>>19656425
And most livestock are fed on things like corn and soybeans...
>>19656766
That you cannot be perfect doesn't imply that you can't or shouldn't try to be less bad.
>>19657276
>Meat is cheaper than plant based alternatives because it's free to have a cow born into existence.
Er... what about the feed required for the dam to gestate her calf? Much less the feed required for the calf to grow up into a cow/bull.
>Yes, it takes thousands of calories of feed to produce perceptually smaller amounts of beef, but that feed is inedible to humans. That's why it's so cheap.
Much of it is corn and soybeans, but even if it were things humans can't eat at all and grown on land completely unsuitable for growing anything humans can eat (which seems unlikely, you could at least grow potatoes or something), it still takes land and water and time to grow it?
>Cows eat grass and all sorts of other junk that's basically all byproducts or things sold in abundance.
And most cows don't, as evidenced by the fact that being grass-fed is a selling point for beef and not a given.

[Anonymous No.19658501]

>>19657304
>after all, if we could process the foods they could, there wouldn't even be a food industry, because we'd all be able to survive by grazing like cattle.
I'd think there'd still be issues of numbers of scale- maybe if there were only a hundred million humans on Earth we could, but not with eight billion of us.
>you're using the same retard logic that vegans do when they say shit like "if gorilla eat nothing but plant and is stronger than man, why man need animal protein to build muscle?". you're not a cow or a gorilla, simple as
Though we are much more closely related to gorillas than cows, and most of our closest relatives eat primarily plants and a few bugs. To my understanding, humans do have adaptations to process meat, but it's something of a kludge and has side effects it doesn't have for creatures that have been carnivores longer.

[Anonymous No.19658509]

>>19657340
And the vast majority of beef is not grass-fed, as demonstrated by the fact that 'grass-fed' is a selling point for beef and not a given. If there were enough grass to feed all the cows on it we would. Most are fed on things like corn and soybeans.

[Anonymous No.19658519]

>>19657388
Where did they say that?
>>19657405
>Most cattle eat primarily grass for most of their lives
Again, if this were true then 'grass-fed' would be a given and not a selling point for beef.

[Anonymous No.19658520]

>>19658501
Imagine a vaccine that could make poor people be able to digest grass. Would you take it?

[Anonymous No.19658523]

>>19657431
>Or youre saying we dont have enough land to feed cows and people?
To feed all the cows we eat on grass, no, or we would.

[Anonymous No.19658530]

>>19657576
>Livestock producers do not have to worry about it tasting the same, and can buy whatever feed has the best price for weight gain ratio at the time.
Does what an animal is fed on not influence how its meat ends up tasting?

[Anonymous No.19658531]

>>19658520
Wouldn't that quickly become unsustainable because everyone would take it and they'd eat up all the grass? There are eight billion human beings.

[Anonymous No.19658539]

>>19658501
>Mountain gorillas mostly eat foliage, such as leaves, stems, pith, and shoots, while fruit makes up a very small part of their diets.
try eating as a gorilla does for an extended period of time and report back

[Anonymous No.19658542]

>>19658531
One lb of grass has like 900 calories. Ain't not way we running out grass for all the poor people to eat.

[Anonymous No.19658543]

>>19658539
I didn't say we should eat exactly like a gorilla, just that our closest relatives are all primarily herbivores.

[Anonymous No.19658568]

>>19656290
Beef is heavily subsidized in the US.
But on the other hand most of these fake meat companies are operating on a loss subsidized by investors.

[Anonymous No.19658579]

>>19658543
so?

[Anonymous No.19658581]

>>19658542
Grass isn't very heavy, isn't a pound of grass like the clippings from a whole largish lawn? And grass doesn't grow back instantly either.

[Anonymous No.19658580]

>>19657314
Land suitable for grazing is not inherently suitable for planting.
Cows (and lambs etc) can survive in areas that are too arid to grow crops. Watch a documentary about Mongolian pastoralists. The only reason humans can survive in the steppes is because they have animals that can convert what little vegetation there is into edible products.
Thats an extreme example, but i would guess that in the US areas used for grazing are probably not the most ideal for growing crops. The market generally ensures people will use land fairly efficiently, because people want to make a profit off of it.

[Anonymous No.19658584]

>>19658579
So biologically we're not very well adapted for eating meat, it's a sort of kludge, to my understanding.

[Anonymous No.19658599]

>>19658543
Our closest extinct relatives are all carnivores

[Anonymous No.19658604]

>>19658581
Grass is heavy. Think straw or hay. one bale of hay would last a person nearly a month.

[Anonymous No.19658612]

>>19658599
Omnivores, you mean.
>>19658604
And do we have enough hay to provide eight billion people with a bale a month?

[Anonymous No.19658652]

>>19658612
America alone makes the equivalent weight of around 4.65 billion 60lb bales of hay per year.

[Anonymous No.19658671]

>>19658652
Which is enough to feed a little over half the population for... a month. Though even if we could digest hay, I don't think it would have all the nutrients we need, would it? So it couldn't be a complete diet.

[Anonymous No.19658712]

>>19658671
Im talking just for the poor people. It says roughly 828 million people are starving around the world today.

The world produces roughly 10billion 60lb bales of hay per year.

[Anonymous No.19658734]

>>19658490
Beef cows raising calves are almost always in pastures, and get little if any, grain. See pic related from the USDA website.

And again, most beef cattle spend a majority of their lives (at least 2/3rds) on pasture land eating mostly grass, or left overs from other crops after they are harvested, i.e. after the corn has been harvested, it is extremely common to move beef cattle into the fields to pick through the leftover stalks, leaves, cobs that fell to the ground, and so on. Then those cattle are moved are moved to a feed lot for the final 3 to 6 months of their life, to be finished on sillage, grains, and soybeans. And of course, a good hunk of the sillage, grains and soybeans are leftovers from ethanol and vegetable oil production.

The ethanol is a major factor here - roughly 40% of the US corn crop is made into ethanol for automotive use. And ethanol only uses the grains, specifically the sugars & starches within. That means there is ton of left corn stalks, leaves, and cobs that cows can eat, either by being pastured in recently harvested corn fields, or as sillage on their feed lots. That also means there is a very large amount of distillers grain left over as well; every metric ton of corn turned into ethanol leaves behind 300 kg of distillers grain. That is a major part of the grains cattle get while being in the feed lots.

The total amount of "fresh" grains & soybeans going to cattle just isn't that much; most the crops being grown specifically for animal feed are going to make pig & chicken food. Those animals have really good feed conversion ratios; trading 3.3 lbs of soy & corn for 1 lb of chicken is a pretty darn good deal to me. And then remember that the food crops people actually want to eat do not yield as well as the stuff fed to animals, so the trade off is more like 2 lbs of human edible plant food for every pound of chicken.

[Anonymous No.19658784]

>>19657276
based cows

[Anonymous No.19658809]

>>19658523
>>19658509
We could and we literally do. As others in this thread have said "corn fed" just means they fatten them up with corn a few months before slaughter. Cows eat grass for the majority of their life
>>19658519
>Again, if this were true then 'grass-fed' would be a given and not a selling point for beef.
Yes. Listen to your corporate overlords. Continue buying gluten free water and cage-free potatoes. They literally can and slap anything true on their product because people are stupid.
By the way they used to advertise beef as being "corn-fed" if it only was for a few weeks

[Anonymous No.19658815]

>>19658530
It does to a degree; that is why enough people are willing to pay a premium for purely grass fed beef (as opposed to the majority of beef cattle that are 2/3rds grass, 1/3rd feed lot), since it tastes better. That said, the typical variations in the usual foods feed to livestock do not make noticable difference in how the meat tastes. If soybeans are relatively cheap one year, so I feed my cows 10% more beans and 10% less distillers grain, few would be able to notice the taste difference. If you took a fake meat patty, and increased the soy content by 10% and cut the pea protein by the same, the taste & texture differences would be quite noticable.