Many people associate monosodium glutamate (MSG) with Chinese food, but it’s actually in a lot of what we eat, whether it is added to processed foods or naturally occurring in more umami foods, like cheese, fish, and mushrooms. While it gets a bad rap, recent studies indicate that it’s probably not the villain it has been painted to be over the years.
A vegan diet can be healthier than one high in animal products, but it isn’t inherently healthier. There are a lot of nutrition factors to consider when removing animal products from your diet, which is why this second installment on vegan health was an unexpected overflow from the previous week and still only represents the tip of the iceberg of nutrition information for vegans.
Many vegetarians say they don’t eat meat because of responsibility to the environment. Mock meat is a great way to reduce your footprint, but I wanted to see how the numbers stack up when comparing our different options. Just how beneficial are plant-based foods for the environment compared to their meat-based equivalents? Are there negative impacts of these “responsible” food choices that we’re not considering?
About 5% of Americans are vegetarian, and many of us don’t even miss the taste of meat. Nevertheless, plant-based burgers designed to resemble beef are appearing in upscale restaurants, grocery stores, and now fast food chains. Eating a plant-based diet is one of the easiest things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Is meatless meat good enough to get meat eaters to cut back?
In just the past week, I had the opportunity to try both the Beyond Burger at a cookout and the Impossible Whopper at Burger King. With all of my raving on social media about these new and different options, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from both meat eaters and vegetarians, some of which I could answer, and some of which I couldn’t – until now.