Bogus burgers
This is the other side of the Oct. 8 Grinds article promoting the Impossible Burger as it will now be available in food stores.
The Impossible Burger represents the opposite of what today’s health-aware and environmentally conscious consumers want from their food: pure, natural, minimally processed, non-GMO ingredients.
It contains GMO ingredients, namely soy protein isolate. This burger is a GMO food that is also higher in saturated fat and salt than real grass-fed beef. All other ingredients listed are highly processed food and synthetic vitamins.
This burger that bleeds is made from a soy protein gene that is fermented with genetically modified yeast to create a substance, soy leghemoglobin, which bleeds like meat, in huge industrial vats in a nutrient-rich broth of chemically synthesized ingredients that are themselves industrially manufactured.
Looking at the bigger picture, how much greenhouse gas is generated in the synthesis of all those highly processed ingredients … that go into making this burger?
How does the Impossible Burger’s environmental impact compare with sustainable, pastured, organic beef production that sequesters lots of carbon dioxide?
A better choice would be the vegan Beyond Meat products that contain beets to create a burger that bleeds like meat.
Merle Hayward
Hilo
Alternate reality
We are seeing today a people descended from Tahitians that long for the old days prior to the arrival of Captain Cook and all the history that has passed since. If only Kalani‘opu‘u had sent the HMS Resolution packing with a hearty, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Kamehameha was just a local chief then and, sadly, was later killed on a raid to Maui. The islands wouldn’t have been united, and if the islanders didn’t get to use the iron the English would have introduced, they’d still be using stone, bone and wood tools. Wishing to keep their ways, the islanders kept refusing to allow contact from any nation.
In an ideal world (for the islanders), nations respect their standoffish nature and allow them to stay the way they want. Individual islands still warred between themselves, thus keeping the population from overloading the islands.
Cook returns to England, enters into politics and is welcomed into the House of Lords. He proposes treaties with other nations to respect what has come to be called the Sandwich Islander’s culture. Nearly all ocean-faring nations sign on.
And by now, up on the side of Maunakea, the adze quarries would have been seen from space … .
Ralph LeVitt
Volcano
