“They used to make a vegan real whey protein powder made from bacteria instead of cows. It was so tasty. . . . They cancelled it because the market for that was basically just me.”
This is a huge issue with animal product substitutes that I’ve noticed since becoming (sort of) vegan. There was a product called “Bored Cow” that was basically synthetic cow’s milk. It didn’t taste as good as real cow’s milk, but was indistinguishable when used as an ingredient in other things (coffee, smoothies, baking, etc.). I loved it. Pretty sure it’s off the market now because I guess I was the only one.
It’s really dispiriting. Synthetic animal products have long been my hold-out hope for veganism actually making some real growth. But it seems like I better hope that demand for the best synthetics will be astronomically higher than it is for these pretty good synthetics - or I’ll need to rethink my theory of change.
Thanks for publishing this! After reading your AI series I've been inching more towards vegetarianism to offset my LLM usage/general animal welfare concerns, but as a hobbyist lifter I've been concerned about my protein intake. Question about this: I was under the impression that Amazon and other last mile delivery services are pretty bad for the environment - do you know if the Amazon usage for the vegan snacks is offset by the benefits of eating mostly the vegan snacks? Is there some other way you offset the carbon use?
I'm pretty unsure about Amazon, I honestly haven't compared it to other stuff. I guess I worry that some people might boycott Amazon deliveries but then just drive to a grocery store. Because the Amazon delivery van is making a ton of optimized stops to get everyone their stuff, I suspect that the emissions would actually be much lower than driving a large car to get a few bags of groceries and then coming back.
I'm actually pretty convinced that most of the CO2 from food comes from the type of food you're eating, not the shipping. Shipping has just been incredibly optimized across the board, you can look at this graph as an example and see how small the CO2 cost of shipping is compared to the cost of actually making the food: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
This is an extreme example, but if we compare beef jerky to a chickpea snack that has the same amount of protein, we can assume the beef emitted about 25 kg of CO2 while the chickpeas emitted <2 kg https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
So assuming you save 23,000 g of CO2 by switching a single beef jerky snack to a chickpea snack, you've saved about 230x as much CO2 as the cost of getting the snack to you.
The numbers here will be complex bc there's a lot more going on in the supply chains, but I feel pretty confident that most food's carbon impact will happen when it's grown, not in shipping, even the last mile for Amazon deliveries.
Thank you so much for the extensive follow up! Maybe it's because I grew up eating meat, but I find it so easy to forget just how intense the greenhouse gas emissions are from meat. I really appreciate the math; even if you're wrong by an order of magnitude it's still more efficient to go the vegetarian/vegan route.
Even for non-vegan lifters, I think it's worth saying that there's absolutely no reason to increase meat intake to meet protein needs. Protein powders are just as good nutritionally. (Plus I vaguely remember that whey is a byproduct of cheese production so it must be much better than meat environmentally).
Yup my impression is that whey is one of the least harmful animal products all around relative to how beneficial it is health wise. I'm consistently vegan mostly as a form of protest about the animal situation, but if I were to eat some animal products I'd probably start with whey.
“They used to make a vegan real whey protein powder made from bacteria instead of cows. It was so tasty. . . . They cancelled it because the market for that was basically just me.”
This is a huge issue with animal product substitutes that I’ve noticed since becoming (sort of) vegan. There was a product called “Bored Cow” that was basically synthetic cow’s milk. It didn’t taste as good as real cow’s milk, but was indistinguishable when used as an ingredient in other things (coffee, smoothies, baking, etc.). I loved it. Pretty sure it’s off the market now because I guess I was the only one.
It’s really dispiriting. Synthetic animal products have long been my hold-out hope for veganism actually making some real growth. But it seems like I better hope that demand for the best synthetics will be astronomically higher than it is for these pretty good synthetics - or I’ll need to rethink my theory of change.
Nice touch putting the links at the top. Classy
Thanks for publishing this! After reading your AI series I've been inching more towards vegetarianism to offset my LLM usage/general animal welfare concerns, but as a hobbyist lifter I've been concerned about my protein intake. Question about this: I was under the impression that Amazon and other last mile delivery services are pretty bad for the environment - do you know if the Amazon usage for the vegan snacks is offset by the benefits of eating mostly the vegan snacks? Is there some other way you offset the carbon use?
I'm pretty unsure about Amazon, I honestly haven't compared it to other stuff. I guess I worry that some people might boycott Amazon deliveries but then just drive to a grocery store. Because the Amazon delivery van is making a ton of optimized stops to get everyone their stuff, I suspect that the emissions would actually be much lower than driving a large car to get a few bags of groceries and then coming back.
I'm actually pretty convinced that most of the CO2 from food comes from the type of food you're eating, not the shipping. Shipping has just been incredibly optimized across the board, you can look at this graph as an example and see how small the CO2 cost of shipping is compared to the cost of actually making the food: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Assuming you're not driving to a grocery store:
This website says Amazon last mile delivery adds about 100g CO2 per parcel https://www.supplychainmovement.com/co2-emissions-per-parcel-down-56-over-last-five-years/
This is an extreme example, but if we compare beef jerky to a chickpea snack that has the same amount of protein, we can assume the beef emitted about 25 kg of CO2 while the chickpeas emitted <2 kg https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
So assuming you save 23,000 g of CO2 by switching a single beef jerky snack to a chickpea snack, you've saved about 230x as much CO2 as the cost of getting the snack to you.
The numbers here will be complex bc there's a lot more going on in the supply chains, but I feel pretty confident that most food's carbon impact will happen when it's grown, not in shipping, even the last mile for Amazon deliveries.
Thank you so much for the extensive follow up! Maybe it's because I grew up eating meat, but I find it so easy to forget just how intense the greenhouse gas emissions are from meat. I really appreciate the math; even if you're wrong by an order of magnitude it's still more efficient to go the vegetarian/vegan route.
Even for non-vegan lifters, I think it's worth saying that there's absolutely no reason to increase meat intake to meet protein needs. Protein powders are just as good nutritionally. (Plus I vaguely remember that whey is a byproduct of cheese production so it must be much better than meat environmentally).
Yup my impression is that whey is one of the least harmful animal products all around relative to how beneficial it is health wise. I'm consistently vegan mostly as a form of protest about the animal situation, but if I were to eat some animal products I'd probably start with whey.
Great posts - thanks for writing. Creatine seemed to make my face fat(ter), which was annoying and the reason I stopped.
Thank you! Yeah big main issue with creatine is the bloating. I'm just taking the hit.
Thanks, Andy - this is very thorough and honest.
Greatly appreciate the emphasis on protein. I harp on it a lot.
https://www.mattball.org/search?q=protein
Take care.
https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/
seems like you only need about 0.8g/lb regardless of bulking/cutting
Jury’s a bit out here imo, I usually eat a bit more to be safe
Not available in the US :( My followers... please lmk if you have any US recs