I've eaten them. They are unsatisfying. They do fill your stomach though. While they aren't disgusting, they lack the satisfaction that is gained by eating beef. Meet eaters here probably know what I'm talking about.

In a true crisis (ie. a doctor demands that I don't eat meat because of a terrible health problem), I'de eat them. In any other circumstance I'de stick to real hamburgers.

I am largely vegetarian, rarely eat red meat.

Most recent red meat was some kangaroo meat with salad at a local Austrian (!? - not Australian!) restaurant, as much for curiosity as anything. It was fine.

I get my protein mainly from various vege protein 'burger' things, sausages, slices etc, plus eggs, beans, and fish.

Especially when used with various dressings and sauces and cheese, I really do enjoy my main meal, in the morning.

I have nothing against dairy, but I try to keep to low fat, low cholesterol where practical.

Extra virgin olive oil is entirely vege , and no down sides that I am aware of. Chips are still really vege of course, should avoid saturated cooking fat or oil. Although ordinary potatoes are not the best veges.

I genuinely do not crave red meat. I used to eat a fair bit, mainly because my parents served it a lot.

My father ate a lot of it, but he went out with bowel cancer, which has been linked to heavy consumption of red meat with low veges. Probably mainly with people genetically susceptible, but he was my father...

So that was a significant and I reckon very rational motive for largely giving up red meat.

I am concerned about the sustainability of fishing, so I try to stick to small fish low down on the food chain - sardines, herrings. I venture up the chain a bit, for variety, to mackerel, and occasional tuna and salmon. Keeping low on the food chain keeps the potential mercury exposure lower, too.

The bulk of my breakfast is a wide assortment of microwave-steamed chopped fresh and frozen veges.

Vegetables are what food eats.

Well, I have had veggie burgers. They really are not that great. As Jorm observed, they can fill you up but it is not a satisfying meal. Honestly, I have also tried a few MREs and I would rather have those than veggie burgers.

Even so, it is certainly possible to make a decent meal without going for beef at every seating. Personally, I am partial to steamed vegetables over rice. If you make sure that your meal has some beans/mushrooms/etc. You can get all of your protein requirements. Also, the idea of a “complete protein” is not quite all that some people make it out to be. Sure, you need all of the essential amino acids somewhere in your diet but it certainly does not have to be the full set at every meal.

I'd like to have one of them near me.

Most red meat, as it is currently raised, is really bad for the environment. I almost never purchase it, but I'll eat it if I'm invited to someone's house and they're serving it.

My wife doesn't eat meat of any kind, though she does eat seafood. So we get most of our protein through various veggie-meat products and seafood. Any of the veggie-burger products are typically fine with the right kinds of condiments.

RR group hug = Rational Responders I assume?  And who else is in the group?

Which location are you near, I plan to visit Jake in Santa Ana, CA within the next year (I think).  I could add it to my stop list.

EDIT: COOL!  They have Philadelphia on their "coming soon" page!

Probably referring to waste of resources and carbon emissions.

Beef is worth the equivelant of something like ten times the amount of vegetables, that are eaten by the cattle. Especially considering most cattle are fed corn.

It's been a long time since I looked at this, so I may be off a bit. Going entirely off memory here.

Some people gorge meat burgers together with potato chips, and bread, which is a bad combination [bread with potatoes].
But if the simple burger is to be accompanied by garlic, onion, lettuce, wild rocket, tomato, and chillies, it’s ok, I guess [not too much sauce, please].
The rule is: no bread and potatoes together.

jesus christ, man, i'm a fucking CELT.  i can't follow that rule.  that's all my ancestors had.

Look, I know for a fact that combining potatoes chips with bread is a BAD combination. Go research it and then tell us what you found.
Avoid that mixture, to help your stomach functioning well.
Either bread or chips with your burger, but not together, I'm afraid.
Those subway "entrepreneurs" know very little about the ART of food combination for your good health [and couldn't care less for what you eat].

Apparently few know about this "art" then, because potatos served with or on sandwiches are a worldwide phenomenon.

Belgium sandwich.

Greek Souvlaki.

I easily found hundreds of different commonly eaten foods all over France, Italy, and many other nations that all disagree with you and say potatos are delicious next to bread and are devoured as such.

i have to concur.  one can often find french fries slapped on top of burgers at snack stands in train and bus stations throughout europe.  healthy?  of course not.  you want to be healthy, don't eat fries at all.  but fries as a burger topping between buns are delicious and have never caused me any particular stomach problems.  hell, even jamie oliver, the guy who tried to make british school cafeterias more healthy, did an episode on burgers and fries.  and yes, he used bread.

I am going to have to go with CC and geirj on this one. I have looked into the American food producing industries and they are pretty bad, not only for the environment but also for the consumer as well. The only way they are any good at all is for the shareholders of the various companies.

I haven't really looked too deeply into how other countries produce foods but I would tend to assume that they are probably as bad, if perhaps in different ways from what we have going on.

Since we are talking about beef here, let me stick with that as an example. The beef that our great grand parents ate was considerably different from what we have today. Time was that cows were allowed to walk around outdoors eating what was normal for them (grass mostly) until they were ready for the cattle drive to get them to market. Along the way, they would walk off quite a bit of stored fat.

Today, the beef industry has managed to convince most consumers that very fatty grain fed beef is the luxury commodity that everyone ought to aspire to. Since few people ever question where their food comes from, all is well with the industry.

Ever wonder how beef gets that way? I hope you are not eating right now because this is pretty gross.

Where we used to walk full grown cattle to the few stock yards/slaughter houses that were located near major transportation centers, today the slaughter houses are all centrally located in Kansas and the cattle are brought in when they are only half way grown. Then they are confined to pens where they are fed a diet of nearly pure grain to force them to pack on calories and grow to market size in half the time that they would in nature. Since they are not allowed to walk around, they build up and retain huge stores of fat that they would not in nature.

Also, since they are not allowed to walk around, they spend the last few months of their lives standing ankle deep in their own shit. Hence the reason why you may hear about beef cattle being fed huge doses of antibiotics. It is not to make them grow faster (that is what genetically engineered bovine growth hormone is for BTW), it is to keep them from developing massive infections.

As far as bad for the environment goes, with all of this going on, one simply cannot farm down hill/wind/river from the feed lots, at least not for anything that would be a problem if it were exposed to large doses of cow shit. Crops that are meant to be eaten raw such as lettuce/spinach/celery are especially off limits in this regard.

People eat on average like 1-2 pounds of insects a year. I'm afraid I don't see why this is a problem? Other than "ewww" what harm does it do? Why worry?

I'm much more afraid of transmittable spongiform in beef than I am bugs.

I will maintain [till proved wrong ] that potatoes with bread is unhealthy combination.
Sure, in burgers they are camouflaged with sauces and other ingredients, in a taste deception, but...
[All in all, hamburgers are unhealthy, for their industrial preparation, processing, storage and all.]
I like hamburgers, but, honestly, I avoid them.
[I don't trust the processing industry ... besides the cockroaches, that is...]

I like tuna sandwiches with chips. Any sandwich is usually good with chips, especially something like a club.

If potatos and bread are bad with eachother, I'd like an explanation still for potato bread from julio. It is widely eaten, and is bread baked with potato in it.

I'd like to take a stab at debunking this, although it may have some merit in certain circumstances.  Potatos are high in starch, which means they are complex carbohydrates.  Bread can vary in its content of carbohydrates.  White bread is a simple sugar... it is so easily broken down that if you leave white bread in your mouth for a minute you will taste sugar.  Carbs are all eventually broken down to glucose (and in the end game so are fats and proteins), but the easier the food is broken down, the worse it is for you.  As in, simple carbs, (pure glucose) can diffuse directly into your bloodstream before anything of substance can reach your small intestine (where all nutrient absorption actually takes place).  So, IMO, if white bread is almost wholly broken down before reaching the small intestine, there would be no difference as to whether you ate a pixie stick and a potato or a piece of white bread and a potato... so the lesson here is eat better bread (Anything with whole grain/whole wheat/rye, etc etc)... Fact is that most restaurants serve white bread, so I don't see it as being a problem.

However, if you did eat a 12 grain whole wheat with french fries or potato chips, I'm not sure as to whether the mechanism would be harmful to your stomach.... although it is important to remember that the stomach doesn't actually digest.  It's more of a conduit to the small intestine, breaking food down into simpler terms for the SI to absorb the nutrients, but no actual absorption happens in the stomach (hence why people w/ their stomach removed still have perfectly normal digestion).  I think that by eating this combination, the body may have problem breaking down the high content of complex carbohydrates for sure, but I can't see how it would hurt the stomach?

And in terms of burgers... when a single McDonalds burger was completely analyzed on average there were: a) 100 different cows DNA in a single patty  b)mealworms c) Insects

enjoy!

Rdklep8:

Your chemistry is fucked.

For our purpose, there are three type of molecules that we need to consider.

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.

Sugars are the building blocks of starches (and both are considered to be carbohydrates).

Fatty acids combine with glycerol to produce lipids. Lipids which are liquid at room temperature are called oils and lipids which are solid at room temperature are called fats.

The more complicated molecules are broken down in your body to the simpler ones but they do not generally change from one type to another.

What you are trying to get at is that chemical changes either require energy input (endothermic) or produce usable energy (exothermic). Generally, the process of building a complex molecule from the simpler ones is endothermic and the process of breaking down complex molecules to simpler ones ix exothermic.

So yes, your body can break down protein to produce energy. While it is quite similar to breaking down starches to produce sugars, the end result of breaking down a protein is amino acids.

Also, the reason why you may find a sweet taste to a bit of bread can be accounted for in the fact that most bread recipes have a small amount of sugar to help get the yeast started.

You are correct, proteins are broken down to amino acids at their most basic form.

But, when the body demands energy, proteins and fats are broken down into simple glucose through gluconeogenesis.  It is fairly common when atp demands are low in anaerobic circumstances.   That is, carbs don't typically turn to proteins, but lipids and proteins can be turned into gycogen(carb storage) or glucose fairly easily... that's what I was getting at

Amino acids are needed for the krebs/ETC aerobically, so some proteins are broken down in AAs in order for energy production to go on, but AA are not responsible for the direct production of energy.  That is the job of glucose. 

I think you just forgot about the process of gluconeogenesis..

and the sweet taste while leaving bread in your mouth for a short time is that saliva breaks down simple carbohydrates and turns them into glucose.  So, if you leave white bread in your mouth, it will become sugar.

I'm in East LA but if we have enough time to plan it I'm sure we could get a group together and visit any of the ones near me. Studio City and Santa Monica are the ones I go to most often.

Very. It was one of my first jobs, it is their highest priority. A McD's kitchen is a thousand times cleaner than yours, at any given moment.

And we really do need to stop the green revolution here. peta would lose material (they'd lie about it, but investigation would prove them liars), cows would be healthier, and more land would be available for crop for us. Not to mention pollution.

All of our processed food has insects, rats and/or mice mixed in with it. There are regulations in the US based on how many parts per million of the food can be ground up bugs and rodents. Ground meat (except tuna) is very clean in that sense. Things made from grains have especially high quantities of ground up insects and rodents. Bread has quite a bit and corn flake cereals have very large amounts. The silos grain is stored in have bugs, mice, rats and spiders in them. They are all just ground up with the grain. They pose no health risk and a tiny enough amount of their feces is present that it is considered safe. If you are concerned about eating bugs and rats, avoid canned tuna and corn flakes.

Thanks for your comments. I tell my wife not to buy tuna, as a matter of fact. I fear there are strange substances in it, and you now confirm it [what are they, by the way?]. Honestly, I avoid canned food. I cannot imagine absolute purity in the processing chain. As for kitchens at McDonald's, Kentucky and other outlets, man, after a day's work, walking up and down, and LOTS of people inside and out, what would the hygene of such places be like?... I feel bad already, just thinking about it... and then you have people going in there to have a meal AT THE END OF A DAY'S WORK!!!... For Pete's sake!

A lot of ground up mice, rats and roaches. They aren't bad for you and their feces are in small enough amounts to not be a problem. The other problem is mercury. As a rule of thumb, don't eat more than one can of tuna every three days. If you did eat more you could risk mercury poisoning. And if you feed tuna to kids, give them tuna only rarely. I've seen charts telling you how often you can safely eat tuna based off of your body weight. It is not so much that it is bad for you as it is that you should eat it only occasionaly. And even if you did eat a can a day, you wouldn't neccessarily get mercury poisoning. You would merely be at risk.