Ethical considerations.

Although many Quorn products contain egg, and the egg industry is cruel and unnecessary.

However, Quorn is still a baby step away from the slaughterhouse abomination :innocent:

I think you know this anyway and just added your comment to provoke a group or groups you currently despise, because you sense an accusatory finger pointing at you, calling you a "bad boy" :smirk:

For the record, their products do not taste of cardboard and even a bright spark like you dear heart, I would wager, could tell the difference blindfolded during a taste test.

I'm not a vegetarian and I love Quorn! Their chicken and mince beef taste great and are healthier for you. And y'know, a sentient animal didn't have to die just to fill my belly and get turned into poo. So everyone's a winner! All these chest-thumping, red-faced, evangelical carnivores need to get a life. Some people like Quorn and that's fine. If you don't like it just keep shovelling red meat into your sad, boring, middle-aged faces until your inevitable heart attack.

I see you have just wakened up. Made a nonsensical remark. Now go back to sleep.

Love quorn. Great price thx.

Well there you go veggies who can't do without their mince or fillets...!!!
I prefer the Aberdeen Angus bananas and the chicken pineapple personally.

I don't see the need for this. Why not just buy real meat? This tastes like cardboard..

Cold

not in my local Morrisons! they're still full price! I do like them though.

Thanks for posting, although in no way a vegetarian myself, I must admit I find using Quorn mince an easy change which is also convenient for pasta dishes, chilli's etc, as you really don't notice the difference too much.Obviously it's a healthier, and also at only £1 a lot cheaper than decent beef mince for the same quantity.

quorn products make me bloat

JJ, I'm aware of this, but there are also carnivores that eat this stuff.. My comment was mainly aimed at them..

my family dislike quorn bar one who loves it, it makes us bloat up too ,
cheers op , i will be treating him to some quorn at this lovely price

Give gives me panic attacks and anxiety like no other food can.

Vegetarians and vegetarians? If you meant to say vegans then that would be a no, other than one or two specifically labelled products Quorn isn't suitable for vegans as it contains egg.

Vegetarians obviously buy quorn but they are not the main target demographic. The sector to which they really want to sell are the health and fitness conscious. Hence all the TV ads recently they're presumably aiming at the new years resolution people.

Anyway just to say that Waitrose have a quorn offer as well but it's on 300g chunks rather than mince.

If it's healthier, how come it (the mince in particular) causes bloating and seems to be pretty much indigestible? Not too sure how feeding an artificially grown fungus with "nutrient enriched" water can be seen as 'healthy'. Sure it's low fat, but then, so is paper.

I've 2 vegetarians and 3 non-veggies in the house and we used to eat the stuff pretty regularly but it's been the cause of too many late evening stomach cramps. Anything you can make with it, you may as well just make with a selection of fresh veg instead.

Love quorn products, could eat the cocktail sausages till the cows come home :wink:

I'm not a vegetarian and I love Quorn! Their chicken and mince beef taste great and are healthier for you. And y'know, a sentient animal didn't have to die just to fill my belly and get turned into poo. So everyone's a winner! All these chest-thumping, red-faced, evangelical carnivores need to get a life. Some people like Quorn and that's fine. If you don't like it just keep shovelling red meat into your sad, boring, middle-aged faces until your inevitable heart attack.

Try avoiding "the interwebz" for a while. That may help.

But the internet is an excellent source of information. :smiley:
And I don't think avoiding the interwebz will stop my arthritis, mate. :confused:

...of varying quality. Yes.


I didn't say it would, pal. :confused:

On Christmas day we were all tucking into lovely turkey but a vegetarian relative made her little kids eat Quorn sausages, poor mite, it looked most unappetising.

I'm pretty sure I picked the right parts free from propaganda. :smirk: (Well based on reasoning and critical thinking skills.)

Anyway I'm just saying that things like tobacco, asbestos, margarine, sugar, radioactive substances, etc. being dangerous was laughed upon
once upon a time and I don't think it's logical to pretend things aren't toxic
until it's too late. It's better to be cautious than completely ignorant, is all I'm saying.
The way you balance caution with convenience, may vary.
There is no perfect way of knowing someone is lying (or crazy) on the internet
but luckily there are often clues. :sunglasses:

Keep an open mind but be critical, I say.
I'M NOT A NUTTER!
..........


But seriously, while I'm saying it in a jokey, eccentric way, you never know
which side of the true or false coin you've landed on when you're on the internet....could even be half truths, in which case, the coin landed sideways. :confused: Metaphorically speaking. :man:
In newspapers' case, often the coin flips every week. "Coffee helps fight cancer" suddenly switches to "might increase risk of cancer". (Considering a lot of the population drinks coffee regularly yet cancer is on the rise, though only a correlation, suggests to me it probably isn't safe entirely...but I may be wrong. Who knows.)
Proper, independently peer-reviewed, independently funded scientific research papers with strong methods and big sample sizes, meta-analyses from many studies, etc. are more likely to give credible info than newspapers for example.
And in some cases, people are genuinely and innocently wrong. *Shrugs*
Just saying be careful....but don't stress your mind out over the toxins.
Oh yeah and teflon is toxic too. :disappointed:
What do you expect from a patented chemical substance. :/ (Chemicals leech into food....similar phenomenon
with plastic containers, especially at higher temperatures.)

Lactose tolerance evolved mainly in European populations over thousands of years, as a result of advancements in agriculture and the inclusion of lactose into the adult diet. Infants had always been able to consume lactose (breastmilk) but the genes encoding lactose tolerance were deactivated in adulthood because there was no need for them (and so no evolutionary pressure to keep them active). Lactose-tolerant adults' bodies have simply evolved to keep the infant lactose-digesting genes active. Nothing scary about that.

Anyway, if some people are lactose intolerant, that doesn't mean that people who aren't lactose intolerant (like you) shouldn't drink milk. That doesn't make any sense.

Probably?? Why even bother writing this meaningless rubbish?

Thousands of years is nowhere near enough time to eliminate all problematic consequences as a result of drinking milk. Just because lactose tolerance has improved over thousands of years, does not mean everyone has become completely ok with it, (probably no one has) hence varying degrees of severity rather than simply "tolerant" and "non-tolerant"
also hence the word "tolerant" is used....it's being tolerated.
Some decent points but I still disagree despite not being able to bring myself to completely remove milk from my diet (although I am reducing it).

Also, the lactose is not the only thing of concern when it comes to humans drinking milk from other animals,
even if it's completely natural and free from anti-biotics and hormones fed to cows in lots of farms.
Milk has an incredibly complex formula, as most things in nature.
So it's difficult to find out which components (and their variants) may work differently in a human metabolic system with countless pathways oversimplified in biology textbooks.
Also, human breast milk contains a human variant of lactose as opposed to bovine lactose found in cow milk.

I'm not discouraging people from drinking milk, but I am health conscious and would prefer to ensure anything I consume regularly, is not doing too much damage.

I know everything on the internet should be taken with a pinch of salt (as in,
be open minded but stay critical/skeptical and question everything on grounds of logic/reasoning/common sense)
but if anyone's interested in this side of the story:

http://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/

http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/cows-milk-may-actually-be-bad-for-your-bones/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/fayeflam/2014/10/30/holy-cow-study-suggests-milk-is-bad-for-bones-heart-has-the-medical-establishment-lied-to-us/

Admittedly the study in the Forbes link seems to only have a correlation (like with most studies as a causation is difficult to establish due to the possibility of countless variables affecting the results)
but considering the large sample size, I have to wonder if there is some truth in it.
Make up your own mind. I have no agenda, I'm just discussing my concern for this stuff. :smiley:
I also find this stuff interesting....perhaps it's a defense mechanism to avoid being depressed. :confused:

To be fair, madchester probably meant protein from the eggs from battery hens
(which would be unethical since chickens/hens shouldn't be caged).
But if madchester wants to elaborate, I'm interested to hear if he/she meant actual meat protein. :confused:
Not that I was ever going to eat quorn but...it's nice to know in case one day I go on a "I'll try that once" shopping spree. :laughing:
But it is a little weird if quorn (supposed to be mycoprotein only right?)
contains egg or whatever. :confused:
Can't trust companies these days....
There are even "natural" crystal deodorants (which I was initially impressed on)
that contain potassium alum crystals and last ages for under arm deodorising.
But the truth dawned on me when these products said "aluminium free"
only to research what alum means.....contains aluminium. (A neurotoxin linked to Alzheimer's disease,)
TYPICAL.:disappointed: The natrual stuff was supposed to be a substitute for the aluminum containing mainstream deodorants...
but I still can't get away from the blasted aluminium! (Also in lots of cookware like some pans...)

I can't believe there are weird loop holes for companies to use to deceive customers. -_-
Some veggie burgers contain the neurotoxin hexane.....probably for the process of making
the burger stick together? (Not sure...I may have to look that up.)
But I don't see hexane on these burgers so it's like Russian roulette....unless
I contact the companies...if they don't try lying/misleading me. I'll give it a go.
I guess going to the factories would also be a more reliable way of finding if such
burgers are relatively healthy by observing the entire process with all the ingredients, even the unlisted ones.
:man:

Yes I meant protein from battery hens' eggs, I thought that's what I said?
After the horse meat scandal it's obvious the food industry is not to be trusted. Egg protein is used in making quorn, where do the eggs come from? Are they even hens eggs? If you were told they were free range hens' eggs would you still believe them?
A healthy human diet includes meat and fish, not this man made "pretend meat" LOL
If following a vegetarian diet there are tastier, healthier alternatives. :wink:

Several GMO things have landed in the EU. Many animals are fed with GMO feed. Ironically if you are concerned about pesticide residue, although you shouldn't really be (the dose makes the poison :wink:), GMO technology allows a great reduction in the need for pesticide use.

Sorry mate, I didn't realise you were an evolutionary biologist. This isn't creating a new gene from scratch, merely keeping an existing gene active into adulthood. And lactose is a simple molecule with a definite structure - if it's different (between humans cows, as you say) then it's not lactose. I think what you've probably gleamed is that human/cow milk have different concentrations of lactose (there's about twice as much in human milk). If you're on about alpha and beta isomers, you should know that lactose spontaneously switches between the 2 forms - it's not either/or - they're essentially the same molecule.

I only used the word "tolerant" to distinguish from "intolerant" people. You shouldn't read too much into that. People who produce the lactase enzyme don't merely "tolerate" lactose - they digest it and gain sustenance from it. That's why it evolved.

You obviously have a very (very!) inquisitive mind and that's fantastic, but you need to hone that and study things from the ground up. Do a course with the OU or something. Otherwise you'll end-up with an annoyingly distorted view of the world.

Sorry to get back to the deal, I know everybody likes a good debate in here.. but has anybody actually found these at this price? At my local these were still full price, looks like the deal maybe hasn't started yet, does anybody know what the start date is?

I get what you're saying but one poison over another is not going to fix the problem.
I'd personally rather risk washing normal (possibly pesticide ridden) veggies over GMO veggies (with pesticides) with the evidence from rat studies.:confused:
Look up the evils of Monsanto. Apparently they want to have a monopoly of the food people eat.
Messed up stuff. Obviously one company's GMO products may not be of the same danger as others (some companies may purposely add malicious genetic modifications) but no way am I risking it. :stuck_out_tongue:
GMO foods also seem to be less nutrient dense, gram for gram which begs the question if they're actually healthy.

And with the "poison is in the dose" is fairly right but it's too simplistic in the real world, otherwise most people would live to at least 100 with basic advice. And drinking moderate amounts of alcohol would make no difference to your health when this is not correct. People who don't drink alcohol at all are more likely to live longer than those drinking any alcohol at all.

Alzheimer's patients' brains have been found to have more aluminum than the average person's brain.
The liver is not capable of removing 100% of some toxins so some molecules linger in the body....and so within your lifetime, you may have deposits that cause diseases like cancer, alzheimer's, arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, etc.
Even stainless steel is made of iron, carbon and the heavy metals chromium and nickel...
I would rather drink from lead-free glass and ceramics. (But I'd take steel over plastic...though I'm not sure if that's wise advice as I don't know which is technically more harmful.)

And even if a certain substance was 100% removed...it would take time and in that time, would
cause damage. This damage accumulates over time as well. (Minuscule damage upon minuscule damage until
it gets significant.)

Just my opinion.

There's no need to be condescending, mate. :man:
Evolution does not play with one gene alone. And genes often have domino effect-style effects
on other parts of the body so it's too reductionist to assume that one gene change is fine.
Nothing is guaranteed in science at this level of understanding.
Humans are pretty clever...but they still know relatively little.
Us moonkehs have already designed efficient banana powered cars. (Hahaha I'm just kidding. :laughing:)

I'm not really a strong chemist so I can't comment on the types of lactose, (but if there was really no difference between alpha and beta lactose, why would people bother giving them separate names then? :confused:) nor do I have any research on humans regularly drinking human milk :confused: against those drinking cow milk in adulthood on the effect on health.
(Or more usefully, milk drinkers vs non-milk drinkers.)
Even if you're right about only the concentration being different....a difference is a difference.
And a difference often causes a different response in the body or different interactions with other molecules. (Obviously within a range, usually.)
Not to mention astronomically different composition of the proteins (some people are allergic to some of the protein in cow milk) and other components as we don't even yet know the exact composition of milk!

Yeah, we know how get a 140,000 kg rocket to escape the Earth's gravity but we don't know what milk is made of. :confused:
Like most things in nature, substances often have extremely complex mixtures of complex compounds that also vary in different conditions. (E.g. olive oil releases carcinogenic fumes at about 40 degrees celcius.)
Pasteurised milk also seems to be void of active antibodies and enzymes so it seems there's little benefit to drinking milk. I'm not saying we should drinking human milk...but I'm just weary that cow's milk is probably not as safe as people think and cause problems later on in life. (I suspect arthritis and bone problems may be in the list.)

And for the word intolerant, I'm not referring to your use of the word, but rather just the fact that
everyone uses the word intolerant when talking about someone who isn't lactose persistent.
The majority it seems, do have some observable biological disagreements with milk.
Even if the lactose was completely fine, there are other things to worry about in cow's milk.
Also, whether a gene is "new" or not does not have much relevance in terms of whether it's detrimental or not.
Only that older genes by chance, (surviving through generations) appear more stable in the sense that it's not causing too many problems, comparatively.

Evolution improves random adaptations over time and less than 10,000 years is often too little
time for significant mutations to improve a lot to occur in a wide-spread fashion in the population.
Tens of thousands would seem more like it as a bare minimum but of course there are freak exceptions but this depends on how aggressively mutations occur and spread, i.e. an area with greater radiation levels are more likely to exhibit significant mutations within a given time than places with low radiation as DNA is less likely to be damaged and have its codons changed.

I'm not an expert and I haven't done enough research to be a pseudo-expert either but Google is your friend if
you want to check what the other side of the argument claims. (Which I happen to believe over the "it's totally safe" side.)
Just my reasonable opinion.

How weird! Thanks for that, maybe my local just hadn't changed the prices yet, I'll pop back in :smiley:

saying that I went to buy 2 more bags today and fridge with promo on only had the chicken left in it and main freezer it said £1.74 but still went through at £1

GMO's are not poisonous/toxic etc. How and why do you think they would be? "Normal" veggies are more likely to have more residues than GMO veggies. Organic veggies will still have residues on and they even use pesticides which are more toxic than synthetic ones. In this day and age, in order to provide sufficient amounts of food at affordable costs, pesticides are critical to doing so and keeping yields high.

Have you critically analysed this study or just read articles on the internet about said study? For example, how many rats? Were they normal rats? Was there a control? Has this result been replicated elsewhere? Are there better studies that contradicts this study? Animal models are very limited when making conclusions about effects on humans.


"some companies may purposely add malicious genetic modifications" - Stop and think for one second, does this baseless conspiracy theory seem rational to you?
1 - Why would they do this?
2 - What modifications would/could they add?
3 - What malicious effects are you expecting?
4 - Why would they do this?!

I'm not naive enough to think large corporations are perfect however Monsanto is one biotech company and it's not the largest nor the only one that deals with GMO's, pesticides etc. When Monsanto has the same turnover as Whole Foods and is smaller than several of its biotech competitors, I fail to see how the allegations of seeking a monopoly can be true.



[citations needed] - GM foods are practically nutritionally equivalent to their conventional counterparts except when the modification specifically does so for that purpose e.g. golden rice - rice with a larger amount of beta-carotene/vitamin A. GM foods tend to alter 1 gene to infer a specific trait. It doesn't mean there's more/less protein, vitamins etc as this would require huge changes to the DNA and thus almost impossible. If you think about it however, this would be far more likely to occur through artificial selection/selective breeding.

Toxins and chemicals all sound scary but we are exposed to many of them everyday but we have organs and cellular systems in place to protect and repair us. For example, many fruits and vegetables such as pears and cauliflowers naturally contain formaldehyde, a proven Class 1 carcinogen used to preserve dead bodies so should we limit intake of fruit?

With regards to alcohol abstinence and longevity, I think this is something to consider:




[citations needed] Another rule you should follow when looking at info on the internet - Correlation does not mean causation. A good article by a relatively famous clinical neurologist covering this exact topic.

Something to consider - if you need open heart surgery, do you:
A) See a cardiovascular surgeon
B) Look up youtube videos and articles so you learn how to perform the surgery on yourself

You clearly have done a lot of research online and no offence but I don't think you know how to analyse it. Say you read "the Earth is round" but you are unsure so you search for why it isn't and find lots of articles and studies showing it's flat. Well that might be enough to convince you or make you start doubting if the Earth really is round but why not search for how and why the flat Earth studies and articles might be wrong? Evaluating the quality and weight of both sides of the evidence will help you reach your own conclusions. An odd example I know but basically have an open mind yes of course but, don't give equal weight to everything.

Keep doing what you're doing but try to be skeptical of and be critical of everything. :smiley:

If you're interested, here's a great article on evaulating scientific research.

I would have preferred it if you could back up your claims with evidence. No offence is ever intended, I don't know exactly who I am debating things with so sometimes I may incorrectly err on the side of simplification but thanks for reading anyway. :smiley:

Sorry I realise you didn't want to continue and I don't particularly (may have to steal the phrase "debate fatigue" :wink:) as I know we will only agree to disagree but I just wanted to add a couple of points.

You're talking about the naturalistic fallacy There is absolutely no difference between a natural and synthetic chemical. Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in an apple is the exact same as ascorbic acid made in a lab. Synthetic drugs and medicines such as vaccines were crucial in helping to practically double life expectency. Some of the most toxic substances are natural such as botox and cyanide. You are correct about the concentration or rather the amount as there is only 60mg of formadehyde in a pear however warnings about formaldehyde are found everywhere on the internet that ignore this principle.

The surgeon thing was to highlight how, for example, some people will accept an article on health written by a random self-taught wellness guru or something as truth but will immediately dismiss a study written by several experts in their fields that strongly refutes the said article.

You misunderstood the alcohol graph, it showed binge drinkers probably won't live longer as you'd of course expect. However, the relative risk of alcohol consumption remained the same for under 4 units per day i.e. the recommended max intake by the DoH, and suggests a decreased risk in comparison to a teetotaller. Unless it has since been refuted, the date of the meta-analysis shouldn't make a difference. Here is a more recently published (2011) systematic review suggesting light alcohol consumption reduces risk of cardiovascular events.

Sorry for continuing on I just thought those were a few points to consider that didn't require further debate. Hopefully. :laughing:

Anyway Dara O Briain can probably explain some of my points in a better way than I ever could and provide some needed comical relief for debate fatigue. (nfsw)

It worked for me anyway. :laughing:

I don't need Google mate, I'm a qualified biologist. I hate to break it to you, but absolutely everything you've said is pure gubbins. GMOs, aluminium, pesticides, hexane, lactose-intolerance, carcinogens - it all reads like the mad ramblings of a man in a tinfoil hat.

To answer your specific questions (because it would take days to address every one of your concerns)

Most molecules exist in 2 or more forms called "isomers". Lactose, for example, exists as a mixture of alpha-lactose and beta-lactose isomers. This is usually a 60:40 split but can be altered by pH, temperature, etc. In the case of lactose, the alhpa and beta forms switch spontaneously from one to the other. Theoretically, if you could isolate one form, you'd find that, unless you kept the sample under some very specific conditions, about half of your sample would have switched to the alternate form (isomer). For this reason, there's really no biological distinction between the two forms. Human lactose IS cow lactose. Also, when I said about the different concentrations of lactose, you'll note that I also said the concentration was higher in human breastmilk. That is, there's less lactose in cow's milk.

Furthermore, the metabolism of lactose is really quite simple and well-documented. If you're not genetically "lactose intolerant" (very different to being allergic to lactose), your body produces an enzyme called lactase that splits lactose into 2 molecules - plain old glucose, and galactose, which is later converted into regular glucose or some other sugar, depending on the body's requirements. That's really all there is to it. If you're white and European, your body can probably metabolise lactose with absolutely no ill effects. That's a fact. Allergies are more complex, but I think it's safe to say that you're not allergic to lactose either.

You boasted about your reasoning and critical thinking skills earlier, but I've yet to see any sign of them. You talk about mutations and codons and enzymes and arbitrary evolutionary constraints but you don't actually understand those things at all. You've just gleamed a load of random factoids off the internet and knitted them into a vast and utterly incoherent mental tapestry.

But all is not lost. You clearly have a very inquisitive mind. That can get you far in life. Very far. My advice is, forget everything you think you know, and enroll on a biology course with the Open University or something. Put that brain to good use. Don't fill it with nonsense.

Are you a doc or a scientist or something? Good points..