Meatless Meat Helps Cut Back On Your Carbon Footprint, While Enjoying Your Beef Burger

For meat lovers out there, Beyond Burger has created "the world's first plant-based burger that looks, cooks, and satisfies like beef without GMOs, soy, or gluten." Now we can enjoy burgers, meatballs, sausages and other meat products without our planet Earth taking a hit.

Some 51 percent of global greenhouse emissions is driven by livestock rearing and processing. If every person in the U.S. relinquished meat and dairy products once or more a week -- or in an ideal world, throughout the week -- the environment would be saved from thousands of tons of carbon emissions.

Now, more than ever, it is important that people make environment-friendly changes to their lifestyle. The effects of a climate-unfriendly lifestyle are beginning to show markely -- for instance, in the The Artctic , which is heating up more rapidly than any region in the world.

Just a few weeks ago, wildfires so huge they could be seen from space burned across 11 regions within the Russian Arctic. About 100 megatons of carbon dioxide were released between June 1 and July 21 from these events. According to the CAMS, this is approximately the same amount of carbon dioxide released by Belgium in 2017.

Beyond Beef is made using "a blend of pea, mung bean and rice proteins" and boasts checking all the boxes in being a complete protein source, providing 20 gms of protein for every 4 oz serving. From a greenhouse gas emissions aspect, it is markedly better for the environment to eat a plant-based diet.

Protein sources that contain adequate amounts of each of the nine essential amino acids can be called a complete protein. Essential amino acids are not made by the body and must be acquired through the diet. Examples of complete proteins include red meat, poultry, eggs, cheese, quinoa, and soybeans.

Incorporated into the product is marbling fashioned to "melt and tenderize like traditional ground beef" so we do not miss out on the signature grease characteristic of a great burger. Innovators have even chosen beet juice to act as the “blood” in meat because of its ability to change color, allowing the product to have distinguished appearances before and after cooking. It is the most heat-sensitive out of all the natural food colorings.

Beyond Beef is adaptable enough to be employed in practically any ground beef recipe while providing good nutritional value and environmental benefits that accompany consuming plant-based meat products. Just like raw meat, it comes in a "neutral flavour and aroma profile to serve as a blank canvas for any seasoning or cuisine."

Following a plant-based diet is beneficial for our health as well as our planet’s health. Not only would it add up to 49 percent to the international food supply sans expanding croplands, but there would also be a substantial cut in carbon emissions and waste by-products that reach the oceans.