DIY -- veggie burgers

I haven't posted in this column for a long time but some things came together one morning out of the news, so I decided to do this one.

A report in the British Medical Journal summarizes three large studies in separate nations about how processed food is shortening lives.

https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1949

You are at a higher risk of dying young -- up to 60% higher -- compared to other people in your age cohort, if you eat more processed food than they do.

Kicker: that includes "health" food like veggie burgers. Check the ingredients. There may be dairy products in them. Including cheese. Look where cheese falls in the BMJ study.

Here's another way that dairy products are a flashpoint. Cows don't give milk unless they give birth. They are bred to produce a calf about every 3 years after they come to maturity. They have 2-4 calves during their lifetimes. Farmers cannot house, feed, and muck out for that many calves and still keep up their milk production. That's where veal comes from. If you are opposed to eating veal, you have to be opposed to production of unwanted calves, and you have to take away the demand for the dairy products that wouldn't exist without producing unwanted calves. So you can't eat anything with dairy products as an ingredient. If you didn't know this, it's because you're like the majority of people who know nothing about the food chain.

Look at most of the processed food on store shelves. How much of it contains dairy products? (This is an "oh shit" moment for a lot of you.)

The veggie burger I'm talking about also contains lecithin and guar gum. Lecithin, an emulsifier, along with other emulsifiers like the polysorbates in ice cream, has been implicated in causing obesity.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19288019

Guar gum belongs to a class of chemicals which seem to help with cholesterol. Guar gum is the only member of the class which does NOT help with cholesterol.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28733671

Now, vegan veggie burgers may not have the dairy products, but that doesn't mean they get off scot free. The Beyond Burger contains gum arabic. This is a conflict product. The only source of gum arabic is Sudan, and the income from it fuels war there.

The other product that uses gum arabic is all sodas, to keep the chemicals in suspension. All sodas, even the "diet" ones, promote obesity and Type II diabetes.

Meanwhile, you are better off making your own, not just veggie burgers, but everything else, like sun tea instead of sodas, so you aren't at the mercy of manufacturers who are making a pile off of killing you.

Here's a veggie burger recipe; I haven't tried it because being veggie is not one of my things. Make sure the egg you use in this recipe is free range; if you're lucky, your community may allow you to raise your own chickens. For the bread crumbs, remember way back when I posted how to brew your own sourdough starter from water and flour? Do it. Keep the crumbs. You can use them in this, or you can add them back into any bread you bake to enhance the flavor.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/85452/homemade-black-bean-veggie-burgers/