Paul Shapiro's High Protein, Low Calorie Approach to Healthy Eating - The Better Meat Co.

Hi everyone, Chris Stout here. If you have been watching any of my other videos you may know that I am a vegan athlete and do a lot of what I like to call weirdo challenges and ultras and climbs and a variety of other things in the context of that. I'm also a big fan of Tim Ferriss here which I just love. Love this sticker. Sorry I had to cut this in half. I'm shooting this one handed so I couldn't show you me actually cutting this, but obviously I have. I just felt bad about slicing right through Tim's face. But recently on one of his five Bullet Fridays Tim talked about the Better Meat Company and I went and researched it and was very impressed with it. Paul Shapiro, who is the founder I have been sharing emails with and whatnot. The deal was I'm getting ahead of myself was that if you posted on LinkedIn and made some comments about the company that you would be put into a drawing and stand the chance of being able to get a £1 sample of the product from Better Meat which is mushroom based meat substitute which is wonderful for us health conscious folks in general and vegans in particular. And so I did that. Long story short, I have the and also done a little bit more research. Paul and I have been in touch with each other. I'm happy to say that Paul has agreed to be on my show, my podcast Living a Life in Full in our ninth season coming up. So I'm really excited about that getting to know him and pick his brain about how this all came about because I'm very interested in these kinds of alternatives. I would also recommend I'll put it in the notes here on this video as well too. But I would also Recommend watching his TEDx talk. It is just excellent looking at the concept of environmental impact, ethics, health, et cetera. All the kinds of boxes that get checked when you start to look into non animal based protein products and food. So always been a big fan of mushrooms anyway. But one of the other things about Better Meat Co. That I kind of fussed at them a little bit about was that at this point in time they're only a B2B company, meaning that they only sell their products to restaurants and other non direct to consumer options. So I hope that that will change. So let's take a look. The box came and I'm very excited about unboxing it. I always have these interesting challenges that I've done unboxing so we'll see what we've got here. Cool little sticker. Always a Big fan of stickers and patches and whatnot. So that's very cool. I got a letter card from them. Okay, now we're gonna see if I can do this one handed without having to do an edit and come back. Terribly sorry about that, guys. So. Oh, great. So this is the version of their taco meat. So here's a ingredients of what would go into making the taco. Sorry about my voice, by the way. I've got a bit of a sore throat, so I actually, I don't know if we'll be doing this one, but I plan with great help from my wife that we will also do after this part of the video, I'll shoot another and combine them into one video of preparing it and giving you an opinion of what taste and texture and mouth feel and whatnot's like. So this is super helpful. This is great. We actually do have a lot of vegan recipes that you can kind of do a DIY meat substitute yourself. I should also say I am not a big fan of North Ben's, but like the beyond meat cooking, we like to eat as raw as possible. So, you know, cultured meats and things like that really kind of aren't our thing. But again, this isn't that at all. This is. This is natural. This is mushrooms. So it's not cultured. It's not anything that spent a lot of time in the lab or anything like that. So here's the stickers in action. This is the myoprotein mycoprotein. I'm probably mispronouncing that, so sorry. And basically that's it of the ingredients and another smiley face there of Tim. And this is what it looks like. So once we get a little bit closer and I maybe have a free hand in the assistance of my wife, then I will be getting into everything else is just to keep this all safely packed. So we will be getting aprons on and trying this out in the kitchen and then trying it out at the dinner table. So stay tuned for what comes next. And a quick little FYI before we start cooking and prep, I just wanted to point this out too, because I thought it's kind of cool and I thought it's really kind of important as well. So hopefully I can get a little better focus on this. That basically this is the only ingredient. So that's great. There's really no allergens to it. We're a pretty vegan, friendly family, myself, my wife and our adult children. And, you know, again, do it for a variety of reasons. Health Wise, longevity wise for me also and my son, performance wise, found it much less inflammation and with doing running and distance running and whatnot. But my wife or my daughter actually developed a soy allergy so she's kind of had to be back off on soy based products or anything like that, which is really kind of unfortunate because we're a little big soy fans. I just thought this was terrific. So just again to let people know before we move over into the kitchen that this is a sample for research purposes which we'll be doing. And that you can store it at room temperature away from heat and that it is patented, which is pretty cool. And that it's not just vegan, but it's also certified kosher. So really again, kind of I haven't even opened the package and it's already kind of checking all the box for those kinds of aspects. So as we get into this, it'll be fun. I have very high hopes on the actual eating of it and consuming it and enjoying it. So that'll be coming up next. But I just wanted to give this quick little detail like that because I thought that was, that was pretty cool. All right, next up is the kitchen. Hi everyone, Chris Stout here. Again, a big shout out and thanks to the folks at Better Meat Company. This is the sample that we got. Typically they are not a direct to consumer business, so this is kind of a special treat for us. We just recently received this and again also big thanks and shout out to Tim Ferriss for sponsoring them on his show or I guess maybe being sponsored by them. When we received this, we also got the taco meat recipe. So we're going to take a cup of this in just a second we'll open it and we are going to then have a half a cup of water which we have a half teaspoon of probably sunflower or is it olive oil and 2 teaspoons of taco seasoning mix, which is what we have here. The other things that we'll be doing with the taco are these over here as well. So can we get this cut open? Pretty straightforward. So couple this. And then we have a quarter cup of water. Pretty straightforward, the seasoning and the oil and we will stir this up. That's getting stirred. Then the direction is that we'll have a lightly oiled pan over a medium heat on the stovetop. We've already put a little bit of oil, Adding the meat and then we cook this way for about three to four minutes until it's evenly cooked through. So pretty straightforward. After that Then we have options of placing the taco meat on a cooking tray and cook under a broil for five or 10 minutes. That's probably what we will do since we don't have an air fryer, but you do have that as an option at 400 for two to four minutes. So at this point, no sense of just sitting here watching a pot boil. We'll do that. And then next up, we'll show what it looks like after it's been prepared and as we make the tacos proper. All right, so this is what it looks like at the end of being fried up in the pan. We actually doubled. It looked like we really weren't gonna have enough for the two of us, so we added more and actually added a little bit more water to it and seasoning and whatnot. So this is what it's looking like after four minutes or so in the pan. And next up, we'll show and do a taste test with it in the tacos. All right, and now here we are with the finished product. So we've got avocado, tomatoes, salsa, oops, black olives and lettuce. And here are my two tacos. I'm going to take a bite off camera and tell you what's what. Apologies for my chewing and full mouth, but very good mouthfeel texture. My wife and I were talking off camera. This seems very similar to more so fish tacos in terms of texture rather than beef, which is really very good. So a big fan and looking forward to having a conversation with Paul Shapiro about all the background around this. Thanks for watching.