I'm going to throw my $0.02 in on the fake meat stuff, because vegan.
My history with veganism:
Shortly after my wife and I first met we watched 'Forks Over Knives' together. I don't recall any particular reason why, so I'm not really sure what set us on the path. Anyway, after watching, we went vegan for a few months, then flip flopped back and forth for years. The idea of being vegan to preserve our health sounded great, but was always hard to keep going with it.
Fast forward a few years; A few months after we get married, I ditch my new wife for a weekend in Disney with my sister, brother in law, and niece. I'm having a great time swimming in the hotel pool the night before I'm to get on a plane back home when I feel my heart go into an irregular rythum. It feels like a-fib, I know it's a-fib. I fly home the next day and figure I'll go to work and see how I feel by the end of the day. Half way through my shift I feel completely exhausted, so much so that I start to fall asleep while standing at my computer workstation. So, being I work at the hospital, I tell the charge nurse to listen to my heart; She immediately hooks me up to the EKG and there it is, a-fib, hearts beating at 160 bpm. They make me take a wheel chair to the ER and I spend my weekend as a patient. A-fib goes away with some meds and I get sent home with a halter monitor to wear for a month.
At my follow up with the cardiologist he says he wants me on a statin because my cholesterol is too high (it was 200, high LDL, low HDL ). I decided I didn't want that and figured I'd give this vegan thing a real try for a month and if my cholesterol goes down I'll have no excuse to not stick with it. It was 148 (high HDL, low LDL) when I got it rechecked after ditching all the meat and dairy (I really wasn't eating much of it at that point anyway, as I really did want to keep that stuff to a minimum). I was cured, I was convinced. Been vegan ever since. That was in 2015.
To get back to the topic, the fake meat stuff for me was great for helping to transition to a whole food plant based diet. I still craved burgers at BBQs and cheese on pizza, etc... And so we are a lot of beyond burgers at the beginning and slowly learned to shift our diets and eating habits. Now I can't remember the last time I've eaten any kind of meat alternative, though I will occasionally order an impossible burger when we go out to eat with people as they are starting to show up everywhere. I'm not sure why I do it though, it always kinda grosses me out, it's too close to the real thing, and it's just not appetizing to me anymore. Now I mostly just eat stuff from plants. I eat as much as I want and I'm the lightest I've been in decades. Also feel better than ever.
Prior to having the a-fib, I used to get PACs (extra heartbeats here and there) a lot. I was always able to feel it: I'd hook myself up to an EKG and see what it was. Even after I went vegan, I'd still get PACs all the time. It wasn't until about two years ago when we finally ditched all the transitional fake meats and processed foods that it finally went away. I can't remember the last time I had any PACs.
TL
R- In my sample of 1 experience, Animal products are bad for you, fake animal products are slightly less bad for you, plants are best for you.
I'd never say that anyone needs to ditch animal products altogether, but I do believe they are best eaten in moderation. I'm not good with moderation, so I abstain altogether.
While going through the early days of transitioning to eating differently, all the other documentaries really helped keep me on track as well. Seeing how bad animal agriculture is for the environment (Cowspiracy), how shitty animals are treated (Earthlings), and how shitty the whole industry really is (What The Health) helped to keep me going.
There's another documentary that I'm looking forward to seeing called 'The Game Changers' that is premiering in theaters on the 16th. It's focus will be on vegan athletes.
We live close to Philly and that city makes it really easy to be vegan. They have vegan pizza shops, a vegan cheese steak shop, there was a vegan taco shop but I think it's now a vegan Mexican place, a vegan Puerto Rican restaurant, and a bunch of other great vegan places. Dottie's donuts are all vegan and are the best donuts I've ever had, the dunkaroo donut is God like. We had our sons christening catered by Hip City Veg and no one had any idea that the cheese steaks, chicken sandwiches, and chicken nuggets were vegan. Everyone loved it.