I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.)
One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.
> Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat.
Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.
I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint.
But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger or a garden burger. Those taste light and yummy and don’t leave a weird feeling in my stomach.
"Here’s a pesky little chemical called hexanal. If you’ve ever eaten a beyond burger, or any of these plant based products 2.0 (though to be honest, it’s more like they’re on V.46.6.2) and burped 10 or 15 minutes afterwards, and thought to yourself, “Hmmm, wow, ok I definitely just had a meat alternative” you were probably regurgitating this aerosol. Some people think it’s fruity, like green apple, others like mulched grass. At the lab, we had to walk outside to get wafts of it in its pure form, but the minute I opened the cap I knew exactly what this flavour was…. “OLD FRYER OIL, 100%”. It’s metabolized in all manners of organisms through the oxidation of fatty acids, and is… kind of unpleasant?! The point is that while this molecule exists in fava beans, peas, and soy, (the three kings of texturized vegetable protein) when you have a WHOLE FOOD, its there in harmony among all sorts of other volatile compounds, while also being locked away deep inside the beans fibres. It’s the act of processing that concentrated and heightens the presence of off-flavours like these, making the processed foods made from them taste, well, processed. Good with the bad. You can’t concentrate for protein without concentrating other aspects of a plant. There’s always a cost.
Now, I will always be a huge proponent for whole foods, made with care, prepared simply. But the realities of grocery store shelves dictate a different truth. People opt for convenience, and sometimes, you’ve got to meet them where they are.
My current work at CH has me doggedly hunting down an effect of fermentation I’ve long known intuitively through practice. Certain lactic acid bacteria fermenting their way through legumes don’t just mask, but dismantle this and other problematic molecules. I’m still after the mode of action, but it’s also enough for me to know that age old techniques of fermentation (like soaking ones legumes or grains days in advance of their cooking) can still put to shame the greatest technological “advances” of food science of the past 40 years.
Nature is, after all, cleverer than you are. "
Once you start paying attention, you can find bad tasting details in almost everything. For example, steak can taste metallic. People don't mind or even notice such things because they are used to it.
I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean. When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion. I don't get this with typical veggie patties.
Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.
To each their own. I greatly enjoy the flavor of meat, but feel like a serial killer when I think about the animal suffering and to a lesser extend carbon emissions. While I also get a slightly odd feeling in my stomach from Impossible beef (doesn't happen with their cyber chicken), it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger without feeling like I just tortured a puppy.
If you have the money, buy meat directly from a regenerative ag farm you can go visit personally. You'll see animals with plenty of space, given healthcare and protection from predators, and contributing to soil growth and biodiversity.
The thing is... this is not a solved problem, by far.
You forget all that leather used in a myriad of products, that leather comes from cows. Or feathers and down from various birds. Or the other million side products of animal husbandry, that I'm not even aware of. I think almost every part of a cow is used in an industrial process, not much is wasted.
Plus, this needs a totally vegan solution and you're wiping out any and all dairy products: cheeses (all 100 million of them), yogurt, regular milk, sour milk, sour cream, whey, etc.
The entire western market isn't going to simultaneously and instantly stop eating meat. There won't suddenly be a day when all the herds are culled because everyone finally stopped eating meat at once. If it ever happens (I'm hopeful but not optimistic), it will be a gradual process, and industries will have lots of time to adapt.
But even that aside, it's not our duty as consumers to keep eating animals to keep industry able to make shoes and cheese.
My point is, what are we going to replace those with? Especially leather & co. They have real life applications, they're not just fads. Plus, will those replacement products be sustainable? Vegan leather is just rebranded plastic, for example.
I'm equally curious, but I don't know the numbers, if replacing plastic packaging with paper/cardboard is environmentally sound. I remember back in the day efforts to reduce paper consumption, I think our sustainable paper production capacity was near its limits.
Cactus leather is a new trend. I don't own any cactus leather products so I can't say how good it is, but surely it's possible to replace cowhide with something.
Even vegan (plastic) leather is significantly better from an environmental and emissions perspective than cowhide leather. The tanning process is not exactly eco-friendly, and neither is raising cows.
My old boss was vegan (or rather his wife was and he was very accommodating of her diet, he would still eat meat outside the home). He would always mention that the fanciest, most expensive vegan cheese option out there set itself apart from the rest with the tagline "It melts!" on the packaging. Vegan cheese has to come a long way to be anywhere comparable to real cheese. The same applies to synthetic leather, by the way.
There are several products lined up to come out next year that use casein produced by genetically modified plants. There are already products with similar whey protein from plants on the market. For example I've been loving Brave Robot ice cream.
It depends on what you are looking for with the vegan cheese. If you want something to go with a charcuterie plate, there are really good cultured cashew milk cheeses. They are more akin to cheese spreads though, something like this [0]
But if you are looking for something like a slice of cheddar or vegan mac-n-cheese the options are really pretty terrible and all have an aftertaste like you just ate a spoonful of Crisco.
Not knowing anything about vegan cheeses, are there options that would be something similar to say brie, camembert, emmental, fontina, gruyère, havarti, manchego, parmigiano reggiano, or roquefort?
There might be some I'm not really sure for the specific varieties you have listed above. A vegan gouda seems to be a pretty standard thing for some of the manufacturers. So there are definitely some trying to make things outside the typical cheddar, swiss, mozzarella.
I don't think I have ever seen something trying to imitate any really soft (brie) or blue (roquefort) cheeses.
It doesn't have to, Alcantara is extremely robust and a great replacement for leather, just as one example.
But the synthetic leather in cheap products aiming to look like real smooth leather, I think this is the one you mean, time and time again is so inferior it's almost a scam. Shoes will fall apart quickly, sofas, clothing will peel off after 2-3 years when the softener has gassed out.
>it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger
You're not getting the flavour of a burger, no matter how hard you try to fool yourself (or make yourself sick). That's why these companies are flailing.
There are qualities in a fake burgers that emulate parts of a burger someone might enjoy without having an exact replica. In the same way Turkey Bacon is acceptable to some and not others.
I think the purists are trying to hold a parity argument but the substitute enjoyers are cool with experimentation and want something similar even if it's not 1:1.
Sorry, I prefix plant-based/meat-substitute products with "cyber" instead of one of the more boring options because it makes me giggle. I shouldn't have used it with people not familiar with my in-joke.
I, uh, thought that the beyond meat pseudo-ground-beef I ate tasted almost exactly like beef, cooked like beef, looked like beef, etc... just without the killing of a cow. I liked it and will buy it the next time I want ground beef.
You'd be surprised how many animals die in the process of scaled agriculture and displacement that occurs to create these replacement goods. But they're not the big fluffy animals we anthropomorphise, so it's easy to accept.
It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture.
What do you think the animals humans like to eat, eat? A heck of a lot of grain and other plants. "Animal agriculture" includes the fluffy animals (with whom we may empathize - they ain't robots) and the massive farms that grow their feed.
Animal agriculture incidentally kills and displaces far more other creatures than non-animal agriculture simply due to the additional land requirements. It is far easier to accept the less harmful industry.
I don't think they were suggesting that. More something along the lines of "you're likely to be killing animals either way, so just accept that nature is cruel and don't feel guilty about it".
There's a wide spectrum of how much you're willing to do to avoid causing suffering:
- Nothing, eat meat from the worst factory farms without second thought
- Only eat meat from local, ethical, sustainable, etc farmers.
- Only eat meat you have personally killed in the most humane way possible
It's kind of bad either way tbh. Imagine going to the funeral for someone else's mother and saying something to the tune of "The old hag was going to die anyway, so don't be sad".
Telling people that their principles or feelings are wrong is rarely a great way to convince people, it just makes you look obnoxious in debates.
On the second point, I agree, if in person I wouldn't make such a statement in that way because reactions are immediate and you're within immediate awkwardness. But on the internet, you read a statement and then you will emotionally react, but can then go research more, ponder, deliberate and choose whether you respond emotionally, matter-of-factly, not at all, etc. I think that's great and in a sense encourages some more provocative honesty that we dance around in the flesh.
Most humans can live deeply fulfilling and joyful lives without causing as much suffering as they do now. They don't need to feel guilty about what they are doing now so much as strive to cause less suffering.
Maybe you must eat factory farmed meat, fine, it's not for me to say. But that's not most people. Most people can do with reducing their meat intake, and it isn't hard. It's not like you are in the wilderness hunting or anything. You just go to the grocery store and buy veggies and beans and stuff.
Furthermore, for some people, eating meat from a factory farm is orders of magnitude more difficult than eating a strict plant based diet. Maybe that's easy for you - not for me.
Finally, while nature may indeed be cruel, we do not need to be.
Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them. Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.
The idea that killing animals is more cruel than not is to ignore ecology.
Factory farms and industrial meat is certainly another story. But I wanted to point out that cruelty is not so black and white. It’s similar to the cat people that feed strays — makes them feel good, but it makes the problem worse which is more cruel than simply not feeding the strays.
> Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them.
I strongly disagree with this. If there were no humans participating, and deer ended up overpopulated, and then starved, would there be any issue? Of course not, this is just how nature balances itself.
That "killing an animal directly via hunting" is more cruel than "letting the populate self-correct via natural processes" is not a matter of common sense - it's not something we all agree on. There is an implication that we know better than the universe and I'm not convinced that is the case.
> Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.
I assume you are referring to feral pigs, which are not wild in the sense that a native creature is. They are domesticated pigs which have ended up in foreign environments. Whether hunting them is appropriate or not, I'm not sure.
Nowadays, though, we have gotten ourselves in a pickle, by eliminating the natural predators in many environments in which deer thrive naturally, or have adapted to. Via our own lack of foresight, consideration for the planet as a whole, or even some degree of self-serving malice, we have created a really tricky problem.
I do agree we ought to work on this issue. Hunting is probably the best, most practical solution we have, but only because I believe we should try to fix what we have broken, not because it is somehow less cruel. A less practical but far less cruel solution may be a sterilization program for the invasive populations.
Two factors: 1) Humanely raised 2) Efficiently killed (done quickly with limited/no pain).
One can argue the cruelty of eating animals regardless - but there very much is a difference between tightly caged factory farming, pumping animals with medicine constantly because the conditions keep them sick all the time, and raising animals in a healthy environment.
> Is the humane way to kill an animal the same way one would humanely kill a toddler without consent of the parents or child?
Interesting wording.
> If not why not, when we consider animal have at least the intelligence, will to live, social connections and capacity for suffering as children?
When we will be able to ask for that kind of a contest?
PS. I know, animals has some signs of intelligence. But for me this measure of intelligence is not enough for not willing to eat it. And referring to parent poster, I really think there is some ethics in eating only those meat which has been killed by me, but I only have a chicken farm when I want to eat not only chicken.
Halal slaughter is certainly not the most humane way to kill animals; it optimizes for religious taboos on consumption of blood more so than lack of suffering. For the latter, you really want to target the brain directly if at all possible.
I think they are simply pointing out that you must kill other animals in order to live. There's no way around it.
If your interested in killing the least amount of animals, why not go hunting and fishing, that almost assuredly kills fewer than industrialized agriculture. I've replaced almoat all beef all year round in our family with deer venison kept year round in a chest freezer.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think that veganism or vegetarianism for most people is very emotional action. Most of the pop media around it focuses on the cuteness of the animal not on the total number of animals killed. and it's ignoring that like in hunting or ethical farming, the animals have a very full happy life.
As a hunter it's interesting seeing this article on HN and seeing no mention of hunting. Also not a bad thing, it's not part of the culture here, but it's interesting to see that bias in the HN culture.
> It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture.
Is exactly what happens. Without cattle there is not the need of meadows anymore. Not wildflowers, butterflies, hedgehogs, molluscs or birds. Soy fields have a biodiversity composed of: Soy. Period.
> Without cattle there is not the need of meadows anymore.
This is just silly. I can't imagine an internally consistent worldview that would assert something like this. Of course natural biomes are valuable regardless of the presence of cattle. Besides, modern cattle are domesticated creatures and don't even really have a native (i.e. not man-made or facilitated) environment.
The assertion regarding soy fields is at best a misunderstanding of the actual data regarding land use, or at worse, a meaningless tautology.
For those who don't have time to click and read the link in the other reply by user vnorilo, I'll just quote the relevant paragraph:
> More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception.
This is quite a red herring. The bulk of soy production is waste, that we have managed to use for cattle feed, because they can upcycle it into consumable nutrients.
If we got rid of all cattle, we would not reduce the amount of soybeans grown by 77%, just our utilization of what is grown.
77% of soy beans are used as feed in animal fattening. The basic biology and ecology of trying to push calories through a lossy (25x!) step in the food cycle doesn't work out.
Yes but before feeding the cow the bean we press it for soybean oil, which now accounts for a significant portion of calories consumed globally (somewhere around 10%, a quick search did not yield the study and I can't recall it exactly).
What do you imagine we would do with the soy pucks that are produced after extruding the oil?
Also, ruminants need non starchy, fibrous plant materials. I can't speak toward chicken and pork but I don't advocate people eat those.
It doesn't reflect well on your argument that your quote doesn't appear in the source.
"Results estimate that livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed in ruminant systems and 3.2 kg in monogastric systems. While livestock is estimated to use 2.5 billion ha of land, modest improvements in feed use efficiency can reduce further expansion."
Even the source you are citing agrees that after massaging the numbers as much as possible it's still 3x less efficient to produce calories for human consumption by feeling animals.
I was quoting Diana Rogers, who provided a source for her statements, so I thought I would include it.
I cannot access the full article, but from the abstract that seems to not be congruent with what the study is suggest. Perhaps you are confusing kg for kcal? It could indeed be the fact that it is 3x less efficient by weight.
Given that the article is pointing out that 86% of the feed for animals is not edible by humans, claiming that meat is 3x less efficient calorie wise with these numbers is also making the claim that we are growing plants 2x more calorically dense by meat than weight.
30-70% of their food - depending on the region and local industry - is distillers grains [1]. That’s the waste from ethanol production, including biofuels and alcohol.
Of that last 14% of human edible food, the vast majority is used at the end to fatten up the animals for slaughter.
Is easy to understand even without bibliography. Soy is an annual herb. It grows all the summer, invest everything on producing fruits in fall and then die in winter.
Beans are the crop. Everything else must wait until they are ready, and by then it will be basically dry matter. Therefore all except the beans is a residual.
Can still be recycled into more human food by herbivores, but we couldn't do it directly. We can't feed on dry stems, withered flowers or brown leaves.
I would highly recommend the book Sacred Cow. It has links to hundreds of studies within for further research. The authors, Diana rogers and Robb Wolf have been on many podcasts since it's release to discuss the topic.
If you want specific studies I can go look up in the book but it sounds like your asking for further reading, not cited sources.
How much of the meat we consume do you really think are grazing in meadows? Even most the grass feed cows are raised in fields that used to be rain forests in Brazil. However you turn it, it’s impossible to claim that cattle raising is a net gain for biodiversity.
You are moving the goalposts. The parent post was comparing non-animal agriculture with animal agriculture in terms of biodiversity. I'll copy it here for you.
> It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture.
Animal agriculture is better for biodiversity than crop monocultures. I understand that the truth can be shocking for some people, but there are dozens of ecological studies pointing to the environmental value of pastures and meadows, specially as ecotones.
As the initial plan to demonize cattle failed, now you are silently replacing "non-animal agriculture" by "rainforests" as a straw man to attack the original claim. Sorry, but this was not the point that we were discussing.
"Non-animal agriculture", also known as "Agriculture", has replaced happily as many rainforest hectares as cattle, if not more. Take a look to the fate of Indonesian rainforests
No, no goalposts have been moved. It is worse for the environment, in all aspects, including biodiversity, to raise animals to eat than to eat the crops directly.
The reason is simple: to produce the same amount of energy (and protein) with livestock as you would with crops, you have to use orders of magnitude more resources and you affect the environment orders of magnitude more: you use more fuel, release more greenhouse gases, use more water, use more land area, destroy more soil, et.c.
And while it might be true that one hectare used for grazing might be more biodiverse than one hectare used for, your example, soybeans. But 85 percent of the world's soybean crop is processed into meal and vegetable oil, and virtually all of that meal is used in animal feed.
I think you need to look up the meaning of the expression "straw man". And about the rainforests: Tropical rainforests are the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems in the world, and right now, huge areas of that rainforests are destroyed for the land to be used to raise cattle.
>> most the grass feed cows are raised in fields that used to be rain forests in Brazil
> Evidence for that rather large claim?
While most cows in Brazil are grass-fed, about half are raised on former rainforest:
"Nearly 50% of Brazilian livestock are raised in fields that used to be rainforest."[0,1]
"Most cows in Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, are grass-fed."[2]
See also:
How beef demand is accelerating the Amazon’s deforestation and climate peril[3]:
> Cattle ranchers in the Brazilian Amazon — the storied rainforest that produces oxygen for the world and modulates climate — are aggressively expanding their herds and willing to clear-cut the forest and burn what’s left to make way for pastures. As a result, they’ve become the single biggest driver of the Amazon’s deforestation, causing about 80 percent of it, according to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Cattle Ranching in the Amazon Region[4]:
> Cattle ranching is the largest driver of deforestation in every Amazon country, accounting for 80% of current deforestation rates. Amazon Brazil is home to approximately 200 million head of cattle, and is the largest exporter in the world, supplying about one quarter of the global market. Low input cost and easy transportation in rural areas make ranching an attractive economic activity in the forest frontier; low yields and cheap land encourage expansion and deforestation. Approximately 450,000 square kilometers of deforested Amazon in Brazil are now in cattle pasture. Cattle ranching and soy cultivation are often linked as soy replaces cattle pasture, pushing farmers farther into the Amazon.
Cattle do not eat solely from a meadow. Even if cows are free range, that's generally only a spring to fall state, in the winter they are eating farmed foods (usually hay).
For factory farmed cattle (which is the most common) the situation is far worse.
An individual cow needs 24lbs of food per day. How much soy does one person consume in a day?
> in the winter they are eating farmed foods (usually hay).
To have hay in winter you still need a meadow of high grass that will burst with life in spring, and cattle is excluded from this areas. Hay don't require pesticides or weedkillers. Traditional farming areas double its purpose as small natural reserves, even in winter. (Not all is nice, we could have a forest there instead, but is still better than modern agriculture for a mile).
> An individual cow needs 24lbs of food per day. How much soy does one person consume in a day?
This is a false equivalence.
The correct question would be: "how much soy consume the number of people that could be feed with this cow".
The error is understandable because many of this movements are focused in the individual, and equality among individuals. This is just one way to study ecology, but not the more interesting or rewarding one, and sometimes leads to plain wrong conclusions.
A cow can produce until 88lbs of milk a day. Having 12000 L of milk by cow in a lactating season is not uncommon, and some can reach 20000 L of milk. And this without talking about the meat and the leather.
No, it's not a good point. Cows are rarely grown in "meadows". Free-range beef is a minority, and most cow feed comes from monoculture fields. And it takes more monoculture grain to grow a pound of beef versus a pound of vegetables, and it's not even close.
No, I'm suggesting it is not a good/bad dichotomy and people should make sure large decisions are not made on what they think are simple moral choices.
I mean if you determine that animals dying for your diet is no good, then make sure you consider the people that might be dying to bring you the goods you haven't checked the source of, or for the stadium you enjoy watching events at, etc.
Quit meat if you feel you need to, but don't pretend it makes you a morally better person because 'animal murder,' it's not that simple.
Which would be very compelling if your body only needed calories to survive. Meat is the most efficient way to deliver proteins and essential amino acids. You should also dig into the concept of bioavailability.
This is debunked. Tofu is incredibly protein dense - on par or surpassing chicken breast. Without looking it up and subjectively, tofu also seems to be digested very easily. There’s also seitan and the beans. Nuts also exist but have fat/protein ratios that tend toward uncomfortably high. (If what your eating has macros that approach the fat content in nuts to other nutrients that’s pretty high and should be noted.)
Taken from wikipedia entry on Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score [1]:
- Chicken has a PDCAAS of 0.95
- Soy has a PDCAAS of 0.92
- Black beans have a PDCAAS of 0.74 (highest legume)
- Other beans and legumes have a PDCAAS of 0.70
- Wheat (seitan) has a PDCAAS of 0.42
Facts:
Soy has good enough nutrients to make a valid claims for it without throwing away valid science.
Soy is not surpassing chicken breast in PDCAAS, or red meat.
Eggs and dairy literally break the scale and are by far the highest ranking whole foods on a PDCAAS basis.
Seitan and beans are terrible in comparison in terms of PDCAAS, with you needing to consume nearly 2x the amount of protein from the former to compete with the later.
Opinions:
As far as fat goes, keep in mind tofu has a 1:2 fat:protein ratio. Chicken breast is 1:20+. This reason is the reason a lot of people herald chicken breast
Overconsumption of soy can lead to health implications
Soy does not have enough leucine to trigger the MTOR pathways to build muscle. If you are having soy post workout, you need to consume 45-60g of protein, vs just 20-30g of protein from animal products
Red meat has literally everything you need to live. Throw in a little carbs and fiber too and you can run at peak performance without worrying about anything in your diet.
Biases:
I've been relentless about my diet for 10 years and have tried everything. This includes vegan, vegetarian, keto, carb cycling, protein sparring modified fasts, you name it.
This year I started eating an animal based diet and not only do I feel great, my TDEE went from 2400 to over 3700. This means while I used to eat 2400kCal to maintain my weight, I now have to eat 3700 to maintain my weight, and I feel fantastic while doing so.
I don't disagree that it's comparable - in fact that's half my point. That was the first 'fact' I listed. It's pointless to claim bioavailability is 'debunked', because soy stands on it's own in the bioavailability data.
However, it's also misleading to claim it's debunked then point to seitan and beans as viable alternatives, or warn against fat content immediately after comparing tofu to chicken.
> How do you feel great knowing you are harming other sentient beings?
Because I wake up refreshed, have steady energy throughout the day, and can focus on solving complicated tasks throughout the day. I'm happier and healthy than I've ever been.
> Are there other areas of your life that you optimize for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings?
Almost every area of my life is at the expense of other sentient beings. I use energy that probably comes from coal that is fueling the war. I use an iPhone that has a battery that was probably made from slaves in china, built from materials sourced from slaves in mines in Africa. If you're checking hacker news, I'm assuming you are optimizing for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings.
I'd like to change some of that. The are more effective ways of doing so than just opting out of society.
> Are there areas where you don’t?
Chicken and pork are actually my favorite foods. I don't eat them because I think as livestock they're a net harm to the environment.
I don't kill spiders in my house, they're happy to cohabitate.
I have a dog, I sacrifice hours a day to make sure he is happy and healthy.
> Are there other areas of your life that you optimize for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings?
I think the answer must be yes for everyone here. We are choosing to use (and pay for) the internet and electricity when we could instead be buying food for people who have none. We participate in Western economies which prey on the economies of the developing world.
I think it's important to also think about the definition here of 'sentient' and the definition of 'harm'. Is it 'harmful' to build houses, when otherwise animals would live in the fields/forests? Is it 'harmful' to burn fossil fuels for energy? Do you refuse to use electricity which has come from fossil fuel sources?
Is 'sentience' the right point to draw the line? How would you respond to findings like this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pce.13065, which comes to the conclusion that the assumption that plants are not sentient may be flawed?
I just spent the last month learning to build EarthShip homes from the human waste stream. Not perfect but heading in the right direction as they generate all their own power.
You make great points about exploitation that we all benefit from.
As for plants, I think it’s possible, however raising animals requires even more plants to be killed.
And I’m not sure plants experience pain the way animals do. And if I had to choose, it seems animals are more capable of experiencing pain and suffering.
Honestly, from a poorly philosophical standpoint I struggle finding a reason not to conclude that the best solution as a human is to remove oneself entirely from the equation. As humans we are practically a walking Holocaust no matter what we do. The point about plants only drives this home further. There are even reasonable arguments for panpsychism which might mean even more unavoidable cause for suffering from one's existence
In my opinion this is the weakest argument for veganism. Are Lions bad because they eat deer? Are Sharks good because they eat fish that eat other fish that eat plants? Are cats demons...maybe?
The philosophy makes no sense even if you start with the assumption that animals are on the same moral plane as people that does not preclude or discount eating them out of preference because animals already do that. If you want to argue for veganism use a less combative prideful argument. For example I'm not vegan or vegetarian but I heavily reduce my meat consumption for environment and health reasons, less than 2 times a month and I want to go lower. Talking about the nuance and difficulty that comes with eating less meat and overcoming them should be inline with the, moral pride based better than you attitude you have. And it should be something you are seeking not trying to derail because your goal is to get people to eat less meat.
You seem to place humans and animals in the same moral category w.r.t. violence, specifically predation, due to your usage of "other sentient beings" in the above comment.
In your view, if a lion and a hunter both kill a gazelle, have they both committed the same moral violation?
Knew I was leaving things out. Thanks for including peas!
I don’t want to know how anybody gets actual, non-supplemented B12 nowadays. Many foods add a B12 in the form of cyanocobalamin. We evolved in a world where bacteria left B12 on nearly every surface left out long enough. But nowadays we clean our food and it shouldn’t be present. People will say they get it from the organ meat of certain animals - because that’s where those animals collect the B12 in their environment.
Notably, I avoid cyanocobalamin like the plague. It releases small amounts of cyanide into your liver upon processing. It’s also not particularly bioavailable. There are better B12s and I wish food would leave me to choose it myself.
Peas are a complete protein, but in their natural form they suffer from poor digestability compared to animal proteins. (Split peas have a PDCAAS score of around 0.5 - 0.6. Pea protein isolates can get up to 0.9, or comparable to chicken.)
It’s not all about bioavailability. Fiber might not be digested by us but the microbes that do fill the role of an organ. Giving the body something to work on offers benefits like leveled out blood sugars. This pdcaas metric needs a high quality reference.
Peas (gen Pisum) are very close to gen Lathyrus. Many of this wild flowers use a chemical defense to protect their seeds that is accumulative and can lead to serious and permanent neurodegenerative consequences at long term.
Lathyrism is one of the oldest diseases known in the history. Was observed in people with irreversible damages on their spinal cord after eating big amounts of the plant Lathyrus sativus, today known as Pisum sativum or "pea".
The disease develops after heavy consumption of peas for over two months so, to include an unlimited amount of Pisum sativum in the diet as your main source of protein is a terrible idea. Another case of wrong solutions and dangerous advice provided by veganism. If you are doing it, please stop right now and read this:
Just because 2 things are related does not mean they are equally dangerous. Potatoes, tomatos, eggplants, and most peppers are in the Solanaceae family, same as deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), which is extremely poisonous. Yet potatoes are a staple crop.
The commonly consumed pea types (yellow, sweet, snap, snow) have no risk of causing Lathyrism. Only wild peas pose a risk and those are outright banned in most nations. (notable exception, india, where it is part of several common dishes).
You have been warned. Plants are unsafe to eat by default
The fact that wild peas are much more dangerous does not remove the danger from common sweet peas (of any kind or color, Is the same species). Is a matter of how much of it you eat, and if you allow enough days between meals to detox.
It depends also in "how" you eat it. If you mix it with cereals or not (hint, you should) and even in "where" you cook it.
By common sweet pea, I mean the green common edible one. Pisum sativum = Lathyrus sativus a species that is known to cause the disease if eaten in large amounts. Lathyrism is happening still today in a few parts of the planet like India, and is a serious irreversible condition, not much unlike paraplegia. This is not FUD, is a proven medical fact. Maybe the vegetable has a different name in English. Dunno, but we are talking about the same species all the time.
Lathyrus odoratus, is the Fragrant sweet pea, a small species with huge flowers that smell really well. It has tiny peas that are not really edible -in big amounts- (all are "edible" in very small quantities but it does not worth the risk) and of course, as most Lathyrus it causes lathyrism. is just that is a different case of Lathyrism, affecting bones instead nerves if I remember correctly.
Pisum sativum and Lathyrus sativus are not the same plant. Pisum sativum’s Lathyrus name is “Lathyrus oleraceus”
Lathyrus sativus is also referred to as the “white pea”. Because it’s white.
I know sativus and sativum look the same but that doesn’t mean they are the same plant.
Here’s an article with photos of Lathyrus sativus. [1]
If I may inquire, are you from india? If so, then yes, you probably do have to be more aware of the peas you are eating. From the articles I can find it sounds like Lathyrus sativus is banned in india but still somewhat commonly sold. That’s not the case where I’m at in the US. You cannot accidentally get Lathyrus sativus here because nobody is selling it.
Yep. The International Plant Names lists 33 synonims for Pisum sativum L. and 16 for Lathyrus sativus L. and none of them coincide. Botanical names are changing all the time, and is not straightforward sometimes.
So you were right and I was wrong. I stand corrected. Thank you for getting me out of my mistake.
Tofu is not digested easily, it has a lot of ingredients our omnivore stomachs cannot digest, so the bacteria gets to it. It's made out of soy beans, so yes, it will cause gas and bloating.
Your comment is obviously (to me) someone who hasn't explored any other diet except meat eating (feel free to dispute). There are many people thriving on a vegan diet.
There are, but everyone has different dietary needs too. Some studies found a genetic sequence evolved in asia that confers better utilization of legume protein. Western Europe and eastern Africa evolved lactose tolerance to get protein instead. Up north people got bigger livers to handle more meat consumption.
I have tried vegan (whole foods only) for months, and I have real trouble with legumes, not just normal gas, and my blood work went crazy. Triglycerides shot up for one.
The healthiest I have ever felt, and the best my blood work has ever been, was eating 1.5lbs of grassfed beef every day (with lots of roots and leaves too).
I can do vegetarian pretty easily, I process eggs and dairy well, but both of those foods are designed to trigger rapid growth in young organisms. I'm not growing anymore so I tend to pack on fat with them.
My chosen middle ground is to get my protein from fish (Cobain said they don't have feelings) and dinosaurs(they had their time). I feel little kinship to cows, grew up around them, but it isn't efficient, even if I feel physically better eating them.
I was vegetarian for six years. But my personal diet has nothing to do with debunking the myth that humans are not omnivores by necessity.
There are plenty of studies showing large populations of vegetarians suffering vitamin deficiencies, so thriving is quite a stretch. Here is one example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29446340/
We could cut down on oxygen use by not breathing too. Ultimately you have to ground these abstract vectors of comparison in some fundamental purpose. For me, the only possible ground is humanity.
If humanity is the ground of your analysis, meat consumption will fail to present itself as the decisive factor for any vector of comparison. The decisive factor will generally be the elevation of capital or oligarchic social ends over general social interest.
It would allow nature to begin to recover from the damage we've been doing to it for thousands of years. Besides increased biodiversity being an inherently good thing, it would also reduce flooding and erosion, stabilise weather systems, preserve topsoil, etc. etc.
I've seen a number of reports of large farms being planned in places like the middle east.
Dubai opened one about 6 months ago capable of producing over a million kg of leafy greens a year, the largest vertical farm in the world by some margin, and that's just a pilot project.
A million kg of the most calorie dense leafy green (parsnip or kale at 50-60 kcal/100 grams) would be equivalent to about 167,000 kg of wheat (~360 kcal/100 grams). A bushel of wheat is about 27kg and the US produces about 50 bushels per acre [1] or 1,350 kg of wheat per acre. To produce the caloric equivalent of a million kg of leafy greens you would need about 130 acres (167,000/1350) of wheat. The average farm in the US is over 400 acres in size [2]. There are over two million farms in the US alone.
The “largest vertical farm in the world by some margin” produces less calories than a tiny family farm that can barely afford its own tractor. The largest wheat farm in Canada is over 35,000 acres which means it produces just as much food per day as the largest vertical farm produces per year. That wheat farm isn’t even in the list of top 10 largest farms in North America.
Edit: I made a slight mistake in my math. A 60 lbs bushel of wheat when processed doesn’t yield exactly 60 pounds of usable food, but it doesn’t change the overall picture (360 kcal => 240 kcal, 130 acres => 180 acres)
Edit 2: That vertical farm cost $40 million to build. Our hypothetical wheat farm would cost under $2 million for the land, fertilizer, seeds, and machines.
Wheat was first grown in Mesopotamia, literally in the middle of the Middle East!
> The industry is growing at 25-30% YoY…. That’s gonna snowball fast.
Pure fantasy. We’ve had vertical farming for thousands of years already - first built by the same Babylonians that grew wheat in Mesopotamia! When’s it going to start snowballing?
There will still be a relation, `more vertical farms => more use of water and pesticides`. Now, the factor between those might change. But I fail to see why vertical farming would change the dynamics fundamentally.
Not to say this is your moral prerogative but it's pretty simple: Eat only hand-picked fruit. It's by far the least death-causing food out there and it's offered to you by the tree to eat.
I'm not a vegetarian or fruitarian, I don't generally care about animal death or suffering. But if I did that would be my tactic to minimize pain in the system.
If you did that you would become extremely unhealthy. Veganism has the caveat "as far as is practicable", and a fruitarian diet is not practicable for extended periods of time as you will become malnourished.
Fair enough. Swap "only fruit@ for "as much fruit as possible without becoming malnourished" if you would value your own wellbeing above another animals' (which I would as well).
I know a guy who was promoting frutarian lifestyle. He was a previous world champion kayaker and works in the outdoor industry. I saw him recently and he was still in the top 15-20 in the world in his even. I need to check with him if he's still doing it. He looks like a model, superfit and full of energy. He had an interesting blog on the amount of fruit he was having to eat, most of which he picked up for free or cheap at markets as it was approaching use by date.
Look up how olives are harvested. There are big machines that go over rhe tree and vacuum off all the olives. Too bad theres a lot of birds living in there that get sucked in and die. Why don't they fly away? The noise must be a fair warning ahead of time! Well, the harvest is at night because of lower temperatures. The birds freeze in shock when the noise and bright lights get turned on and don't move.
I don't think any organic certifications regulate the method of slaughter. If you go to a local farmer, maybe there's a more humane method of slaughter (although the vast, vast majority of even local farmers will contract out slaughter and butchery), but organic at Walmart is probably going to be processed more or less identically to other meat.
Really..
Is that what you are doing, seems more like you just want to be violent toward others and have built yourself a causi belli to engage that way.
> wanting to reduce suffering
Bullshit, you don't give 2 shits about that, you want to increase suffering in actual sentient beings.
Which a cow is not. Hence you are in a cult because what else would you call that position??
You are not a moral agent and you don't get to define what others can and can't do when it comes to food production.
Organics is a fantastic way to go, it just shows how full of shit you are to go against that.
We know red meat isn’t healthy. Most (not all) fake meats try to replicate red meat.
What proof do you have them being unhealthy? Impossible for example has fairly simple list of ingredients. Better macros than burger ground.
Anecdotally. My father in law has had to stop eating red meat due to health concerns. He enjoys impossible products just fine with no negative concerns in blood biomarkers or examines (several years running now). We are controlling for exercise patterns too. He’s just replaced his frequent burgers with an impossible patty instead.
This comment is just a wild claim with no evidence and falsely equates “processed” with “unhealthy”
I think you mean we have studies of dubious quality blaming red meat. And scores of people repeating the same trite arguments.
It's the same people that brought to you salt causes high blood pressure and saturated fat causes atherosclerosis, pushing the low fat craze and the obesity epidemic.
Sure, meat is bad, go eat hyper processed fake meat.
not the OP, but this was covered a fair bit in a book I read recently called "genghis khan and the making of the modern world" which was a pretty good read.
Iirc it was that the figting forces of the various northern chinese states were comprised of conscript peasants whose diet consisted of grain and not much else, which stunted their growth among other things, meaning the mongols were significantly larger and stronger than them leading to certain mythologizing in the centuries afterwards. It probably also didn't help that the conscripted peasants were, well, conscript foot soldiers, wheras the mongols were willing participants on horseback
Bang on, same thing with the Dutch and the Brits when the empire flourished.
Dietary changes drive a lot of these things, more than I think is generally understood and credited.
The Mongols are a very famous example and extreme as you stated the Chinese peasant and soliders mostly had a grain based diet and poor health that came with it.
Epidemiologic nutritional studies are proven to be totally useless. They literally are a questionnaire asking people what do they eat, take some health markers and drawing conclusions. I spent the morning reading through the data of that "plant-based diets reduce colorectal cancer" on the front-page of the Guardian [1], and it's yet another pile of cherry picked inconclusive crap people will keep sharing on social media.
From just 2 minutes with your paper: "Higher heme iron intake appeared to be
significantly associated with a 31 % (95 % CI 4–67 %)
elevated risk of developing CHD" --- lmao, loving that 95% confidence interval between 4 and 67%.
Passing those out as proof of real science keeps the disinformation and terrible practice alive. If I had a dime every time a random commenter gave me a link to an epidemiologic nutritional study, I could fund a double blind randomized one myself.
I'm curious how one gets a 95% confidence on such a wide margin. I'm having trouble visualizing data that would give such a result. Is this just a result of a very wide distribution of data? Or is this done with shady statistics. The 95% seems to imply that there's data on either side of their chosen bounds. To my understanding, the real "beef" with the article is the choice of representing the data as "31%" when there's such a wide distribution. A more accurate statement would be that, "nearly everyone experienced some heightened risk of CHD with the actual risk varying largely, but firmly positive". Thoughts?
Consuming a lot of TMAO is proven to be bad for the heart. Cod contains TMAO in great amounts.
Yet white fish is one of the most recommended heart healthy foods.
You have to be careful when talking about specific mechanisms in terms of Whole Foods. Nutrition can't be reduced down to single mechanisms to provide confident recommendations, and often times results are the opposite of what we would expect mechanistically.
First we have lot of studies based on statistics.
There are also simple statistics which show than vegetarian live longer then meat eaters.
Then we have the five blue zone where people do not eat meat and most of them are centenarians.
But some people do not support their habits to be changed and are ready to believe anything that confort their opinions.
Even if their habits destroy the planet.
It's worth obfuscating this point. We don't know red meat isn't healthy.
Equally, we also don't know that red meat is healthy.
Without making a case for either side, readers should know that the field of nutrition is incredibly unclear, often times very individualized, and most of what people 'know' are just 'educated guesses'. For every study proving one side of the argument, you can find 10 studies proving the opposite side.
For one thing, the high level of saturated fats in beyond meat patties (25% of max daily recommended intake) could be considered unhealthy. On some other aspects it seems pretty decent, with good protein content and some added vitamins as well.
Not exclusively, of course, but the degree of processing of food greatly influences our body’s insulin response, which can over time have huge impacts on health (leading to fatty liver disease / metabolic syndrome / obesity / diabetes). This is why, for instance, fruit juice is so much worse for us than the whole fruit — most of the fiber is removed which would otherwise slow down digestion and temper insulin response. For more info I’d highly recommend Jason Fung’s Obesity Code book — he’s a nephrologist specializing in diabetes treatment.
Some kinds of processing increase insulin impact, others don't. If your goal is controlling sugars, a diet premised solely on minimizing processing isn't a great strategy; "processing" isn't the high-order bit of that problem.
Theoretically, you are right, of course. In practice though, to apply this, you would need to know how the processing exactly works, and how the body responds to that processing. Given that you can not really determine this easily, it is in practice just simpler to stick to unprocessed foods as much as possible, and just apply the sugar limit to those.
I don't think this makes a lot of sense. Cheese is cooked, fermented, emulsified, and aged. It has a lower glycemic impact than milk, its primary unprocessed input.
Mostly, I think the "processed" vs. "unprocessed" debate is an appeal to tradition, not science; if it's a kind of processing we were doing 200 years ago, it's OK; otherwise, it's unhealthful.
I would say that Cheese, at least its classic variants, fall exactly under the category where you have fairly good knowledge of the nature of its processing and its effects on the body. I'd say your example supports my argument.
But as humans we can't read every study for every ingredient. We have to use heuristics to guesstimate a healthy diet. Reducing (not eliminating) processed foods is a decent one. Same goes for including protein, increasing fiber (so whole wheat instead of the cake americans call "bread"), including veggies.
For some reason there is no reply button on the other replies.
Maybe the evidence for meat doesn't generalise, but the idea that fresh vegetables would retain some sort-lived structures that start to break down once processed seems plausible. I was just pointing out that GPs claim could do with some backup.
Your references seem to back me up, and not the person I was replying to? Eg:
"There is evidence showing an association with certain types of food processing and poor health outcomes (especially highly- or ultra-processed foods). This association applies mainly to ultra-processed foods that contain added sugars, excess sodium, and unhealthful fats."
From the second one. Maybe you confused my position?
That's mostly related to the curing salts and their reaction with heme iron. Curing salts are not used when processing vegetables; heme iron is not added either (I hope), so this should not apply in this case.
What makes you think so? Do you have any examples of particularly healthful highly processed foodstuff in mind? Or is this more some "there are no slow programming languages, only slow implementations" type of argument about the absence of strict logical necessity?
Healthy food is basically a lemon market, so what would a plausible mechanism to economically incentivize high processing for healthfulness look like?
Conversely there is a clear economic incentive to highly process food in order to decrease unit cost at fixed palatability. By increasing yield (pink slime) or shelf-life (trans-fats) or taste and looks (flavor enhancer etc).
None of these are necessarily bad in all cases, and in some cases might even correspond to increases in healthfulness (e.g. by killing harmful micro-organisms).
But on average, in the absence of some additional economic incentive to keep or increase healthfulness, I'd expect optimization for these criteria to decrease it.
For example, a lot of nutrients have short shelf-lives, so if there is an incentive to increase shelf-life but not an equal incentive to preserve nutritiousness (and I don't think there is), you'd expect healthfulness to go down, no?
Saying there's necessarily a causal relationship is probably not well supported, but there's absolutely a correlation, and as a rule of thumb, if you choose whole foods over processed foods it will tend to net out as more healthy.
Nutrition pretty much by definition requires a lot of simplification to allow people to make quick decisions on food choices, and so broad rules that are mostly right are pretty useful (and pretty much the basis of how most diets work).
I agree in so far that I believe that the observation of "more processing > less health" is not caused directly by the amount of processing, but by the way those highly processed products are designed to match as many "appetites" as possible. I use the term "appetites" in the sense of a low intensity craving, the feedback signal the body sends to fill some nutrient deficit. But our taste buds can't really identify most of the nutrients in question, we just have is a set of complicated heuristics taking an educated guess. And many of those highly processed foods, in their quest to maximise desire, will fool those heuristics, matching the "appetite" without fulfilling the deficit. Perhaps not by deliberate design, but by market selection.
On one hand, the faux meats sound quite risky, but in the other hand they are under extreme scrutiny like no highly processed food before them, so they might not actually be bad at all.
Tell me that raw, uncooked wheat is just as healthy as processed and cooked wheat. I'll wait.
Cooking makes some things edible that weren't before. Just because it doesn't work on an apple in the way you are imagining doesn't mean much.
I'll also note that many folks think of baked apples as sugar-laden desserts and fresh apples as eaten plain. Nevermind that folks add apples to savory rice dishes and nevermind that folks dip fresh apples in caramel sauce. You need more than the descriptions of "baked" and "raw" to denote health.
Depends on fruit/vegetable. Some have nutrients that are easily destroyed by heat, but some have nutrients that are easier absorbed after light heating, or problematic compounds removed during cooking.
You mentioned a ton of things that change (which, sure, they do, after all it would be weird if, after processing when things taste differently, nothing would have changed), you did not make the causal link to things changing in a way that is detrimental to health.
Just because it changes doesn’t mean it‘s bad.
Even your only point where one could argue that there is a potential obvious negative health effect (the vitamins) is only an issue if there are actual vitamin deficiencies that matter.
> is only an issue if there are actual vitamin deficiencies that matter.
It's an issue because it's wasteful, you're loosing the good stuff in the process. Throwing half of your meal into garbage every time is only an issue if you're still hungry afterwards, but it's not economically and ecologically sane thing to do. This is a similar thing, one should try to maximize the use of food that they pay for.
Cooking meat allows your digestive system to ingest more proteins, for example.
This is why fire was such an unprecedented step in our evolution.
For example:
Raw egg: 3g of protein at most.
Cooked egg: 6g of protein.
Not just heating, even simple cutting/mincing of the food promotes oxidation that can significantly influence the composition of food.
On the other hand some processing like canning of fresh food can actually help preserve the good stuff compared to whole food that's refrigerated or otherwise stored over longer periods of time. Processing also can increase the bio-availability of many ingredients, which can sometimes be a good thing, or in case of sugars not so good.
Eating heated food is a staple of human diets for hundreds of thousands of years - ever since fire was invented. I wouldn't worry about that part so much.
Unless you're on a paleo diet, heating to cook is considered minimally processed. So that's more evidence that looking for "processing" isn't a good metric.
Processing changes so many things in both good and bad ways that you can't use its presence to determine much of anything.
I disagree. Depending on the prep, I could have been fooled into thinking it was a real patty at Hopdoddys. Saying it is unhealthy sounds ideological. The point of making this imitation meat is to over time, get better and better until it is truly indistinguishable. It is premised on the idea that many people don't want to give up their meat foods, and that mass meat production is unethical and environmentally negative.
Beyond/impossible aren't trying to be healthy. They're trying to be meat replacements and have similar healthiness to red meat, which they do. I prefer them to previous generation meat substitutes. They work great as ground beef replacement, much better than any vegetables.
I'm a heavy meat eater, and I actually kinda liked the impossible whopper.
More importantly, while I like the taste of meat too much to give up on it, I would also very much prefer that it could be had without killing animals. I don't think plant-based meat is going to be the ultimate solution to this - more likely, it'll be the lab-grown stuff. But, either way, it requires investments from the food industry to reach maturity, and those won't happen unless there's a real customer interest. Buying fake-meat burger is a way to express that interest.
I’m not positive but I have a feeling it’s the methylcellulose. In my own home experimentation, none of the ingredients seem to cause issues except for that.
It seems fairly benign, but it can’t be digested and it isn’t clear to me if we have gut flora which can break it down efficiently.
I enjoy throwing together little experiments in a similar vein to beyond meat or impossible burger products, but it feels too much like a lab experiment to eat regularly. My kids like “meat balls” with spaghetti, so I tend to make that and otherwise I’m gravitating back towards whole food-based garden burgers.
A weird thing about beyond/impossible is that while they appear moderately healthier than real meat from some perspectives… They are still pretty trashy. I can’t not feel like I’m making a bad choice, even if it’s home made, and at the end of the day I just want to feel good (mentally and physically) about my food.
This is a qualitative/irrational assessment and not a quantitative/rational one, especially considering that fat consumption got a wrongfully-deserved bad rap for decades thanks to unethical lobbying by the sugar industry.
For years I’ve spent a lot of time (probably more than I should) crawling through research about exactly this, which is precisely why I use the term trashy. Relatively speaking I suppose it’s better than many other options, which is relevant to some people. In the broader scope, this is still junk food.
I’d argue (based on the best dietary research the world has produced) that saturated fats do deserve a bad rap, and most refined fats are also worth minimizing in a diet. Are all fats bad? Not at all, we should eat them. We’d die without them. Are saturated fats and refined plant fats worth including in our diet? Arguably no, not at all. Incidental consumption of them is more than enough and intentional consumption becomes problematic quite quickly.
I’m not aware of any outcomes-based studies spanning the globe which indicate that a high fat diet serves most people well as far as long term quality and quantity of life. On the other hand, there are several, and more all the time, showing the opposite.
The valid “fat is actually okay!” data almost exclusively comes from whole-food based studies. However, those which position saturated fats as safe or healthy are typically of poor designs. One example off the top of my head is one which put vegetarians on an extremely high coconut oil diet and meat eaters on a lean meat diet. The results? Eating meat is better for your cholesterol! Surprise?
I couldn’t make this stuff up. In fact, someone likely paid people a lot of money to make it up. The irony is that it uses the truth (saturated fat raises blood lipids) to indicate that this truth is actually false. If saturated fat was bad, wouldn’t the intersection of meat eaters and vegetarians look different? It must be okay. Makes a great headline!
I agree that the sugar lobbying is absurd and harmful to society, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to believe there isn’t a massive and busy lobby behind fats as well. Why wouldn’t there be? Look at how many studies around animal products and fat are funded by associates of the food processing industry.
And yet the best studies we have clearly have no commercial agenda behind them, they typically took years or decades of work, yet they’re hastily discounted by all kinds of people.
diet is a fairly complex topic and it's a shame that most doctors don't get more than a single course in nutrition. I read a paper like this (which is related to our discussion) and the raw complexity is just... difficult to boil down into a variety of good food choices sometimes: https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000871
I can't touch 'vegan cheese' made with coconout oils for this reason - for some reason it leaves me feeling like I have a film of oil down the back of my gullet that I can't shake off for an hour or two afterwards. It's a weird, unlikeable and thoroughly unwanted sensation.
You might have a touch of legume allergy (if only have a touch is possible). Beyond has pea protein and Impossible has soy protein. What's in your veggie patties?
Hmm not to say that’s not it (because people vary) but my wife and I both get this feeling with these Beyond/Impossible meats but we otherwise eat a lot of legumes which don’t give us that feeling
I think they both contain methylcellulose, which is considered benign but not digestible. In my experience it doesn’t cause major discomfort, but a mildly off putting sensation in my GI tract for a few hours. It might be something else, but it seems likely after narrowing things down for a while.
If you dig a little deeper you’ll find that methylcellulose has some interesting culinary properties, making it well suited to adding structure and firm texture to soft foods.
When mixed with water it transforms into a firm gel after heating, or it can be used to create extremely resilient emulsifications.
It’s practically flavourless, so it works well. I’m not convinced it passes through the GI tract with no impact whatsoever, but it appears so far to be relatively benign.
It’s nothing like sawdust or a filler, though. It’s also somewhat expensive so it wouldn’t be a good option for filler. My 500g bag was around $25, but if you wanted to use actual sawdust, well I think you could get that for close to nothing.
Thank you for your eloquent and well reasoned refutation! Getting early 90s internet vibes, where prople actually typed out their disagreement in an informative way instead of just downvoting.
I take that as a huge compliment! I find myself dreaming of Old Internet quite often these days, so thank you very much. Maybe we can restore the old ways one comment at a time.
I know exactly what you mean and I get this a lot too. I always thought it was in my head but recently I tried a Drunken Noodle recipe from FreshPrep which used Beyond Meat Burgers and I felt nothing. It was actually delicious. I guess the prep method somehow affects it?
100% in agreement. It’s not even in the fast food places I struggle to find a plain bean burger now… it’s the supermarkets too.
The odd peculiar taste of these kinds of new plant based burgers can be pretty foul. For me and my partner, the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap.
Bring back the delicious bean burgers and actual normal veggie burgers.
I used to love the Morning Star Chipotle Black Bean burger. Then they changed the recipe and now it tastes horrible. It's lost the fresh, garden flavor and now it may as well be burnt bean paste or mush. At this point I'm moving on to my own patties.
"delicious" and "bean burger" never have gone together in my experience. To each their own, I understand. Maybe it's because I only had a bean burger at Chili's .
It might be, but it's not that particular genetic marker. I have it (confirmed by testing) and, while I hate Impossible Burgers, they definitely don't taste like soap to me. More like a bean that's developed a "funk". And not like tasty cheese funk, more like meat that's gone off funk.
i don't know about anyone else, but the second I eat a portabello burger, I'm racing to the bathroom. unless they are washing extensively, whatever those spores are just hit me the wrong way and i'm off to the races. don't get me wrong though, they taste amazing, i just have to be selective of where i'm eating them at.
I'm an omnivore but still like to have the odd non-meat option, and I'm the same. I find the impossible (etc) burgers are just.. weird. I really prefer having a felafel if it's available!
I've not eaten a real burger or sausage since the 80's and I've only had two of these impossible burgers but they tasted quite nice when I had them and no adverse reactions, but at NZ$14 (US$8.50) for two frozen burgers at my local supermarket, they wont be on my menu often.
Public service announcement from the vegan community: Cutting out meat doesn't mean you have to eat bugs, or any other gross animal byproducts. Plants are plenty nutritious.
Hypothetically, would this still be the case if eating bugs was better on environmental and animal welfare/displacement metrics over plant agriculture, and those considerations were motivations for someone being vegan?
I also had this thought once, but then looked it up, and found that it is completely wrong. It's basically like saying "we already eat plenty of fish... We just call em things like beef, pork, and bird meat".
Except that fish are much more closely related to mammals than crustaceans are to insects (same phylum, different class). Here is an example of an animal that is as closely related to a cow as a grasshopper is to a lobster: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp
Edit: Even more, dietary preferences tend to focus on a single species. Plenty of people eat chicken but not turkey, or eat pork but not boar. There are even people who eat lamb but not adult sheep. And no one eats wolf or eagle meat. To then come and say "hey, you already eat one arthropod, why not another" is pretty absurd.
I'm not at all against eating insects, I'm just pointing out that the fact we eat shrimp has 0 to do with it.
That's still at best relating insects and crustaceans at the level of (most) fish and mammals. I'm also unclear on where this pancrustacea clade comes in, as most Wikipedia articles for specific species don't even list the clade, just the phylum and class - and fish are still the same class as mammals, while insects and shellfish are not.
Either way, while we eat some mammals and birds, we still don't eat the vast majority of mammals or birds, and we barely eat any reptiles or amphibians or fish.
We also eat plenty of other bugs and insects which just get into the way of processing plants ;=)
(crustaceans are a good example as traces of them tend to get included into algal based food, but less pleasant sounding examples are e.g. from time to time small worms being in fruited pressed for juice, sound terrible but isn't really that terrible and impossible to avoid without using pesticides which are worse then that by far)
I'm someone from far away, reading this unfold with curiosity. My country's variety is NotCo, who in all fairness makes damn good patties without any of the downsides told here (the fakeness sensation, the heavy stomach after eating, that strange waft when burping). NotCo uses AI for their processes, combining strange things like chicory, pineapple juice & cabbage to create milk that even froths like the real one; or strawberries, chickpeas, cocoa, beetroot & bamboo to make very passable "meat". They simply taste good, to the point sometimes I prefer to buy them instead of regular burgers. It helps that we have a healthy market of real veggie (ie. no meat-replacement) products to choose too.
Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff.
I assume Beyond, Impossible etc use another, more crude/unrefined approach.
Tried to eat a NotBurger last night. I couldn't finish it... because my meat-eating girlfriend took it for herself. Their milk is pretty good too. The patent for the ML approach they use is kind of interesting as well, I honestly expected their "AI" to be a lot dumber: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10915818B1/
> Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff.
Here they recently partnered with Kraft to make Not versions of their cheese singles (although some would say they weren't really cheese to begin with) and eventually other products. NotChicken is supposed to also make it here relatively soon, but sadly only as patties.
Haven't heard of it here in Australia yet. Australia has a few brands of its own (Buds and Veef are two popular ones) as well as some of the more global brands, so it's quite a saturated market.
I agree with you, and I think it’s the soya protein. I don’t have any problems with pea protein, but the soya protein makes me feel queasy.
I think those meat replacements are good for people who have just become vegan as they give you a sense of familiarity, but after a while you realise that it’s possible to eat a delicious vegan diet that doesn’t consist of mega-processed things trying to be meat.
Photos and internal documents from a Beyond Meat plant in Pennsylvania show apparent mold, Listeria and other food-safety issues, compounding problems at a factory the company had expected to play a major role in its future https://trib.al/q1SAHYO
To be honest I don't know too much about it, but as I understand it tofu is the curd made from soya milk, and soya protein is some form of the processed whole bean. My thinking that it's soya protein is just from the fact that I've tried a few different brands' soya fake burgers and they all give me the same discomfort.
The fake stuff usually lists “textured vegetable protein” or “soy protein isolate” or things like that. Those are much more processed than tofu. Tofu is more like a curd in so far as the tofu gets minced then settled out of the water. I think it sometimes gets calcium carbon added.
Not a vegan, but I went to several places that served some veg patties that I really enjoyed. It didn't attempt to taste like meat, but it was just as enjoyable.
After this I tried several of these alternatives just to look for different flavors. Beyond meat really smelled weird when cooking, and while somewhat acceptable in taste I can totally share the stomach weirdness.
This didn't prevent me to keep trying other stuff. "Impossible meat" I was never able to find yet. But as other have said, the major issue is that all the alternative options cost _more_ than actual beef where I live. This makes it a luxury option.
I find that Beyond Meat is 'okay' in a burger when it's got all the other flavours going on, but I was recently playing around with using it in other dishes like meatballs and wasn't nearly as happy with it. It has a weird aftertaste that I can't quite identify, and whilst not awful, isn't terribly pleasant.
I bought a pound of the "ground beef" to try it out. Pretty sure it was Beyond beef, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't smell and taste like cat food when I opened up the package. It was fucking revolting, and totally ruined the dish I was making.
There must be some special way to prepare it to make it taste good. There's no way I'll take this stuff and make burger patties out of it just like I would regular ground beef.
I'm not the only one either, do a search for "beyond smells like..." and look at the autocomplete results.
My favorite of all of these products are the various Impossible Sausages, probably for exactly the reason that sausage is way more flavor and texture than just the meat or “meat” itself. Seriously love the bratwurst alternatives. The burgers from either brand? I completely agree with you, there’s something just slightly off about them.
The Beyond meat we've had from the grocery store has too much smoke flavor added in. It's fine if you're making burgers, and maybe chili, but anything else is a non-starter. I think they make sausage and meatballs that don't have this flavor, but whatever generic 'ground meat' we got was suitable only for making food on a grill.
They're really good with no awful side effects or tastes. I like some vegetarian options, but honestly, most of it either tastes nasty or has poor texture.
My girlfriend dislikes some meats and seems to want to be a low-meat household, she loves morningstar nuggets of most kinds. Another good one is Quorn. They are a cultured fungus protein and it just makes a much more meaty tasting and feeling product, and you could easily forget it's not chicken.
Big problem though is the required level of processing to take a vague protein slurry and turn it into a glued together nugget means it's only really comparable to the absolute lowest quality, bulk batch, school lunch grade nuggets.
Quorn is a fermented slime mold, the fungi label is a marketing trick.
This said, I used to like Quorn before they started stuffing egg (mostly eggwhite) into everything. The real slime mold is great, but where I live it's near impossible to get Quorn products without the egg. They taste as bad as impossible/beyond with their clearly chemical taste.
Going beyond this, mosr vegetarians/vegans find over time that it is much cheaper and actually nicer to go simple, not with the replacements. tofu, seitan or simply vegetable dishes without any of these things. E.g. in a well flavoured bolognese/ragout no one can taste a difference between meat, fake meat or simple hard tofu (mouth feel/texture are clearly different though). And anyone should really try making seitan, it's super fun and easy - basically you just wash a bag of flour repeatedly with warm water.
I realize they are processed food but I really like Morning Star ~~Farms~~ Laboratories products. No one is going to mistake their products for meat but they are still delicious.
And I doubt their business is struggling, or that Beyond Meats's fate has them worried.
I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I like certain black bean and garden burgers. I don't eat them with a bun though, I cook them and then top with a little cheese.
There's a good chance that your gut microbiome forgot about meat which is why you have the problem.
It's a well known story I've heard of vegetarians going back to eating meat and then getting sick from the meat for some time. This is also why eating foods you're not used to can often make you sick even if they're fine. Your gut microbiome adapts to your diet, and if you suddenly change what you eat you can get indigestion.
From my understanding the beyond/etc "meat" acts like real meat to your body microbiome because it's so similiar.
Interesting I've experienced this too though interestingly it is way more noticeable for me with beyond than impossible. I get a weird after taste for hours and my stomach feels off. Not bad enough to never eat again but noticeable enough that I tend to avoid beyond in particular now. Some people have suggested it is so close to meat that your stomach just isn't used to it but I'm pescatarian and eat fish fairly regularly so I doubt it is that simple.
It’s cheap and people who avoid soy might buy pea instead. Almond protein might work better for ice cream from a taste perspective, but that’s super expensive. We have a great almond & coconut based ice cream in our region but it costs 2x as much as the milk based one.
One thing both Impossible and Beyond do is add artificial smoke flavoring/aromatics to their product to more closely resemble a flame broiled burger. I find them to be somewhat offputting personally, and it also makes the product useless for anything other than a burger. You can't do a hot dish with the Beyond meat because the smoke flavor will overwhelm everything else in the dish.
I agree the naming/labeling thing is tricky. We have a friend who brings round 'vegan cheese' when she visits; living in the EU, I'm surprised this labeling is allowed. Is it OK to label vegetarian things as 'beef'?
On the other hand, 'beef substitute' doesn't sound terribly appetising.
But we are all familiar with 'peanut butter'; I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can explain what is and is not allowed.
I live in the EU. The thing that makes cheese cheese is arguably the mix of fungi and bacteria growing in it. We have some excellent cheeses here that are traditional except for the substitution of nut milk for mammal milk. They are currently specialty items, but that may change. We may have to give up meat and dairy to get through the energy transition, but fortunately the same mold and bacteria responsible for blue cheese grow on plant milk too!
The etymology doesn't really matter, but the french word for cheese refer to how milk is ~processed... "Fromage" -> "Formage" -> "putting stuff in forms". If you think "peanut butter" is confusing... it is called "pinda kaas" in dutch... directly translates to "peanut cheese"!
I'm in the UK so I might have trouble getting them, most of the vegan cheese I have access to is basically the same flavour just in different shapes and forms.
I have celiac and often feel the same way about gluten free foods. Please stop trying to feed me gluten free versions of things that rely on gluten to be good. Just give me a rice bowl or tacos on corn tortillas. With Veganism/Vegetarianism it makes even less sense to me. Not eating gluten is not a choice for me, but Vegans and Vegetarians chose this lifestyle because they don't want to eat meat, why make fake things that resemble meat?
Yeah I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I get a weird aftertaste that lingers when I've tried the impossible burgers. Closest thing I can compare it to is the aftertaste I get after eating chicken thighs. I know that's not exactly a useful comparison, but it's what I've got to work with. Definitely not an aftertaste I've ever associated with beef.
We haven’t had issues with stomach upset, but I’ve found that cooking impossible burgers leaves an oder lingering in the house for days. It smells good while cooking but over time becomes off putting and I loose my appetite to cook the rest of the pack through the week.
It's could be the high amount of fat / saturated fat. This happens to me with a lot of high fat products. When I was consuming a lot of coconut milk / cream with curry dishes it happened too.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
You are not the target group for these products!
The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's the value. That's the target.
This is about replacing the meat in gas station hot dogs and fast food burgers and food court lunches, and if these alternatives can be made good enough and cheap enough, we can reduce the total meat consumption in society to a fraction of what it is today, without having to ideologically convert people to vegetarianism.
These products are for all the people who don't think vegetarian products are incredible, but actually don't care whether or not their burger is made of cow or plants, as long as it tastes the same. But the traditional veggie burgers that you prefer don't cut it, so these products are a step further on the way to a product that will. They're not there yet, though.
> You are not the target group for these products!
It's not a choice for me. When I go to _restaurants_, they are replacing their only vegetarian options with these impossible/beyond meats, and they're charging $2 more while they're at it.
These goals and target markets sound great on paper, but feels like the exact opposite in practice. The goal for reducing waste is great, but why are vegetarians paying that cost when they go out.
Probably because the beyond/impossible offerings sell more and they're only willing to put a limited number of vegetarian items on the menu so the others are crowded out.
> If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption.
Habitual meat eater here. I will never ever trust these products to be right for my body the way meat is. Humans haven’t nailed it in the past with heavily processed foods, why would it suddenly work now? I understand the noble dream, I really do. But the fact is, unless I find myself in near poverty or poverty and (no added sugar) peanut butter is unavailable, imitation meat will never be a go-to for me.
Hell, not to mention the disgust I’d feel eating it while knowing my betters are certainly dining on the real thing.
It's not like meat is free from controversy, to play devil's advocate a little. We had beef that turned out to be horse for a moment in the UK.
Not to mention mad cow disease and similar issues.
What risks are you thinking of with plant based or lab grown? If anything it seems the lab environment would catch anything significant before it got out of the building.
I'm not arguing with you, honestly curious. I've not thought about this much.
HFCS wasn't last decade. Trans-fats wasn't last decade. We've known they were bad more than a decade ago.
Many more decades ago they marketed these artificial food alternatives without any evidence of long term health effects, and the process of "proving" them bad took many years (funny how the onus lies on the potential victims), and only recently we've been able to mostly contain the damage of HFCS and trans fats.
It seems every once a while this process restarts again. Americans sure love to play with their food. (I'm not American)
This seems like a bonkers thing to claim. You're suggesting that if someone gave you two burgers that tasted identical, one that was real meat and costs £5, and the other that was fake and costs £2, if they were other than that TOTALLY IDENTICAL (other than the fake one being better for the planet), you'd still feel the need to eat the real one? For some sense of perceived...offence?
100% Have we forgotten trans fats in margarine? By all accounts, it was butter but cheaper and "healthier". 70 years later, we realized it was worse for us that natural fats.
I would. I try to only eat fresh things that I could prepare at home. Why would I willingly eat 100 grams of refined coconut oil with yeast, potassium chloride, methylcellulose (a laxative) and a whole bunch of other stuff?
I'd rather eat less meat than replace it with this crap.
No added sugar peanut butter is not really a high quality protein source that can substitute for meat, not to mention there are doubts about the health of seed oils (peanuts may or may not be included here) and high omega 6.
You're right, but I can put up with eating a lot of it for long periods on end and it gets me through. I'm open to other suggestions of similar price/effort/tastiness with a better protein & nutrition profile. As long as it's not crazy processed.
Buy whole chicken when it’s on sale, if you have a freezer you can stock up and break it down into pieces in advance.
A 4oz piece of chicken probably gives a better combination of amino acids than many servings of peanut butter.
Edit: actually I looked it up and peanuts are a decent source of protein, the issues are possibly omega6 and getting peanut butter without added sugar or oil, you should be able to find peanut butter with just peanuts and salt as ingredients.
Humans weren't originally growing meat to eat, either. We were catching it - which puts an upper limit on both the amount of the meat eaten, and on how fatty that meat it.
So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat and actively seek it out? And they're catering to them by... replacing existing vegetarian options? They must not have read your comment. Sounds like a bad market fit.
The number of people who eat meat and don't care if their meat is made of meat has got to be in the 7 figure range worldwide. The number of people that don't eat meat and want their vegetables to taste like meat is probably larger, though still miniscule. It's failing because there's no market for it.
I don’t know if anyone should even be targeting the second group.
I don’t think a significant number of people who “start” with beyond meat are going to end up vegetarians.
In fact I think it’s more likely that they go back to eating meat the same amount once they’re done with the substitutes. And maybe if they’re as (rigid? closed-off?) as we’re implying (since they are not already actively eating less meat), they might even walk away with the mindset of “vegetarian food is not as good as meat” and therefore in future avoid the wide variety of delicious vegetarian food.
If people truly want to eat less meat, just throw in some of the most delicious off-the-shelf replacements (like veggie patties) once a week or once a month. The water’s fine, as they say.
> So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat
No!!!
The target market is habitual meat eaters. People who grab a hot dog as a snack. Eat a burger for lunch. Make pasta bolognese for dinner. Get chicken nuggets for the kids.
The vast majority of meat consumption is done without a strong craving for meat. People are just buying and eating dishes they like. Asking that all of these people consciously substitute those meals with vegetarian meals is not going to happen in a million years.
But if the cheapest hot dog is fake meat, and taste the same, they'll switch. If the cheapest burger is fake meat, and taste the same, they'll switch.
It's not as impossible as you make it sound IMO, I would guess it's more a matter of pricing. If plantburgers and plantdogs where considerable cheaper than meatburgers and hotdogs I would guess people would follow the money and shift to consuming the plant based alternative if they were otherwise close enough.
Well, we're running that experiment right now with soaring meat prices and it looks like you're wrong. Turns out if you make one type of meat more expensive then people just switch to a different kind of meat. If you make all meat more expensive, people buy cheaper cuts and get creative with how they prepare it. My bet is that if you make it prohibitively expensive then people will get creative about sourcing their meat instead so rather than go to the grocery store they'll put in a group order direct from CSA or a small independent meat producer and just store a years supply in a deep freeze.
It turns out a lot of people just prefer eating meat over other options regardless of price. I'm not really surprised.
I think your comment acknowledges that we're not running this experiment. These "fake meat" products are still way more expensive than actual meat. If fake meat actually drops substantially below the cost of meat, we can see what happens, but as you suggest there's really no sign they can compete on price yet.
I do think that if the target market for Beyond really was meat eaters, they've been deluding themselves. Maybe they can shave off a few meat eaters due to the ethical issues, but how many? Ultimately, I have to assume the only way to win many over is on cost, which would have to be a high volume low margin business (if it's even possible to get the prices that low).
I'm not 100% sure it's a product issue and not a market positioning issue. Current gen "new fake meat" veggie brands try to position themselves at premium, which looks like the wrong place to be in. At premium fake meats loose to meat, hands down.
It's like you are trying to position fish sticks on the same slot as fresh salmon.
Huge marketing campaign, target low price segment - that would be the market experiment I would be really interested in.
Maybe. Maybe not. Poor people are pissed off these days and boy that sends the message “we’re taking meat away too now! For a hundred years you knew at least you had meat on the table, but we’re going back to the good ‘ol days of serfdom. Enjoy the slop!”
I have already seen this sentiment among poor people.
Well, it's about marketing and positioning isn't it. Veggie based diets are plausibly healthier due to higher content of fiber - and health is generally considered an admirable trait. So the marketing should not be about selling a cheap offering, but something like Coca-Cola (everyone likes it!) and celebrities enjoying the product and so on. A campaign that draws everyone to the product basically (like cigarettes in olden times). I'm not sure if you can achieve something like that today though. But at least US food industry used to be really great at selling a cheap product to the masses if they put their marketing muscle behind it :)
I'm a meat eater and I really prefer no meat over fake meat. A good vegetable curry, ratatouille, stew, pasta or a portobello mushroom burger really beats all of the fake meat substitutes for me. If meat becomes too expensive, I'll just cut it out completely... Until lab grown meat becomes a viable alternative. All these fake meat substitutes are just awful, to me.
I'm definitely a habitual meat eater. I don't have a vegetarian bone in my body. Yet I'd prefer a vegetarian burger to have beans and carrots, to having one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste.
That is, while I'm happy to eat a perfect meat substitute, I'm also don't have a problem with vegetables and I'd rather have a totally-not-meat burger than a not-quite-meat burger.
> one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste.
I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley?
I love meat but eat it rarely. And I like burgers, even the cheap McDonald’s stuff. But burger patties are basically entirely their own texture, which is only loosely related to beef meat.
Now a burger with lightly cooked and well seasoned, real fresh ground beef? It’s a different product altogether. But it’s also less popular and I don’t think it’s what beyond meat tries to replace.
> I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley?
Yeah what they need to imitate faithfully is the fastfood variety. I'm sure that's slightly easier than imitating the "proper" thing. What they have now is the not-quite-a-fastfood-thing even.
Which is why OP complains about "One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus".
As a meat-eater, these products have been great as an option for sharing a meal with my vegetarian friends. I don't really know good vegetarian recipes, but I know how to cook a burger.
I mostly don't eat meat now, but actually started for this reason alone - I wanted to level up my vegetarian cooking skills, so gave myself a challenge of not eating/cooking any meat for a month.
The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat, and if you go by bio availability of the nutrients, a fraction of the same nutritional value as actual meat. And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land.
So either way, it wont work that well in it's current state.
> The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat
That's only because we are "subsidising" meat production cost through immense animal suffering. Once you have regulations that make the animals we keep in captivity have a somewhat good life, then meat price goes through the roof and those alternatives are the only reasonable option for the non-rich.
> And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land.
And where do you think the animal food is grown? Instead of feeding it to animals, make veggy dishes out of it.
It's true that some land can't be reasonably used for growing and harvesting crops, and keeping animals there which turn this into high quality protein is the best option, but that's only for certain regions on the planet.
I buy ethically raised %100 pasture raised ground beef at ~$6/lbs from whole foods, and a 1 lb packet of "beyond burger" is even more expensive than that at $11/lbs (!) at the same shop. There is barely any profit margin in beef, while beyond burger does have relatively healthy one at that price looking at the ingredient list and price. I can also buy a quarter cow for $8/lbs locally raised similarly. %100 pasture raised is how you think it is, eating grass in some field for %100 of it's life, protected from predators, which is pretty much the type of life it would have in the wild with less stress. Not to mention it's better nutritionally than the standard %75 pasture raised / %25 grain finished beef you buy at a costco.
Impossible burgers take an order of magnitude less land to produce than beef. They're not made of vegetables. Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease. Putting soy in a veggie burger results in way more nutrition than putting soy in a cow.
Vegetable or edible plant food is a bit of splitting hairs, they require the same kind of agricultural land that can sustain vegetable crops. Looking at the ingredient list of beyond burger, it's mostly grain and vegetable based, and of that the bulk of it is rice & peas along with 3 kinds of plant oil:
"Ingredients: Water, Pea Protein†, Expeller-pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Protein, Natural Flavors, Dried Yeast, Cocoa Butter, Methylcellulose" (there are a bunch of ingredients that are less than %1 that I'm excluding)
On top of that, there is a vast amount of land you will never be able to use for vegetable crops, and the ONLY way you will get food out of it is ruminant grazing. Removing that from the food supply is going to create price shocks and even more soil depletion as food demand concentrates on that %25 of land left. On top of that, animal food production takes a lot of uneditable plant material and turns it into something human edible, which subsidizes vegetable prices. Without that either plant prices will go up.
This focus on plant only nutrition reminds me of 'environmentalists' shunning nuclear power, and in the end cause more damage to the earth via increased coal power production in the end, like Germany. While the actual answer is nuclear and solar power. Cows and other ruminants are the nuclear power of food.
> Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease.
That is fairly outdated science, it's quite the opposite actually! In 10 to 20 years, your doctor is going to start singing the praises of saturated fat and it's going to be quite hilarious. You can look up research papers today.
It is all magical and ideological driven thinking that ignores scale.
Solve one problem and pretend the solution that works at a micro scale has no issues scaling up.
I am completely down to eat bugs even but eating bugs at a scale anything close to meat in general is a laughable amount of bugs. We would probably need 10 times the long haul trucking to ship that many bugs around.
No, in ground-up form you can ship much more bug protein than meat because you are transporting a lot of water (and refridgeration tech) with that meat. Not to even speak of transporting animals, especially live ones, which is a suffering desaster in and of itself.
If water weight is the case, you can dehydrate the meat already? Beyond / impossible burger is shipped wet, and most unprocessed raw plant food is shipped wet too.
There's the kicker; the "meat replacement" industry is not in it for the good of humanity or whatever, they're in it for the money. They know there's a demographic of people who feel guilty and who are willing to pay extra to soothe their conscience.
I'm going to sound like a gatekeeper here, but Real Vegetarians know how to cook without something that looks or tastes like meat. Meat replacement patties are just... uninspired and lazy conscience comforting food products. IMO and such.
I wouldn't object to better stimulus from up above, that is, make vegetable options more available, diverse, and affordable. Frozen is fine.
Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process (maybe lab grown meat will get us there someday). Human grade food is more expensive, often considerably so. Animals essentially get the leftovers that we can't eat so they are afforded a huge price advantage and it is not clear how that is to be overcome sustainably.
Circumstances – widespread disease, for example – could see the price of meat exceed these products for periods of time. At which point these products could become contenders on factors of price, but as soon as the market starts to shift the price of meat will fall on the decrease in demand, and you're back to square one. Especially as meat has lag time to market so the price will fall further than you might expect before meat producers are able to pull back on production. There is nothing to keep people eating these products if there is nothing to differentiate them in the market.
The real value proposition is that it is different. A new food option to choose from. If it can be made great, where it is craved as much as meat, then they might have something. Until then, I can see why they are struggling.
You are missing the core technology point that drives the underlying thesis here - ‘every manufactured good, gets cheaper per unit as you make more and more of it’.
Whether this is from the lab, a recipe of plant inputs, or some other currently unknown thing - if you are able to develop and commercialize a product around a ‘specific technology’, you can drive the cost of that down through experience and scale.
Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue).
By taking a technology with a much higher theoretical efficiency, and then scaling that up - creates the classic technology disruption scenario. ->‘It’s the cheaper version of X commodity, why wouldn’t I choose that?’
> Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’.
That would be pertinent if they were eating the same foods, but they don't eat the same foods. They eat the stuff we won't eat, produced largely either as a byproduct of the production of the foods we do eat or produced on lands that cannot support the foods we eat.
The more efficient we get in producing plants to eat, the more efficient byproducts there are for animals to eat, so you get a continuous relationship of meat becoming cheaper as other foods become cheaper. Economies of scale can only get you so far when the raw material inputs are your main cost centre.
The industry will have to move towards using those 'waste' products in order to be competitive, but at that point you're essentially just replicating animal processes and you're up against a 'machine' doing the same that has had millions of years to develop itself.
> Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue).
This really is such a cool take on it that it bums me out to say…
>why wouldn’t I choose that?
…because I just[0] don’t wanna eat fake meat.
[0] On a very deep, perhaps primal level. I can feel it rooted so far in my brain it’s hard to convey. Rather eat peanut butter at every meal.
> Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process
I'd say cheaper doesn't seem feasible without duplicating the subsidies received by the meat industry (including farming of animal feed). Give similar subsidies to the plant-based-meat industry, and I'd bet that meat replacements will be much cheaper than meat.
But there's a political risk at that: Meat industry has huge political influence. If their profits are hurt, they would probably demand even more subsidies for covering their "loss". Or you can expect farmers on the streets, and your political oposition taking advantage of the situation.
I'll grant you poultry (chicken, turkey) producers with their sweet, sweet supply management deal. But producers of other meat products? I'd say they are essentially ignored in political circles. If they actually had huge political influence they'd be all over supply management like the poultry producers are afforded. If you venture out into the backroads it's painfully obvious how much richer the poultry producers are compared to their beef and pork producing neighbours, and it is downright sad when you look at those producing less common meats.
The government pays 40% of the insurance premiums for crop insurance (insurance against mother nature) which is a subsidy to plant growers, and is sometimes claimed to by a subsidy to animal producers by extension, but the program doesn't factor in where the product goes. Navy beans grown for humans are very bit as eligible for those subsidies as corn grown for cattle. While it is fair to call it a subsidy, it would be quite disingenuous to claim that is a meat subsidy but not a 'meat alternative' subsidy as well.
Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not.
The idea of a lettuce tomato onion burger stack on a bun is that there's a taste and texture contrast between the stack of vegetables and something that's not another stack of vegetables but mashed. (Doesn't mean it has to be Beyond or Impossible, see last para.)
I suspect displacement happened because folks paying $25 for a "burger" when out are less interested in the garden mash, want something a little edgier. FWIW, before Beyond and Impossible, at any restaurant or diner where I took time to explain the difference in alt-burger types, they were willing to try ones I mention below, and they reported customers preferred it. In many, someone had just told them "have a vegetarian burger" and they just got the mashed veggies patty or mashed beans cake since that's what most products are. Not being vegetarian themselves, they weren't aware of other availability. By contrast, Impossible and Beyond essentially went door to door "educating" them, so they switched.
While Impossible and Beyond displaced the meat alternatives, that doesn't mean you have to go meat in a vat at home, you can do products such as Morningstar Farms Grillers Original, or maybe Boca All-American Flame-Grilled Burger. Those taste stack more reasonably with what goes on a burger than the mashed vegetables patties, without the weirdness (fake blood look, why?) of Impossible or Beyond. Your local diner will probably be happy to stock them as they're simple frozen goods.
> Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not.
I can agree that "mashed vegetables" does not describe a good veggie patty. I don't agree that a good veggie patty fails in "burger" format.
I can easily imagine that some people have simply never tasted a good veggie patty in "burger" format, because they are rare.
This is the root of most "meat alternatives" in average restaurants -- much of the restaurant world hasn't figured out that providing vegetarian options isn't about finding equivalent "meat replacements" but instead about cooking up options that stand on their own and taste great.
> While Impossible and Beyond displaced the meat alternatives
In my experience the "meat alternative" patties have not displaced the good veggie patties in the restaurants that had good veggie patties to begin with.
> ...that doesn't mean you have to go meat in a vat at home, you can do products such as Morningstar Farms Grillers Original, or maybe Boca All-American Flame-Grilled Burger. Those taste stack more reasonably with what goes on a burger than the mashed vegetables patties, without the weirdness (fake blood look, why?) of Impossible or Beyond. Your local diner will probably be happy to stock them as they're simple frozen goods.
A beef burger patty has the wonderful property that it is simply made of meat -- a good beef patty has no ingredient lists because it isn't a packaged food.
A good veggie patty is also made on site of simple whole foods, in the same way a good burger is and in the same way any other good meal is.
Any frozen puck taken from a bag and slapped on a grill fails the test, be it comprised mostly of beef, soy, beans, "beyond beef", wheat, or whatever. Those things are about convenience, not taste.
FWIW, to each their own, but I have the complete opposite experience and opinion:
1. First off, the vast majority of restaurants that I've been to that offer Impossible or Beyond Burgers still offer at least one traditional veggie burger. In fact I don't know if I've ever seen a restaurant that will only offer a faux meat burger but not offer a veggie burger.
2. I love a good Impossible Burger, fundamentally because it satisfies my cravings for meat in a way veggie burgers never do. Faux meat burgers have very similar protein/fat/carb ratios to real meat, while veggie burgers are nearly always a ton of carbs. I can eat an Impossible Burger and feel full for hours. I eat a veggie burger and I'm hungry again really quickly.
Complete opposite experience on both counts, anecdotally. I've been vegetarian for years, and the texture of meat (and substitutes) creeps me out. My town has like 10 restaurants that dropped their veggie burgers for beyond/impossible.
I'm not a vegetarian but I used to sometimes enjoy eating the old style veggie burgers that didn't try to taste like meat. I can't find them anymore and I absolutely loath beyond meat and impossible.
I lean vegetarian/vegan these days and have echoed on this very forum that Beyond/Impossible have crowded out any form of unique approaches. It's led to everything at restaurants tasting way too similar.
I'm a vegetarian but I very much agree and I'm surprised to see the dislike of these product on this thread from both camps.
I want the full fat, greasy, meaty nostalgia of my very American-diet childhood and Impossible/Beyond have finally gotten 95% to achieving that. I definitely do not want some bean/vegetable patty with low fat, low salt, and weird texture.
Additionally, my Midwestern-diet wife happily eat Impossible (not Beyond) burgers with me which is a pleasant surprise.
I agree with OP.
Fake patties taste like... erm...
But a nice veggie patty with peas, corn and stuff is great.
Maybe I agree, that this modern crappy fake food is make by meat eaters for people who try to not eat so much meat, but they forgot that a normal veggie patty doesn't need to taste like meat.
I love Beyond Sausages for that very reason. they cook up like a sausage, they even have a sausage like skin. I think its pretty great, although highly processed and not suitable for staple food IMMO.
> a nice veggie patty with peas, corn and stuff is great.
That's irrelevant - someone who is in the mood for a meat patty burger won't be happy with a veggie patty no matter how great it tastes, unless it tastes like meat.
There's tons of comments here saying how nice veggie patties can be[1], but none of the posters saying this have the self-awareness to realise that the taste of veggie patties are irrelevant if they don't taste like meat to people who want a meaty taste.
[1] I agree, they can be very nice, and when I'm in the mood for one, I choose it.
Yeah, I agree, but most fake meat doesn't taste like meat. It tastes like made out of grain and stuff. Sure, there are some brands who can mimik the taste quite good, but this stuff will never ever really taste and feel like meat, because it isn't. And some people might try it, think that it nearly is meat maybe, but not 100% and then never try it again. Like me :D
I would always prefer a true veggie patty, but maybe I'm not the target audience. But I should, because I often tried to not eat so much meat but failed because of bad tastes.
I hate veggie patties and feel like they were always the frost-bitten-back-of-the-freezer-kept-around-in-case-a-vegetarian-one-day-visits option that a restaurant falls back on. Not a vegetarian any more, but I don't think in the years that I was that I ever ate an enjoyable veggie pattie. As you said, it's 100% matter of taste so there's no right or wrong, but the opposing viewpoints are fascinating...
Same here. I’ve tried many veggy patties at restaurants and only ever had one that I liked, and even going back to that same restaurant is hit or miss. It is rare to find one that isn’t either very dry and flavorless or soggy, mushy and impossible to bite without squeezing out of the patty.
Beyond and Impossible aren’t amazing but they are decent and consistent.
Same here, I don't care either way whether it's trying to taste like meat or not - I've had too many tasteless, dry bean burgers that any alternative is welcome
I much prefer Beyond Burgers as well, and the sausages. I even invested in the company, and it's surprising to me the negative press and Wall St shorting action.
>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
Veggie burgers are in a weird position because it's hit or miss on whether they are made with eggs. So it alienates vegans. I don't even bother checking at restaurants if the veggie burgers are vegan anymore. But with Beyond and Impossible, the name recognition is there. Vegetarians and vegans alike know they can eat it. It alienates fewer people. That said, I want as many choices as possible when I go out to eat, so being able to choose a (vegan) veggie burger would be great.
I used to go to Dos Toros once a month or so. They used to have a burrito option where the protein was replaced with a vegetable selection. I’m sure that it varied by region, but around me it was usually a roasted variety of squashes. When combined with all the other burrito toppings, it was hands-down the best thing on their menu.
Then they replaced that with beyond/impossible at a higher price. I tried it once, and it basically killed the aura. Now it’s just another burrito shop, no different than any other.
It's very sad that so much veggie food is now with egg. A horrible rancid flavour that meat eaters and veggies alike don't like. But it's cheap and heavily subsidised so goes into everything as a filler.
The thing is BM (and others) aren't trying to create vega/vegetarian meat. They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way, so it has to taste more like beef/pork than chickpeas or tofu if they want to get the main market.
As a pretty hardcore meat-lover (we had sous-vide filets tonight at home), I think Impossible is close enough on the taste and feel side for a lot of dishes that use beef (including hamburgers).
They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.
Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.
>Economies of scale will push the cost down over time.
This is, of course, true, but as a business proposition it's a bit daunting.
When you're competing with industrial agriculture, you're competing with a technology stack that's tens of thousands of years old, spans the globe, and employs literal billions of people. It's not quite the same as accepting a couple years of unprofitability when scaling up a social network. What if it takes centuries?
"The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today."
Those numbers don't make sense. If you follow the chain of references, they seem to be made up.
(Why do I say the numbers don't make sense? a) That subsidy works out to about 35 cents per person per day. How could that possibly reduce the price of a pound of hamburger by a factor of 6? b) In other countries, a Big Mac costs at most $6.71. The $13 figure seems to be nonsense.)
I agree the reference is weak and there is most likely a large amount of conjecture behind that number, but the numbers don't a priori not make sense.
Subsidies can have both > 1 multiplier impacts and non-linear impacts. For example, subsidies allow for artificial economies of scale to kick in that can then bring the price down significantly. However, were those subsidies to dry up, then certain thresholds may no longer be met and you may see again a non-unitary and non-linear rise in price.
Indeed this is the main theoretical reason why a society would be interested in subsidies: they can get back more benefit than what they pay for in the form of the subsidy.
AFAIK there is no subsidizing of the beef industry in the US directly. There is subsidies for the sales of common feed plant crops and that's an indirect subsidy for growing beef, but that also applies burgers made directly from plants.
This is dwarfed by feed subsidies. Feed subsidies don't convert directly to edible-food subsidies; the 'big five' staple crops are subsidized independent of 'specialty' crops, and the vast majority of corn is grown for feed and ethanol in the US, and is of a variety not used for any kind of human food production.
The corn for feed is just used as a protein source though. I'm not sure why you couldn't grind it up for use as a protein source in say a plant-based burger.
Isn't most of the meat subsidy via the feed? Shouldn't competing plant-based products be able to benefit from the same subsidy? Buy a ton of corn, extract the zein (protein), make a burger, use the excess carbohydrates for ethanol (fuel or liquor).
Agreed. The first time I had an Impossible burger, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just the weird name the hotel bar in SF I was at gave its burgers. Loved it, they made a great burger. I had no idea it was nonmeat until weeks later when I learned what Impossible was.
Now, if I'd known to look out for it, I'm sure I could have picked and found out. But since I wasn't looking for a difference, I didn't notice one. And that's coming from someone who eats a ton of (real) burgers.
I’m surprised by this… they’re possibly 20% more expensive in the grocery store here in the UK, but not 3x. More like on the order of what you’d pay for a meat product that was particularly high quality.
I don't understand how you can say this. The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all. The texture is wrong, the feel chewing it is wrong, the taste is wrong unless you slather it with enough condiments that you can't taste it anyway. It is exactly the sort of highly processed industrially-created food that health experts tell us to avoid.
I’ve seen huge improvement, from what felt like a lump of shredded beetroot and corn 18 months ago and made me swear off veggie patties, to being a patty that will permanently replace beef burgers in my diet (not a huge component anyway, maybe 1 /2 a month).
In general I’d rather eat vegetarian than fake chicken or sausages, but beyond meat’s current product makes me feel optimistic about a future without methane emissions.
I had seen a family of 8 people by accident grab our order of impossible burgers from BK by accident and consuming them, while we were waiting for our order. When we figured out what happened and tried to explain to them that they just ate meatless burgers, they couldn’t understand what we’re talking about. It was believable enough for them, I guess.
That’s the issue here, veggie folks think meat tastes gross and everyone who eats it is evil and carnivores think vegetables taste gross and vegans are just NPC henchmen for the Illuminati
Non-animal protein has two main traditions that are quite different: on the one hand you have the tradition that since antiquity has avoided animal protein and don't try to imitate texture or flavor (say South India) and the other tradition which does not completely avoid animal protein and often complements animal protein with plant analogues ("temple food" with origin in China) These offerings sometimes try to come as close as possible to animal and fish protein in texture look and taste. It's the difference between your veggie burger and your impossible burger. One is not trying to be anything but itself the other one is attempting to pass for the other.
Sometimes it seems these BM and IF, etc., are trying to simultaneously cater to both customers at once. That will likely not work as they are different customers.
> They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way
I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier.
I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm animals.
Densely-quartered urban dwellers eating like sparsely-populated pastoralists is not sustainable. A theory behind the sanctification of cows in India is because a cow kept for its meat feeds far fewer people than one kept for its milk. The same would apply to some of the climate effects, such as the feed crops, although I don't know if it would change the cow-emitted methane.
Not sure what your point is, but agriculture needs to change dramatically in the next couple of decades.
Human civilization/all life that wants to keep existing also needs to change dramatically in the next five billion years but I think that is to be expected.
Water usage is heavily region dependent - grass fed beef from a region which does not depend on well irrigation essentially has net zero water usage. The cows eat grass and drink water, which they then piss out watering the grass. This is for sure a problem in an arid region dependent on aquifers to raise livestock, but for instance the midwest has plentiful rain (sometimes far too much in fact) and "water usage" isn't a meaningful limitation. Often times the water usage numbers quoted include all the rain that fell to grow the silage that the cows eat, which still ends up in the same aquifers and rivers eventually whether it passes through a cow or not. There are concerns if there is a poorly managed high point source concentration of manure which causes nutrient runoff into waterways, but that's a far different conversation.
Methane is a better example, but ironically factory farming has the answer there. Collecting manure in a waste pool and turning it into biogas turns it from a negative to a net positive.
"We find irrigation of cattle-feed crops to be the greatest consumer of river water in the western United States, implicating beef and dairy consumption as the leading driver of water shortages and fish imperilment in the region. We assess opportunities for alleviating water scarcity by reducing cattle-feed production, finding that temporary, rotational fallowing of irrigated feed crops can markedly reduce water shortage risks and improve ecological sustainability. Long-term water security and river ecosystem health will ultimately require Americans to consume less beef that depends on irrigated feed crops."
It's probably sustainable for everyone to eat a large fraction of a pound of meat per week. The average American eats over 4lbs. of meat per week. This is not sustainable.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.
I love meat, and the best non-meat burgers I've eaten that I would absolute eat again and again, didn't try to be non-meat. They were just really tasty vegetable burgers.
Me too (regarding the best veggie burgers) — the best I’ve had were nothing like meat burgers, but were awesome nonetheless.
One is in a cookbook called “the vegan Korean”, and it’s a legitimately memorable food experience. I’d much rather find that at a restaurant than some kind of run-of-the-mill faux meat burger.
I think what companies who want to cater to vegetarians and vegans should do is focus more on providing plant based foods that AREN'T pretending to be meat. I'm not a vegan, never have been, but I quite like a lot of vegetarian foods. But I tried a beyond burger once just out of curiosity and it just... smelled wrong. There was something about it that put me off immediately on a primal level. My guess is that sales surged initially as curious non-vegans tried the fake meat, only for most to realize that it wasn't nearly as tasty and go back to actual meat, leaving the main customer base as vegans trying their best to convince themselves that no it tastes good actually. Providing options such as grilled vegetables that are actually super tasty is a way better idea than just trying to mold weird processed plant matter into a vague approximation of "meat".
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
This is literally the whole point of the Food Chain and why species counts generally decrease as you go up the chain. Plants make up the vast majority of biomass on the planet. Animals that eat plants make up the next largest chunk. Animals that eat those animals make up the next largest. Etc.
I eat meat, but it's undeniable that vegetation is far more economic than meat on sheer scale.
I have eaten land-based predator meat before, and it's usually very oily and not good for you at all. I wouldn't recommend them. Fish that eat other fish, like Tuna, can be tasty but are still not very nutritious.
Understood that you dont;
But before Beyond/Impossible came, there used to be veggie patty that vegetarians enjoyed. And many of them have never tasted meat, and don't want to eat something that tastes like meat.
OP's point is that Beyond/Impossible replaced the veggie patty with a non-meat version of meat patty, instead of adding a new item in the menu.
And, honestly, as a meat-eater I really enjoy certain veggie patties. It's not meat, but it shouldn't be. They're their own delicious thing.
When I'm in the mood for a veggie burger, I don't want a hamburger. Restaurants shouldn't replace veggie patties with imitation meat -- they should have both.
The thing some vegetarians do not understand is that traditional cuisine from all over the World is basically 90% vegetarian, because poor people had to survive too.
I'm Italian, I could eat vegetarian meals everyday for a month without ever eating the same thing twice.
Same goes for all of Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa or South America.
Vegetable dishes are the foundation of every established culinary tradition.
There's absolutely no need for incredible|magical|impossible|whatever meat.
> The thing some vegetarians do not understand is that traditional cuisine from all over the World is basically 90% vegetarian, because poor people had to survive too.
Sure, some people of every ilk are likely to be uninformed about some aspect of the world or the other. How does that apply in the current context? Most meals for most people worldwide are essentially vegetarian, even if the people are not obligate vegetarians. Are there some vegetarians unfamiliar with the reality of practically all world cuisines? Sure - and? Impossible meats aren't directed towards these people, and they aren't looking to substitute the taste of a burger. They're likely not averse to it, for what it's worth.
> Sure, some people of every ilk are likely to be uninformed about some aspect of the world or the other
I am absolutely not claiming that, I am absolutely claiming that beliefs based on feelings and not hard truths tend to reject rational arguments, hence their members are usually not the most curious people around and it's common they ignore things that are obvious to the rest of us.
Take a western vegetarian, we all know a few of them and some vegan too.
Most vegetarians/vegan inform themselves in vegetarian communities, which are based on the same western principles where they were born, mainly North America.
Most vegetarian communities are based on spurious correlations, like the fact that 80% of people from India are Hinduists, a religion that promotes a lacto-vegetarian diet letting people believe that 80% of Indians are vegetarians, which is obviously completely false.
Christianity promotes a mostly vegetarian diet too, there's a list of food that you should not consume on certain days, nobody follows those prescriptions anymore, they are thousands years old and come from the Jewish traditions.
But if I say that 30% of the World population is Christian, a religion that promotes a mostly vegetarian diet, things sound completely different.
Don't also forget that in vegetarian circles meat is the root cause of everything bad: from cancer[1] to diabetes[2], deforestation[3], being overweight [4], depression[5] and even infertility[6] (yes, you heard right!)
All these claims have been either debunked, highly exaggerated or correlated when there is no factual evidence. Yet they resist in the narrative of these communities, like the idea that Christ died on a cross and then came back to life 3 days later. It's false, we know it is, but people still believe it and there's nothing we can do about it.
It's easy to understand the stigma that these manipulatory lies can create around "traditional food", these people often think of themselves as revolutionary going against the status quo, so their enemy are their local traditions, not just the meat (everyone eats some meat around them, so it must be "the others their ways and they do not see it").
So they end up eating a lot of food that is not local nor traditional (tradition equals bad, remember?), such as tofu, that in Italy is totally not traditional nor commonly used, yet most vegetarians and vegans rely on it.
The reason why?
Vegetarianism in the west is a business, if you can sell the dirty cheap tofu at 5-10 euros/kg (that's the price in Italy) while poultry costs 3-5 euros/kg (raw, raised on the ground and antibiotic free) you can understand how convenient it is to sell people the idea that you need to eat tofu instead of pasta with tomato sauce (1-1.5 euros/kg), you are in for the big bucks.
Don't dismiss what I say just because you disagree, I've researched the topic a lot, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
> Most meals for most people worldwide are essentially vegetarian, even if the people are not obligate vegetarians
Sooner or later people in the west will understand that there are people among us priding themselves for not eating meat while our pets, for example cats, every year eat 10 times the meat an average central African person has to eat, suffering the horrendous consequences of malnutrition, like watching their children die of hunger or curable disease that their bodies weakened by the forced plant based diet hadn't the strength to fight, and we don't see a problem with that.
The irony is that those people are in developing countries, they are developing, they will eventually eat more meat, no way they will keep dying for a made up belief, for those who care about animal suffering I have an advice: renounce to pets. They eat too much meat, they kill too many animals, they are not sustainable.
I think you're conflating the median North American vegetarian with the median vegan. Your comment makes a lot more sense if I substitute "vegan" for wherever you've used "vegetarian". If you do indeed mean "vegetarian", then I think it makes much less sense in contemporary America, for example.
Yes, almost every vegan I've known is optimizing to minimize animal "cruelty", defined on their own ideological terms. Meanwhile, almost every vegetarian I've known is either one for religious reasons (and have their tradition's cultural cuisines to draw from) or simply don't like meat. I also know many Muslims who avoid meat at restaurants since it's not halal. I am struggling to recall any vegetarians that eat an average American diet by simply replacing meat with something like tofu.
If your intent is indeed to refer to vegetarians, I think that hasn't been the case in the US since perhaps the 90s. American vegetarianism really took off in the cultural context of the 60s and 70s, where Eastern ideas & sensibilities were imported but not the people or their cuisines. If a median American in the 70s wanted to maintain a meat free diet, their options were genuinely restricted. That's certainly not the case now, where the median American vegetarian is likely of recent immigrant descent, and has their heritage cuisine to inspire vegetarian meals. Changes to American immigration policy and the segment of countries where immigrants have come from have changed American vegetarianism. I also think something like Impossible burgers have very little appeal to the median vegetarian, since they're not interested in the taste of meat to begin with.
Yes, unlike the median American vegetarian, the median American vegan tends to appear spontaneously among families that are not themselves vegan. Unlike vegetarians, they don't have a rich family tradition to draw from, and plenty learn to just wing it. That said, I do think even this is likely not the case anymore. Today, in any big city, good vegan/vegetarian food is easy to find. As an illustrative example, I asked a relative who's lived in NYC for 40 years what his favorite restaurant meal has been (he absolutely loves steak). His favorite restaurant is a vegan Korean BBQ. Similarly, I've been informed by Mexicans of an amazing Mexican vegan place in Brooklyn.
I love a good veggie patty burger. I also like the Impossible burger. I'd love to see both on a menu so I can choose the one I want. And heck I'll eat a meatburger on special occasions as well. There are a couple of local restaurants that had really nicely done veggie patties that have been displaced by Beyond/Impossible burgers, and it's a shame.
> But I don’t want a veggie patty. I want a hamburger that doesn’t involve killing animals
so basically you want a veggie patty disguised as an hamburger.
but there's a catch: agriculture kills as many animals than we do to eat them.
You might not see them, but billions of insects, worms, small rodents etc are killed in the process of making agriculture a viable business.
Pesticides are not exactly environmental friendly.
But then the crops need to be protected from their natural predators: herbivores!
You might have asked yourself sometimes why we don't see deers, boars, jackrabbits, cows, goats (the list is endless) roaming free close to crop fields and the answer is simple: they eat the crops, so they have been killed in the past and are now kept away, maybe not shooting them directly, but not asking gently either.
That causes massive repercussions on natural fauna too: coyotes, wolves, bears, cougars, bobcats etc cannot survive in absence of preys.
So basically veggie patties are not made of dead animals, but a lot of animals died so that we could eat them.
I appreciate the very good points you are making, however I do not consider these morally equivalent. Specifically the indirect affects of agriculture on local wildlife vs direct and largely unnecessary killing and suffering of animals.
I am aware of the objections coming from vegans, I really have nothing to say to them other than I am in favour of freedom of worship, but I am also an atheist who tries to stand on the side of the scientific method as much as my abilities allow me, so I think National Geographic and PNAS are a more reliable source of information.
Most importantly: loss of vegetable specie due to mono cultures farmed specifically for humans (tomatoes for burgers, for example - McDonald's is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, purchaser in the world of potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes - or avocados for fancy sandwiches, that consume 300 liters of water to produce a single fruit) is not be underestimated.
As an example, this sentence
> vegans are inflicting far less damage because most of the cereal crops that are mono-cropped (wheat, corn, soy, etc.) are fed to the animals people consume.
is almost completely made up and numbers are greatly exaggerated for propagandistic purpose.
The reason why original Parmigiano cheese is so worshipped by Italians and it's so expensive abroad, is exactly because cows are not fed with crops, bu with natural grass.
The reason why in USA many animals are fed with farmed crops is because crops are subsidized by the govt, making them cheaper than the alternatives.
Another reason why herbivores are fed with crops is because they can eat the remains we can't eat, which is around 85% of the whole plant
According to FAO (United Nations Agency for food) "only 13% of global animal feed (all animals for food, including chickens, pigs and cattle) is comprised of grain crops"
Crops are also heavily subsidized to produce bio fuel, which is not great, I agree, but that has nothing to do with feeding animals or eating their meat.
I don't think any of the sources you mentioned here actually justify animal agriculture on the grounds of causing less death, though. The first two sources aren't specific to agriculture specific to human consumption, just agriculture in general. Also, whether or not global livestock is primarily fed on human consumable crops isn't the issue. For example, a very large portion of the feed mentioned in one of your sources (the third one) is still coming from farmed crops, so even if it isn't human consumable that doesn't mean we don't consider deaths coming from it. The last source is just unrelated, as you acknowledge.
I think you'd need to have sources that prove that specifically crops grown for human consumption result in more deaths, or that we'd have to grow more of those crops to feed humans compared to the crops grown to feed animals.
Again, just to clarify, the third source you mention has categories for things like "by-products", "Other non-edible", "Oil seed cakes", etc. Whether or not humans can eat those is irrelevant. The point is that all those things could still be coming from crops grown in the same general way as the crops grown for human consumption. Does that make sense, or am I being too religious for your logical atheistic brain?
> I think you'd need to have sources that prove that specifically crops grown for human consumption
I think you don't understand the issue.
Vegetarians (and vegans) don't kill less animals, they simply don't eat them (or at least that's what they say...)
> The point is that all those things could still be coming from crops
The point is that eating meat, unless you are from the US, does not mean you're killing billions of animals for fun.
American domestic cats kill billion of birds and other small animals every year.
Why are vegetarians obsessed only with non vegetarian people and not with domestic cats, which they love?
Because it's a religious fight, not an ethical one.
They want to blame someone and found this.
Anyway: scientific method implies that if you say "vegetarians kill less animals" you should prove it with numbers, as humans their activities kill billion of animals every year all over the World.
Vegetarians are not outside of the human realm, they live in societies as we all do and the major source of animal killing and suffering is not eating some meat, that's only selection bias at work.
It would be the same as saying: plants produce oxygen, if you only eat plants you're robbing our planet of breathable air, you should replant every plant you eat.
But every normal well functioning human knows that it's stupid to divide people into good and bad.
That's exactly what vegetarians do.
If you believe in veganism, it's OK, religions are allowed in our societies.
If you believe "vegan facts" from a vegan website is the truth, I don't know what to say to you, you can't fight made up beliefs, I got the Pope in front of my house, I know you can't beat blind faith.
But, the claim has always been that vegetarians don't kill less animals, not that they kill more. Which is arguably true. You won't find vegans in poor countries, you'll find denutrished children starving to death, they'd eat some meat if they could, just to survive. Veganism is a first World problem and as many other first World problems it's completely disconnected from reality.
When you'll eat an entire plant of wheat from roots to the top, we can talk about eating only vegetables.
Until that day you are only wasting resources, as any of us western humans do so well.
On average each year every American eats 3 chickens. Are you sure vegetarians on average don't cause the death of 3 birds each year? Can you prove it? Can you prove the industry you rely on for food is more ethical and kills less animals?
If your objection is "but I don't eat chicken so I kill 3 chickens less than the average" remember that other people could reply "I don't eat vegetables as much as you, so the damages produced by the agriculture industry are much more on you than on me"
Waiting for the data, please refrain if you wanna answer with more propaganda.
> Vegetarians (and vegans) don't kill less animals
Source? Your claim, thus the onus is on you to prove this, which you haven't.
> American domestic cats kill billion of birds and other small animals every year.
Completely irrelevant whataboutism. Like, that's a textbook example of the fallacy.
> Vegetarians are not outside of the human realm, they live in societies as we all do and the major source of animal killing and suffering is not eating some meat, that's only selection bias at work.
> It would be the same as saying: plants produce oxygen, if you only eat plants you're robbing our planet of breathable air, you should replant every plant you eat.
I don't even know how to respond to this. If we include fish, then _trillions_ of animals are killed every year for their meat and body parts. How is that not the greatest source of animal suffering?
> If you believe in veganism, it's OK, religions are allowed in our societies.
This is such a lazy insult. Why do you insist on acting like you argue in good faith, yet say nonsense like this? Genuinely, why?
> You won't find vegans in poor countries, you'll find denutrished children starving to death, they'd eat some meat if they could, just to survive. Veganism is a first World problem and as many other first World problems it's completely disconnected from reality.
What is the point you're making here, exactly? Because some people in the world have limited access to non-animal based sources of nutrition then veganism as an ethical framework is entirely debunked. How on Earth does that follow?
Your style of debate is _not_ working, my guy. Your comment history in other threads seems to paint a picture of you not really arguing in good faith. If you want to continue this discussion, I'll only do it on a video call. My email is in my profile if you'd like to set that up.
>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.
This upsets me because as a vegetarian the last thing I want is to be reminded of what meat tastes like. Who exactly is this for? Because the last I heard it was being marketed primarily at meat eaters.
I’m a meat eater and I would love to find a faux ground beef or faux ground pork that I can use in the kitchen exactly the way I use beef/pork in my recipes. I would prefer such a food if it was similarly priced to animal, but more sustainable, because I would rather be vegetarian but not to the degree that I need to give up my favorite recipes. I need it to provide essential umami, salt, fat, flavor. Often vegetarian recipes suggest minced mushrooms for this purpose but maillard browned pork bits hit different. My favorite recipe uses something like 80g of ground pork and 540g of soft tofu. Clearly I’m not eating the pork because I prefer meat protein! But making the dish without the pork leaves it tasting a bit hollow. Adding a bit more MSG helps sometimes but isn’t a general fix.
(Note that beyond or impossible might fit the bill, but availability has been so inconsistent here for the more “raw” ground-X products versus patties/sausages that I haven’t gotten to try it. I don’t care much about burgers.)
I am omnivorous, but I have a sibling who is vegan. When we were both in the Bay Area, Golden Era ( https://www.goldeneravegan.com ) was a place that we found that... wasn't bad.
This was quite a while back but the first time we went in and looked at the menu the question of "is all of this vegan except for these two items with an asterisk?" (It was the 'classic' Chinese style menu with about 200 things on it with numbers to identify them).
I found the "drumsticks" and the pot stickers to be quite good. For an entree, I would have the Mongolian (now the 'Spicy Mongolian Delight') which was again quite good. The only problem with eating there is on the drive back home I'd have a hankering for some beef jerky.
We encountered that with a vegetarian restaurant in Mountain View (or was it Palo Alto? somewhere on El Camino Real) that had vegetarian food... but it was entirely boring without much flavor, texture, or... spirit. It was a bowl of bland vegetarian chili... with kale. No spices from onions, or garlic or anything really interesting. It was brown and green.
And so, that's what made Golden Era somehow different - it had flavor and did a lot of work with the sauces to make them interesting and desirable.
This is interesting. There's a few successful "vegetarian/vegan" places in my area, but they're all basically some variant of Chinese food and are from moderately to pretty good. There's also a few Indian places, but they don't really seem to register with the local vegetarian population as such, but at least can be quite good if you know where to look and have the usual amounts of flavor that Indian food tends to have.
However, there's a couple "Western" vegetarian/vegan joints in my immediate area that I've tried a couple of times. To be fair you get lots of food for the money, but both places produce a product that really is quite flavorless -- even with pretty different menus. Things like extra spicy vegan chili go down with the flavor profile of water, other dishes taste like salad baked in an oven, it's really dreadful shit. Yelp reviews for both places? 4+ stars. shrug
They make fake ground beef in a number of brands now and they all taste pretty similar once you season it to what the dish would be with meat. Imo the hard part is actually cooking the stuff. Theres no fat to render out to keep it from sticking to the pan really so you have to add your own, which it absorbs like a sponge because its so dry. In the end theres no way the nutrition facts are reflecting the final meal with it taking on so much oil in the pan.
Where I live in Australia, Coles has a vegan mince option that is pretty excellent. It requires longer to cook though, but it works brilliantly in chilli and pasta. $7.50 AUD for half a kilogram (and $4-5 on special), which is close enough to the price (and sometimes cheaper!) for real beef mince that I'm happy to use it regularly (as a vegan). It doesn't taste identical, but its close enough that my vegan partner who has been vegan for over a decade dislikes the smell haha
The trick is you must add a fair bit of olive oil to the pan, as it does not have the same fat content actual mince does. Once you do, it tastes brilliant in the dishes I'd use it for, with the seasoning and such we use.
Everything is of course flavour preference but I found that liquid smoke is a great add-on that makes much veggie food taste good to meat eaters; it takes care of the smokey/charred flavour that you get using ham or frying your meat before you add other things.
And for umami tomato (fresh/canned & condensed) works wonders.
Try tempah or mushrooms. (You might want to pan fry the mushroom first.) You could also try shelled edamame.
They aren't a one-to-one replacement for meat, but even when I've tried the impossible or beyond meat replacements, I find they taste like tofu instead of real meat.
Seitan is also nice for a ground sausage type texture.
It’s unfortunately not as appealing to many because seitan is wheat gluten. But it’s definitely worth trying; Chinese Buddhists haven’t been eating it since the sixth century on a whim.
The only tempeh I like personally is when we make our own using the Okara left over from making our own tofu -- that tastes fantastic fresh. I've never enjoyed eating the store bought stuff, even from the amazing Asian grocery stores here.
Meat from all kinds of animals is delicious. I'm a die-hard omnivore, but don't mind going sans meat for a few meals if the food tastes good -- think more "bear" diet than obligate carnivorous "T-Rex".
Intersect those two sets of food products and you get exactly who this is for.
Actually even more particularly, it's for food products where the absolute quality of the meat, and the way in which it is cooked, doesn't really matter all that much ... burgers, sausages, chicken nuggets, etc.
The problem really with these products is that the prices are absolutely hilariously ridiculous. If I could walk into a Burger King tomorrow, have no meat-based burgers and only Impossible burgers, but all the prices were 20% lower, I would eat...at least 20% more Burger King. Maybe more.
But right now the prices for an Impossible Whopper can be 20% more than the one made from an animal raised at great expense.
Beyond Meat's real problem is that it's not as convincing of a meat substitute as an Impossible Burger, leaving it deep in the uncanny valley while an Impossible product can often times be imperceptibly the same as a low quality fast food burger patty.
Fake meat is a replacement for meat, not for existing vegetarian food.
It is a common misconception that vegetarians want food that looks and taste like meat, but is vegetarian or vegan.
Most vegetarians already know what to eat.
Fake meat is for the carnivores who don't want to go cold turkey and have no idea what to eat otherwise.
Interesting you should mention that. I used to really like the spicy beanburger at McDonald's. There was no reason to make something that pretended to be meat with even more additives, except to drive the marketing of the non-meat meat industry. I'm happy to eat rice and beans, I don't need no pretend meat. Although I do eat meat about half the time.
Interesting I'm reading Michel Pollan's book the Omnivore's Dilemma, about large scale agriculture, it's quite worrying, although I don't feel the UK is quite at the stage of the US yet. I see quite a lot of animals roaming and diversity when I'm out walking, but it's definitely going in that direction.
> aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus
I've found a similar trend in the supermarket frozen aisles. I used to be able to reliably find "veggie crumbles" at most largeish stores, perfect for pizza, chili, or mapo tofu. My favorite brand was Quorn (not quite vegan, includes egg whites) but there were often several decent options. Now it's rare to find anything other than Beyond or Impossible, packaged to look and feel like ground meat, very fussy. They taste okay, but I prefer both the crumbles' flavors and form factors. I've gone back to using TVP. (I'm not vegetarian -- I'll happily brown my TVP in bacon grease.)
Honestly, the best approach is not making “fake” anything—black bean burgers and other home-made options not only taste way better, but they are not highly processed.
The more stages in processing a food undergoes, the worse it is for people. It’s really that simple.
People are trying to over-science food in my opinion. Sticking to good, wholesome ingredients is the way to go. Support local farmers not some large conglomerate factory.
If you have a home-made option that is built-to-taste, how can anything else be better? It’s tailor made for each individual. Hence “… and other home-made options.”
Whereas, a factory made thing is mass-produced and has to target the lowest-common-denominator.
As a rule, the animals from which meat is derived do not eat vegetables.
(...) livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans [1]
In particular, much of meat consumed by us is that of ruminants, which depend on eating foods which must be fermented internally to be assimilated, such as grass.
The global livestock sector ingested an estimated 6.0 billion tonnes of feed (DM) in 2010. The three major feed materials were grass and leaves (46% or 2.7 million tonnes, Fig. 2 and Table SI 2 in Supplementary Information), followed by crop residues such as straws, stover or sugar-cane tops (19% or 1.1 billion tonnes DM). At global level, human-edible feed materials represented about 14% of the global livestock feed ration. [1]
Livestock eat quite a bit of corn / maize, which we think of as both a vegetable (fresh) and a grain (dried). I took the original comment to be tongue in cheek though, and to just mean that eating plants is more efficient than eating plant eaters.
I'm with you and a lot of people apparently. I became a vegetarian a few decades ago. I'm of the opinion that there are plenty of vegetarian dishes that feature the vegetables, and I don't seek out dishes that are vegetables pretending to be meat. Probably the most well-known example is ToFurkey. I mean, I've had it, it's OK, but it's a salty processed food product. Just give me something featuring vegetables, no faux meat.
My conclusion is that we are not the target audience for fake burgers, because we are not missing what it's presumably giving some people. I'm pretty sure these patties are meant to assuage meat cravings in psychologically-obligate carnivores. Because otherwise, you're right. Almost all meat substitute dishes are missing the point; just cook vegetarian cuisine from the start. There are all manners of unhealthy deep fried deliciousness with plants, that don't involve heavily processing the plants to look and vaguely taste meaty first. And most of them, frankly, taste better than fake meat. But if you're in burger withdrawal, no onion rings or curry will help. Only meat, or perhaps, fake-meat, will sate that desire.
Been a vegetarian and enjoying veggie burgers for over 30 years now. The Beyond Meat patties taste too much like actual meat - that is, awful. The meat eaters don't like it because it's close, but not quite, like meat. The vegetarians don't like it because it tastes too much like meat and we have other, better tasting, options.
They've kind of hit an uncanny valley of food. As such, I say good riddance!
This resonates though. A lot of restaurants have vegetarian dishes prepared to taste sort of like meat (e.g. paneer tikka instead of chicken tikka etc.). It was telling that the reverse was never there. I never liked the trend but understood it since the vegetarians would like to enjoy the taste of the other food and this was a compromise. This seems to be next step in that evolution but from what I've read, the stuff is highly processed and has a ton of chemicals added for flavour, stability etc. There are several vegetarian dishes that I enjoy for the vegetarian taste and the last thing I want is for them to pushed aside for these highly processed products that try to approximate meat.
Ive been a vegetarian for nine years. I very quickly learned that you can tell the quality of a restaurant by the type of vegetation dishes it has. 'meat substitution' is lazy and generally means a poor chef.
As a note - many traditional curries are vegetarian, which isn't surprising as India has a long history of vegetarianism. Paneer curries have been around for at least a few hundred years with reasonable evidence for a few thousand. Whilst it may be a substitute for meat in a westernised 'x tikka masala', and half decent Indian restaurant should have some established dishes designed around the paneer.
Ten years ago, I found that the good-tasting veggie burgers invariably consisted of mostly carbs. The rare high-protein soy burger wasn’t very pleasant.
Most restaurants have plenty of tasty ways to deliver vegetarian carbs, but protein is harder to find. The Beyond and Impossible burgers aren’t perfect, but they do allow me to meet my macronutrient needs while satisfying a burger craving. Old-school veggie burgers don’t do the job.
> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus
I'm not vegan, but I've grown to always take the veggie burgers, unless they're beyond meat or black beans-based. They tend to be better than that dry-tasting overcooked patty (in my opinion). Makes me sad when they replace their veggie options with beyond meat
I tried being a vegan for several months. I developed all sorts of aches and pains. As an experiment, I ate a steak. It was the best tasting thing I ever ate. I even licked the plate. I felt great the next day.
I eat and like to eat meat, lots of it, as well as other foods. I am completely stumped by this push for hyper-processed "substitutes". I regularly ordered vegetarian dishes, and often enjoyed a decent bean or beet based burger. Those things can be delicious. I can only hope this fad of beyond meat bull-crap goes bankrupt and dies, sooner rather than later.
> It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables!
Not exactly. In pastoral agriculture, animals eat grasses that humans cannot, on land that is not easily farmable (infertile, rocky, hilly, etc). A nice side effect of this is that the animals make the land more farmable by fertilizing it with their poops.
I'm not a vegan but a 5-day vegetarian and I've been enjoying all plant-based meat brands over the last few years.
One problem I find with a lot of their products is that their marketing seems off - it is often hard for me to locate plant based nuggets or tenders or patties or just anything. They often say "Chickn", "Pork" or beef in large font with graphics but only write "plant-based" in small text at a location on the packaging which you really have to pay attention to notice. It's not hence, easy to distinguish these things from actual meat by simply glancing at the packaging through the glass.
I don't know whether they want people looking for actual chicken to buy these and give up on returning them later, or whether they're reluctant to highlight the plant-based part of the label as they're often in a small corner in a store.
I’ve been vegan for many years now, and I hate those bean burgers, to the point that I’d rather have nothing than them. I love impossible meat and have no problems with it. I eat it almost every day for years now. I’m almost 40 now and my blood work is better than when I was 30.
It’s funny to hear how a person who eats meat thinks that I should be satisfied with a sausage made out of a carrot. I eat enough of veggies in their original form, but they do not make a great burger or sausages. I also really don’t think that meat alternatives are pushing out anything – it’s the consumers that prefer them. I know I am.
I would like to clarify that for me eating healthy was not the reason I became vegan. We need to stop the torture and extermination of sentient beings for the sake of pleasing our tastebuds.
> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. . . The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
”Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
> I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day
The reason you don’t see the value prop of beyond burgers is that you’re eating the real thing regularly. As a pescitarian who loves meat, I would bet the farm that if you went vegetarian, you would think Beyond is a godsend.
> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach.
Similar to how nuclear fusion is better than fission, and self-driving cars are preferable to human-controlled, etc etc.
> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.
for taste yes, for vegan and vegetarians it depends. that audience is so heavily diluted by a dozen different goals they want to represent or embody.
some don't like the inflammation (according to their sources) that a meat diet causes within humans, in which case this wouldn't satisfy them
some don't like harm to animals, in which case this would satisfy them
some don't like the environment impact, in which case, who knows? sustainability study and audits needed
I see alot of Vegans / vegetarians responding in support but let me say as a carnivore that will never go Vegan / vegetarian I agree 100%,
I have eaten vegan dishes that were excellent, I am not opposed to them at all. One of the best Tikka Masla's I have ever had was vegan. However I can not stand when they attempt to make be believe X is Y meat, no, it is not and no amount of marketing will get me to believe they taste the same. They do not.
Just like Cauliflower Mash does not taste like potatoes, it tastes like puréed Cauliflower...
Exactly, these things are all analogous to eatint something called 'meat pie' to me - Well ok but what is it?
I make vegetarian burgers sometimes, either something grilled(broiled)/griddled stacked up like halloumi & aubergine, or a patty of shredded jackfruit or something. Why would I want to eat nondescript 'vegetarian patty'?
It's not just burgers, 'vegetarian lasagne' etc. is (aside from not being good appealing marketing) a reliable negative signal for a menu.
I wasn't referring to that, so apologies if that sounded offensive, I thought I was making something up.
Elsewhere though, unless presented as intending to be a specific thing from down under, 'meat pie' is a lot less appetising than 'steak and kidney pie' or whatever, because who wants mystery meat (implicitly perhaps the cheapest odds and ends available).
Similarly though to be fair 'fish pie' in the UK & France at least is a slightly flexible mixed fish fare.
For a vegetarian burger option, nothing beats a potato patty burger done to perfection. It's incredibly simple, essentially just mashed potatoes formed into a patty, breaded and fried. It can be seasoned to your liking with herbs, garlic, salt, etc. and the traditional burger toppings nicely compliment it. You can somewhat emulate it by replacing a burger patty with the fries that often come with an order but it's not the same as a purpose made one.
One of the reasons that the vegetian options are more expensive is because the margins are higher. People compare supermarkets based on meat prices, so they accept lower margins on meat to attract more customers.
Another thing is that people don't typically buy brand name meat, which allows supermarkets to more aggressively negotiate on price.
At least this is how it is in the Netherlands (according to a newspaper article I can't find right now).
Completely agree, I hate it when products attempt simulate meat. There are so many delicious vegetarian recipes! I could eat Indian food everyday for the rest of my life.
That's also my experience. Not a vegan but (before covid and wfh) I used to like eating 1-2 times a week in certain vegan restaurants because the food was good and very well prepared and seasoned. The stuff that tries to imitate meat however is nasty at best. Not only it tastes horrible but what's the point of choosing a supposedly healthier diet if you eat that industrial sludge?
I'm not a vegetarian. I recently bought packaged sliced baloney for a sandwich, as well as sliced sharp cheddar. The baloney I accidentally bought was fake baloney. (No meat.) I didn't notice until I was making my sandwich. It tasted absolutely disgusting, like chemicals. I am not a picky eater and I think it is the only disgusting food item I've ever bought in a grocery store. As I tried to finish eating it, I kept thinking, how can my grocery store sell something that tastes so disgusting? I mean aren't there taste tests during product development? My sandwich literally tastes better without it. And not just because of the cheddar - I nearly bought hummus and it also would have tasted great. Hell, a single leaf of lettuce would taste better in my sandwich than that. It was horrible.
The thing is, I think the only criteria it was judged by is that it has to look completely like baloney. It did, it had me fooled. But tasted disgusting.
> how can my grocery store sell something that tastes so disgusting?
Earnestly answering your question, it's because every person perceives taste differently (eg to some people, cilantro tastes like soap!). The complexity of vegan substitutes is high, because they're trying to simulate a completely different flavor. So likely you're just sensitized to whatever happens to be in that particular product. If you tried a different fake baloney, you'd likely have a completely different experience (not saying a good experience necessarily, depending on your expectations, but at least different).
>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.
The homogenization of veggie burgers into one particular type of patty is the reason I don't even try Burger places anymore. It used to be that if you had 5 Burger places near you, you'd get 5 very different veggie burgers (e.g. black bean, quinoa, mixed veggies, all with a different mix of spices). Now you basically get the same veggie burger at every place, just with different dressings/sauces.
I suspect it's better in big cities (e.g. NYC) where there's enough of a customer base for a veggie patty and a engineered meat patty on the menu. But in other places, I think the customers numbers are just too small. So I understand the logic from a business perspective, but for some customers it just sucks to have lost the veggie patty.
The point being made was that these fake meat patties are more expensive, whereas the old vegetarian options were cheaper or bottom priced.
I've been a vegetarian for nine years. It becomes noticeable when your meal jumps 50% in price and goes from being the cheapest in a group to the most expensive.
But in the UK the burgers made of veg are at least as expensive as their meat counterparts. On the menu I posted the bean burger is 50p more expensive than beef.
I have had exactly one good veggie patty at a restaurant. The recurring problem is a complete lack of structure so that 90% of the patty squishes out the sides when you try to take a bite. And the restaurant with the good one closed last year, so I might never have a good veggie patty again.
Veggie patties mostly taste fine, but the entire point of a sandwich is that I can pick it up with my hands and take a bite out of it. If the patty can’t stay on the sandwich, it’s not a good sandwich. Just put it on a plate and call it a veggie loaf or something that I can eat with a fork.
Even the older products you get at the grocery store from Boca and Morningstar Farms could be structurally acceptable, but whenever a restaurant tries to make a veggie patty I swear they’re just sticking some vegetables in a blender, putting it in a round shape, and hoping it stays that way. I’ve eaten soups with more structure.
I've been vegetarian for 40years and prefer my food to not be like meat. I also know plenty of people that avoid if too like real meat. Not sure what market they go for. People that dont want meat but miss it I guess. The idea of the latest lab grown meat I also find disturbing
I don't eat much meat outside of the occasional fish but I did welcome the fake meat fad.
It's not that I enjoy eating the product, it's that I need to find protein somehow when I'm at "American food" restaurants (fast food or otherwise). In most of these places there's no veggie protein options other than the "veggie burger" - and the fake meats have made these a little more ubiquitous.
I've been asking myself ever since this beyond/incredible/whatever fad got started: Why spend all the time and energy trying to make something taste like beef that isn't beef? Why not spend that same time and energy creating a new, appealing of its own (and then market that)?
Perhaps to cater to people who love meat but won't eat it? What's hard to understand about that? There are plenty of great tasting vegetarian options, now there are plenty of faux meat options as well. The more the merrier in my opinion.
I think the idea was to disrupt the... looks like $3 billion dollar a year[1] hamburger patty market. This is a market that already exists. Presumably there's room for two main competitors, so pretty decent market, plus vegetarian meat is a premium product which makes it a good investment vehicle. On paper it's a convincing argument. I think the pizza market is pretty well mined-out at this point and the major players are well entrenched since the mid-1990s with tombstone red barron and digornio. There is no national level alternative meat product yet and most americans who eat pizza will eat a cheeseburger. Like the article says though, it looks like they took the inital interest as tremendous growth, and it's mostly plateaued. I personally have zero interest in even trying the product as a novelty.
Meat is a lot more nutrient dense. You would have to eat 4x the veggies to get the same nutrition. Better to let the farm animals concentrate that energy for us. They also eat a lot of grass, which is great for carbon capture. So just eat a balanced meal and be done with it.
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
Actually, as far as I recall, a counter argument to this, is that fresh vegetables are more expensive since their shelf lives are a lot shorter. I can buy most types of meats (chicken, beef, etc.), freeze them for weeks and the taste would still be great, while fresh vegetables will normally only last for a few days.
Of course you can go for frozen vegetables, but this is only limited to some vegetables, and in my opinion, don't taste as good as fresh vegetables.
"fresh vegetables are more expensive since their shelf lives are a lot shorter"
Certainly if you have sufficient storage, it's possible to buy meat in bulk quite cheaply, some of which might even be cheaper per kg (or per calorie?) than many vegetables, but if you stick to in-season vegies and cook them sensibly (into dishes that last a while), on average they're still going to be cheaper than meat.
Plenty are in the order of $1-$2/kg in Aus. (potatoes, onions, pumpkin etc.) - I don't know any meat that cheap.
I'm no dietitian but how much nutrition there actually is per 1kg of beef compared to 1kg of potatoes/pumpkin/onions, etc.?
My sister is vegan, and whenever we have a vegan meal, I'm already hungry 2 hours after the meal. On the other hand, if I eat a burger for lunch, I might not be even hungry by dinner time. Again, I'm not a dietitian so I'm pretty ignorant about these things, but if it has to do with proteins, I think the ROI for meat proteins is going to be a lot higher compared to vegetables.
I realize this gets complicated, but just another counter argument for ROI of meat compared to vegetables.
Certainly meat tends to have much higher fat and protein density, and hence calorific density than vegetables, but the latter invariably have higher carbohydrate content (meat is essentially 0). Multigrain bread can have much the same calorific density as beef, and nuts are often considerably higher (admittedly, they're typically quite pricey per kg, though not more so than quality cuts of meat).
I've personally not observed any significant difference in the quantity of food I eat between vegan/ vegetarian/meat-based meals, though I very rarely eat meals that meat makes up more than a small percentage of. It's actually the micronutrients you need to be more aware of if you're on a strictly vegan diet, which are unlikely to make a difference in food cost (e.g. B12 supplements are about $9 for a gram, but that can last you months).
Beyond the taste, most Beyond Meat meals also tend to contain more calories than the meat-based equivalent. I am better off to eat an occasional burger when I fancy it, and go for more healthy vegetarian dishes on other days.
One Beyond Burger has 260 calories. There are claims that these are healthier alternatives to beef, but to what end? Calories is certainly not it because this is compared to 230 calories in a same size beef patty.
But what does your spouse think? I'm an omnivore and agree with you. But if I went a year without eating a real burger I'm sure I'd prefer a Beyond Meat burger over the nice black bean burger I'd currently prefer.
I don't think the complaint is that, per se. I'm happy to have these products coexist.
But Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers and suchlike have been actively displacing the existing options in restaurants and grocery stores. To my palate and that of nearly all my longtime vegetarian friends, those pre-existing options were much more palatable. My (pesca) kids won't even eat these meat analogue products; they think they're disgusting. I do appreciate that these products might be making it easier for other people to cut back on their meat consumption, but I also think it's fair to miss a reduction in the already meager selection of convenience foods that I liked.
Maybe, but it really shouldn't come as a surprise that there is a correlation between people who don't really like meat and people who choose to become vegitarian.
It doesn't even have to look like a burger patty. The best burger I've ever had was a portobello burger with blue cheese. Just the head of the portobello, blue cheese melted over it, in a bun with all the works.
Exactly. Even if I was a vegan I would not touch heavily processed food like beyond meat. The distinction between processed vs non-processed is much more important to me than the vegan vs non-vegan.
I eat meat, but I’d replace all my meat consumption with plant based options if it was a similar substitute and matched the price.
But I also want the black-bean burger option, because, as you said, it’s a different taste.
So I think (I hope anyway) that there’s room for both the vegetarian options that are their own thing, and vegetarian options that aim to be a 1:1 replacement.
Maybe they shouldn't just imitate meat. Go beyond or extend the traditional meat, meaning make it more tasteful with better texture. Create new flavors, play with chewiness etc.
As a vegetarian since childhood in the 80s it’s incredibly sad to have seen all the progress made in both shops and restaurants thrown away. Even before meat alternatives, menus were getting blander with a focus on dairy-free options (to be clear, vegan food can and should be extremely tasty, decadent even, but it’s also the dumping ground for healthy options in most menus). That the main options are now explicitly meat flavoured is adding insult to injury.
Veggie burgers can be quite delicious with all the traditional burger toppings, and I'm a pretty big traditional burger fan. The beyond ones always taste kind of dry to me.
>A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
So much, this, I have been vegetarian my whole life and quite honestly the idea of eating something that tastes like meat is almost as unappealing as the idea of eating meat. I get that it helps people give up, but it's not for me.
Moreover, I dont think vegetables even need to replace meat in position — vegetables allow for other forms of food formats.. so utilize it. Every time I go to vegan restaurants I get the feeling they don’t actually like vegetables; everything is vegetable-replacements for meat-based dishes. And the tofu crafting is just baffling, with the whole chickin and bacin and whatnot
Agreed, I haven't had meat in a few years now but the key to cooking vegan and vegetarian is to let it be its own thing and not try to make it taste like some specific 'meat' flavor.
Unless the cook has a flame grill or knows their business very well I also find beyond/impossible 'meat' to taste worse than a decently prepared seitan or bean based patty.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
This is something I always have to highlight to folks. In Australia, personally speaking, the best veggie burger is call the 'Not burger'. It doesn't taste like Meat, it just tastes good! There is a reason why they haven't changed it in almost 20 years I have known about it.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
I'm not a vegan nor a vegetarian. I just sometimes think I eat too much meat and check out vegetarian restaurants. They all have 100 kinds of fake burgers and little else.
There are thousands of good food recipes without meat. Why are you trying to sell me burgers?
Because in the American society, food == burgers. If you don't want to eat meat, you need to replace the meat bit from a burger.
In many other cuisines, there are naturally non meat dishes, just look at the Indian cuisine. Heck, even my own country cuisine, Romania, has plenty of meat free dishes that taste very good.
I really don't understand why people want to simulate the taste of meat. It seems like a completely uninteresting problem to solve, plant foods are already perfectly fine.
The availability of "perfect substitutes" for meat wouldn't affect my food choices at all and this is likely true for a lot of people.
The other very annoying trend is to remove the vegetarian option and only have a vegan one. My wife is a vegetarian and obviously the food can be far better if you can have butter, milk, cheese, and eggs, but they often insist on only having either meat options or vegan options
Most westerners are not calorie starved. You can get cheap calories everywhere (e.g. calorie-bombs of expiring chicken covered in oil and salt, roasted and sold super cheap to get rid of them ASAP). Reductio ad absurdum - just eat palm oil. I would argue it's not a good metric.
Same. I ate plenty of vegetarian or vegan stuff that's just tasty food.
I'm already picky for burger meat, I'd rather have plain sandwich than burger with mediocre meat, and at best those emulate that, mediocre burger meat, at cost of way more processing.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.
Sure, you are married to a vegan and learned to appreciate the taste. In the same way, I enjoy a level of Indian spices that would make an average American's eyes bulge out. But for habitual meat eaters there is nothing that really replaces the texture, the feeling of substantial satiety, reality of not being hungry again for 8 hours... To each their own?
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
We have herds of goats eating dry brush to prevent wildfires around here. I don't suppose you would enjoy THAT vegan dish? :-)
I can't understand why some entrepreneur saw vegetarian food existing, and decided to make a startup about ultraprocessed vegetarian food. It's as if they thought ideology was more important than health or environmental benefits.
> can't understand why some entrepreneur saw vegetarian food existing, and decided to make a startup about ultraprocessed vegetarian food
I'm a fan of real meat. But isn't the environmental impact of Beyond Meat lower than that of meat meat? Sure, a vegetarian meal would be even lower. But that's not the competition. Those folks are already eating vegetarian, or so the thinking goes.
It seems fairly apparent to me that vegetarian != minimally-processed. Definitely a lot of "junk-food vegans" who eat lots of chips and other heavily processed food. Processed also != bad for the environment or for health.
Don't get me wrong -- I think there can totally be some questions around health and environmental impacts of vegetarian/vegan foods entering the market! But I think the mapping between "there are preservatives in it" and "it's bad" is, uhh, not necessarily strong.
Thank you for sharing your personal anecdotes and opinions. However true they may be, I'm kinda concerned that this sort of post is at the top of a highly commented Hacker News thread.
I don't like beans, peas and lentils. I do however love plant-based meat. There is a market for people like me but I don't know if it justifies the valuation of these companies.
This post is crowded with responses from people explaining why they hate Beyond meat
FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a few shares since I figured they'd do well.
I've tried Impossible Burgers too (both prepared by others and myself), and I don't like that it has hemoglobin in it and for some reason it's more in the uncanny valley than Beyond meat is for me - Beyond Meat is just different enough that it doesn't taste to me like moldy beef the way Impossible Burgers seem to.
What _did_ eventually get me to stop making Beyond Burgers is that the fat and sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef. Reducing red meat consumption to once a month or so achieves basically the same benefits, and occasional red meat consumption + no more frequent beyond meat burgers is healthier in the long run than what I was doing before. I think an under-appreciated advantage to the veggie and black bean burger options out there is they tend to be way better w.r.t. fat and sodium, and taste just as good once you give up on the "almost beef" taste of these new-wave alternatives, but Beyond Meat _did_ work for a few people out there and just never tweaked their product enough to seriously compete with cheaper alternatives as inflation has gotten worse.
High sodium diets are "associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" "in a hypertension-independent manner". They are associated, among many other ailments, with strokes, cancer and heart failure.
Thanks for the input. Not sure to what extent the links support the assertion
> "associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" "in a hypertension-independent manner"
> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32738302/
"Some studies have shown that HSD has a positive correlation with albuminuria, an important risk factor for the development and progression of kidney disease in a hypertension-independent manner "
A correlation with a risk factor .It asserts "is associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" with no citation. The paper itself is about feeding a high-salt diet to mice.
"Our observation of sodium intake correlating positively with life expectancy and inversely with all-cause mortality worldwide and in high-income countries argues against dietary sodium intake being a culprit of curtailing life span or a risk factor for premature death. These data are observational and should not be used as a base for nutritional interventions".
Good overview of the poor design of that study and many others that make statements that very much go against the plurality of high quality evidence:
"While calling for a controlled trial to provide “robust evidence” to support the current global policies, Mente et al. lend their support to an “ecological analysis” of global statistics by Messerli et al. [78]. There are many inherent limitations of such analyses. Messerli et al. [78] correlate sodium and outcomes by country, not by individual. The study design is unable to remove unmeasured confounding (ecological fallacy), a well-known methodological concern that the authors acknowledge and then promptly dismiss. Many countries do not have data on sodium intake and, when available, it is often of poor quality. When comparing “high income” countries (in World Bank Income Class 1), the authors aggregate data from the USA, UK and Canada, Trinidad & Tobago, and Equatorial Guinea. The distribution of wealth in these countries and the ensuing disparities in individual health will have huge effects on life expectancy due to factors other than sodium intake, none of which are accounted for. In addition, Messerli et al. ignore the hard evidence from previous human trials. Yet, Messerli et al. claim their results “argue against dietary sodium intake being a culprit of curtailing life span or being a risk factor for premature death”.
Thanks for that, a valuable paper. Seems it's not straightforward as a lay person to get a clear answer on the state of knowledge. And it's a shame that as you try to check citations, so many of them are behind firewalls.
IMHO, Health / Nutrition is very K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid), but it feels like so many people get caught in the trap of finding "one weird trick" to keep them lean / healthy and then setting common sense on fire - so long as they obey that rule.
> Vegans are healthier and leaner than Omnivores. Therefore I can eat pastries for breakfast lunch and dinner, and as long as they don't contain animal products I'll lose weight!
> What _did_ eventually get me to stop making Beyond Burgers is that the fat and sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef
Exactly. As a vegetarian, I do choose a Beyond burger when I go to a burger restaurant, but I never buy it to make at home. There are healthier alternatives that are also delicious.
For me it's the exact opposite. I'm a vegetarian for ideological reasons, not health ones. I'm not the healthy kind of vegetarian at all. For me the only flaw of Beyond Meat is that it's a bit too salty and it sits a bit funny (weird-flavored burps after you eat it).
They have a solidly good product, it's a shame they can't make it work.
As a parent one big problem I had with them was that for home use they only sell the huge quarter pound patties (while they do shrink when you cook them, they do so less than beef) which were too much for my kid. I had to thaw them, slice them down the middle (which is tricky) and cook the two halves separately. They're much too big for a standard burger bun. It seems obvious they're going for a prestigious form-factor but missing out on being able to sell something more universal.
> FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger...
I tried two burgers 1-2 years ago: when I opened the package I smelled alcohol, the same while frying them in the pan and while eating them (I cooked them "medium/well done" without cheese nor anything else as I was curious and just wanted to try this stuff out) => is this normal?
Asking because I never read anywhere anything that mentioned this... . (btw. I'm in Switzerland, so maaaybe here the product is "different" to comply with the country's regulations..., just a wild guess).
In the end I didn't like it because of that smell (I'm in general ok with alcohol, I'm drinking a beer right now), the texture and taste was acceptable/good.
> FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a few shares since I figured they'd do well.
You are the target demographic; you're looking for a vegetarian or vegan meat analog so you can continue your existing eating habits and the meals you're familiar with, instead of the more difficult task of changing your lifestyle and diet.
What do you see as the benefit of reducing red meat to once a month?
There was a widely-publicized article recently questioning some "well-established" science that had, previously for decades, linked red meat to higher rates of heart disease, etc.
Not a vege, but that study doesn't really say say as much the article made it out. The core thesis was essentially:
"Eating red meat at most causes increases in risks of cancer and similar by 15%. If people replace calories that could come from vegetables with red meat, that risk gets worse because they're eating less vegetables"
So yeah, eating red meat isn't that bad, but if it reduces your vegetable intake significantly, it probably is worse for you. And it's harder to get the right amount of vegetables if you eat a lot of red meat (unless you just want to increase your calorie intake)
Same with sugar. For most people, Sugar is either pushing you over your calorie threshold or it’s displacing healthier food you could have eaten instead which is reason enough to reduce it.
Here[1] is the article post on HN and the OP[2] on case you want the article directly.
Tangentially, seems to me the science on every food seems to change every few years. Sugar, fat, MSG, eggs, butter, meat, fish, milk, the list goes on.
As others in both this and the linked article stated, I think just reducing consumption would drastically reduce the amount of necessary livestock, which would reduce everything else in the chain. I definitely became more conscious of what I consume from all the secondary and tertiary effects.
I tried to do a deepdive on nutrition a few years back when I went on a diet. My conclusion was that there are far too many confounding factors for any population studies to be taken too seriously. That's why the field is so vogueish like you point out.
Long term, highly controlled trials are more useful, but much rarer.
Not sure why you think that. I actually do eat burgers, on the rare occasion I eat a burger at all, with no sauce, which I think is fine if the burger itself is not overcooked and made with sufficiently good meat. The patty should be plenty juicy.
A 1 tbsp serving of both will set you back 4g of sugar. Sure, they each have "high fructose corn syrup" on the ingredient list, but it's a small enough amount to have no nutritional impact. In reality, the bulk of the sugar in the ketchup is coming from the tomatoes and the mayo doesn't have enough to even warrant listing measurable calorie content from sugar at all.
Pickles, lettuce, tomato, a whole fried egg. All of these are options that don't include sugar. There are options outside of ketchup (corn syrup) and mayo (probably corn syrup). Except the pickles. I bet those have sugar.
But I'll fight anyone who eats hamburgers without pickles.
I'm a meat eater, but am a big fan of fake meats - to the point where I prefer them in some situations.
Overall I'm not a huge fan of Beyond Meat. While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience. Beyond kinda just tastes like lower end beef to me. This means Beyond is facing a Coke vs Pepsi situation here - effectively halving their market.
From a price standpoint, they're more expensive than beef is. While economically this makes sense due to heavy beef subsidies around the world (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person), it's still a heavy expense for consumers. This means despite being cheaper to make, they're still the more expensive option. This means they're a premium product, not an economic option.
When these are the factors at play, it really cuts down the market size. You're really only targeting people who prefer your version, are willing to pay a premium for a sub-par version of a burger while not choosing plenty of the other food options out there. IMO these plant based meats are really doomed to fail unless we stop subsidizing the beef industry. If they become an economically viable choice, they become an option for many more people. Right now they're too niche.
The irony is that there is no reason these plant based alternatives should be priced higher than meat. The raw ingredients are dirt cheap.
You can get pound of TVP or soy protein is like $3-4; and certainly less at wholesale prices. It comes dehydrated, so back of the napkin I'd guess the cost for a company producing fake meat products is like $1/lb or less.
I paid $8.50 at a gas station for 2.47 oz of "Noble Jerky." Ingredients: soy protein, sugar, black bean paste, spices.
I imagine the profit margins for these products approaches that of soft drinks.
I don't understand why the cost of processing can't achieve significant economies of scale when the company is supplying food at the national level. Can someone explain that to me?
Sometimes, economies of scale don't just come automatically with scale. You actually have to make economies of scale happen when you invent new processes - this often means creating new machines or new methods that can be done by untrained people.
The process for creating these fake meats is complicated and long, so there are certainly a few novel steps in there. I'm guessing that a few key steps do not scale well today and have significant technological barriers to scaling. I have no idea what they could possibly be.
So you seem to know what's complex on this products. Share your knowledge. I claim that this products are not complex or not more complex as meat based products
1. Raw materials are cheap
2. Expensive end product
3. Company is losing money
The most straightforward explanation is that the processing is expensive in some way, unless I’m missing something here. I feel like the burden of proof should be on you to establish that the straightforward explanation is not accurate beyond just a claim.
R&D is not a total black box. Management sets a budget, "Scientists you are allocated $XXX this year for reagents + equipment." Sure there are plenty of unexpected gotchas (equipment X broke, unexpectedly announced equipment Y is a must-buy, etc), but more or less there should be some ability to forecast expenses. If the company is in the red, cut that number down.
All conjecture, but as a former bench scientist (spending money, not making budgets), it felt like our burn rate was reasonably constant.
I have no idea what goes into making these plant-based meats, but I vaguely remember that for Impossible Foods specifically, that they had to do a lot of experimentation and genetic engineering of a yeast to make their product. I think that's part of the reason why they have to charge so much.
I would love to have harder numbers on their product. I want to eat less meat and the Impossible Burger feels a totally adequate substitute to me, but the price has greatly limited my conversion.
TVP is so damned excellent. That reminds me, I really need to write up the recipes I've come up with using them and post them somewhere. Magic cheap protein with an awesome flavour if you rehydrate it with vegan beef/chicken stock and season it well and cook it correctly.
It's even excellent just chucked into some instant ramen (after frying it) with some spring onions!
Would def want to see some of those! I've been doing TVP and beef stock as my backup meal for years and it's amazingly good for the price. 500g for like €3 that'll last absolutely ages coupled with one of those stock cup things (think they're like 4 for 90 cent now).
Originally only tried it due to a serious lack of fridge/freezer space.
I find the Beyond product has a strange artificial odor to it. Like it's trying to recreate the smell of fully cooked meat product, but before it's even cooked. It's odd in the way that artificial smoke can be weird. I bought a package of Beyond patties at Costco (I think it was like 20) and had a hard time getting through them after the first 4-5. The Impossible equivalent tended to just make my kitchen smell like a decent meal instead of some kind of weird laboratory experiment.
The problem with both of them is I can get a sack of burgers from Costco, like 50 of them, for less than I'd pay for 20 of the fake ones. and they'll taste and smell the right way and be usable in more recipes.
That US subsidy, $114 per person, if removed and offset by higher prices at the supermarket, would amount to under $10 more a month per person in grocery costs. I can see there being a reduction of consumption at the scale of the industry in the US, but generally speaking I don't think the industry would notice it all that much. The subsidies are almost certainly not the reason that meat is cheaper than beyond burgers.
$10 a person is naive math, sure, there would be reduced demand which means that some of that cost would be bourne by other purchasers to keep industry revenue stable, and there would be a reduction in production which further compounds this. But it's not a doubling in cost, I think the true number would be between 20 and 30 dollars per person (10-20% of their monthly food budget) that continues eating as much meat, per month, and close to that percentage in production decline. A big deal, but not a complete upheaval in the meat industry.
The subsidies aren't really about keeping meat costs down for consumers so that meat producers can remain profitable. They're more about manipulating the global meat market to compete against other producers and ensure domestic food security.
I'm sure that if the subsidy went away, McDonalds would reformulate the big mac so that it's only $5.50. It's gross, but that's what fast food companies do.
> While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience.
Interesting. I've always felt the opposite: Impossible closer to beef, Beyond much tastier.
But I haven't eaten a real burger in a couple decades.
> (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person)
I think that number is basically made up. It comes from a chain of references by activists and lobbyists (against meat and dairy subsidies) who are basically playing a game of broken telephone with statistics.
AIER cites a Columbia SIPA article, which cites the book Meatonomics. Meatonomics is written by a lawyer who advocates against meat and dairy and seems to have synthesized the number by adding numbers from several sources. He cites an article by an anti-meat/dairy law firm which estimates dairy subsidies at $19 billion. (Meatononics includes dairy subsidies in the $38 billion figure.)
But those dairy subsidies aren't from payments to dairy farmers. They're looking at indirect subsidies, the largest of which is food stamps and other nutritional assistance programs. They estimate that Americans spend about 11% of their food budget on dairy products and based on that they estimate the amount of food stamp money that goes to dairy farmers.
tl;dr: The number is a rough estimate based largely on the government giving poor people food stamps and people choosing to spend some of that on meat and dairy. The numbers are also from advocacy groups, not peer reviewed journals.
One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead.
IMHO this is the wrong approach and hardly ever works well or relies on luxury products like beyond meat(1).
The best vegetarian food I had eaten was such which was designed as vegetarian food, not as a dish with meat and then modified to somehow work. Pretty much the only times I ended up with vegetarian food which tasted disgusting was with meat replacement products.
At the same time beyond meat isn't the only producer of meat replacement products, and you don't need massive international cooperation for them either. For example the local butcher around where I live has meat replacement products, self-made based on the recipe they licensed from another smallish non-international company. It doesn't taste like meat, but it tastes good and has properties similar but not quite like meat wrt. taste direction, consistency and texture so you can swap it in to get a quite different but still good tasting result (through it's not stake like, more pulled pork like, suited for dishes which need pulled pork or minced meat).
(1): Now part of the reason why it is more expensive then meat is probably state subventions but on a pure resource level meat is much more resource intensive to produce then most vegetarian stuff.
I was wondering this the other day when eating a saag paneer curry instead of my normal meat-based order: why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options which can be treated similarly to how we treat meat in cooking. Paneer is not 'trying to be chicken', but it can be put in a curry or fried, so can serve a similar purpose -- but is distinctly delicious in its own right!
A chap I worked with years ago had his wife cook us some food for a week or so, and brought it into work each day in little plastic tubs. Lentil curry, chickpea curry, all sorts of vegetarian food, and it was amazing. One was even a soya-chunk curry, which tasted better than meat, and zero chance of bones. I think playing to the strengths of the vegetables is always going to work better than creating stuff like facon and such. It always looks so...unappealing. That being said, perhaps the reason we eat so much meat in the UK & USA is because we're also taught that to cook vegetables you boil them...in water. Nowhere else in the world do they think it's a good idea to do this. They have flavours, they incorporate vegetables into meals, not just a spoon of boiled carrots, a spoon of boiled broccoli, and a spoon of peas.
Because our culinary repertoire and tastes are cultural.
People know how to pan fry up some chicken/beef, this their fake analogs too, but not how to make saag paneer curry. Or some pan fried chicken is what they crave while they’ve never had these foods you consider superior.
Our relationship with food is very weird and delicate. It’s more of an identity trait than a rational choice we make daily. We like our comforts.
>why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options
Because meat tastes better, and I want it. If I can have that taste without an animal involved then it’s all the better. If not then I’ll continue eating meat.
Vegetarians and vegans just don’t seem to understand this. Food is all about personal preference but the extreme majority of people eat and enjoy meat. They enjoy it because they find it delicious. If people felt vegetarian options were as delicious as meat we wouldn’t be having these discussions.
People who don’t have a taste preference for meat are obviously not the target for plant based meat.
Vegetarian here, you're wrong. Boil a chicken breast and eat it and tell me it tastes better. If you handed me a plate of boiled peas and a spoon I'd probably hand them back to you too.
Good _food_ tastes good. Most times you eat it's complemented with sauces, marinades, etc. Cooking vegetarian requires the same effort. People who slather a Midwestern meatloaf in ketchup likely wouldn't even notice if it was vegetarian unless you told them.
> If people felt vegetarian options were as delicious as meat we wouldn’t be having these discussions.
Meat is a luxury and a status symbol. Eating meat every day is something my parents did because they could afford to because their parents _couldnt_. I'm not going to sit here and tell you a bone in rib eye with a pan sauce isn't delicious - it is, but so is a paneer masala, or huevos rancheros.
Legitimately laughing out loud at this response. You're sitting there at your keyboard telling other people that their food preferences are wrong? Seriously? No one is going to take you seriously if you can't acknowledge the basic premise that food preferences are personal opinions.
Sorry, as a person who eats both, meat doesn't "just taste better". If by vegetables, you're referring to standard meat and 3 veg that western countries were used to, then yeah meat tastes way better. But if you're trying Indian/Thai, etc, vegetables can taste as good as meat, and in some cases, even better.
The number of people chiming in on this article proclaiming food preferences as "wrong" or "correct" is truly astounding. No, my preferences aren't wrong. No, yours aren't wrong either. Food preferences are personal.
The only thing "wrong" here is all the people chiming in to tell others that their differing preferences are incorrect.
> One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead.
As somebody who does not really eat meat but is very concerned about protein targets, this isn't quite so simple. Various meats (chicken, some fish) can be extremely cheap extremely high protein foods. When you don't have these to work with you need to think a lot more about your options.
I often "replace" a meat protein option with seitan, tofu, or tempeh just to hit my goals. These things aren't engineered in a lab the same way that Beyond etc have been, but they are processed/made and fill the "chunk of protein" requirement in a way that whole plants struggle with.
If you don't toss in a "chunk of protein," you need to be incredibly careful working in proteins. Anything with a low protein/calorie ratio becomes difficult to work in. Cheap staples like pasta and rice are even questionable because their protein ratios are relatively low, and then you find yourself eating only beans...
This is easier for vegetarians who eat cheese and eggs, of course. Nutritionally these things act more like meat and you can use them as such.
Food is highly cultural and habitual. Changing their diet can take years for some people. Also, many people probably never have tried many truly vegetarian dishes, so there is a learning curve.
I for one really gained an appreciation for curry, and since they're stewed to fuck anyway you barely notice whether or not there's meat in them.
I hope that people trying to improve their diets will discover spices beyond salt, pepper and chillies, lol.
I do believe part of it is that western diets are more about the ingredients and the textures / mouthfeels / flavors thereof than spices. Which is ironic, given the whole colonization and world spice trade thing from some time ago.
Completely agree with you. I'm not a vegetarian at all and honestly most of my dinners are vegetarian anyway because half the time I'm just too lazy to deal with meat. Plenty of delicious cheese centered meals, for instance. Mac and cheese can be made in a million different ways. Sometimes I'll make my chicken rice and mushroom casserole but throw in legumes instead. Lots of great things to make with eggs for protein too.
I've accidentally cut my meat consumption down drastically through sheer laziness, so I always find it puzzling that people make a fuzz about it.
I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Beyond Meat had a mad run up in the same way that loads of companies had a mad run up in the ZIRP environment, and now the real questions are being asked: What's the actual TAM, what's the long term margins, what are the competitors in this space. Their market cap was like $7Bn, compared to Kraft Heinz at 45Bn. In the long term, do plant based meat alternatives form anything other than another type of food in the existing market? No. Do BYND have a monopoly on plant based meat alternatives? Also no. So why would BYND trade like anything other than comparable food companies?
On top of that, does BYND really seem likely to be a independent company long term considering the other consolidation we see in the market? This is a market where on the supply side you have Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Neslte - massive consolidation. On the demand side you have Walmart. What does that mean? It means it needs to either grow massively to the point where it can be independent, or the price needs to come down to the point where an acquisition is attractive. We're probably reaching the latter of those two right now.
It could be that plant based meats in general grow to became atleast as big as the meat industry, but the likelihood of that being reflected in BYND's stock price is slim.
I think you are on the money. Despite the article's headline (and anecdotes) implying a broader downturn in the sector, I'm inclined to write this off to Beyond expectations being completely out of touch with reality, and possibly some mismanagement / marketing problems specific to Beyond.
This statement from Impossible (which is included in the article) directly contradicts the "plant based meats are failing" subtext the article seems to want to push otherwise:
> “We’re not experiencing anything like what Beyond Meat has reported or some of the other brands in the space,” Keely Sulprizio, a spokeswoman for Impossible Foods, said in an email. “Quite the opposite: We’re seeing hypergrowth, with over 60 percent year-over-year dollar sales growth in retail alone.”
> The IRI data show that while volume sales of Impossible ground meat and faux burger patties were down slightly, volumes of other categories, including frozen faux meat and chicken, soared.
If you know cars are problematic, the solution isn't to produce a bicycle that has a "car-like experience". The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful.
I have at least 8 vegan dishes I can make that are just amazingly delicious. A mushroom risotto, veggie tajine, chana masala, ramen, moussaka, general tso's cauliflour, cuban black beans, jajangmyeon. Make it vegetarian and I have even more; give me eggs, chicken or pork, and a whole universe opens up. It's very rare that I ever cook red meat anymore, just because there's so many recipes that don't make use of it.
My favorite fast food restaurant is Pollo Tropical. Their franchise has 140 locations in South Florida. Most of their menu is rice, beans, vegetables, salad, roast chicken, and roast pork. The white rice and black beans with sauteed onions is delicious enough (and big enough) to be a meal in itself. The fried plantains are like savory candy. It's healthy[ish], fast, and definitely not typical American fare. Yet it won't work outside of Florida, because Americans think rice and beans equals "mexican" food.
American culture simply hasn't incorporated foreign cuisines in a way that makes them actually tasty. If it's not smothered in cheese or bacon, they don't want it. It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's. We have a lot more variety in restaurants today, but the home cook is still left with garbage "Americanized" recipes you find on Google Search. We need a new revolution in home cooking to introduce the people to meatless dishes, and we need restaurants (especially fast food) to push them outside the home too.
Finally, we're gonna need to clamp down on meat. There's no way around it. As long as animals can be farmed so cheaply that a few pounds of meat costs $5 or less, people will not stop buying it and restaurants will not stop selling it. Just like we need to make cars less convenient in city centers to emphasize bikes, buses and trains, we need to make meat less convenient.
> The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful.
I disagree with the last part on a philosophical level. Society should push forward, and that doesn't mean we need to take convenient things and make them less convenient, so that alternatives seem more attractive in comparison. We need to make the alternatives better in-and-of themselves, otherwise there will be more pushback from people who currently only use cars, as opposed to a more positive "oh, we can use our car for X and then use this other thing for Y because it offers Z advantage vs the car"
Philosophically I agree that this would be pretty nice.
Realistically though I don't see how to make bike travel safer and more convenient in an already packed city, without taking away road space from cars. Same for bus lanes.
I don't mean that improving other means of transit shouldn't negatively affect car travel, just that we shouldn't go out of our way to make car travel more painful. e.g. maybe we don't need to remove a car lane from every street in the city to replace it with a bike lane, but rather restructure flow so that every other block is car/bike/car/bike, or something similar.
There is nothing harder to change in this world than culture. Sometimes you can't just make the alternatives better. Sometimes they already are better, and still nothing changes. People are stubborn, interests are entrenched. Sometimes you have to force society to change. It's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world.
I don't see how you are going to make this stick. Suppose some politician adds a meat tax or something like that. He will just be voted out enmass in the next election and the ruling will be quickly reversed. Furthermore with the way these things go in a country like the US, that successor will not only roll back and tax he will then tax vegetables to help subsidize the meat eaters.
That's what everybody says about every kind of dis-incentive program, but we have hundreds of them on the books. It would be one thing if it were just trying to correct people's health, but the issue is far greater, spanning ecological impact, water rights, feedstock, farm subsidies, animal treatment, land use, etc. We will one day reduce our use of meat, if only because eventually it won't be feasible to keep farming it at scale. But the sooner we start, the better.
From a French perspective, American cuisine is bland and unimpressive.
Clamping down on meat is not enough, you need to also get around cooking everything in oil, and added sugar (basically, everything about your cuisine).
I don’t get why hfcs gets so much hate. I bake with it all the time and use it when formulating my recipes on purpose. In an alternate universe it would be the premium and cane sugar would be the substitute. There has to be something there because people without access to it make invert syrup as a substitute.
This seems crazy to me, I can buy unimpressive because that’s a matter of taste and American cuisine is kinda samey but American cuisine is practically defined by “punch the eater in the face with massively over the top flavor.” Like if anything it’s putting too much and too many flavors without thinking too much how they interact.
Safety also matters, US meat industry is really strictly controlled and paradoxically it's safer to eat meat than veggies, especially fresh like a salad. It'd be tough to solve, this. No one would vote to remove meat controls but comparable controls over pesticide/soil/cleanness would be unpopular too as they'd increase prices and make veg tougher to sell.
I'm very surprised to read this, because my understanding (from the UK) is that US chicken and egg farms have a horrendous salmonella problem stemming from high numbers of chickens per sqft and low regulation on things like clean bedding.
This is the reason US eggs are washed, removing their natural antibac coating, and therefore need refridgeration whereas UK/EU eggs are not and do not.
I remember reading a lot about this subject during the Brexit debate, but have forgotten a lot of it since. So, what am I missing?
They're claiming that it's safer to eat _cooked_ meat than _raw_ vegetables in the US, I'm assuming. I'm not sure if this is true (it's certainly possible if wastewater from animal farming is poorly controlled there), but it's not really comparing like for like.
You are saying USDA controls may not be so successful at this which could be true but then in veg there seem to be just no controls of similar extent (different from "have controlls but they don't quite work). Some comment on HN mentioned every single dead animal in US meat industry is inspected and signed for, imagine like this but with each carrot
While vaccination is one difference, the EU has banned conventional battery cages, and some countries have banned all cages. Where cages are allowed, the legal minimum area is 0.075m^2/chicken; the US doesn't seem to set a minimum on a national basis, but average seems to be ~0.04m^2. So there's a significant difference in density, which likely has some impact.
This is a really great perspective. Thank you for sharing!
Regarding this part:
> It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's.
I feel like this should be obvious but I'm ashamed to know I don't know who you're describing. Can you or somebody else happening to read this please elaborate?
I married a Vegetarian and I converted to a mostly Vegetarian diet myself and I have made a very real realisation over the last 10 years:
The one group that really hates Vegans more than meat eaters are Vegetarians. Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder. It's so hard to find a Vegetarian pizza nowadays with real cheese. It's either meaty or fully Vegan. Same for burgers. Vegetarians don't want to eat a shitty meat like patty. They want a Vegetarian burger, made of a bean patty, mushroom or some other vegetables which is not some form of dystopian processed food. Unfortunately Veganism has pushed all real Vegetarian burgers off the menus and repalced them with Beyond meat.
Look, I don't mind Beyond meat, I tried it and thought it was nice, but currently it costs as much as a real prime cut of beef which doesn't make sense to me and doesn't taste nearly as good. Our (Vegetarian) household actively refuses overpriced Vegan food because it starves menus of good creative Veggie options and therefore is a net harm at the moment.
I've been vegetarian for a couple decades and have no problem with vegans.
I don't think I've ever been to a pizza place that didn't just let me choose a vegetarian pizza with real cheese. I also love Beyond Meat, but most veggieburgers I ate prior to Beyond Meat were vegan too, though few places used cheese or egg. You can make a vegan black bean burger, or a great vegan portobello. Veganism isn't what converted places to Beyond.
Vegans are and were as happy as vegetarians to eat non-processed vegetables patties. I could push this point further by stating that a high percentage of vegans are turned off by the meatiness of those fake meat products. Those who pushed or asked for the product are companies and clients with an environmentalist motivation. It also appears that the product is easier to manage for restaurants which is also a reason why most restaurants are picking this product. The meat-like is really just an industrial product designed to please the largest crowd as possible which also includes vegans. So please, don’t say it’s the vegans that pushed all “real” options off the menu because the situation is much more complex than that.
“Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder.” This is a bold claim. Those people you met needs to chill because the problem you described is light years of being a “real” problem. Adding or removing ingredients is possible in most restaurants and quite easy: “Please can you substitute the absence of cheese or the vegan cheese for real cheese.”
In London (UK) Veganism is a REAL problem to Vegetarians. I am not saying that it is the Vegan people's fault, but simply that currently Veganism is the lowest common denominator between Vegans and Vegetarians and 7/10 restaurants have mostly replaced their Vegetarian options with Vegan options and Vegetarians are getting really pissed off.
Vegetarian here (though often I end up going many days without eggs or dairy), I don't have any beef with Vegans.
I'm fine with eating vegan options as well, I only use eggs and dairy products at home because I can't replace everything yet. I'm currently looking at some new egg replacement products, which would allow me to get far closer to the ideal, 100% vegan, diet.
That said, I actually like Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Nestlé's Garden Gourmet's Incredible Burger, Rügenwalder's products, etc. When I started living vegetarian in 2011, all the replacement products were shit and I ended up just making all food from scratch instead.
I'm genuinely happy that all these options exist nowadays, while I don't use them every day, they've become a staple of our diet by now, as they make adapting omnivore recipes much easier. I can always adapt it further later.
And I know some vegetarians who get "meat cravings" every few months, which these products help with – they allow fulfilling the craving without resorting to actual butchered animal flesh.
This is an unusual point, and one that I've never heard before.
If anything, since veganism started becoming popular, the options in restaurants have increased. There are places that previously didn't offer any or many vegetarian options, and now have more options (Gregg's and KFC are two that come to mind).
(Conspiracy hat on) I wonder if Big Meat is deliberately pushing veganism to dissuade vegetarianism similar to how Big Oil pushed for “carbon footprint”.
"Its stock has slumped nearly 83 percent in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33 percent this year, are now likely to show only minor growth."
So they still showed growth, the stock just crashed; and the others in the segment who don't have to report numbers are doing better. Just sounds like a discounted stock to me.
Not really, if you look at the last 2 years their revenue has been flat and their cost exploded.
This stock doesn't look discounted at all, they don't make any money and don't have any growth. I haven't checked their strategy to turn this around but just from the financials I'd say the stock is about where it should be.
We can't really say that anybody should be shocked to see irrational exuberance and hype of the stock value of a freshly IPOed tech company in the post-2010 economy, after things recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.
Even at this 'discount' their market cap is 2x their revenue, which doesn't sound so bad until you compare it to someone like Tyson foods who has a market cap that is 0.5x their revenue.
Given BYND isn't growing much and its got a bad cost structure, it's still 'expensive,' just less so than before.
Have you even looked at their costs?! They’re losing so much money and much more than ever before. They’re playing the growth game but they don’t have software margins. It’s trouble.
There is such a large market for this that one of Germany's largest meat processing companies, Rügenwalder, is heavily pivoting towards vegetarian products, and now makes more money with vegetarian meat replacements than with actual meat. And they're not even the largest seller of meat replacements in the country.
The market is huge, but it's quite literally a matter of taste.
I try hard to avoid red meat for reasons but I do like a burger. I tried the Beyond when it was new and I was really impressed. I thought it tasted great and held together as a patty in a way that a lot of "traditional" bean and veg patties fail to do.
Unfortunately after I had cooked a bunch of them I realized what the smell of uncooked Beyond reminded me of: wet cat food. Now I can't get that association out of my head and the smell of the uncooked patties is so revolting I can't really enjoy them any more :(
Out of curiosity, are you also ok with how raw hamburger looks, because to me personally that's also super gross. I guess everyone is different though.
> Iceland eats hakarl (which traditionally used urine)
I don't think hakarl was ever processed with urine - it just smells like it because of the high urea content. Do you have a source that it was processed with urine?
Not the parent, but you can absolutely smell raw meat. It also lingers on dishes, and it seems at some level to also be a cultural thing whether you can detect the smell. Arabs also have a word for the smell - "zankha"
Have you… smelled cat food? Not appetizing. It is meat, yes, but does not smell like ground meat, pâté, or hot dog meat, even. I'm not sure if it's because of the way the meat is processed (akin to potted meat), or if it's because of potentially added aromas, as cats do prefer fishy doors.
Lot of nonsense in the comments, absolutely nothing wrong with the taste of Beyond. Problem is that it is outrageously expensive and the market has become saturated with plenty of more cost-effective alternatives, many of which taste even better. There was a time when Beyond was the only really "good" option, that is simply not the case anymore.
When I see those 2-packs of Beyond Burgers on the shelves in the supermarket, they are marked down 40%, and they are still more expensive than a 4 pack from other brands. Makes zero sense to buy them.
I agree. I'd also add the fact that much of the world is experiencing a cost of living crisis, and luxury products are often the first to be cut in difficult times.
Food is not a startup company, people's tastes are shaped by their culture/religion, childhood favorites and decades in between. Expecting exponential growth is unrealistic how good the product is, and financial considerations quickly come into play once you run out of early adopters. Whoever is up to the challenge must prepare for a lot of patience, optimizing production on thin margins, tweaking product for different recipes and demographics and lots of advertisement and community outreach. Having the product on average grocery shelves is already amazing success for this category, now the hard work begins.
Really satisfying, foodie-quality meals can exist without meat or fake meat.
From a blind taste and smell perspective, animal flesh on a grill is very hard to beat. But if one wants to avoid eating animals, it is possible to do so very happily without resorting to manufactured creations that resemble meat.
Unfortunately, good creative vegetarian meals do take more work than throwing a nice steak on a grill. It seems that humans have a predisposition for appreciating hot animal fat with something to chew on.
All this is to say that we don't need fake meat. But it takes more effort and work, especially at first. Once the ingredients and skills are in place, however, vegetarial dishes can be more satisfying than typical meat dishes.
We should not be wasting business effort to provide fake something, but instead we should be working to teach good alternatives.
I think the reason we are in this situation is that companies need to sell things. Selling cooking lessons (good vegetarian cooking recipes and skills) is not as easy as pushing to the grocery store a plastic container with something resembling a hamburger patty.
I think this shows us that "technological innovation" solutions are not always the right answer to our problems.
I've had these fake-patties and they're good, I've gone to burger king and it's more than good enough. But then again, when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat and the flavor profile is not as good. So I they would have to come up with a really killer product, but how can that happen when adoption is so slow? They are not going to get money to really improve things to the required level to dominate the market.
In this regard, I think anyone who was hoping for plant-based meat to replace meat was being a little naïve. Imo, the solution to phasing out meats should come more in incentivising proper vegetarian/vegan meal plans, restaurants, etc. Probably through education plans on the benefits and the right ways to approach plant-heavy diets as well as tax incentives and so on.
But... do we even want to phase out meat? I think for a large majority of people the answer is no and so we end up with products like "beyond meat". I think vegans are right, ethically and politically but in many cases it is very difficult for us to admit how wrong we are and it really doesn't help when the counterpart comes off as morally superior. There needs to be humility but at the same time, this is not a problem we can really ignore.
I think our societies are addicted to meat and so the solution to our meat problem should be the same kind of solutions we apply when we have systemic addiction problems. Education, rehabilitation, support. It's difficult for us to admit that we do have a problem, and being such a systemic world-wide scale problem... well, yeah, it's almost impossible.
No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.
$38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 -> $5 cost reduction.
>No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.
This is such a wild thing to say without any proof. SA, for example uses way more petrol than the EU, largely because of direct subsidies that keep the price low [0] Now, notice how my example was a consumer subsidy, and consumers can't easily export petrol.
What you're maybe confused by is the concept of tariff-free trade that's become popular in the past few decades.
The US subsidizes corn farmers (who are free to sell corn to whomever they like anywhere in the world) not corn consumers. Most Western subsidies are to producers, for a variety of reasons.
A single global prevailing price isn't evidence of subsidies not working, it's just evidence of free trade.
The true counterfactual for Western subsidies is the global price if there weren't subsidies, which is usually pretty extreme, for example:
As we have seen, corn is one of the most highly subsidized crops in the US, with subsidy levels as high as 47% of farm income. Other important distortions characterize US corn markets, some more important to prices perhaps than high subsidy levels. [1]
Now keep in mind, that's not 'Corn is 47% cheaper because of subsidies' that's '47% of the effort dedicated to growing corn would not happen if not for subsidies.'
>$38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 - $5 cost reduction.
To make the claim you did just has no basis in logic. The US does not participate in direct subsidies like you claim. It instead gives farmers $38bn when the total value of cattle marked for slaughter in the US is $135bn. [2]
>What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how supply and demand work. The money is not given directly to people so making it per Capita is an intellectually dishonest red herring.
$38bn creates an unknown amount of incremental supply of beef (since it is given to farmers). It does not lower aggregate beef prices by $38bn, it increases the effort dedicated to beef production by $38bn (even then, that's still a 25% subsidy relative to the entire market, you can't just make things per Capita to make them seem like a small number without context).
The increased supply form that new effort then interacts with demand. Both of those curves have slopes, so the interaction is much more complex than you're making it out to be.
Easily-available meat is Pandora's Box; we're never going to be able to move away from it. It is what it is. People's eating habits are so fucking hard to change. It should be insanely obvious that talking down to people like they're children and saying "your eating habits are bad and you should feel bad" doesn't work, and often backfires. We should focus on trying to bring efficiencies to our current pipelines instead of making these processed monstrosities and trying to shove them down everyone's throats from some imaginary moral high ground.
Our current pipelines of CAFOs and the majority of crops being dedicated for livestock and methane pollution is not acceptable, however. It's not possible to significantly improve the efficiency of the fundamentally inefficient process of growing plants to feed animals before feeding ourselves.
Burger King uses Impossible. You could be right about the business side, but I point this out because I think Impossible is substantially better than Beyond.
Like I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second (and it's not as explicitly their intention), whereas Impossible is pretty damn convincing in certain contexts.
Also, Impossible started out strongly focused on the restaurant industry, and AFAIK still doesn't even bother with supermarkets. Whereas Beyond started as a supermarket item. Even if I did like Beyond I agree I'd be less inclined to buy these to cook myself.
> I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second
Anecdotally, my partner modified the menu at the bar he used to run to change the burger to be Beyond by default and beef optional. While it was clearly labelled on the menu, people didn't seem to read it/realise that the default was vegetarian. Everyone was very excited about the "new" burger, and most people were (happily) surprised to find out it was vegetarian.
So at least at this one bar in Amsterdam, Beyond fooled many meat eaters.
> Impossible started out strongly focused on the restaurant industry, and AFAIK still doesn't even bother with supermarkets
They are now widely available in supermarkets. In my big city they are carried by all the major chains, Safeway, Walmart, Giant, Target, Harris Teeter, Wegmans and Trader Joes.
Like I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second
Eaten 'naked', no. Cover it with cheese, bacon, bbq sauce, onions, tomatoes etc. and I think it can easily compare to a Burger King pr McDonald Burger.
People would notice. There needs to be meat in there so customers can worry about food poisoning and complain that it isn't cooked exactly the right amount, regardless of how it is cooked. It is part of the burger tradition.
They are, currently, expensive for sure. This is largely because of lower demand than beef. The longer term plan is that with increased demand they will be significantly less expensive than beef, because they have lower input costs: instead of processing plants through cows, you remove the middle-man-cow.
> when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat
I never looked, but if the above is true, then that is the issue. People will always buy cheap. And to many people, if more expensive than 'real' meat, then they will not buy "beyond meat". Why, real meat in people's mind will always equate to higher quality.
For reference: I looked up prices at a local grocery store just now and Beyond products are in the $12-16/lb range. I've never understood how something that is almost entirely pea/rice protein + vegetable oil can be so expensive.
I don't consider eating meat a problem. Its the Vegans who seem to have a problem with it. Not everyone else. And they are a loud minority.
The "problems" with meat have more to do with how the industry operates than the actual practice of eating meat itself. We are omnivorous. And the health issues with meat are overstated by those with an agenda to force their diet on others.
What about a price to CO2 (with equivalence calculation) emission? This would automatically make the (beef) meat significantly more expensive. And it would essentially just put a price on something which costs a price later anyway.
You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes.
The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less processed and taste as good or better
My gf is vegan, she makes home made black beans patties, cauliflower patties, spinach patties, &c. they're all excellent, it's more of a question of habit than taste in my opinion
This is a very common theory on Beyond/vegetarian meat-like alternatives. At least in my perception, this is incorrect. I eat vegetarian, and know many others in my circles (24-32 year olds, mostly in Ams and NYC) who do, or who try to eat less meat. This:
> you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes.
is very false for my circles. All this means for these people just means "no meat" or "no animal products". These people around me (and I) eat just as many frozen pizzas, microwave meals, and junk food as any other person. We just substitute meat versions for non-meat versions. That usually means making fully vegetarian/vegan dishes, but it's not at all uncommon, especially among those who eat less meat, to substitute meat with meat-like alternatives.
I know very few people who actually care to put in the time to home-make their own patties etc.
One of my coworkers was a vegetarian and went on a business trip to Texas. His associates there took him out for dinner at a steakhouse. After looking over the menu, he asked the waitress, "Do you have anything without meat in it?" She thought for a moment and then cheerfully replied, "We have chicken!"
I want to eat less meat not because of mumbo jumbo health stuff but because the meat industry is just cruel to animals. I wish I had the fortitude to eat no meat, but my hope is fake meat will get to the point where I don't miss real meat anymore, so I support it.
And sorry, impossible burger tastes better than most vegan varieties, which aren't really just "vegan" by the strict definition but must fulfill some other strange moral criteria.
Have you considered buying whole or fractional beef? In most places it's not hard to find small farms that will sell you a quarter, half, or whole steer that was raised in open pasture. You'll need a chest freezer, but it doesn't cost much more than supermarket beef.
If you don't know where to start, look for 4H programs. You could literally buy and eat some kid's loved school project. No cruelty required.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole
I think this is wrong, and you're missing where the market is.
From what I've read, the meat alternatives actually sell primarily to meat eaters who feel like they should occasionally substitute meat for health reasons or variety.
Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.
I stopped eating 99% of the meat I used to eat. I didn't stop liking burgers. So has one of my daughters. Both our concerns are ethical. I would 100% eat bacon if it was vegan and tasted like actual bacon.
There are some vegan bacons where I am in Australia that, while they aren't bacon, are close enough in a BLT to leave me happy. But like a lot of these alternatives, the trick is you need to add the fat yourself: use a fair bit more olive oil than you would with actual bacon, and it rehydrates it and gets the taste and texture way closer :)
But if you are a meat eater that want to eat healthier, you'll be very suspicious of what appear very heavily processed food and just eat actual vegetable-looking food.
That's at least the case for me. Note I'm not saying that these meat substitutes are actually unhealthy, they just look very suspicious to me.
I mostly avoid meat for environmental reasons rather than health reasons. So Impossible and Beyond are nice alternatives. you shouldn't be eating hamburgers super regularly either way so the healthiness of alternatives really doesn't matter to me.
Are they? I use Meet Co products a few nights a week in the various stir frys and pastas and such that I make, and got my blood test results in last week. And I am incredibly healthy at least by all the normal markers (and amusingly have too much iron saturation despite not supplementing it, which is weird, likely a genetic thing that they're screening me for now, that my vegan diet is probably keeping in check through coincidence).
I don’t know what studies have been done in these products; they are too new and their processing steps are trade secret. But in general every processing step removes/denatures nutrients and increases the likelihood of toxic side reactions. And fake meat products involve a LOT of processing steps.
Think of it this way: every molecule in a cut of beef is something that was safe to be in a cow, and is generally safe for humans too. That’s true of beans and peas too. But every processing step denatures the organic matter further through a sequence of noisy organic chemistry reactions with lots of byproducts. Each inorganic processing step is making carcinogens and such, in trace amounts. A raw beef steak is 99.99% stuff that you have been evolved to eat. A beyond burger is probably 98-99% ok. But that extra 1-2% is very important to your health.
Unfortunately this isn’t something required to be studied by the FDA, so it isn’t.
My cholesterol levels beg to differ. When I became vegan, my LDL/HDL ratio
dropped from 1.9 to 0.8, triglycerides dropped by 35%. My doctor told me she's never seen such a turnaround without statins.
I've been vegetarian since 2011. I never liked the shitty bean burgers or saitan sausages.
But in 2018, some flexitarian friends showed me these new meat replacements, like Rügenwalder's veggie lineup, Nestle's Incredible Foods and later Beyond.
And it's only at that point that I started including meat replacements in my meals. Now we're including at least one type of meat replacement a day.
And 9 of my closest friends have got pretty much the exact same experience. We're all between 20 and 30 years old.
> Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise
Not all of them!
I don't buy meat for myself any longer, and am trying to get away from dairy. However, my childhood furnished me with possibly lifelong cravings for jerky, burgers, nuggets and sausages-- all of which the meat substitutes totally satisfy now. I'm very glad for these options!
Now I just need a good cheese substitute and I can go mostly vegan (I will still likely eat meat & dairy when it comes to leftover food that would otherwise be thrown out, though; my desire to avoid waste is greater than my desire to avoid those things because my body will be garbage all too soon no matter what I do anyway... life is far too short to justify being a purist imo).
> Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.
This was my experience. A month or two after dropping animal products, my body just stopped asking for them. I couldn’t care much less if I ever had meat or cheese again. I’ve got a massive repertoire of other stuff I crave instead now.
I just substitute meat for legume or dairy based products. For instance, I love black bean burger patties and paneer. If I want to eat meat, I'm going to eat meat. Not some weird frankensteined up soy bullshit.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole
I love meat and regularly buy these instead of hamburgers. While shopping for vegan Thanksgiving guests I saw some patties that imitate chicken. Going to try those out soon too.
I hope they stick around (Impossible should be ok). They're not the healthiest, but they're a rare semi-reliable vegetarian/vegan option for when you go out to restaurants. Otherwise you usually have to eat french fries or pasta. And they're also higher protein which is difficult to find going out unless you want to cook all your food at home.
It varies a lot depending on where you live, I'm in Berlin and a lot of restaurants have more vege/vegan options than meat ones these days. Hopefully it'll continue and that path everywhere.
Well prepared tofu/seitan/mushrooms are delicious, nutritive, much more environmentally friendly and you don't have to ask yourself if they were raised ethically or in hell like conditions
It's not perfect, and I have nothing against meat per se, but I acknowledge that we can't eat meant 1-2 times a day every day sustainably/ethically and affordably
I have a coworker who came from Germany and that seems to be the case. USA still has very limited options. I don't mind, but I've come to stop going to restaurants outright due to the lack of decent options and only really go with friends for the social aspect.
Or you eat meat, take care of what you in your body, and know these meat substitutes are a gimmick to put "health halos" on highly processed soy products that were formerly just sold to prisons.
For me, and I'm not sure how widespread this opinion is, it's not a health halo. I treat beyond/impossible burgers like I treat beef burgers: an occasional dietary splurge. I like them for a few reasons: more sustainably sourced, signalling with my pocketbook that alternatives are important, getting my kids ok with not eating meat occasionally (meatless Mondays sort of thing).
Yes that's what they're designed to do. Make you "feel" like you can contribute to meaningful solution not by pressuring large industrial polluters to do something but rather just make minor changes in your personal consumption habits.
I'm not sure why you're putting "feel" in quotes, voting with your pocketbook is a legitimate way of signalling to large industrial polluters to do something, right?
Not in the least. Consumerism is not a substitute for real policy.
Imagine if instead of freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln just instead made "Freedom Credits" that were issued to businesses that didn't use slave labor, but it allowed companies that used slave labor to purchase surplus "Freedom Credits" as offsets so they could claim they're making progress towards their ESG goals. Maybe it would become part of these companies advertising like "Fairtrade" has. The net result is that we would still have some kind of chattel slavery.
As ridiculous as this sounds, this is what we are doing when we defer to market based solutions to help nibble away at real policy issues. Also, consumer choices are already highly constrained by what the market bares.
I think you're mistaking me for Abraham Lincoln... I can't impose policy on the beef industry. Comparing the actions I took to the actions a historic US president took is not really appropriate commentary.
Millions voting with their pocket books can have the same impact; causing the industry to change because of reduced revenue. Especially if we can reach the tipping point where beyond/impossible becomes less expensive than beef.
In this analogy, Mark Rober would be your Abraham Lincoln, his video helped tip me towards eating more plant-based burgers, and has been seen 54M times.
Where I agree with you is that _policy_ is a much more direct and effective method of achieving similar ends. However I don't think eating less meat is comparable to carbon credits. The IPCC specifically lists it as a tried and true strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions.
The substitution of meat for other protein sources has real (albeit lagging) effects on the agricultural economy. Less people buying meat leads to less production of meat at scale, which in turn results in reduced deforestation (and potentially reforestation). Producing less meat leads to less greenhouse gas production at several points in the chain, most notably from reduced number of animals, but also during production and logistics. More forests contribute to carbon capture and biodiversity.
Probably the two biggest obstacles to consumer based solutions have been policy that subsidizes the cost of meat, and the cultural backlash to the idea of eating less meat (despite the many health + environmental incentives to reducing meat consumption overall).
Because it is a gimmick to make you feel like you're doing something, for the sole purpose of getting money from your pocket into theirs. You're not doing anything. The dr. feelgood insect and vegetarian "meat" products are heavily processed, requiring extra energy, fuel, and manpower.
Eating plant based meat instead of meat directly causes less animals to be factory farmed as demand is reduced. That reduces suffering, seems like something to me
You're moving the goalposts here, but neither the person I'm replying to nor you are really providing anything compelling about how unfit these are for consumption.
Wrong. Whether it's pea or soy, it's a distinction without a difference. They're substitutes that really offer no real quantifiable or societal health benefit that make people feel better about their consumption.
Protein is made up of different amino acids. If a food has all 9 essential amino acids humans need its called a "complete" protein.
It really does not matter, since presumably that is not the only food you eat. You need all the amino acids, but like any other nutrient, you don't need them all from the exact same source. As long as all the food you eat balances out the needed nutrients, you are good.
It'd be like saying, apples are unhealthy because it doesn't have literally every nutrient and if you only ate apples for the rest of your life you would be malnourished. Which is true but also a silly thing to say because nobody eats only apples.
There are a group of amino acids that the body has to get externally. There are a few veggies that do have all those amino acids, but I guess soy and peas don't
That explanation doesn't really work for me. Meat eaters aren't all yee-hawing tailgate BBQ addicts, and vegetarians aren't all paragons of healthy/natural virtue. I know plenty of people who are happy carnivores, who also enjoy a Beyond or Impossible patty. Usually it's an "every little bit helps" thing, cutting down just a little bit on the health or environmental negatives of meat. Sometimes it's just for variety. Either way, there are people who love meat and also will touch these products gladly.
The "variety" contingent includes me BTW. I've enjoyed all sorts of vegetarian meat alternatives over the years - old school soy or peanut-based "TVP" in a can back in the 70s, tempeh, bean-based and rice-based and mushroom-based kinds, etc. I make both lentil and potato burgers according to my own recipes. One of the reasons I prefer Beyond to Impossible is that Impossible tastes too much like meat. I can easily tell the difference with Beyond, though, making it less of a direct replacement for beef and more like a different meat to experiment with. That's far more interesting to me.
Unfortunately for Beyond, I think I'm in the minority. Most in-betweeners seem to have settled on Impossible. Consumers want a direct replacement, apparently. Beyond has simply not won in a finite market. There's no need for a Manichean "two types of people" model to explain it.
> you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body,
That's a false dichotomy there - you're making the assumption that there's only two types of people: 1) meat eaters, and 2) people who care about what they eat.
Yep, I dated a 'pastatarian' for a couple years. I don't remember her ever eating a salad, despite being vegetarian. She made a mean potato pizza, though!
I’ve heard of the nickname “beer and potato chips” vegan. There is no reason to think that your protein choice === the healthiness of your diet. I mostly eat chicken and veggies and fish. Not a very rare exception.
As for beyond meat - I find the taste and texture unsettling and a little too sweet. Kind of like it had beets in it. Impossible meats I eat about once a week
Its even less complex than this: its more expensive than its meat or vegetable equivalent, so you're either eating meat or you're eating vegetables and there's no point to sub in plant-based meat.
If you're doing it for cost reasons you'll eat cheaper meat or vegetarian, or if you're doing it ideologically you're eating vegetarian.
There's, at least, a third group that stopped eating meat on ethical or climate related grounds rather than taste or health grounds. My daughter was one, as were a decent number of her peers. Whether or not that's a sufficiently large segment that can sustain an industry, though, I'm not competent to judge.
Climate impact is what made my daughter become vegetarian. I am not yet completely convinced (I eat meat, but in smaller amounts than I used to), but do find the argument persuasive.
Things like BM aren't appealing to me, though, because of the price point. I can just eat non-meat things instead.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or [...]
I'm 90% plant-based (I occasionally eat meat). I love beyond meat and prefer it to real meat, but it's more expensive than real meat. One of the more significant egoistic advantages of a plant-based diet is the cost, which generally means it tends not to end up on the shopping list.
Their target market is all wrong. They need to drop the cost below "luxury food" and cater to the crowd who are scraping together cash for a McDonalds.
I'm vegan, but our numbers are so vanishingly small, we're a distraction in this conversation. Essentially the ~entire market for these products is meat eaters, and I don't believe meat eaters care about what they're eating even if they pay lip service to their health, the environment, or animal rights. Meat substitutes will win in the market because the food labs will (and I believe already have) succeeded in making them cheaper and tastier. You can't add extra salt, sugar, and MSG (not there is anything wrong with it) to a 100% beef patty.
I am 100% rooting for Impossible to win regulatory approval here in the EU, even though it's an uphill legal battle. The USA leads the world in junk food technology, and we need better junk food to get us through the energy transition.
> or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes.
First, for many vegetarians it is primarily moral position, not health position. It does not imply the know or care more about healthy eating.
Second, even people who care for health food, that does not mean they subscribe to junk/processed cultural labels, which are illdefined and often irrelevant to whether the food is healthy or not.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole
Assuming you can afford to eat meat, which many meat eaters might find themselves less able to do if prices continue to climb and/or beef subsidies end.
Last I checked, Beyond Burgers cost almost 50% more pr lbs than the cheapest bulk ground beef in the store. If that changed then there might be a market.
Around here (Cambridge, MA) when it's on sale, maybe it's only 50% higher than ground beef's regular price. It's normally 250% the price of ground beef, with Impossible being even slightly higher priced.
That's the gag with Impossible. Unless you or your parents are owners of a climate non-profit flush with cash, their products are impossible to afford.
I'm a meat-eater who is aware of the negative health consequences of excess meat consumption and Beyond Meat has been a great gateway/transition food for me. It tastes great, I'm not too worried about how processed it is because it's still better than how meat is processed (e.g. nitrates), and I hope it sticks around. The biggest downside to Beyond Meat for me is the cost.
I've tried many of the traditional alternatives. Tofu can be great, but getting it there is a lot of effort. Tempeh is ok but only works with some dishes. For me there's nothing quite as easy as throwing a Beyond Meat sausage or patty on the barbecue in the summer.
One thing to watch out for with Beyond and Impossible is that they still contain pretty crazy amounts of saturated fats. I know they’re better overall, but for a lot of people those fats are evidently one of the most substantial risks to their health.
I know it’s considered contentious, but the balance of research around this strongly indicates that reducing saturated fats has profoundly positive impact on health outcomes.
I’m not saying don’t eat them or they’re terrible. They do seem better than real meat as far as health goes. I’ve just been blown away by the amount of fat these things contain and I wonder if people realize how much it is.
Agree. I grew up vegetarian and nowadays (sometimes) eat meat. So vegetarian food for me is not some make believe meat substitutes. And when I do feel craving I would eat normal burger, chicken or lamb curry. It is just eating less meat not looking for daily substitute for meat.
I agree. People complain about GMO seeds like crazy, then expect people are going to eat lab grown meat in large amounts?
Also their obvious social media astroturfing is very on the nose. I don't like being gaslit when I ask questions about why people would eat lab grown meat
Contrary to many comments, being a vegetarian/mostly vegan (with a pause) for 15+ years, I do enjoy an artifical meat burger every second month. At McD in Germany they are out of stock too often though and I have to leave.
Before artificial meat I had to forgo burgers, as I never liked veggie patties.
I got some push-back from my family on Beyond Burgers, we were grilling them somewhat regularly this summer and I was perfectly happy with them, but then towards the end of the summer my wife said, and my kids agreed: they didn't like them. I think the Impossible is the better product.
But, Beyond is listed on the stock market, so it's easier to see that they've been struggling?
Why am I not surprised the vaunted NYT failed to do basic research that might contradict their narrative. They dont even mention the bombshell story from last week regarding a whistleblower complaint about Beyond factory conditions: mold, bacteria, and string found in the meat. They even lied about being inspected by Pennsylvania state officials but havent faced any punishment. see https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-21/beyond-mea...
This reminds me of the early days of every new technology when the media predicted doom and gloom.
Every time an electric vehicle caught fire it was national news, and then someone in the comments would point out that they weren't catching fire any more than gas cars, but that wasn't newsworthy.
The early days of the Internet, the media constantly portrayed it as full of child porn and hackers.
Now the ultra-critical lens is on meat alternatives. But in 10 years that'll be the default when you order a Big Mac and nobody will think of it as any weirder than any of the other ingredients in packaged and prepared foods.
Makes sense to me. I'm a now 7 year vegetarian and I've tried somewhere between most and all of the meatless options I've encountered in restaurants and at grocery stores. I eat probably 15-20 meals a week based around meatless burgers, bacon, chicken, steak, sausage, etc.
In that time (well, 2020-present) we've gone from having Beyond burgers constantly in the fridge + inclusion in a meal every few days, and seeking out restaurants that have them, to completely avoiding them. I cannot tell if the flavor has actually changed or my family has become too accustomed to alternatives-- Impossible is king to us and I'll happily take Gardein or even Boca options over Beyond now, althought I'll happily take a Beyond patty over the average black bean burger, my original standard, back before the Brave New Meatless Times (black beans feature heavily in my diet still, but not on bread :).
It's worth noting their sausage- and chicken-type products are really quite excellent. But the standard bearer, the burger patty, doesn't compete these days, IMO.
There are better alternatives[1] than Beyond Meat at least here in Switzerland. There are several competitors that create much better tasting non-meat products without any of the additives that Beyond Meat uses, locally made and sustainable.
Beyond Meat spent an enormous amount of money to have their foot everywhere but if your product is mediocre a better products will take your place.
Also very interesting is that different countries have different priorities when it comes to such food items. The planted CEO stated that it was quite difficult to enter Germany because price was a much bigger factor than taste.
Trust me, I agree. I just found the first link that explained it more or less. I am the furthest thing from vegan and I couldn't care less, but wanted to produce some source on why Impossible Meat is not technically vegan certified. Whatever that is.
I'm not aware of any standard of vegan certification. If there was one, and it counted this against Impossible, then it would have to count a whole lot of other ingredients that were animal tested too wouldn't it?
Agreed. And as an aside, the Impossible Mince is pretty excellent, though too expensive for me to use regularly over the cheaper vegan mince alternatives.
If you’re vegetarian, why do you want the uncanny valley version of meat? Be a vegetarian.
I have always thought that the target market for Beyond/Incredible/etc was not vegetarians, but rather partners of vegetarians. They don’t really want to give up meat but they want to support their partner and/or avoid conflict.
For some people, meat tastes good, but they want to reduce meat intake or remove it from their diet for health or environmental reasons. The status of 'be a vegetarian' is irrelevant to the material effect.
Apologies, I think I used "health" in a misleading way.
My intention was not to suggest meat substitutes are strictly better than meat for losing weight, or reducing heart disease, general public health advice (I am not qualified to even make those comments!).
The scope I was hoping to address was situations where an individual needs to replace meat for their specific dietary requirements. In this case, meat substitutes may be useful if, say, there is something in meat causing inflammation for the individual.
This is largely "what-if" though, and would probably require a doctor's consult to confirm.
As a vegetarian, I'm going to eat the vegetarian food I like, and that includes fake meat.
I've lived with dozens of other vegetarians, and I've heard the "I don't like fake meat" position a lot, but it's not a clear majority, and far from universal.
My grocery store sells five+ brands of fake chicken at this point, in addition to vegetarian burgers, fish, and sausage. There's very obviously a market.
The play was to be well positioned when the big meat brands (think McDonald's) eventually make the switch which they theorized will have to happen both because of climate change and because they'll have a cheaper, less resource intense substitute.
It's really the same play as any technology, the first generation jumps the gun and strikes too early given their ambitions.
But someone's gotta be the Yahoo! It's a necessary step in the path.
Restaurant menu and supermarket shelf space is expensive. Yet I almost never see it purchased at anything like what would justify the frequency - it's like it's offered out of pure politeness, like a decorative menorah at a "holiday celebration". Ofc it's not, the company has to be subsidizing it at effectively negative cost. Even in their 10K they keep their "promotional activities" confidential, but their "selling, general and administrative expenses" are 50% of the value of their actual cost of goods sold.
It's sort of an irritation finding it lumped in the meat freezer section at Costco, it's like noise in my search space looking for the real stuff. It doesn't help that they try to simulate the visuals to appear the same as well. Many times I have looked at some packaging and thought "that looks like a good chicken nugget", but then quickly ascertain it's not a chicken nugget. I wouldn't mind if there was some distinct boundary labeling of the shelf to identify the cluster of products under a certain identity, it's just when the border isn't identified and the customer has to determine it each round that causes the friction. It has seemed to stabilize in our region to in this third left quadrant of the freezer but it shifts one or two columns left and right it feels like depending on the inventory coming in.
I mean, you can pretty much make the same argument about brands you don't like: they look similar to those by brands you do, and occupy the same shelf space.
(And for chicken nuggets specifically, I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference, haha.)
true, I think there's a basis for that. When you jump stores like enter a Sprouts freezer aisle you can get disarrayed from the unfamiliar brands and logos and all that and have to orient yourself first in those scenarios too at times.
It's probably because people have been judging a food company like a tech stock, and now things are leveling out.
I'm in tech, and (for whatever reason) I feel more kinship toward Beyond Meat than I do Swanson. It hyped itself up as an innovative product (it is!), raised money like an innovative product (sure, why not) and now is being valued like the product it actually is.
This happens all the time (Peloton! Airbnb!), and every time news articles act aghast. At some point, products collide with the industry they're competing with, and start to be valued by the same metrics.
You don't see meat eaters trying to make their broccoli taste like hamburger patties.
Vegetables are supposed to taste like vegetables. They're good without needing to be processed. Nobody wants to buy uncanny valley meat substitute, except as a novelty. And novelty business models work, but these guys misread their market and thought it could be a daily meat replacement, for a group of people that don't eat meat, or a group of people that eat real meat, not the fake stuff. Of course they failed.
Considering Rügenwalder, one of Germany's largest meat processing companies, managed to pivot to primarily selling veggie meat replacements, and grow their business at that, your conclusion is wrong.
There's definitely a niche for this, and it's large enough to build a multi billion dollar company.
And if it can work in the country that's home to the Currywurst, then it can work everywhere.
There is a niche for it, I'm not saying there's not. All I'm saying is they went about marketing it wrong because they misread the market and targeted the wrong demographic. Meat eaters dont want it, vegetarians don't want it, it's a novelty item, that's your niche.
> Meat eaters dont want it, vegetarians don't want it
But that's obviously wrong, vegetarians and meat eaters are buying it én masse, the product is clearly a success, at least in Germany. And not just once, but repeatedly, again and again.
I am a former meat-eater. I became vegetarian for ethical reasons, and I don't really miss meat much (except for the very occasional chicken wings craving).
A couple of years ago I was at a restaurant (Beach Chalet in GGP in SF) and ordered their "veggie burger". It was one of those Beyond Meat/Impossible burgers. One bite and I recoiled in horror: did they give me real meat instead of the veggie option? Now, it has happened in the past that I have been given meat when I specifically ordered something vegetarian. For example: "beef burrito" at a taco place when I wanted a "bean burrito". It brought back those bad memories and I could not take another bite.
The problem here is a marketing one. Beyond and Impossible have a market, but it's those people who would just like to lower their meat consumption. _It is not the veggie burger eating hippie!_ By forcing us vegetarians to consume these fake burgers, the industry is embracing a lose-lose proposition: most vegetarians want nothing to do with these because of the taste, and most meat eaters would rather just eat the real thing.
I think what companies who want to cater to vegetarians and vegans should do is focus more on providing plant based foods that AREN'T pretending to be meat. I'm not a vegan, never have been, but I quite like a lot of vegetarian foods. But I tried a beyond burger once just out of curiosity and it just... smelled wrong. There was something about it that put me off immediately on a primal level. My guess is that sales surged initially as curious non-vegans tried the fake meat, only for most to realize that it wasn't nearly as tasty and go back to actual meat, leaving the main customer base as vegans trying their best to convince themselves that no it tastes good actually. Providing options such as grilled vegetables that are actually super tasty is a way better idea than just trying to mold weird processed plant matter into a vague approximation of "meat".
I can't say I'm surprised. Before I left the UK, I regularly enjoyed bean burgers and Quorn burgers. I haven't seen either since I moved to Germany, but I have seen plenty of other meat alternatives including this, and none of them are quite as good as the Quorn or the bean burgers.
Im a meat eater, but you can wake me up anytime if some good Indian vegetarian food is being served. I don't think its necessary to call chemical slop "meat" but okey.
I really like Beyond Meat, though it's not as good as some of the other meat replacement options I can find at the grocery stores around here. I also think of all of these meat replacement options as junk food and not replacement for actual whole vegetables.
There's a fast food chain called "Max" that has veggie patties. When I tasted their burger for the first time I thought they might have messed up my order and given me real meat, the taste and texture seemed so realistic. But I hadn't eaten real red meat in around 20 years, and didn't trust my own taste, so I got my meat-eating boyfriend to try it. He was also confused and suspicious, so he went to the cashier to confirm that this was definitely not meat. I was pretty blown away!
One thing I thought was cool was, a few years ago, seeing a plant-based patty + bacon burger. At that time these replacements were only really marketed for people not wanting to eat meat at all, so at first I was confused about whether the bacon is vegetarian, too. But no - the bacon was real. After the initial double take I realized how cool it is, and how these kinds of partial-options can help normalize eating _less_ meat even if you still want real bacon (for example).
For the long term though, I'm hopeful for lab-grown meat becoming a more common and accessible option.
Since the rise of Beyond and the whole hype of this lab-grown alternative products, something has really changed (at least here in Germany): There are a lot of good tasting meat-like products on the market and they improved very well over the last couple of years.
They improved in texture (IMHO a completely underrated factor) and flavor. I mostly buy steaks and sausages for BBQ. Nowadays there are some differences in taste and texture but when I was beginning eating only vegetarian (20+ years) there was nearly nothing on the market and that, what was on the market, was disgusting.
But I have to admit ... the best products are products which don't want to be meat replacements. That are well flavored (with herbs and smoke) tofu products from one german company/brand. They are too expensive for day to day use like the most other meat replacements but if I want to spend my money on that than I buy the really good stuff.
Vegan/Vegetarian has, depending on the intention behind this decision, often a health related reason. Meat alternatives are often highly processed food which is not healthy at all. Proteins from peas, soy, mushrooms or whatever remind me more at dog food with hydrolyzed protein content for allergic dogs ;-)
The replacements may or may not taste good ... at the end they are not as healthy as self cooked food.
Unfortunately beyond / impossible meats were just mimicked by all the incumbent meat alternative brands and it turns out what they are doing isn't that special or proprietary. Most people eating them are not hardcore vegans / plant based folks, tried them for novelty and switched back to beef. People don't want to eat this regularly and when we do, there are 10 brands on the shelf with it on offer and it's a race to the bottom.
I also think that the anti-meat trend has peaked out. The people yakking about Soylent were yakking about fake meat, and their attention span is limited.
It is interesting how they mention in the article that some Deloitte analysts think there is a segment of consumers who think this plant-based meat is "woke" or is otherwise related to politically-left leaning ideas. I think this kind of resistance to the fake meat is irrational, but there is definitely memes and other ideas on some corners of the internet that associate certain foods/dietary choices with the "Other".
The people who promote fake meat are also often promoting banning real meat or making it more expensive by adding carbon credits. You can see some of them in this thread.
The issue is that the business strategy for all these companies was to convert meat eaters into plant eaters which is never going to happen in the long run. Sure sales surged in the beginning cause it was the "new thing" and everyone wanted to try them if nothing else, as a comparison. Like ever other gimmick though, once the surge ends the company has no idea what to do next.
I don't think demand for Beyond will ever hit zero but I do think recent demand seems to have been temporary & can see it falling into a niche.
In the past, vegetarianism/veganism was mostly the reserve of activist types, dogmatic in their approach, with little interest in fake meats (though they existed, demand & competition was low enough for them to be pretty poor substitutes).
Then, more recently, there was a big trend of vegetarianism becoming more mainstream, with many people trialling it: during that trial, there's naturally a lot of reliance on products like Beyond. Similarly, with the mainstreaming of it all, many old-timer vegetarians become more comfortable/open with liking/trying meaty things & also as the product quality/variety improves, many old-timer vegetarians will be naturally curious excited to test new options. So this all results in big spikes in demand for Beyond.
Now I think we're entering a phase of (a) long-term dedicated vegetarians have tried it out & the novelty has disappeared and (b) "trial" vegetarians are settling into a "flexitarian" / low-meat diet, where they just eat real meat when they want to, but do their best to reduce consumption. So the demand drops.
There's still going to be the odd "trial" vegetarian who likes meat but stayed strict & there's probably some old-timers who developed a taste for it, but it's a much lower % of people than at the peak of novel interest.
---
There's also a few notable exceptions where new substitutes have succeeded in gaining a culturally iconic status - e.g. the Greggs sausages in the UK. These will probably retain some popularity I guess, but they're very much the exception.
The number of vegetarians/vegans in Germany is strongly increasing [1]. The reasons vary and range from the horrific and inexcusable environmental impact of mass meat production to simple ethics. I personally have been convinced by my conscience and empathy.
I make an effort to reduce (and hopefully stop) eating meat after witnessing the insane cruelty we subject smart, intelligent and emotional animals to. The cognitive dissonance required to eat tons of pigs but on the other hand love dogs and cats is just weird. I mean if you get the chance, check out some cows and pigs. They're awesome and form a bond with you.
So hearing pigs scream in pain from CO2 suffocation is absolutely psychotic to me. Their cries burned themselves into my mind. Especially considering that most of them probably never saw the sun or could ever lay down in the grass to doze off... :(
For me, eating meat doesn't justify this pure horror. However, I still make a distinction between this sort of meat and, say, animals that had happy free roam years on a farm. I get a lot of heat from vegans but it doesn't matter. ANY reduction in the consumption of live animal products is a positive thing and there will always be political radicals.
So in the end, I find myself in your category (b) at the moment with severely reduced meat consumption. Beyond Meat temporarily helps to bridge the gap, it's akin to the nicotine bandaid, only this time it's for the meat addiction. But in that way the subsutition products are temporary and the majority of vegan/vegetarian food we cook is way tastier than the ready made substitutes.
Not only they taste like the real thing or better, but they are multiplying in variety, number and availability.
The 'fake' versions of meat dishes starting to taste much better seems that they should start being called new, actual dishes instead of being considered clones.
Yes, there are plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes that don't require any kind of fake meat. We know. Please shut up since this isn't what fake-meat products solve.
Fake-meat products are for when I have meat cravings, when I go to a restaurant that doesn't normally do vegetarian cuisine, and ditto cultural events like cookouts.
I stopped buying beyond meat burgers simply because they disappeared from the shelves (of Tesco). For no other reason. The burgers were excellent. To me Beyond Meat just “got it”. I wanted a burger that delivered tasty high energy content and they delivered. The other meat alternative companies went down the health food route which I think is a mistake.
My wife taught a business class using the Beyond Meat company as one of the examples. We got a costco box of beyond meat patties to check them out and I cooked and served them (just to the family). They reminded me of a puck of cat food when frozen/de-thawing. Smelled weird cooking. Then for just the time I was eating, came really dam close to a real burger. But no one had any desire to reheat any leftovers. My opinion was they are close, but the concept needs a bit more work. I also think they might be better in a restaurant setting as it's kind like sausage, it's best not to know the process and just enjoy the finished product.
We also have a Next Level Burger in our local Whole Foods we occasionally eat at and if they added Beyond Meat to the menu I don't think I would order it over the other vegi patties they already serve...
...but it is so expensive. In my country (EU) it's easily 2x the price of real meat. And sells frozen in packs of 10. And there is ONE store that sells it.
At reduced price, packs of 2 would be a hit. Like this it's "yeah I tried it once, it was good... nope, not going to buy again"
IMHO this is the same sort of issue that hydrogen as a car fuel has. It's a stop-gap, interim measure that people hope will succeed prior to full bore measures like lab-based meat.
But, it's more than that. It's also economic. These things cost more than meat themselves. They also cost more than other vegetarian friendly (and tastier, but that's subjective), patties. Even worse, they've trying to drive up consumer cost of alternative burgers in general. I can either spend 32 NIS on a 4 pack of really good vegan burgers, or I can spend 24-30 NIS on a 2 pack of "plant based meat burgers". Heck, they actually cost ~25% more than meat burgers here.
I may have personal reasons to not like them. But from a purely economic point of view, they just don't fit here. Interestingly the data shows that they also don't sell here.
'Plant-based' is such a nice way to hand wave away just how terrible these meat-replacements are.
There is nothing natural about it at all and it's a shame as it's pushed vegetarian offerings off the table, options that are from what I can see healthier and more accessible to a broader consumer base.
I’ve tried the product and I always thought it silly to produce a plant-based version of an unhealthy meat product so that all the healthy dieters that switched away from said foods now have an unhealthy option restored to them that is more conscionable than what they chose to avoid in the first place.
> Palaeolithic diets were diverse and prehistoric cooking complex, involving several steps of food preparation.
> mounting evidence of plant consumption by both early modern humans and Neanderthals, in addition to meat. Wild nuts and grasses were often combined with pulses, such as lentils, and wild mustard.
He's saying that we ate all of those AND meat, and meat was actually meat, you know, a tried and tested substance on which entire species subsist, while the new thing is a super complex mix of stuff we don't really understand.
Which is just an appeal to nature and/or tradition. If they want to say something of value then they should present data showing that these products are not as healthy as an otherwise identical diet consisting of real meat.
> Which is just an appeal to nature and/or tradition.
An appeal to nature and/or tradition is not inherently a fallacy.
We KNOW for a fact that meat is a valid food, and we also know almost all of its downsides.
We definitely don't know the downsides of all these new "foods". And unfortunately it's the kind of thing that will take decades and decades to figure out.
But in any case, since I don't have conclusive evidence this is bad for us, I'm perfectly fine with others being Guinea Pigs and I'll be perfectly happy to eat it once there are government mandates in place to ban meat consumption and have it replaced with artificial meat :-)
In this case, it is definitely fallacy. These new "foods" are made of all the same stuff as the things we have been eating for centuries [0]. Soy, peas, rice, various plant fats, vitamins, etc.
This is the part where you bring out the "processing" boogeyman, right? Like people haven't been eating processed foods for decades too?
[0] with the exception of the heme in Impossible burgers I suppose, which did undergo animal testing and was approved by the FDA same as drugs you've likely taken that were approved in the past decade.
> Like people haven't been eating processed foods for decades too?
And guess what, saturated fats are killing us. Saturated fats found in abundance in processed foods. Less processed foods don't have as many saturated fats, so this isn't really a problem you encounter with a traditional diet.
This is just an example of why're right that processed foods are bad for us.
It's not a boogeyman if it can be proven right with a 2-minute Google search.
Excuse me for not trusting blindy J. Random startup making food from stuff at the bottom of a glass tube. I'm sure their incentives are perfectly aligned with mine :-)
I think meat mimicking is a wrong approach. When I was 12-15, my grandma made a lot of plant-based menu, I don't even know what it is back then, so I don't know it's supposed to be meat alternative. It's just one strange menu that has a good taste.
I mean, should they try create a new naming system, stop advertising as anything related to meat at all. Create a whole new menu set, they don't even need burger! Look around the world of feed, mediterranean, italian, portuguese, south east asia etc. Plant-based chelf should be the whole new study as well. The current plant-based industry is so mediocre or too early.
Early in the pandemic, during my first trip to a grocery store, I saw that the meat aisle was bare - but for a meat substitute (was either Impossible or Beyond, can't recall). Even in the midst of a global health crisis no one wanted it.
I mean, people didn’t want hoard it. It’s as equally intuitive that there’s little overlap between people who eat meat alternatives and those who stockpiled staples and caused the shortages their stockpiling was supposed to protect them from.
Some of the worst displays of poor manners in the “civilised” world was of people fighting over piles of toilet paper.
Meat substitutes are almost always sold out at my local grocery store. Last week beyond was entirely sold out and I managed to get the last 2 packs of Nestlé's Incredible? Impossible? Whatever it's called, yesterday veggie bacon and salami were sold out, I got like meat's last like gyros pack, and had to get a separate like meat like chicken pack to somehow substitute the missing like gyros pack. Oh and I got Rügenwalder's last Leberwurst.
Sometimes I cycle another 2½km to the the next grocery store, because they usually have more like meat and vivera products, but often they're sold out there as well and I've got to try another day.
In India, which has the world's largest vegetarian population, there seems to still be a rapid expansion of fast-food burger restaurants taking place (e.g. https://www.burgersinghonline.com/menu). They cater to this large demographic with low-cost burgers where the meat patty is replaced with a range of existing Indian foods (deep fried cottage cheese, potatoes with mixed vegetables and spices, etc).
A single Beyond Meat patty at the U.S. supermarket price is equivalent to the Indian rupee price of ~4 full vegetarian burgers at Burger Singh (the Indian BK).
To be fair, vegetarian Indians probably wouldn't eat something like the Impossible burger anyway for fear of eating meat, nor is the taste or texture of real meat appealing to them.
At some point we are spending millions and millions to cater to a specific cultural niche - India has 1.5 billion people whose idea of home cooked food isnt meat and certainly not a burger, China and Nigeria pretty much the same.
Yes we need to stop farming animals (climate, space, cruelty, cost) - but there are alternatives.
Edit: yes vegetable dishes are prepared in the home usually by the wife and tend to take hours - so the convenience aspect plays a huge role as society changes - but ready meals are not the only solution - humans used to be good at social - we might need to relearn how to design our cities and discover our neighbours
The problem in a nutshell is their price point. It’s way, way too high and not competitive with similar products, which is why people aren’t buying it. If they can’t figure this out, then they probably don’t deserve to be in business.
Strong tangent here, but y'all vegetarians in the Bay Area ought try Dad's Luncheonette in Half Moon Bay for their mushroom sandwich, a vegetarian's alternative to the hamburger sandwich.
I got no affiliation with Dad's aside from thinking that they make a couple of fine sandwiches, and the mushroom sandwich is a great example of a vegetarian hamburger "alternative" that doesn't try to be a hamburger but tastes real good.
I'm omnivorous but like that mushroom sandwich sometimes (and the hamburger sandwich they sell is probably the best sandwich in the state, so that's saying something).
Creating "actual beef" used to be fairly expensive, but, over the decades, companies have found out how to produce it for as cheap as possible, while still earning billions in profits, without consumers feeling as though beef is expensive. That efficiency comes with time. Plant-based meat is still in its infancy by comparison. So, even though the costs to consumers is high, the amount of profit the plant-based companies earn may be similar, or even lower than, what the beef industry earns.
Then there's Beyond itself. Striking a deal with McDonald's likely involved a lot of time and money — and then the "McPlant" product immediately failed. If you're going to convince Americans that plant-based meat is good, meeting them where they're at with fast food may seem like a good idea. But the type of people who find themselves in the McDonald's drive-thru, and the type of people who will pay extra for plant-based meat, is a tiny sliver of the theoretical burger Venn Diagram.
Now, you could call that grossly mismanaged, or you could call it the best possible shot they had at catering to a wide audience and breaking out of the niche vegan market. But the fact is, the product failed. Where can they possibly go from here to continue growth?
I'm vegetarian and I get asked how I like these "meat replacement" things often enough. The thing is that I just…don't like burgers, steaks, etc. so these are basically of zero interest to me (e.g., every veggie burger I've had I would consider to be better than every beef burger I've ever had; there was one kind of steak I liked growing up and it being mostly pre-marinated juices was most of what I liked about it). These products are not, IMO, for vegetarians for vegans but more for meat eaters looking to reduce their (actual) meat consumption.
i've always wondered why these meat alternatives don't try to target exotic & rare meats rather than aiming for the most common staples. i would think you would have much more leeway with something where there is less familiarity and not to mention the price tag could be framed much more favorably rather than trying to compete with one of the most highly subsidized proteins on earth.
why don't we have beyond alligator or beyond ostrich or even better yet, some kind of hypothetical dinosaur meat?
I try to eat less meat, but to be honest I haven't really found a "plant-based" product that actually tastes good. At best it works for products that are highly processed, and over-spiced anyway.
But e.g. things like minced meat alternative just taste awful, no matter which brand. I'd rather just put more veggies in my food, or mushrooms, or more natural things like tofu and spice it myself...
I see those plant-based products only as an alternative to very cheap, low quality meat. E.g. Id rather eat a plant based "chicken" nugget, than one made from meat scraps full of bone splitters and cartillage.
Seems weird to me to insist that the human culinary apex is the burger and we just gotta replicate it sans animal product. It is hilarious that billions in R&D have been poured into such a ridiculous cause.
Will it eventually be possible to use technology to make plant-based meat taste identical to real meat? Yes.
Will it be cheaper to manufacture this future plant-based meat than real meat? Very likely yes.
Then, it seems obvious that eventually everyone eating meat will switch to plant-based meat.
The real question is if BYND will survive this technology shift. Whoever does will have at least tens of billions in revenue (and be worth some multiple of that) given that the current size of the meat industry is $1.3t (1% market share = $13b). At a $800m market cap, the stock seems cheap.
The goal should be to eat HUMANE meat if you want to eat meat but can't for ethical reasons.
When I was a kid, my gram grams in Ukraine treated our animals like family members. That cow and hog dinner cooked for them smelled so good I wanted to plant my face in it myself.
My grandfather even built a sun deck for the pigs. A sun deck.
We wanted them to be HAPPY and PLUMPY, and when it was time to get the household through the winter, the dispatching was done quickly.
Humane meat should be scarce and expensive. The problem is that it's hard to know whom to trust with the claims of humanely raised stock.
> The goal should be to eat HUMANE meat if you want to eat meat but can't for ethical reasons.
To a lot of us, it will never be considered humane to kill something that is perfectly healthy for no other reason than that we want to eat something that tastes a certain way.
> When I was a kid, my gram grams in Ukraine treated our animals like family members
This is called "sustenance". They are not your pets. You treat the animals well because they literally feed you through the cold months. People don't understand that in many parts of the world not eating meat is a huge luxury.
That's a big goalpost shift. You went from "treat animals like family members" to "some people need meat to survive" those are entirely different arguments.
I was first person to get a beyond burger from a&w in my city. Compared to traditional veggie burgers it was amazing. I can't believe anyone would go back to veggie burgers now the beyond burgers exist. I assume the other brands are similar.
I dont care at all the beyond burgers are everything nutritionists claim is bad for you. I know nutritionists are outright lying.
Personally however, it didn't hit the threshold of being better than meat. So that was the last time I had beyond meat.
In other news, FDA approved lab grown meat. Chicken is first at bat.
Given the popularity of the vegan diet among millennials and Zoomers I expected this type of products to skyrocket.
The marketing was building a lot of hype, and targeting fast-food was smart, because I think that meat is usually very low quality so changing for a plant-based recipe could have been a double win: the taste is not worse or better, and the concerns about animal cruelty and bad ecological footprint is the worst for the type of meat used in this industry.
Is there a smear campaign going on against BM? Noticed a few of these stories — I just can’t work out whether the stories are causing their issues or vice versa!
Whenever this story comes up I think about how their now-former COO recently "allegedly punched a motorist and bit that man’s on the nose so hard that it tore his flesh" [1]
Knowing nothing else about the story, it's amusing to pretend that he was simply desperate to taste any kind of meat after months/years of being forced to give it up due to his position.
I like them for how easy they are to cook. I tend to eat them once a week. I alternate my protein sources: fish, seafood, chicken, beyond/impossible, egg/dairy, turkey.
I avoid pork and beef most of the time, except on occasions.
In that sense they're a nice addition to my selection, I find they have a unique flavor to them, but most often they're the protein that I cook when I'm lazy, because of how they don't need any prep.
The major problem is that they lose money on every burger sold. They have negative net margins. That was never sustainable. It's not quite like a scaling business ala Amazon where you can eventually stop expanding and collect profits. Their entire production process is cost intensive, even if the marginal cost shrinks over time, it is still a loss. So, this was/is no surprise.
What I don't get here is that this really is only about beef. Chicken and Pork isn't actually that bad for the environment as they are very efficient production wise.
So if you want eat a burger and don't feel bad, just eat a pork or chicken burger and you should be fine.
For me, Beyond Meat was pretty terrible when I tried it. Maybe if you put it in burger with many other things its not as bad.
So I rarely eat processed food at all. More often than not that slightly upsets our stomaches.
Impossible, beyond and whatever all the brands are called did all heavily upset my and my partners stomach so far. Just the same ugly feeling like after a burger king visit but for longer.
No issue with black bean, Quorn or veggie patties. No issue with actual meat. We aren't picky.
As a vegetarian I always despised the idea of chewing/eating something that "just tastes like" meat! I do hope Burger King/McDonald's bring the real veggie patty burger (black bean or anything that is real vegetable/grains) back on their menu - so much convenient when traveling on the road!
I think its a positioning problem: "alternative" meat is not good enough to substitute real meat + some people just dislike meat and its taste completely, not just concerned about animal cruelty etc.
Vegetarian food can be very tasty and beautiful and it does not have to be a substitute or an imitator of meat and other non-vegan food
My mom and sisters are vegetarian and they haven't really liked this "wave" of vegan burgers because they taste and feel like meat (which they don't like). From talking to them, they preferred the old school veggie burgers that didn't attempt to replicate meat 1:1 in attributes
I regularly buy and eat Beyond Sausage. Not a fan of their other products due to texture/taste. Just like with other food companies, I like some products, dislike others.
Nobody should be treating food stocks like growth stocks imo. Food doesn't scale that way and the margins aren't great.
Every week I try a different meat-substitute product just to see if I like them.
I keep visiting supermarkets which claim to sell Beyond and I’m yet to find one.
The other issue with many meat subs: they usually have insanely high saturated fat content. At least if replacing beef, make it a healthier alternative.
Wow that's some dedication.
What are you hoping for exactly doing this?
Are you not scared it will likely plain poison you eventually trying all those experimental stuff?
All the plant based companies try to cater to the meat eating folk. I don’t know if it’s a winning strategy. There are tons of possibilities with vegetarian patties, they are super tasty and flavorful. I would eat them if catered as vegetarian but with the same protein content as meat.
I simply cannot afford it. The price for what you get is too high. I never understood why these supposedly cool new things have to be so expensive all the time. I'm better off eating neither meat nor beyond meat or at least in lesser quantities.
The mistake they're making is hammering it as a consumer brand. Really it should just be an alternate behind the scenes where people don't know. Or need to know.
Long term tho, I think lab grown meats will prevail and non-meat meats will age like margarine.
I never understood why their patties are so thick. That's a thing you do with high quality meat. They should have aimed for the masses instead of gourmet. If people are skeptical of a new food why would you use a form factor that is only used with trusted meats?
My 7 year old son is vegetarian - Neither of his parents are (although we've always tried to be awake to the ethical implications of what we eat)
When I asked him why he'd gone so all-in on vegetarianism, he said "Daddy, animals are my friends. And you don't eat your friends"
The little bastard derived the whole thing from first principles, with no input from his parents.
I've tried to use the vegetable-based mince alternatives in pasta sauce, and we're always really unsatisfied with the results. He much prefers lentils / tofu / tempeh and frankly so do we.
We're in the target demographic for these products, and I can tell you: THe problem isn't the price, the branding or the level of ethical awareness. It's the product! It's a lousy substitute for the meat-based alternative, and it doesn't even stack up well against the raw ingredients they're derived from, which have the advantages of being cheaper and tasting better.
Meat subsidies are one huge reason for keeping meat prices too low. At least here that's the case. These vegan meat alternatives are naturally more effort to make than the original veggies but still cheaper than meat. But the subsidies fuck this up.
Somehow I'm not surprised that I had to come this far down to find a reference to Planted. Nowadays if one doesn't know the meme term involved (in this case plant based meats directly means BeYoNd MeAt), there are no other examples that come to mind.
In fact, however, there are _plenty_ of plant-based companies doing just fine (like Planted). I'm a fan of nearly all of their products and have watched their growth over the past few years, which has been nothing short of incredible.
I wouldn't worry about plant-based "meats", as the tech improves and we bring another 2+ billion onto the planet, they'll find their market share more and more.
What I've noticed is that plant meat got very popular over a few years, and then price increased 50-100% during Covid, and then plant meat got less popular.
There might not be any story here besides inflation and Covid supppy chain problems.
Make sure you sniff Beyond before eating it. I had Beyond mince that was a couple days away from the sell by date almost knock me off my feet when I opened the pack. It doesn’t go off like meat does. It smells like hydrogen sulfide.
Beef is different from pork and chicken and turkey. Why can't these new meats stop trying to be beef, and just be tasty? A different kind of tasty is ok.
E.g. I just ate some Impossible chili, and it was great!
For the price point, it's a novelty. I've tried them once, but it wasn't good enough for me to pay such a premium on an, ultimately, inferior version of the real thing - or even other vegan products.
Speaking as a vegan, I really don't want food that imitates the taste of meat and I will refuse to eat anything that's been prepared on the same griddle or using the same utensils as meat.
Pretty much how fast food outlets in India work - the kitchens are divided into vegetarian and non-vegetarian sections, with separate utensils, fryers - everything. You can walk into a KFC in India and get vegetarian options that were cooked in an entirely vegetarian section.
They sell just fine. McDonald’s in the US is ideologically against them. I think I posted about this before. I was in a situation where I got to discuss it with a high level executive. They don’t want it no matter what the consumer demands.
The store manager we were buying ours from said no one was buying them there. But then again I don't recall seeing any marketing there that they even had it. We only found out through the app and after looking around for one. I imagine McDonalds wouldn't want something that makes their other burgers look 'unhealthy'. I bet their profit margins were smaller too.
I am seeing it in my local super markets. One has delisted the Beyond Meat ground beef substitute. Which makes it harder to get, which means I probably buy it less often too
And still chugging along... methinks it's being pushed. Synthetic meat being "environmentally friendly" is the same as considering EVs environmentall friendly.
Maybe the industry will realize that most vegetarians and vegans find anything like meat revolting. They much prefer vegetarian meals that are not ultra-processed and still resemble the vegetable used to make them.
Personally, the taste and look of beyond meat make me urge and feel like vomiting. It looks and tastes too much like a dead animal. I never miss the taste of meat, in fact, I hate the idea of eating anything that used to be alive.
Even in one of the countries with the highest percentage of vegetarians (India; though you can argue that poverty has an impact, since we know that meat consumption goes up with revenue), vegetarians and vegans only make up about 30% of the population. In the rest of the world it's generally max 10%, if not 5% or lower.
So for any of these companies go make it big, they need to cater to the 90%+ of people who like meat.
While 30% of Indians are strictly vegetarian, I would suggest that probably another 40% are largely vegetarian, only eating meat occasionally. Growing up in a major city in India, we ate maybe a single chicken based meal a week, and this was largely the norm in my social cohort. While a major reason was definitely money (poultry and red meat is ridiculously expensive in comparison to the vegetarian staples), it's also just cultural. My family grew up seeing meat as a special treat, and most of our meat dishes are very rich and can only be eaten occasionally.
Plant based meats are full of sodium and chemicals. Now, I’m not saying real meat isn’t; most places stuff meats full of antibiotics etc.
If I had to choose one or the other, real meat hands down. I just don’t eat meat that much, maybe twice a week now.
I’m looking forward to vat grown meats, but the aluminium foil hat person in me thinks it would be used as a carrier for other crap the government decides to throw in there.
that's too bad...I buy beyond burgers because the pea protein in beyond burger is good to me. I can't eat others like impossible burgers which use soy protein (cross sensitivity to soy from peanut allergy)
"Meat alternatives" are highly processed plant waste glued together with countless chemicals and too much salt, often more expensive than average meat.
I am all for a less meaty diet, but those trendy lifestyle companies like Beyond are not the solution.
I read somewhere in French press that some fake food company allegedly put melanin in their products to trick the FDA, that the peas they use for their fake food are from China and that those peas are full of poisonous chemicals like Bisphenol A.
Food is composed of naturally occurring ingredients, whereas fake food is made from synthetic ingredients. Food is typically healthier, fresher, and more nutrient-dense than fake food. Fake food is often made to look like real food, but it contains artificial flavors, colors, and other additives that are not found in real food.
I don't think they would try to get caught but they could try to pass the tests to get a FDA approval.
I raise my own cows on grass, slaughter them and fill my freezer with the beef. My wife and children help with the process and love the results. (I can't wait to see how many downvotes this gets.)
Paywall so I can only speculate. I have thought about if the idea of wanting to eat meat-like food is a construct created by meat eaters speculating about what vegetarians want.
But in reality I think that there is a large portion of vegetarians that view the texture of meat as "gross" and so realistic meat substitutes have no appeal to them.
I don't know if this is true or not, and I have no way of proving this other than the times that I've offered beyond meat at a party but not gotten any takers. It's just an idea that perhaps meat eaters are pushing a narrative at a demographic that doesn't have a desire for it!
As an unrepetenting meat lover and eater I can guarantee you that we simply do not care, AT ALL, about what vegetarians and/or vegans decide to eat. We're just tired of people trying to impose their own conscientious objections on to us. We just want that the people that do not want to eat meat to stop trying to dictate what WE, the ones that love meat, want to eat. There is zero chance that those fake burgers were the brainchild of meat lovers, we simply don't care.
I'm vegan. I became vegan because my partner is vegan, and I started eating vegan food (like Beyond) when I was at her house, out of respect. I gradually transitioned to a non-strict vegan diet for health reasons (my Dr. said she's never seen such a turnaround in Cholesterol w/o statins), and then became fully vegan for environmental and animal welfare reasons.
None of this would have been possible without meat substitutes like Beyond and Impossible, as I would not have had the discipline to stick with the diet. I've had previous generation veggie burgers which tasted like fried cardboard. I think these nasty tasting products of the past have left people with the impression that vegan food just tastes horrible, and vegans have to be crazy to eat them (Boca, I'm looking at you). I certainly expected the worst the first time I had a Beyond burger, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I even evangelized it to a guy at the next table who was asking the waiter if it was good. I think once more people try these products, they'll really take off.
I think part of the problem with Beyond uptake is the way that these fast food restaurants test their products, and the way they package them. These chains are national, and they assume that demand for products will be similar across locations, but that's just not true. Like it or not, Vegans live in mostly "Blue" metro areas, not fly-over states. So if you're McDonalds, and you test your products in Dayton OH, or middle-of-nowhere Alabama, then you're setting them up to fail. They should be tested in LA, SF, NYC, Miami, Chicago, etc, and they should gradually spread out from there.
The other problem is how fast food chains package their plant based products so that vegans can't eat them. The Impossible Whopper is an example. Since I'm vegan, I can't eat eggs and dairy, which means I need to order the Whopper w/o cheese and mayo. This means that I almost never get an Impossible Whopper, since I like cheese (and mayo) on my burgers. I'll instead order from a local vegan place that actually offers vegan mayo and cheese. Similarly, McDonalds in the EU has a plant-based chicken sandwich, but the BREAD contains dairy. So I have to order it w/o the bun, meaning I almost never order it, and instead order something fully vegan from a local place. There's a Qdoba just down the street that has an Impossible Burrito. But again, no vegan cheese, so I tend to order from a smaller local place.
My feeling is that once these 2 things are corrected, vegan meat alternatives will take off. I talked to a grocery store manager a few weeks ago in a middle-sized US city (Richmond, VA), and he said that Beyond products are flying off the shelves, and often backordered. After that conversation, I invested in Beyond stock. I figure if they are doing well in Richmond, then there is a huge market opening up.
im confused by eating food like this, sure ethics are important, as is sustainability, but within the ingredients list of something like BM is pretty horrible:
Tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), Red #3/erythrosine, Sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), Propylene Glycol....
Basically we are talking about TV dinners and fast food. Meat is cheaper and better in this realm than the expensive and highly processed vegetarian stuff.
I'm fine with either but I don't eat much fast food or TV dinners.
For homemade the processed fake meat is more expensive and harder to work with than just grilling some steaks.
When you push “meat” made of soy, not not helping the narrative. Vegetarians are “pussies” to begin with and you pile on that stereotype with “soy boy”. It doesn’t stand a chance.
there is chinese demand for... sea cucumbers...Nostoc flagelliforme..i dunno...all kinds of crab and lobster...shark's fin? that they are prepared to pay good money for..
why are the lab grown food firms trying to compete against the domestic chicken?
why not lab grown shark's fin or sea cucumber?
Is anybody surprised at this, except maybe people who get their news, opinions, thoughts, beliefs from mainstream institutions and their woke ideologies and agendas?
Beyond was never good, pretty obvious they were trying to ride a wave. Turns out true veggie people are not stupid and tasteless enough for this con job to turn a real profit. Good, there is still hope in the world!
I'm surprised we've got this many comments without anyone mentioning Soylent Green.
SPOILER
Soylent Green is both the name of a 1973 science fiction film and of a wafer-like food product in the film. The film is a police procedural set in the future, based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! The food is a processed protein ration made of human beings and distributed to an unsuspecting populace.
Veganism should be outlawed. Everyone should eat meat, period.
I'm wary of female vegans since I believe pregnant women should eat meat to deliver a healthy baby. When she's not pregnant she can stop eating meat for all I care.
People are stating that fake meat is more expensive than real meat. I'd pay more for real meat before I'd ever pay for fake meat.
I don't know a single person that eats this stuff on the regular. I know a handful of people that have tried it, that was it. Nobody is being fooled that this product is healthier than real meat. I can't figure out who's buying this stuff.
I quit eating meat a few years ago for ethical reasons but I still like to have a burger or brat or have a meat-like product in a pasta sauce or whatnot, and Beyond meat fills that role well.
Beyond and Impossible are full of chemicals. Definitely not a healthy alternative to traditional veggie patties. I wouldn't even call them food really. It doesn't even really qualify as a veggie burger (it's pea protein isolate, which doesn't really count). Beyond that (no pun intended) it's got a lot of seed oil, which is awful for you.
Beyond Meat: water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, beet juice extract
Impossible: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Sunflower Oil, Coconut Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% Or Less Of: Methylcellulose, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Yeast Extract, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), L-tryptophan, Soy Protein Isolate, Zinc Gluconate, Niacin, Thiamine Hydrochloride
Definitions of the less common ones:
Methylcellulose: A common fiber/laxative. Non toxic. Deemed safe by the FDA and EFSA.
Tocopherols: Vitamin E. Often used as a supplement. Naturally occurring in egg yolk and leafy vegetables.
L-Tryptophan: An amino acid. Often used as a supplement. Its presence in turkey is what thanksgiving celebrants often assert to be the reason of their "food coma"
The ingredient list overall is pretty tame, so not sure which the OP is calling out specifically. There definitely are high oil counts in these though.
Regarding MSG, isn't it naturally present in many savory/umami dishes including tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peas, salted and shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, walnuts, etc.?
Not to mention salted meat, fish, fish/worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, vegemite...
Good! Intellectual dishonesty and self-deception of all kinds is wrong and weak, and it should be stopped.
Fake meat is just as dumb as those CVT transmissions that have fake shift points, or setting your watch 10 minutes ahead so you will never be late.
If you think eating meat is wrong, then stop doing it. It's a defensible moral position. But don't try to trick yourself into thinking you are still doing it -- instead, have the mental strength and willpower to admit to yourself that you are eating vegetables. Maybe even learn how to cook them in a way that does not impersonate meat.
They are not targeted for vegans, the huge majority of customer are curious people that wants to transition into vegetarian/vegan diet and need the help of plant based meats.
https://archive.ph/wB2s4
I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.)
One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.
> Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat.
Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.
I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint.
But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger or a garden burger. Those taste light and yummy and don’t leave a weird feeling in my stomach.
From David Zilber (formerly of Noma):
"Here’s a pesky little chemical called hexanal. If you’ve ever eaten a beyond burger, or any of these plant based products 2.0 (though to be honest, it’s more like they’re on V.46.6.2) and burped 10 or 15 minutes afterwards, and thought to yourself, “Hmmm, wow, ok I definitely just had a meat alternative” you were probably regurgitating this aerosol. Some people think it’s fruity, like green apple, others like mulched grass. At the lab, we had to walk outside to get wafts of it in its pure form, but the minute I opened the cap I knew exactly what this flavour was…. “OLD FRYER OIL, 100%”. It’s metabolized in all manners of organisms through the oxidation of fatty acids, and is… kind of unpleasant?! The point is that while this molecule exists in fava beans, peas, and soy, (the three kings of texturized vegetable protein) when you have a WHOLE FOOD, its there in harmony among all sorts of other volatile compounds, while also being locked away deep inside the beans fibres. It’s the act of processing that concentrated and heightens the presence of off-flavours like these, making the processed foods made from them taste, well, processed. Good with the bad. You can’t concentrate for protein without concentrating other aspects of a plant. There’s always a cost. Now, I will always be a huge proponent for whole foods, made with care, prepared simply. But the realities of grocery store shelves dictate a different truth. People opt for convenience, and sometimes, you’ve got to meet them where they are. My current work at CH has me doggedly hunting down an effect of fermentation I’ve long known intuitively through practice. Certain lactic acid bacteria fermenting their way through legumes don’t just mask, but dismantle this and other problematic molecules. I’m still after the mode of action, but it’s also enough for me to know that age old techniques of fermentation (like soaking ones legumes or grains days in advance of their cooking) can still put to shame the greatest technological “advances” of food science of the past 40 years. Nature is, after all, cleverer than you are. "
https://www.facebook.com/david.zilber/posts/pfbid02CkCY53qDd...
Once you start paying attention, you can find bad tasting details in almost everything. For example, steak can taste metallic. People don't mind or even notice such things because they are used to it.
Definitely - if you pay attention you can often smell waste and other foul smells in meat.
I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean. When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion. I don't get this with typical veggie patties.
Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.
To each their own. I greatly enjoy the flavor of meat, but feel like a serial killer when I think about the animal suffering and to a lesser extend carbon emissions. While I also get a slightly odd feeling in my stomach from Impossible beef (doesn't happen with their cyber chicken), it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger without feeling like I just tortured a puppy.
If you have the money, buy meat directly from a regenerative ag farm you can go visit personally. You'll see animals with plenty of space, given healthcare and protection from predators, and contributing to soil growth and biodiversity.
The thing is... this is not a solved problem, by far.
You forget all that leather used in a myriad of products, that leather comes from cows. Or feathers and down from various birds. Or the other million side products of animal husbandry, that I'm not even aware of. I think almost every part of a cow is used in an industrial process, not much is wasted.
Plus, this needs a totally vegan solution and you're wiping out any and all dairy products: cheeses (all 100 million of them), yogurt, regular milk, sour milk, sour cream, whey, etc.
The entire western market isn't going to simultaneously and instantly stop eating meat. There won't suddenly be a day when all the herds are culled because everyone finally stopped eating meat at once. If it ever happens (I'm hopeful but not optimistic), it will be a gradual process, and industries will have lots of time to adapt.
But even that aside, it's not our duty as consumers to keep eating animals to keep industry able to make shoes and cheese.
Who said anything about duty? :-)))
My point is, what are we going to replace those with? Especially leather & co. They have real life applications, they're not just fads. Plus, will those replacement products be sustainable? Vegan leather is just rebranded plastic, for example.
I'm equally curious, but I don't know the numbers, if replacing plastic packaging with paper/cardboard is environmentally sound. I remember back in the day efforts to reduce paper consumption, I think our sustainable paper production capacity was near its limits.
Cactus leather is a new trend. I don't own any cactus leather products so I can't say how good it is, but surely it's possible to replace cowhide with something.
Even vegan (plastic) leather is significantly better from an environmental and emissions perspective than cowhide leather. The tanning process is not exactly eco-friendly, and neither is raising cows.
There's synthetic leather too.
And there's vegan cheese https://www.reddit.com/r/vegancheesemaking
and of course vegan yogurt etc. (you can make yogurt with coconut milk for example)
>vegan cheese
My old boss was vegan (or rather his wife was and he was very accommodating of her diet, he would still eat meat outside the home). He would always mention that the fanciest, most expensive vegan cheese option out there set itself apart from the rest with the tagline "It melts!" on the packaging. Vegan cheese has to come a long way to be anywhere comparable to real cheese. The same applies to synthetic leather, by the way.
There are several products lined up to come out next year that use casein produced by genetically modified plants. There are already products with similar whey protein from plants on the market. For example I've been loving Brave Robot ice cream.
It depends on what you are looking for with the vegan cheese. If you want something to go with a charcuterie plate, there are really good cultured cashew milk cheeses. They are more akin to cheese spreads though, something like this [0]
But if you are looking for something like a slice of cheddar or vegan mac-n-cheese the options are really pretty terrible and all have an aftertaste like you just ate a spoonful of Crisco.
[0] https://miyokos.com/products/classic-double-cream-chive-chee...
Not knowing anything about vegan cheeses, are there options that would be something similar to say brie, camembert, emmental, fontina, gruyère, havarti, manchego, parmigiano reggiano, or roquefort?
There might be some I'm not really sure for the specific varieties you have listed above. A vegan gouda seems to be a pretty standard thing for some of the manufacturers. So there are definitely some trying to make things outside the typical cheddar, swiss, mozzarella.
I don't think I have ever seen something trying to imitate any really soft (brie) or blue (roquefort) cheeses.
> There's synthetic leather too.
...and it sucks as a replacement for genuine leather.
It doesn't have to, Alcantara is extremely robust and a great replacement for leather, just as one example. But the synthetic leather in cheap products aiming to look like real smooth leather, I think this is the one you mean, time and time again is so inferior it's almost a scam. Shoes will fall apart quickly, sofas, clothing will peel off after 2-3 years when the softener has gassed out.
Isn't synthetic leather just plastic? That's not really better for the environment.
There are some that are plant based.
>it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger
You're not getting the flavour of a burger, no matter how hard you try to fool yourself (or make yourself sick). That's why these companies are flailing.
“Your mouth is wrong but I am here to tell you what you’re tasting” is quite the argument…
There are qualities in a fake burgers that emulate parts of a burger someone might enjoy without having an exact replica. In the same way Turkey Bacon is acceptable to some and not others.
I think the purists are trying to hold a parity argument but the substitute enjoyers are cool with experimentation and want something similar even if it's not 1:1.
I'm sorry. I really tried to just lurk this thread, but.
What in the flying fuck is "cyber chicken". I'm assuming this is a joke, right!?
Sorry, I prefix plant-based/meat-substitute products with "cyber" instead of one of the more boring options because it makes me giggle. I shouldn't have used it with people not familiar with my in-joke.
FWIW, I knew what you meant and got a cluckle from it.
New from Tesla Foods, of course.
I, uh, thought that the beyond meat pseudo-ground-beef I ate tasted almost exactly like beef, cooked like beef, looked like beef, etc... just without the killing of a cow. I liked it and will buy it the next time I want ground beef.
You'd be surprised how many animals die in the process of scaled agriculture and displacement that occurs to create these replacement goods. But they're not the big fluffy animals we anthropomorphise, so it's easy to accept.
It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture.
What do you think the animals humans like to eat, eat? A heck of a lot of grain and other plants. "Animal agriculture" includes the fluffy animals (with whom we may empathize - they ain't robots) and the massive farms that grow their feed.
Animal agriculture incidentally kills and displaces far more other creatures than non-animal agriculture simply due to the additional land requirements. It is far easier to accept the less harmful industry.
I don't think they were suggesting that. More something along the lines of "you're likely to be killing animals either way, so just accept that nature is cruel and don't feel guilty about it".
There's a wide spectrum of how much you're willing to do to avoid causing suffering:
- Nothing, eat meat from the worst factory farms without second thought
- Only eat meat from local, ethical, sustainable, etc farmers.
- Only eat meat you have personally killed in the most humane way possible
- Vegetarianism
- Veganism
- Fruitarianism
- Starve to death?
It's kind of bad either way tbh. Imagine going to the funeral for someone else's mother and saying something to the tune of "The old hag was going to die anyway, so don't be sad".
Telling people that their principles or feelings are wrong is rarely a great way to convince people, it just makes you look obnoxious in debates.
That's just an absurd analogy.
On the second point, I agree, if in person I wouldn't make such a statement in that way because reactions are immediate and you're within immediate awkwardness. But on the internet, you read a statement and then you will emotionally react, but can then go research more, ponder, deliberate and choose whether you respond emotionally, matter-of-factly, not at all, etc. I think that's great and in a sense encourages some more provocative honesty that we dance around in the flesh.
Most humans can live deeply fulfilling and joyful lives without causing as much suffering as they do now. They don't need to feel guilty about what they are doing now so much as strive to cause less suffering.
Maybe you must eat factory farmed meat, fine, it's not for me to say. But that's not most people. Most people can do with reducing their meat intake, and it isn't hard. It's not like you are in the wilderness hunting or anything. You just go to the grocery store and buy veggies and beans and stuff.
Furthermore, for some people, eating meat from a factory farm is orders of magnitude more difficult than eating a strict plant based diet. Maybe that's easy for you - not for me.
Finally, while nature may indeed be cruel, we do not need to be.
Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them. Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.
The idea that killing animals is more cruel than not is to ignore ecology.
Factory farms and industrial meat is certainly another story. But I wanted to point out that cruelty is not so black and white. It’s similar to the cat people that feed strays — makes them feel good, but it makes the problem worse which is more cruel than simply not feeding the strays.
> Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them.
I strongly disagree with this. If there were no humans participating, and deer ended up overpopulated, and then starved, would there be any issue? Of course not, this is just how nature balances itself.
That "killing an animal directly via hunting" is more cruel than "letting the populate self-correct via natural processes" is not a matter of common sense - it's not something we all agree on. There is an implication that we know better than the universe and I'm not convinced that is the case.
> Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.
I assume you are referring to feral pigs, which are not wild in the sense that a native creature is. They are domesticated pigs which have ended up in foreign environments. Whether hunting them is appropriate or not, I'm not sure.
Nowadays, though, we have gotten ourselves in a pickle, by eliminating the natural predators in many environments in which deer thrive naturally, or have adapted to. Via our own lack of foresight, consideration for the planet as a whole, or even some degree of self-serving malice, we have created a really tricky problem.
I do agree we ought to work on this issue. Hunting is probably the best, most practical solution we have, but only because I believe we should try to fix what we have broken, not because it is somehow less cruel. A less practical but far less cruel solution may be a sterilization program for the invasive populations.
"The nature" is not a thinking and feeling entity.
Each particular deer is, though. And if you were one, given a choice between getting shot and starving to death, which one would you prefer?
You skipped cannibalism. Only eat people who deserve it, Dexter-style.
Like that wouldn’t leave a bad taste in your stomach.
What is the “humane” way to kill?
Is the humane way to kill an animal the same way one would humanely kill a toddler without consent of the parents or child?
If not why not, when we consider animal have at least the intelligence, will to live, social connections and capacity for suffering as children?
Two factors: 1) Humanely raised 2) Efficiently killed (done quickly with limited/no pain).
One can argue the cruelty of eating animals regardless - but there very much is a difference between tightly caged factory farming, pumping animals with medicine constantly because the conditions keep them sick all the time, and raising animals in a healthy environment.
> What is the “humane” way to kill?
Halal one.
> Is the humane way to kill an animal the same way one would humanely kill a toddler without consent of the parents or child?
Interesting wording.
> If not why not, when we consider animal have at least the intelligence, will to live, social connections and capacity for suffering as children?
When we will be able to ask for that kind of a contest?
PS. I know, animals has some signs of intelligence. But for me this measure of intelligence is not enough for not willing to eat it. And referring to parent poster, I really think there is some ethics in eating only those meat which has been killed by me, but I only have a chicken farm when I want to eat not only chicken.
Halal slaughter is certainly not the most humane way to kill animals; it optimizes for religious taboos on consumption of blood more so than lack of suffering. For the latter, you really want to target the brain directly if at all possible.
Halal slaughter is in no way humane.
I think they are simply pointing out that you must kill other animals in order to live. There's no way around it.
If your interested in killing the least amount of animals, why not go hunting and fishing, that almost assuredly kills fewer than industrialized agriculture. I've replaced almoat all beef all year round in our family with deer venison kept year round in a chest freezer.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think that veganism or vegetarianism for most people is very emotional action. Most of the pop media around it focuses on the cuteness of the animal not on the total number of animals killed. and it's ignoring that like in hunting or ethical farming, the animals have a very full happy life.
As a hunter it's interesting seeing this article on HN and seeing no mention of hunting. Also not a bad thing, it's not part of the culture here, but it's interesting to see that bias in the HN culture.
> It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture.
Is exactly what happens. Without cattle there is not the need of meadows anymore. Not wildflowers, butterflies, hedgehogs, molluscs or birds. Soy fields have a biodiversity composed of: Soy. Period.
> Without cattle there is not the need of meadows anymore.
This is just silly. I can't imagine an internally consistent worldview that would assert something like this. Of course natural biomes are valuable regardless of the presence of cattle. Besides, modern cattle are domesticated creatures and don't even really have a native (i.e. not man-made or facilitated) environment.
The assertion regarding soy fields is at best a misunderstanding of the actual data regarding land use, or at worse, a meaningless tautology.
For those who don't have time to click and read the link in the other reply by user vnorilo, I'll just quote the relevant paragraph:
> More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception.
The bulk of soy production is for cattle feed.
https://ourworldindata.org/soy
This is quite a red herring. The bulk of soy production is waste, that we have managed to use for cattle feed, because they can upcycle it into consumable nutrients.
If we got rid of all cattle, we would not reduce the amount of soybeans grown by 77%, just our utilization of what is grown.
77% of soy beans are used as feed in animal fattening. The basic biology and ecology of trying to push calories through a lossy (25x!) step in the food cycle doesn't work out.
If anyone wants to engage with the consequences of animal agriculture, this is a great starting point: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/climatechange/doc/FAO%20repor...
Yes but before feeding the cow the bean we press it for soybean oil, which now accounts for a significant portion of calories consumed globally (somewhere around 10%, a quick search did not yield the study and I can't recall it exactly).
What do you imagine we would do with the soy pucks that are produced after extruding the oil?
Also, ruminants need non starchy, fibrous plant materials. I can't speak toward chicken and pork but I don't advocate people eat those.
"86% of the global livestock feed intake is made of materials that are inedible by humans" - Sacred Cow, Diana Rogers, source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191241...
It doesn't reflect well on your argument that your quote doesn't appear in the source.
"Results estimate that livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake. Producing 1 kg of boneless meat requires an average of 2.8 kg human-edible feed in ruminant systems and 3.2 kg in monogastric systems. While livestock is estimated to use 2.5 billion ha of land, modest improvements in feed use efficiency can reduce further expansion."
Even the source you are citing agrees that after massaging the numbers as much as possible it's still 3x less efficient to produce calories for human consumption by feeling animals.
I was quoting Diana Rogers, who provided a source for her statements, so I thought I would include it.
I cannot access the full article, but from the abstract that seems to not be congruent with what the study is suggest. Perhaps you are confusing kg for kcal? It could indeed be the fact that it is 3x less efficient by weight.
Given that the article is pointing out that 86% of the feed for animals is not edible by humans, claiming that meat is 3x less efficient calorie wise with these numbers is also making the claim that we are growing plants 2x more calorically dense by meat than weight.
30-70% of their food - depending on the region and local industry - is distillers grains [1]. That’s the waste from ethanol production, including biofuels and alcohol.
Of that last 14% of human edible food, the vast majority is used at the end to fatten up the animals for slaughter.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains
I don't know much about this particular thing. would be glad to read up on this if you share a good source.
Is easy to understand even without bibliography. Soy is an annual herb. It grows all the summer, invest everything on producing fruits in fall and then die in winter.
Beans are the crop. Everything else must wait until they are ready, and by then it will be basically dry matter. Therefore all except the beans is a residual.
Can still be recycled into more human food by herbivores, but we couldn't do it directly. We can't feed on dry stems, withered flowers or brown leaves.
I would highly recommend the book Sacred Cow. It has links to hundreds of studies within for further research. The authors, Diana rogers and Robb Wolf have been on many podcasts since it's release to discuss the topic.
If you want specific studies I can go look up in the book but it sounds like your asking for further reading, not cited sources.
How much of the meat we consume do you really think are grazing in meadows? Even most the grass feed cows are raised in fields that used to be rain forests in Brazil. However you turn it, it’s impossible to claim that cattle raising is a net gain for biodiversity.
You are moving the goalposts. The parent post was comparing non-animal agriculture with animal agriculture in terms of biodiversity. I'll copy it here for you.
> It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture.
Animal agriculture is better for biodiversity than crop monocultures. I understand that the truth can be shocking for some people, but there are dozens of ecological studies pointing to the environmental value of pastures and meadows, specially as ecotones.
As the initial plan to demonize cattle failed, now you are silently replacing "non-animal agriculture" by "rainforests" as a straw man to attack the original claim. Sorry, but this was not the point that we were discussing.
"Non-animal agriculture", also known as "Agriculture", has replaced happily as many rainforest hectares as cattle, if not more. Take a look to the fate of Indonesian rainforests
No, no goalposts have been moved. It is worse for the environment, in all aspects, including biodiversity, to raise animals to eat than to eat the crops directly.
The reason is simple: to produce the same amount of energy (and protein) with livestock as you would with crops, you have to use orders of magnitude more resources and you affect the environment orders of magnitude more: you use more fuel, release more greenhouse gases, use more water, use more land area, destroy more soil, et.c.
And while it might be true that one hectare used for grazing might be more biodiverse than one hectare used for, your example, soybeans. But 85 percent of the world's soybean crop is processed into meal and vegetable oil, and virtually all of that meal is used in animal feed.
I think you need to look up the meaning of the expression "straw man". And about the rainforests: Tropical rainforests are the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems in the world, and right now, huge areas of that rainforests are destroyed for the land to be used to raise cattle.
"it might be" true. Enough said. It toke a long of time to admit the obvious.
Oh gosh, you really think you are clever, while leaving ample proof of the absolute opposite.
Evidence for that rather large claim?
Please also explain how any large monoculture crop is a net gain for diversity?
>> most the grass feed cows are raised in fields that used to be rain forests in Brazil
> Evidence for that rather large claim?
While most cows in Brazil are grass-fed, about half are raised on former rainforest:
"Nearly 50% of Brazilian livestock are raised in fields that used to be rainforest."[0,1]
"Most cows in Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, are grass-fed."[2]
See also:
How beef demand is accelerating the Amazon’s deforestation and climate peril[3]:
> Cattle ranchers in the Brazilian Amazon — the storied rainforest that produces oxygen for the world and modulates climate — are aggressively expanding their herds and willing to clear-cut the forest and burn what’s left to make way for pastures. As a result, they’ve become the single biggest driver of the Amazon’s deforestation, causing about 80 percent of it, according to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Cattle Ranching in the Amazon Region[4]:
> Cattle ranching is the largest driver of deforestation in every Amazon country, accounting for 80% of current deforestation rates. Amazon Brazil is home to approximately 200 million head of cattle, and is the largest exporter in the world, supplying about one quarter of the global market. Low input cost and easy transportation in rural areas make ranching an attractive economic activity in the forest frontier; low yields and cheap land encourage expansion and deforestation. Approximately 450,000 square kilometers of deforested Amazon in Brazil are now in cattle pasture. Cattle ranching and soy cultivation are often linked as soy replaces cattle pasture, pushing farmers farther into the Amazon.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/meat-consumption-linked-to-t...
[1] http://www.cbra.org.br/portal/downloads/publicacoes/rbra/v42...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/saving-th...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/27/how-beef-...
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20180928055440/https://globalfor...
Ok so that's Brazil, not 50% of the world's supply. Still though, that sucks.
Cattle do not eat solely from a meadow. Even if cows are free range, that's generally only a spring to fall state, in the winter they are eating farmed foods (usually hay).
For factory farmed cattle (which is the most common) the situation is far worse.
An individual cow needs 24lbs of food per day. How much soy does one person consume in a day?
> in the winter they are eating farmed foods (usually hay).
To have hay in winter you still need a meadow of high grass that will burst with life in spring, and cattle is excluded from this areas. Hay don't require pesticides or weedkillers. Traditional farming areas double its purpose as small natural reserves, even in winter. (Not all is nice, we could have a forest there instead, but is still better than modern agriculture for a mile).
> An individual cow needs 24lbs of food per day. How much soy does one person consume in a day?
This is a false equivalence.
The correct question would be: "how much soy consume the number of people that could be feed with this cow".
The error is understandable because many of this movements are focused in the individual, and equality among individuals. This is just one way to study ecology, but not the more interesting or rewarding one, and sometimes leads to plain wrong conclusions.
A cow can produce until 88lbs of milk a day. Having 12000 L of milk by cow in a lactating season is not uncommon, and some can reach 20000 L of milk. And this without talking about the meat and the leather.
Hay fields are also often monocultures. (https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=67408)
Dairy cows and meat cows are entirely different. Old dairy cows do become meat, but it's very poor meat.
In California. The situation can be different in other places and countries.
I never considered this aspect, really good point.
No, it's not a good point. Cows are rarely grown in "meadows". Free-range beef is a minority, and most cow feed comes from monoculture fields. And it takes more monoculture grain to grow a pound of beef versus a pound of vegetables, and it's not even close.
No, I'm suggesting it is not a good/bad dichotomy and people should make sure large decisions are not made on what they think are simple moral choices.
I mean if you determine that animals dying for your diet is no good, then make sure you consider the people that might be dying to bring you the goods you haven't checked the source of, or for the stadium you enjoy watching events at, etc.
Quit meat if you feel you need to, but don't pretend it makes you a morally better person because 'animal murder,' it's not that simple.
Err, vegetables require less land per calorie than meat for consumption does.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
So your comment makes no sense at all.
Which would be very compelling if your body only needed calories to survive. Meat is the most efficient way to deliver proteins and essential amino acids. You should also dig into the concept of bioavailability.
This is debunked. Tofu is incredibly protein dense - on par or surpassing chicken breast. Without looking it up and subjectively, tofu also seems to be digested very easily. There’s also seitan and the beans. Nuts also exist but have fat/protein ratios that tend toward uncomfortably high. (If what your eating has macros that approach the fat content in nuts to other nutrients that’s pretty high and should be noted.)
This is absolutely not 'debunked'.
Taken from wikipedia entry on Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score [1]:
- Chicken has a PDCAAS of 0.95
- Soy has a PDCAAS of 0.92
- Black beans have a PDCAAS of 0.74 (highest legume)
- Other beans and legumes have a PDCAAS of 0.70
- Wheat (seitan) has a PDCAAS of 0.42
Facts:
Soy has good enough nutrients to make a valid claims for it without throwing away valid science.
Soy is not surpassing chicken breast in PDCAAS, or red meat.
Eggs and dairy literally break the scale and are by far the highest ranking whole foods on a PDCAAS basis.
Seitan and beans are terrible in comparison in terms of PDCAAS, with you needing to consume nearly 2x the amount of protein from the former to compete with the later.
Opinions:
As far as fat goes, keep in mind tofu has a 1:2 fat:protein ratio. Chicken breast is 1:20+. This reason is the reason a lot of people herald chicken breast
Overconsumption of soy can lead to health implications
Soy does not have enough leucine to trigger the MTOR pathways to build muscle. If you are having soy post workout, you need to consume 45-60g of protein, vs just 20-30g of protein from animal products
Red meat has literally everything you need to live. Throw in a little carbs and fiber too and you can run at peak performance without worrying about anything in your diet.
Biases:
I've been relentless about my diet for 10 years and have tried everything. This includes vegan, vegetarian, keto, carb cycling, protein sparring modified fasts, you name it.
This year I started eating an animal based diet and not only do I feel great, my TDEE went from 2400 to over 3700. This means while I used to eat 2400kCal to maintain my weight, I now have to eat 3700 to maintain my weight, and I feel fantastic while doing so.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Correcte...
“- Chicken has a PDCAAS of 0.95 - Soy has a PDCAAS of 0.92”
That sounds pretty comparable from your chosen metric.
I don't disagree that it's comparable - in fact that's half my point. That was the first 'fact' I listed. It's pointless to claim bioavailability is 'debunked', because soy stands on it's own in the bioavailability data.
However, it's also misleading to claim it's debunked then point to seitan and beans as viable alternatives, or warn against fat content immediately after comparing tofu to chicken.
How do you feel great knowing you are harming other sentient beings?
Are there other areas of your life that you optimize for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings?
Are there areas where you don’t?
> How do you feel great knowing you are harming other sentient beings?
Because I wake up refreshed, have steady energy throughout the day, and can focus on solving complicated tasks throughout the day. I'm happier and healthy than I've ever been.
> Are there other areas of your life that you optimize for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings?
Almost every area of my life is at the expense of other sentient beings. I use energy that probably comes from coal that is fueling the war. I use an iPhone that has a battery that was probably made from slaves in china, built from materials sourced from slaves in mines in Africa. If you're checking hacker news, I'm assuming you are optimizing for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings.
I'd like to change some of that. The are more effective ways of doing so than just opting out of society.
> Are there areas where you don’t?
Chicken and pork are actually my favorite foods. I don't eat them because I think as livestock they're a net harm to the environment.
I don't kill spiders in my house, they're happy to cohabitate.
I have a dog, I sacrifice hours a day to make sure he is happy and healthy.
Happy to answer any other questions
I appreciate your answer.
Do you desire to protect your dog or dogs over other animas capable of the same or greater social and emotional experience?
Why not eat dogs?
Putting aside the combative tone of your comment:
> Are there other areas of your life that you optimize for your own personal preferences at the expense of other sentient beings?
I think the answer must be yes for everyone here. We are choosing to use (and pay for) the internet and electricity when we could instead be buying food for people who have none. We participate in Western economies which prey on the economies of the developing world.
I think it's important to also think about the definition here of 'sentient' and the definition of 'harm'. Is it 'harmful' to build houses, when otherwise animals would live in the fields/forests? Is it 'harmful' to burn fossil fuels for energy? Do you refuse to use electricity which has come from fossil fuel sources?
Is 'sentience' the right point to draw the line? How would you respond to findings like this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pce.13065, which comes to the conclusion that the assumption that plants are not sentient may be flawed?
I just spent the last month learning to build EarthShip homes from the human waste stream. Not perfect but heading in the right direction as they generate all their own power.
You make great points about exploitation that we all benefit from.
As for plants, I think it’s possible, however raising animals requires even more plants to be killed.
And I’m not sure plants experience pain the way animals do. And if I had to choose, it seems animals are more capable of experiencing pain and suffering.
Honestly, from a poorly philosophical standpoint I struggle finding a reason not to conclude that the best solution as a human is to remove oneself entirely from the equation. As humans we are practically a walking Holocaust no matter what we do. The point about plants only drives this home further. There are even reasonable arguments for panpsychism which might mean even more unavoidable cause for suffering from one's existence
In my opinion this is the weakest argument for veganism. Are Lions bad because they eat deer? Are Sharks good because they eat fish that eat other fish that eat plants? Are cats demons...maybe?
The philosophy makes no sense even if you start with the assumption that animals are on the same moral plane as people that does not preclude or discount eating them out of preference because animals already do that. If you want to argue for veganism use a less combative prideful argument. For example I'm not vegan or vegetarian but I heavily reduce my meat consumption for environment and health reasons, less than 2 times a month and I want to go lower. Talking about the nuance and difficulty that comes with eating less meat and overcoming them should be inline with the, moral pride based better than you attitude you have. And it should be something you are seeking not trying to derail because your goal is to get people to eat less meat.
I simply asked a question.
One need not conflate “combative” with confronting.
As for other animals, I know that they suffer, feel pain, and have a desire to live.
I do not know if they have the capacity to decide what to eat.
We humans, however, do.
And, the vast majority of meat being eaten is from animals that are vegetarian.
You seem to place humans and animals in the same moral category w.r.t. violence, specifically predation, due to your usage of "other sentient beings" in the above comment.
In your view, if a lion and a hunter both kill a gazelle, have they both committed the same moral violation?
Tre lion likely is less aware what it's doing and what there implications are
What about you?
Tofu is incredibly protein dense - on par or surpassing chicken breast.
According to Wikipedia and Google, tofu [1] has 8% protein, while chicken [2] has almost 31%.
Is there some more finesse required in the exact variety of tofu that you mean?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu#Nutrition_and_health
[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+breast+nutrition+100...
Just press all the water out of tofu you want and you, too, can get it to whatever percentage protein you want.
Water does not matter in the ratio of protein versus fat.
Pea protein is also a complete protein. I've honestly never heard of protein being a problem for vegans.
The bigger issue is vitamins, in particular B12. But that's easily fixed with a daily multivitamin.
Knew I was leaving things out. Thanks for including peas!
I don’t want to know how anybody gets actual, non-supplemented B12 nowadays. Many foods add a B12 in the form of cyanocobalamin. We evolved in a world where bacteria left B12 on nearly every surface left out long enough. But nowadays we clean our food and it shouldn’t be present. People will say they get it from the organ meat of certain animals - because that’s where those animals collect the B12 in their environment.
Notably, I avoid cyanocobalamin like the plague. It releases small amounts of cyanide into your liver upon processing. It’s also not particularly bioavailable. There are better B12s and I wish food would leave me to choose it myself.
Peas are a complete protein, but in their natural form they suffer from poor digestability compared to animal proteins. (Split peas have a PDCAAS score of around 0.5 - 0.6. Pea protein isolates can get up to 0.9, or comparable to chicken.)
It’s not all about bioavailability. Fiber might not be digested by us but the microbes that do fill the role of an organ. Giving the body something to work on offers benefits like leveled out blood sugars. This pdcaas metric needs a high quality reference.
Here you go.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10867064/
https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/...
Necessary footnote:
Peas (gen Pisum) are very close to gen Lathyrus. Many of this wild flowers use a chemical defense to protect their seeds that is accumulative and can lead to serious and permanent neurodegenerative consequences at long term.
Lathyrism is one of the oldest diseases known in the history. Was observed in people with irreversible damages on their spinal cord after eating big amounts of the plant Lathyrus sativus, today known as Pisum sativum or "pea".
The disease develops after heavy consumption of peas for over two months so, to include an unlimited amount of Pisum sativum in the diet as your main source of protein is a terrible idea. Another case of wrong solutions and dangerous advice provided by veganism. If you are doing it, please stop right now and read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathyrism
Just because 2 things are related does not mean they are equally dangerous. Potatoes, tomatos, eggplants, and most peppers are in the Solanaceae family, same as deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), which is extremely poisonous. Yet potatoes are a staple crop.
The commonly consumed pea types (yellow, sweet, snap, snow) have no risk of causing Lathyrism. Only wild peas pose a risk and those are outright banned in most nations. (notable exception, india, where it is part of several common dishes).
You have been warned. Plants are unsafe to eat by default
The fact that wild peas are much more dangerous does not remove the danger from common sweet peas (of any kind or color, Is the same species). Is a matter of how much of it you eat, and if you allow enough days between meals to detox.
It depends also in "how" you eat it. If you mix it with cereals or not (hint, you should) and even in "where" you cook it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15679560/
> You have been warned.
You are spreading FUD.
The link you've provided is yet another study on wild peas (grass pea is a wild pea, Lathyrus sativus, just a different name).
Show me the study that links sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus, consumption with Neurolathyrism.
The only danger to eating sweet peas is when you eat them in combination with eating wild peas. [1]
The pea types I listed do not cause lathyrism without being mixed with Lathyrus sativus.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteolathyrism
Maybe a lost in translation case
By common sweet pea, I mean the green common edible one. Pisum sativum = Lathyrus sativus a species that is known to cause the disease if eaten in large amounts. Lathyrism is happening still today in a few parts of the planet like India, and is a serious irreversible condition, not much unlike paraplegia. This is not FUD, is a proven medical fact. Maybe the vegetable has a different name in English. Dunno, but we are talking about the same species all the time.
Lathyrus odoratus, is the Fragrant sweet pea, a small species with huge flowers that smell really well. It has tiny peas that are not really edible -in big amounts- (all are "edible" in very small quantities but it does not worth the risk) and of course, as most Lathyrus it causes lathyrism. is just that is a different case of Lathyrism, affecting bones instead nerves if I remember correctly.
Pisum sativum and Lathyrus sativus are not the same plant. Pisum sativum’s Lathyrus name is “Lathyrus oleraceus”
Lathyrus sativus is also referred to as the “white pea”. Because it’s white.
I know sativus and sativum look the same but that doesn’t mean they are the same plant.
Here’s an article with photos of Lathyrus sativus. [1]
If I may inquire, are you from india? If so, then yes, you probably do have to be more aware of the peas you are eating. From the articles I can find it sounds like Lathyrus sativus is banned in india but still somewhat commonly sold. That’s not the case where I’m at in the US. You cannot accidentally get Lathyrus sativus here because nobody is selling it.
[1] https://india.mongabay.com/2019/05/toxic-debate-rages-on-ove...
Hmm, I could be wrong... Let me check it.
Yep. The International Plant Names lists 33 synonims for Pisum sativum L. and 16 for Lathyrus sativus L. and none of them coincide. Botanical names are changing all the time, and is not straightforward sometimes.
So you were right and I was wrong. I stand corrected. Thank you for getting me out of my mistake.
Tofu is not digested easily, it has a lot of ingredients our omnivore stomachs cannot digest, so the bacteria gets to it. It's made out of soy beans, so yes, it will cause gas and bloating.
Your comment is obviously (to me) someone who hasn't explored any other diet except meat eating (feel free to dispute). There are many people thriving on a vegan diet.
There are, but everyone has different dietary needs too. Some studies found a genetic sequence evolved in asia that confers better utilization of legume protein. Western Europe and eastern Africa evolved lactose tolerance to get protein instead. Up north people got bigger livers to handle more meat consumption.
I have tried vegan (whole foods only) for months, and I have real trouble with legumes, not just normal gas, and my blood work went crazy. Triglycerides shot up for one.
The healthiest I have ever felt, and the best my blood work has ever been, was eating 1.5lbs of grassfed beef every day (with lots of roots and leaves too).
I can do vegetarian pretty easily, I process eggs and dairy well, but both of those foods are designed to trigger rapid growth in young organisms. I'm not growing anymore so I tend to pack on fat with them.
My chosen middle ground is to get my protein from fish (Cobain said they don't have feelings) and dinosaurs(they had their time). I feel little kinship to cows, grew up around them, but it isn't efficient, even if I feel physically better eating them.
I was vegetarian for six years. But my personal diet has nothing to do with debunking the myth that humans are not omnivores by necessity.
There are plenty of studies showing large populations of vegetarians suffering vitamin deficiencies, so thriving is quite a stretch. Here is one example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29446340/
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
If everyone were to switch to a vegan diet, global agriculture land use would be reduced by 75%.
To what end?
Well, carbon sequestration, for example. Or habitat restoration. Or more suburbs, or whatever.
It's not just land use, it's every single vector of comparison, like water use, energy use, human labor (ab)use, habitat destruction, etc.
We could cut down on oxygen use by not breathing too. Ultimately you have to ground these abstract vectors of comparison in some fundamental purpose. For me, the only possible ground is humanity.
If humanity is the ground of your analysis, meat consumption will fail to present itself as the decisive factor for any vector of comparison. The decisive factor will generally be the elevation of capital or oligarchic social ends over general social interest.
It would allow nature to begin to recover from the damage we've been doing to it for thousands of years. Besides increased biodiversity being an inherently good thing, it would also reduce flooding and erosion, stabilise weather systems, preserve topsoil, etc. etc.
Water and pesticide usage is way more problematic than land usage.
We can safely assume there is a relationship between land-use and total water and pesticide usage.
Can we? Vertical farms are starting to be a thing, and they use water way beyond what you'd expect for the area.
No one is using vertical farms for the kind of calorie dense food that would replace meat, and certainly not at any kind of scale.
I've seen a number of reports of large farms being planned in places like the middle east.
Dubai opened one about 6 months ago capable of producing over a million kg of leafy greens a year, the largest vertical farm in the world by some margin, and that's just a pilot project.
A million kg of the most calorie dense leafy green (parsnip or kale at 50-60 kcal/100 grams) would be equivalent to about 167,000 kg of wheat (~360 kcal/100 grams). A bushel of wheat is about 27kg and the US produces about 50 bushels per acre [1] or 1,350 kg of wheat per acre. To produce the caloric equivalent of a million kg of leafy greens you would need about 130 acres (167,000/1350) of wheat. The average farm in the US is over 400 acres in size [2]. There are over two million farms in the US alone.
The “largest vertical farm in the world by some margin” produces less calories than a tiny family farm that can barely afford its own tractor. The largest wheat farm in Canada is over 35,000 acres which means it produces just as much food per day as the largest vertical farm produces per year. That wheat farm isn’t even in the list of top 10 largest farms in North America.
We’re comparing pebbles to continents.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/190356/wheat-yield-per-h...
[2] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
Edit: I made a slight mistake in my math. A 60 lbs bushel of wheat when processed doesn’t yield exactly 60 pounds of usable food, but it doesn’t change the overall picture (360 kcal => 240 kcal, 130 acres => 180 acres)
Edit 2: That vertical farm cost $40 million to build. Our hypothetical wheat farm would cost under $2 million for the land, fertilizer, seeds, and machines.
Can’t grow wheat in the Middle East, though. In fact, Dubai can’t grow any of their own food outdoors.
The industry is growing at 25-30% YoY…. That’s gonna snowball fast.
Wheat was first grown in Mesopotamia, literally in the middle of the Middle East!
> The industry is growing at 25-30% YoY…. That’s gonna snowball fast.
Pure fantasy. We’ve had vertical farming for thousands of years already - first built by the same Babylonians that grew wheat in Mesopotamia! When’s it going to start snowballing?
There will still be a relation, `more vertical farms => more use of water and pesticides`. Now, the factor between those might change. But I fail to see why vertical farming would change the dynamics fundamentally.
You could have a tall vertical farm using 100x more resources per acre than traditional farming.
correct, which is even more reason to try to reduce animal consumption as they make up a massive proportion agriculture required just for their feed
No, it's the complete opposite. Plant based diets kill way, way less animals.
I don't think I'd be surprised. I don't know how to solve that though short of starving myself to death.
Not to say this is your moral prerogative but it's pretty simple: Eat only hand-picked fruit. It's by far the least death-causing food out there and it's offered to you by the tree to eat.
I'm not a vegetarian or fruitarian, I don't generally care about animal death or suffering. But if I did that would be my tactic to minimize pain in the system.
If you did that you would become extremely unhealthy. Veganism has the caveat "as far as is practicable", and a fruitarian diet is not practicable for extended periods of time as you will become malnourished.
Fair enough. Swap "only fruit@ for "as much fruit as possible without becoming malnourished" if you would value your own wellbeing above another animals' (which I would as well).
I know a guy who was promoting frutarian lifestyle. He was a previous world champion kayaker and works in the outdoor industry. I saw him recently and he was still in the top 15-20 in the world in his even. I need to check with him if he's still doing it. He looks like a model, superfit and full of energy. He had an interesting blog on the amount of fruit he was having to eat, most of which he picked up for free or cheap at markets as it was approaching use by date.
https://www.instagram.com/jamesbebbington/?hl=en
http://www.inspiredlife.org/richard-harpham/item/35-james-pr...
And probably at least pre-diabetic.
The form of sugar in fruit isn’t quite as bad as some, and all the fiber helps it be absorbed more slowly but there is still a lot of it many.
An apple has a much sugar as 6oz of Coke. Lots of nutrients too, but 23g of sugar is… a lot.
Reminder that cucumber and avocado are fruits.
And zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, beans, and peas.
But if you pick fruits from trees you are taking away food for some other animals that also eat those fruits.
I have always wondered just how many accidental casualties occur with harvesting equipment. I guess home garden is the best bet if it’s a concern?
Look up how olives are harvested. There are big machines that go over rhe tree and vacuum off all the olives. Too bad theres a lot of birds living in there that get sucked in and die. Why don't they fly away? The noise must be a fair warning ahead of time! Well, the harvest is at night because of lower temperatures. The birds freeze in shock when the noise and bright lights get turned on and don't move.
Apart from the problems with the point you're implying (see the other replies) you raise an important problem with industrial agriculture.
Go organic, with inflation the premium on organics isn't barely there now.
It's a better quality of product and doesn't send their cows to feedlots.
I've seen industrial farming and it's not pretty, but more than anything it products a pretty crappy product now compared to organic.
You eat a lot less as the quality leaves you satisfied.
I don't think any organic certifications regulate the method of slaughter. If you go to a local farmer, maybe there's a more humane method of slaughter (although the vast, vast majority of even local farmers will contract out slaughter and butchery), but organic at Walmart is probably going to be processed more or less identically to other meat.
That doesnt solve the problem of slaughtering a sentient being for 5 minutes of taste pleasure which I think he was trying to avoid
Lol, ok bud have fun with your veggie cult.
Happily, I see your original comment has been downvoted. Im not sure how wanting to reduce suffering is cult-like but each to their own...
Really.. Is that what you are doing, seems more like you just want to be violent toward others and have built yourself a causi belli to engage that way.
> wanting to reduce suffering
Bullshit, you don't give 2 shits about that, you want to increase suffering in actual sentient beings.
Which a cow is not. Hence you are in a cult because what else would you call that position??
You are not a moral agent and you don't get to define what others can and can't do when it comes to food production.
Organics is a fantastic way to go, it just shows how full of shit you are to go against that.
Liar.
We know red meat isn’t healthy. Most (not all) fake meats try to replicate red meat.
What proof do you have them being unhealthy? Impossible for example has fairly simple list of ingredients. Better macros than burger ground.
Anecdotally. My father in law has had to stop eating red meat due to health concerns. He enjoys impossible products just fine with no negative concerns in blood biomarkers or examines (several years running now). We are controlling for exercise patterns too. He’s just replaced his frequent burgers with an impossible patty instead.
This comment is just a wild claim with no evidence and falsely equates “processed” with “unhealthy”
> We know red meat isn’t healthy.
I think you mean we have studies of dubious quality blaming red meat. And scores of people repeating the same trite arguments.
It's the same people that brought to you salt causes high blood pressure and saturated fat causes atherosclerosis, pushing the low fat craze and the obesity epidemic.
Sure, meat is bad, go eat hyper processed fake meat.
Thank you!
Those studies were all ideological driven and would never pass replication.
Mongols vs China, diet was a defining factor in the Mongols victories.
Meat and dairy, the dairy gave them tons go vitamin D as well.
> Mongols vs China, diet was a defining factor in the Mongols victories.
Source?
not the OP, but this was covered a fair bit in a book I read recently called "genghis khan and the making of the modern world" which was a pretty good read.
Iirc it was that the figting forces of the various northern chinese states were comprised of conscript peasants whose diet consisted of grain and not much else, which stunted their growth among other things, meaning the mongols were significantly larger and stronger than them leading to certain mythologizing in the centuries afterwards. It probably also didn't help that the conscripted peasants were, well, conscript foot soldiers, wheras the mongols were willing participants on horseback
Thanks!
Bang on, same thing with the Dutch and the Brits when the empire flourished.
Dietary changes drive a lot of these things, more than I think is generally understood and credited.
The Mongols are a very famous example and extreme as you stated the Chinese peasant and soliders mostly had a grain based diet and poor health that came with it.
Consuming a lot of heme iron is proven to be bad for the heart. Red meat contains heme iron in great amounts.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23708150/
Epidemiologic nutritional studies are proven to be totally useless. They literally are a questionnaire asking people what do they eat, take some health markers and drawing conclusions. I spent the morning reading through the data of that "plant-based diets reduce colorectal cancer" on the front-page of the Guardian [1], and it's yet another pile of cherry picked inconclusive crap people will keep sharing on social media.
From just 2 minutes with your paper: "Higher heme iron intake appeared to be significantly associated with a 31 % (95 % CI 4–67 %) elevated risk of developing CHD" --- lmao, loving that 95% confidence interval between 4 and 67%.
Passing those out as proof of real science keeps the disinformation and terrible practice alive. If I had a dime every time a random commenter gave me a link to an epidemiologic nutritional study, I could fund a double blind randomized one myself.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/29/plant-based-... — have fun reading the actual numbers in Tables 2, 3 and 4 of the linked paper.
I'm curious how one gets a 95% confidence on such a wide margin. I'm having trouble visualizing data that would give such a result. Is this just a result of a very wide distribution of data? Or is this done with shady statistics. The 95% seems to imply that there's data on either side of their chosen bounds. To my understanding, the real "beef" with the article is the choice of representing the data as "31%" when there's such a wide distribution. A more accurate statement would be that, "nearly everyone experienced some heightened risk of CHD with the actual risk varying largely, but firmly positive". Thoughts?
people who had less than 4% elevated risk composed 2.5% of the group, and people who had over 67% elevated risk composed 2.5% of the group
if normally distributed, two thirds would have elevated risk between 14% and 48%
that is to say, almost everyone has an elevated risk - so I have no idea why you are complaining about confidence intervals
Consuming a lot of TMAO is proven to be bad for the heart. Cod contains TMAO in great amounts.
Yet white fish is one of the most recommended heart healthy foods.
You have to be careful when talking about specific mechanisms in terms of Whole Foods. Nutrition can't be reduced down to single mechanisms to provide confident recommendations, and often times results are the opposite of what we would expect mechanistically.
it also has EPA and DHEA, so it's possible those offset the effects of too much iron
also, it's still lower than red meat, it's on the order of white meat
if you want an iron-rich fish you'd have to go up to bluefin tuna, which does have a red tint to its meat
First we have lot of studies based on statistics. There are also simple statistics which show than vegetarian live longer then meat eaters. Then we have the five blue zone where people do not eat meat and most of them are centenarians.
But some people do not support their habits to be changed and are ready to believe anything that confort their opinions. Even if their habits destroy the planet.
> We know red meat isn’t healthy
It's worth obfuscating this point. We don't know red meat isn't healthy.
Equally, we also don't know that red meat is healthy.
Without making a case for either side, readers should know that the field of nutrition is incredibly unclear, often times very individualized, and most of what people 'know' are just 'educated guesses'. For every study proving one side of the argument, you can find 10 studies proving the opposite side.
Agree. If you have a claim to make about nutrition, please back it up with a million person controlled study run over 60 years.
For one thing, the high level of saturated fats in beyond meat patties (25% of max daily recommended intake) could be considered unhealthy. On some other aspects it seems pretty decent, with good protein content and some added vitamins as well.
The idea that processing determines the healthfulness of a foodstuff is fallacious.
Not exclusively, of course, but the degree of processing of food greatly influences our body’s insulin response, which can over time have huge impacts on health (leading to fatty liver disease / metabolic syndrome / obesity / diabetes). This is why, for instance, fruit juice is so much worse for us than the whole fruit — most of the fiber is removed which would otherwise slow down digestion and temper insulin response. For more info I’d highly recommend Jason Fung’s Obesity Code book — he’s a nephrologist specializing in diabetes treatment.
Some kinds of processing increase insulin impact, others don't. If your goal is controlling sugars, a diet premised solely on minimizing processing isn't a great strategy; "processing" isn't the high-order bit of that problem.
Theoretically, you are right, of course. In practice though, to apply this, you would need to know how the processing exactly works, and how the body responds to that processing. Given that you can not really determine this easily, it is in practice just simpler to stick to unprocessed foods as much as possible, and just apply the sugar limit to those.
I don't think this makes a lot of sense. Cheese is cooked, fermented, emulsified, and aged. It has a lower glycemic impact than milk, its primary unprocessed input. Mostly, I think the "processed" vs. "unprocessed" debate is an appeal to tradition, not science; if it's a kind of processing we were doing 200 years ago, it's OK; otherwise, it's unhealthful.
I would say that Cheese, at least its classic variants, fall exactly under the category where you have fairly good knowledge of the nature of its processing and its effects on the body. I'd say your example supports my argument.
Categorically? Absolutely!
But as humans we can't read every study for every ingredient. We have to use heuristics to guesstimate a healthy diet. Reducing (not eliminating) processed foods is a decent one. Same goes for including protein, increasing fiber (so whole wheat instead of the cake americans call "bread"), including veggies.
This source says differently [0], at least for meat. Do you have any evidence or reasoning?
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/
For some reason there is no reply button on the other replies.
Maybe the evidence for meat doesn't generalise, but the idea that fresh vegetables would retain some sort-lived structures that start to break down once processed seems plausible. I was just pointing out that GPs claim could do with some backup.
I think GP didn’t provide citations as it’s a fairly well known and un-controversial opinion.
If this idea was new to you then maybe have a look at these sources, or do some other searches
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/red-and-proce...
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods...
Your references seem to back me up, and not the person I was replying to? Eg:
"There is evidence showing an association with certain types of food processing and poor health outcomes (especially highly- or ultra-processed foods). This association applies mainly to ultra-processed foods that contain added sugars, excess sodium, and unhealthful fats."
From the second one. Maybe you confused my position?
Evidence for processing meat doesn't transfer well as evidence for processing beans.
That's mostly related to the curing salts and their reaction with heme iron. Curing salts are not used when processing vegetables; heme iron is not added either (I hope), so this should not apply in this case.
Impossible patties have heme iron added.
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/impossible-burger-vs-be...
What makes you think so? Do you have any examples of particularly healthful highly processed foodstuff in mind? Or is this more some "there are no slow programming languages, only slow implementations" type of argument about the absence of strict logical necessity?
Healthy food is basically a lemon market, so what would a plausible mechanism to economically incentivize high processing for healthfulness look like?
Conversely there is a clear economic incentive to highly process food in order to decrease unit cost at fixed palatability. By increasing yield (pink slime) or shelf-life (trans-fats) or taste and looks (flavor enhancer etc).
None of these are necessarily bad in all cases, and in some cases might even correspond to increases in healthfulness (e.g. by killing harmful micro-organisms).
But on average, in the absence of some additional economic incentive to keep or increase healthfulness, I'd expect optimization for these criteria to decrease it.
For example, a lot of nutrients have short shelf-lives, so if there is an incentive to increase shelf-life but not an equal incentive to preserve nutritiousness (and I don't think there is), you'd expect healthfulness to go down, no?
Saying there's necessarily a causal relationship is probably not well supported, but there's absolutely a correlation, and as a rule of thumb, if you choose whole foods over processed foods it will tend to net out as more healthy.
Nutrition pretty much by definition requires a lot of simplification to allow people to make quick decisions on food choices, and so broad rules that are mostly right are pretty useful (and pretty much the basis of how most diets work).
You are technically correct. However...
The complexity of digestion rivals that of cryptography. And the same caveats apply.
Ultraprocessed foods, let's say a [plant] burger, are the food equivalent of "roll your own crypto".
Less processing = fewer things we break without knowing we broke them. I'm in no way actually arguing against cooking.
This would take a fair bit of time and space to explain in general, but if you have specific questions I'll do my best to address them.
I agree in so far that I believe that the observation of "more processing > less health" is not caused directly by the amount of processing, but by the way those highly processed products are designed to match as many "appetites" as possible. I use the term "appetites" in the sense of a low intensity craving, the feedback signal the body sends to fill some nutrient deficit. But our taste buds can't really identify most of the nutrients in question, we just have is a set of complicated heuristics taking an educated guess. And many of those highly processed foods, in their quest to maximise desire, will fool those heuristics, matching the "appetite" without fulfilling the deficit. Perhaps not by deliberate design, but by market selection.
On one hand, the faux meats sound quite risky, but in the other hand they are under extreme scrutiny like no highly processed food before them, so they might not actually be bad at all.
Tell me that raw, uncooked wheat is just as healthy as processed and cooked wheat. I'll wait.
Cooking makes some things edible that weren't before. Just because it doesn't work on an apple in the way you are imagining doesn't mean much.
I'll also note that many folks think of baked apples as sugar-laden desserts and fresh apples as eaten plain. Nevermind that folks add apples to savory rice dishes and nevermind that folks dip fresh apples in caramel sauce. You need more than the descriptions of "baked" and "raw" to denote health.
Depends on fruit/vegetable. Some have nutrients that are easily destroyed by heat, but some have nutrients that are easier absorbed after light heating, or problematic compounds removed during cooking.
That is why we have recipes for both variants, so I would say do both.
Both ways of preparation have their merit.
BTW, enjoyability is an important and underestimated factor in nutrition. (Unfortunately abused by the food industry.)
And raw potato vs cooked potato?
Define "healthy."
Clarify what you become deficient in by consuming a cooked apple.
This frankly reeks of naturalistic fallacy.
HN is full of bizarro techbro eating disorder talk
I didn't quite realize until I met one of those "carbs are worse energy sources" guys at a job
yeah, bizzaro tech world where vitamins get destroyed by heat :)
It's not the facts - it's the mindset and focus.
You mentioned a ton of things that change (which, sure, they do, after all it would be weird if, after processing when things taste differently, nothing would have changed), you did not make the causal link to things changing in a way that is detrimental to health.
Just because it changes doesn’t mean it‘s bad.
Even your only point where one could argue that there is a potential obvious negative health effect (the vitamins) is only an issue if there are actual vitamin deficiencies that matter.
> is only an issue if there are actual vitamin deficiencies that matter.
It's an issue because it's wasteful, you're loosing the good stuff in the process. Throwing half of your meal into garbage every time is only an issue if you're still hungry afterwards, but it's not economically and ecologically sane thing to do. This is a similar thing, one should try to maximize the use of food that they pay for.
Cooking meat allows your digestive system to ingest more proteins, for example. This is why fire was such an unprecedented step in our evolution. For example: Raw egg: 3g of protein at most. Cooked egg: 6g of protein.
IIRC, cooking vegetables is generally necessary to make many of the calories available to human digestion.
You waste much more by not cooking them.
Some food a poisonous when eaten raw.
Cooking reduces availability of some nutrients and increases others.
Yes and can be beneficial sometimes. For example, in the case of something like kale or spinach cooking reduces goitrogens IIRC.
Not just heating, even simple cutting/mincing of the food promotes oxidation that can significantly influence the composition of food.
On the other hand some processing like canning of fresh food can actually help preserve the good stuff compared to whole food that's refrigerated or otherwise stored over longer periods of time. Processing also can increase the bio-availability of many ingredients, which can sometimes be a good thing, or in case of sugars not so good.
Eating heated food is a staple of human diets for hundreds of thousands of years - ever since fire was invented. I wouldn't worry about that part so much.
Unless you're on a paleo diet, heating to cook is considered minimally processed. So that's more evidence that looking for "processing" isn't a good metric.
Processing changes so many things in both good and bad ways that you can't use its presence to determine much of anything.
I disagree. Depending on the prep, I could have been fooled into thinking it was a real patty at Hopdoddys. Saying it is unhealthy sounds ideological. The point of making this imitation meat is to over time, get better and better until it is truly indistinguishable. It is premised on the idea that many people don't want to give up their meat foods, and that mass meat production is unethical and environmentally negative.
There is a need.
Beyond/impossible aren't trying to be healthy. They're trying to be meat replacements and have similar healthiness to red meat, which they do. I prefer them to previous generation meat substitutes. They work great as ground beef replacement, much better than any vegetables.
I'm a heavy meat eater, and I actually kinda liked the impossible whopper.
More importantly, while I like the taste of meat too much to give up on it, I would also very much prefer that it could be had without killing animals. I don't think plant-based meat is going to be the ultimate solution to this - more likely, it'll be the lab-grown stuff. But, either way, it requires investments from the food industry to reach maturity, and those won't happen unless there's a real customer interest. Buying fake-meat burger is a way to express that interest.
That's really anything highly processed. Soo much easier to control eating habits once I limited the highly processed, fast metabolizing stuff.
I’m not positive but I have a feeling it’s the methylcellulose. In my own home experimentation, none of the ingredients seem to cause issues except for that.
It seems fairly benign, but it can’t be digested and it isn’t clear to me if we have gut flora which can break it down efficiently.
I enjoy throwing together little experiments in a similar vein to beyond meat or impossible burger products, but it feels too much like a lab experiment to eat regularly. My kids like “meat balls” with spaghetti, so I tend to make that and otherwise I’m gravitating back towards whole food-based garden burgers.
A weird thing about beyond/impossible is that while they appear moderately healthier than real meat from some perspectives… They are still pretty trashy. I can’t not feel like I’m making a bad choice, even if it’s home made, and at the end of the day I just want to feel good (mentally and physically) about my food.
> They are still pretty trashy
This is a qualitative/irrational assessment and not a quantitative/rational one, especially considering that fat consumption got a wrongfully-deserved bad rap for decades thanks to unethical lobbying by the sugar industry.
It's very rational how many individuals are rejecting these trashy products.
For years I’ve spent a lot of time (probably more than I should) crawling through research about exactly this, which is precisely why I use the term trashy. Relatively speaking I suppose it’s better than many other options, which is relevant to some people. In the broader scope, this is still junk food.
I’d argue (based on the best dietary research the world has produced) that saturated fats do deserve a bad rap, and most refined fats are also worth minimizing in a diet. Are all fats bad? Not at all, we should eat them. We’d die without them. Are saturated fats and refined plant fats worth including in our diet? Arguably no, not at all. Incidental consumption of them is more than enough and intentional consumption becomes problematic quite quickly.
I’m not aware of any outcomes-based studies spanning the globe which indicate that a high fat diet serves most people well as far as long term quality and quantity of life. On the other hand, there are several, and more all the time, showing the opposite.
The valid “fat is actually okay!” data almost exclusively comes from whole-food based studies. However, those which position saturated fats as safe or healthy are typically of poor designs. One example off the top of my head is one which put vegetarians on an extremely high coconut oil diet and meat eaters on a lean meat diet. The results? Eating meat is better for your cholesterol! Surprise?
I couldn’t make this stuff up. In fact, someone likely paid people a lot of money to make it up. The irony is that it uses the truth (saturated fat raises blood lipids) to indicate that this truth is actually false. If saturated fat was bad, wouldn’t the intersection of meat eaters and vegetarians look different? It must be okay. Makes a great headline!
I agree that the sugar lobbying is absurd and harmful to society, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to believe there isn’t a massive and busy lobby behind fats as well. Why wouldn’t there be? Look at how many studies around animal products and fat are funded by associates of the food processing industry.
And yet the best studies we have clearly have no commercial agenda behind them, they typically took years or decades of work, yet they’re hastily discounted by all kinds of people.
thanks for the interesting thoughts.
diet is a fairly complex topic and it's a shame that most doctors don't get more than a single course in nutrition. I read a paper like this (which is related to our discussion) and the raw complexity is just... difficult to boil down into a variety of good food choices sometimes: https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000871
What about food is not "qualitative"? :-) Where on the spectrum are you?
For me it's the coconut oil / cocoa butter “marbling” that gives me the Olé Olestra problem https://web.archive.org/web/19990203160042/http://www.zug.co...
I can't touch 'vegan cheese' made with coconout oils for this reason - for some reason it leaves me feeling like I have a film of oil down the back of my gullet that I can't shake off for an hour or two afterwards. It's a weird, unlikeable and thoroughly unwanted sensation.
You might have a touch of legume allergy (if only have a touch is possible). Beyond has pea protein and Impossible has soy protein. What's in your veggie patties?
Hmm not to say that’s not it (because people vary) but my wife and I both get this feeling with these Beyond/Impossible meats but we otherwise eat a lot of legumes which don’t give us that feeling
I think they both contain methylcellulose, which is considered benign but not digestible. In my experience it doesn’t cause major discomfort, but a mildly off putting sensation in my GI tract for a few hours. It might be something else, but it seems likely after narrowing things down for a while.
Cellulose? This is the modern equivalent of adding sawdust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose
If you dig a little deeper you’ll find that methylcellulose has some interesting culinary properties, making it well suited to adding structure and firm texture to soft foods.
When mixed with water it transforms into a firm gel after heating, or it can be used to create extremely resilient emulsifications.
It’s practically flavourless, so it works well. I’m not convinced it passes through the GI tract with no impact whatsoever, but it appears so far to be relatively benign.
It’s nothing like sawdust or a filler, though. It’s also somewhat expensive so it wouldn’t be a good option for filler. My 500g bag was around $25, but if you wanted to use actual sawdust, well I think you could get that for close to nothing.
Thank you for your eloquent and well reasoned refutation! Getting early 90s internet vibes, where prople actually typed out their disagreement in an informative way instead of just downvoting.
I take that as a huge compliment! I find myself dreaming of Old Internet quite often these days, so thank you very much. Maybe we can restore the old ways one comment at a time.
Fiber is good for you. Adding bulk into something that's supposed to be a mixture is only a problem when it's diluting the rest too much.
I know exactly what you mean and I get this a lot too. I always thought it was in my head but recently I tried a Drunken Noodle recipe from FreshPrep which used Beyond Meat Burgers and I felt nothing. It was actually delicious. I guess the prep method somehow affects it?
https://www.freshprep.ca/orders/11661077/recipes/thai-beyond...
They're higher in fat than traditional veggie patties. That could explain it.
100% in agreement. It’s not even in the fast food places I struggle to find a plain bean burger now… it’s the supermarkets too.
The odd peculiar taste of these kinds of new plant based burgers can be pretty foul. For me and my partner, the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap.
Bring back the delicious bean burgers and actual normal veggie burgers.
I used to love the Morning Star Chipotle Black Bean burger. Then they changed the recipe and now it tastes horrible. It's lost the fresh, garden flavor and now it may as well be burnt bean paste or mush. At this point I'm moving on to my own patties.
"delicious" and "bean burger" never have gone together in my experience. To each their own, I understand. Maybe it's because I only had a bean burger at Chili's .
> the Burger King veggie burger now tastes similar to dish soap.
That's interesting - is it a genetic thing like cilantro?
It might be, but it's not that particular genetic marker. I have it (confirmed by testing) and, while I hate Impossible Burgers, they definitely don't taste like soap to me. More like a bean that's developed a "funk". And not like tasty cheese funk, more like meat that's gone off funk.
We can still fall back to a fried portabello burger … for now.
i don't know about anyone else, but the second I eat a portabello burger, I'm racing to the bathroom. unless they are washing extensively, whatever those spores are just hit me the wrong way and i'm off to the races. don't get me wrong though, they taste amazing, i just have to be selective of where i'm eating them at.
Those are seriously the best.
I'm an omnivore but still like to have the odd non-meat option, and I'm the same. I find the impossible (etc) burgers are just.. weird. I really prefer having a felafel if it's available!
Not a bad choice. A great falafel reminds me of a veggie shawarma.
Everything that is (centuries) old is new again!
PS : soaked portobello mushrooms veggie burger is a delicatessen
> veggie shawarma
Highly under-appreciated IMO.
I've not eaten a real burger or sausage since the 80's and I've only had two of these impossible burgers but they tasted quite nice when I had them and no adverse reactions, but at NZ$14 (US$8.50) for two frozen burgers at my local supermarket, they wont be on my menu often.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is hard at work trying to figure out how to make ground up bugs affordable and palatable
Public service announcement from the vegan community: Cutting out meat doesn't mean you have to eat bugs, or any other gross animal byproducts. Plants are plenty nutritious.
Hypothetically, would this still be the case if eating bugs was better on environmental and animal welfare/displacement metrics over plant agriculture, and those considerations were motivations for someone being vegan?
That really needs rebranding. We already eat plenty but of insects… we just call em things like crustaceans, shrimp, and crayfish.
I also had this thought once, but then looked it up, and found that it is completely wrong. It's basically like saying "we already eat plenty of fish... We just call em things like beef, pork, and bird meat".
Except that fish are much more closely related to mammals than crustaceans are to insects (same phylum, different class). Here is an example of an animal that is as closely related to a cow as a grasshopper is to a lobster: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp
Edit: Even more, dietary preferences tend to focus on a single species. Plenty of people eat chicken but not turkey, or eat pork but not boar. There are even people who eat lamb but not adult sheep. And no one eats wolf or eagle meat. To then come and say "hey, you already eat one arthropod, why not another" is pretty absurd.
I'm not at all against eating insects, I'm just pointing out that the fact we eat shrimp has 0 to do with it.
Not true as of about 10 years ago. The taxonomy changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancrustacea
That's still at best relating insects and crustaceans at the level of (most) fish and mammals. I'm also unclear on where this pancrustacea clade comes in, as most Wikipedia articles for specific species don't even list the clade, just the phylum and class - and fish are still the same class as mammals, while insects and shellfish are not.
Either way, while we eat some mammals and birds, we still don't eat the vast majority of mammals or birds, and we barely eat any reptiles or amphibians or fish.
“ As of 2010, the Pancrustacea taxon is considered well accepted, with most studies recovering Hexapoda within Crustacea.”
Hexapoda are all of the insects.
We also eat plenty of other bugs and insects which just get into the way of processing plants ;=)
(crustaceans are a good example as traces of them tend to get included into algal based food, but less pleasant sounding examples are e.g. from time to time small worms being in fruited pressed for juice, sound terrible but isn't really that terrible and impossible to avoid without using pesticides which are worse then that by far)
Snowpiercer vibes
Clearly there are at least two readers who've never seen the movie, and the scene when they discover the source of the protein bars.
I'm someone from far away, reading this unfold with curiosity. My country's variety is NotCo, who in all fairness makes damn good patties without any of the downsides told here (the fakeness sensation, the heavy stomach after eating, that strange waft when burping). NotCo uses AI for their processes, combining strange things like chicory, pineapple juice & cabbage to create milk that even froths like the real one; or strawberries, chickpeas, cocoa, beetroot & bamboo to make very passable "meat". They simply taste good, to the point sometimes I prefer to buy them instead of regular burgers. It helps that we have a healthy market of real veggie (ie. no meat-replacement) products to choose too.
Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff.
I assume Beyond, Impossible etc use another, more crude/unrefined approach.
Tried to eat a NotBurger last night. I couldn't finish it... because my meat-eating girlfriend took it for herself. Their milk is pretty good too. The patent for the ML approach they use is kind of interesting as well, I honestly expected their "AI" to be a lot dumber: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10915818B1/
> Though IDK what came out of their affair with Bezos, seems it didn't gain traction in the US? Unlike the rest of the world, they're big in LatAm and expanding. I think Australia is their latest successful gig. This isn't a paid endorsement btw, I just like their stuff.
Here they recently partnered with Kraft to make Not versions of their cheese singles (although some would say they weren't really cheese to begin with) and eventually other products. NotChicken is supposed to also make it here relatively soon, but sadly only as patties.
Haven't heard of it here in Australia yet. Australia has a few brands of its own (Buds and Veef are two popular ones) as well as some of the more global brands, so it's quite a saturated market.
I agree with you, and I think it’s the soya protein. I don’t have any problems with pea protein, but the soya protein makes me feel queasy.
I think those meat replacements are good for people who have just become vegan as they give you a sense of familiarity, but after a while you realise that it’s possible to eat a delicious vegan diet that doesn’t consist of mega-processed things trying to be meat.
Probably also the pesticides and industrial oils.
Photos and internal documents from a Beyond Meat plant in Pennsylvania show apparent mold, Listeria and other food-safety issues, compounding problems at a factory the company had expected to play a major role in its future https://trib.al/q1SAHYO
https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_...
this looks like propaganda
Would that be the same thing I’d find in tofu? Because tofu doesn’t upset my stomach at all.
To be honest I don't know too much about it, but as I understand it tofu is the curd made from soya milk, and soya protein is some form of the processed whole bean. My thinking that it's soya protein is just from the fact that I've tried a few different brands' soya fake burgers and they all give me the same discomfort.
I don't have any ill effects from tofu either.
The fake stuff usually lists “textured vegetable protein” or “soy protein isolate” or things like that. Those are much more processed than tofu. Tofu is more like a curd in so far as the tofu gets minced then settled out of the water. I think it sometimes gets calcium carbon added.
Not a vegan, but I went to several places that served some veg patties that I really enjoyed. It didn't attempt to taste like meat, but it was just as enjoyable.
After this I tried several of these alternatives just to look for different flavors. Beyond meat really smelled weird when cooking, and while somewhat acceptable in taste I can totally share the stomach weirdness.
This didn't prevent me to keep trying other stuff. "Impossible meat" I was never able to find yet. But as other have said, the major issue is that all the alternative options cost _more_ than actual beef where I live. This makes it a luxury option.
I find that Beyond Meat is 'okay' in a burger when it's got all the other flavours going on, but I was recently playing around with using it in other dishes like meatballs and wasn't nearly as happy with it. It has a weird aftertaste that I can't quite identify, and whilst not awful, isn't terribly pleasant.
I bought a pound of the "ground beef" to try it out. Pretty sure it was Beyond beef, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't smell and taste like cat food when I opened up the package. It was fucking revolting, and totally ruined the dish I was making.
There must be some special way to prepare it to make it taste good. There's no way I'll take this stuff and make burger patties out of it just like I would regular ground beef.
I'm not the only one either, do a search for "beyond smells like..." and look at the autocomplete results.
Cooking it. That’s the way to make it taste fine. I wouldn’t eat it straight out of the package.
Raw ground beef is much more pleasant, though bland.
My favorite of all of these products are the various Impossible Sausages, probably for exactly the reason that sausage is way more flavor and texture than just the meat or “meat” itself. Seriously love the bratwurst alternatives. The burgers from either brand? I completely agree with you, there’s something just slightly off about them.
The Beyond meat we've had from the grocery store has too much smoke flavor added in. It's fine if you're making burgers, and maybe chili, but anything else is a non-starter. I think they make sausage and meatballs that don't have this flavor, but whatever generic 'ground meat' we got was suitable only for making food on a grill.
My partner is a vegetarian and she doesn't eat the fake-meat patties, however, she does get these: https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/mornin...
They're really good with no awful side effects or tastes. I like some vegetarian options, but honestly, most of it either tastes nasty or has poor texture.
My girlfriend dislikes some meats and seems to want to be a low-meat household, she loves morningstar nuggets of most kinds. Another good one is Quorn. They are a cultured fungus protein and it just makes a much more meaty tasting and feeling product, and you could easily forget it's not chicken.
Big problem though is the required level of processing to take a vague protein slurry and turn it into a glued together nugget means it's only really comparable to the absolute lowest quality, bulk batch, school lunch grade nuggets.
Quorn is a fermented slime mold, the fungi label is a marketing trick.
This said, I used to like Quorn before they started stuffing egg (mostly eggwhite) into everything. The real slime mold is great, but where I live it's near impossible to get Quorn products without the egg. They taste as bad as impossible/beyond with their clearly chemical taste.
Going beyond this, mosr vegetarians/vegans find over time that it is much cheaper and actually nicer to go simple, not with the replacements. tofu, seitan or simply vegetable dishes without any of these things. E.g. in a well flavoured bolognese/ragout no one can taste a difference between meat, fake meat or simple hard tofu (mouth feel/texture are clearly different though). And anyone should really try making seitan, it's super fun and easy - basically you just wash a bag of flour repeatedly with warm water.
Protein covered in bread and oil is tasty, but it's not a meat substitute, nutritionally.
I realize they are processed food but I really like Morning Star ~~Farms~~ Laboratories products. No one is going to mistake their products for meat but they are still delicious.
And I doubt their business is struggling, or that Beyond Meats's fate has them worried.
I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I like certain black bean and garden burgers. I don't eat them with a bun though, I cook them and then top with a little cheese.
There's a good chance that your gut microbiome forgot about meat which is why you have the problem.
It's a well known story I've heard of vegetarians going back to eating meat and then getting sick from the meat for some time. This is also why eating foods you're not used to can often make you sick even if they're fine. Your gut microbiome adapts to your diet, and if you suddenly change what you eat you can get indigestion.
From my understanding the beyond/etc "meat" acts like real meat to your body microbiome because it's so similiar.
Interesting I've experienced this too though interestingly it is way more noticeable for me with beyond than impossible. I get a weird after taste for hours and my stomach feels off. Not bad enough to never eat again but noticeable enough that I tend to avoid beyond in particular now. Some people have suggested it is so close to meat that your stomach just isn't used to it but I'm pescatarian and eat fish fairly regularly so I doubt it is that simple.
It's the pea protein. The aftertaste is horrible. They've started putting it in vegan ice cream. .. Why?
It’s cheap and people who avoid soy might buy pea instead. Almond protein might work better for ice cream from a taste perspective, but that’s super expensive. We have a great almond & coconut based ice cream in our region but it costs 2x as much as the milk based one.
One thing both Impossible and Beyond do is add artificial smoke flavoring/aromatics to their product to more closely resemble a flame broiled burger. I find them to be somewhat offputting personally, and it also makes the product useless for anything other than a burger. You can't do a hot dish with the Beyond meat because the smoke flavor will overwhelm everything else in the dish.
I don't watch TV so I didn't know about these products.
I ordered a incredible beef pizza thinking it was extra topping or something.
Half way through I happened to eat one of the 'beef' bits by itself and realised it tasted terrible and possibly expired.
I googled it and turned out they sold me a fake meat while advertising it as "<product_name> beef". Which I felt should be false advertising.
The funny thing is I really enjoy falafels and the English brand of vege mushroom paddies. But this fake meat is soulless.
I agree the naming/labeling thing is tricky. We have a friend who brings round 'vegan cheese' when she visits; living in the EU, I'm surprised this labeling is allowed. Is it OK to label vegetarian things as 'beef'? On the other hand, 'beef substitute' doesn't sound terribly appetising. But we are all familiar with 'peanut butter'; I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can explain what is and is not allowed.
I live in the EU. The thing that makes cheese cheese is arguably the mix of fungi and bacteria growing in it. We have some excellent cheeses here that are traditional except for the substitution of nut milk for mammal milk. They are currently specialty items, but that may change. We may have to give up meat and dairy to get through the energy transition, but fortunately the same mold and bacteria responsible for blue cheese grow on plant milk too!
The etymology doesn't really matter, but the french word for cheese refer to how milk is ~processed... "Fromage" -> "Formage" -> "putting stuff in forms". If you think "peanut butter" is confusing... it is called "pinda kaas" in dutch... directly translates to "peanut cheese"!
Could you recommend any blue vegan cheeses?
I'm in the UK so I might have trouble getting them, most of the vegan cheese I have access to is basically the same flavour just in different shapes and forms.
Newington Blue by Nettle in London is great. You can find it at Planet Organic sometimes.
I have celiac and often feel the same way about gluten free foods. Please stop trying to feed me gluten free versions of things that rely on gluten to be good. Just give me a rice bowl or tacos on corn tortillas. With Veganism/Vegetarianism it makes even less sense to me. Not eating gluten is not a choice for me, but Vegans and Vegetarians chose this lifestyle because they don't want to eat meat, why make fake things that resemble meat?
Yeah I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I get a weird aftertaste that lingers when I've tried the impossible burgers. Closest thing I can compare it to is the aftertaste I get after eating chicken thighs. I know that's not exactly a useful comparison, but it's what I've got to work with. Definitely not an aftertaste I've ever associated with beef.
We haven’t had issues with stomach upset, but I’ve found that cooking impossible burgers leaves an oder lingering in the house for days. It smells good while cooking but over time becomes off putting and I loose my appetite to cook the rest of the pack through the week.
Beyond doesn’t have the same issue for me.
It's could be the high amount of fat / saturated fat. This happens to me with a lot of high fat products. When I was consuming a lot of coconut milk / cream with curry dishes it happened too.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
You are not the target group for these products!
The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's the value. That's the target.
This is about replacing the meat in gas station hot dogs and fast food burgers and food court lunches, and if these alternatives can be made good enough and cheap enough, we can reduce the total meat consumption in society to a fraction of what it is today, without having to ideologically convert people to vegetarianism.
These products are for all the people who don't think vegetarian products are incredible, but actually don't care whether or not their burger is made of cow or plants, as long as it tastes the same. But the traditional veggie burgers that you prefer don't cut it, so these products are a step further on the way to a product that will. They're not there yet, though.
> You are not the target group for these products!
It's not a choice for me. When I go to _restaurants_, they are replacing their only vegetarian options with these impossible/beyond meats, and they're charging $2 more while they're at it.
These goals and target markets sound great on paper, but feels like the exact opposite in practice. The goal for reducing waste is great, but why are vegetarians paying that cost when they go out.
Probably because the beyond/impossible offerings sell more and they're only willing to put a limited number of vegetarian items on the menu so the others are crowded out.
That has to be temporary and due to novelty.
I’ve never understood the “pretend meat” category. Lots of vegetarian food tastes amazing and is good for you. It doesn’t have to pretend.
It’s like over-boiling broccoli and covering it in cheese sauce: easier for broccoli-haters to eat, but totally missing the point.
Some of us actually like the meat taste, and this is orthogonal to the ethics of it.
Yes, but what’s the altruistic benefit in marketing fake meat to you?
Why should I care? I just want my guilt-free meat.
yeah, it's purely a business decision, but it sucks.
> If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption.
Habitual meat eater here. I will never ever trust these products to be right for my body the way meat is. Humans haven’t nailed it in the past with heavily processed foods, why would it suddenly work now? I understand the noble dream, I really do. But the fact is, unless I find myself in near poverty or poverty and (no added sugar) peanut butter is unavailable, imitation meat will never be a go-to for me.
Hell, not to mention the disgust I’d feel eating it while knowing my betters are certainly dining on the real thing.
It's not like meat is free from controversy, to play devil's advocate a little. We had beef that turned out to be horse for a moment in the UK.
Not to mention mad cow disease and similar issues.
What risks are you thinking of with plant based or lab grown? If anything it seems the lab environment would catch anything significant before it got out of the building.
I'm not arguing with you, honestly curious. I've not thought about this much.
The concern is that lab grown food will have similar health risks to ultra processed foods — which are correlated with a number of illnesses.
You’re asking people to trust a process (food science) that we’ve spent the last decade finding out has poisoned us for generations.
"Last decade" is too generous.
HFCS wasn't last decade. Trans-fats wasn't last decade. We've known they were bad more than a decade ago.
Many more decades ago they marketed these artificial food alternatives without any evidence of long term health effects, and the process of "proving" them bad took many years (funny how the onus lies on the potential victims), and only recently we've been able to mostly contain the damage of HFCS and trans fats.
It seems every once a while this process restarts again. Americans sure love to play with their food. (I'm not American)
Thought: If your beef is horse meat from a bad supply chain, your vegetarian burger may also be horse meat.
> right for my body the way meat is
Where did you get that idea? Meat consumption in developer contries is excessive and far from healthy.
When I don't eat meat I perform poorly in the gym and generally feel worse.
This seems like a bonkers thing to claim. You're suggesting that if someone gave you two burgers that tasted identical, one that was real meat and costs £5, and the other that was fake and costs £2, if they were other than that TOTALLY IDENTICAL (other than the fake one being better for the planet), you'd still feel the need to eat the real one? For some sense of perceived...offence?
100% Have we forgotten trans fats in margarine? By all accounts, it was butter but cheaper and "healthier". 70 years later, we realized it was worse for us that natural fats.
Not that person, but…
Yes, absolutely.
The history of processed foods is that they’re really bad for us, compared to natural foods, even when ostensibly of similar nutrition.
Why would I trust a process that has failed for decades to work this time?
I would. I try to only eat fresh things that I could prepare at home. Why would I willingly eat 100 grams of refined coconut oil with yeast, potassium chloride, methylcellulose (a laxative) and a whole bunch of other stuff?
I'd rather eat less meat than replace it with this crap.
Depends how you market them. Tons of people opt for organic without having much clue what is means. It’s almost default in most shops.
Tons are buying sunscreen that doesn’t even work all while thinking they are better than everyone else.
Honestly making it cheaper is probably an error. Less cash for developer to improve it and has negative aspect of it.
I wish I could get $5 fake meat that tasted real for $2. Right now the options are real $10, fake and substantially not as a good, $10 or $12.
No added sugar peanut butter is not really a high quality protein source that can substitute for meat, not to mention there are doubts about the health of seed oils (peanuts may or may not be included here) and high omega 6.
You're right, but I can put up with eating a lot of it for long periods on end and it gets me through. I'm open to other suggestions of similar price/effort/tastiness with a better protein & nutrition profile. As long as it's not crazy processed.
Beans and rice, or tofu.
Buy whole chicken when it’s on sale, if you have a freezer you can stock up and break it down into pieces in advance.
A 4oz piece of chicken probably gives a better combination of amino acids than many servings of peanut butter.
Edit: actually I looked it up and peanuts are a decent source of protein, the issues are possibly omega6 and getting peanut butter without added sugar or oil, you should be able to find peanut butter with just peanuts and salt as ingredients.
Humans weren't originally growing meat to eat, either. We were catching it - which puts an upper limit on both the amount of the meat eaten, and on how fatty that meat it.
So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat and actively seek it out? And they're catering to them by... replacing existing vegetarian options? They must not have read your comment. Sounds like a bad market fit.
The number of people who eat meat and don't care if their meat is made of meat has got to be in the 7 figure range worldwide. The number of people that don't eat meat and want their vegetables to taste like meat is probably larger, though still miniscule. It's failing because there's no market for it.
There are three kinds of products for three groups of customers.
- People who don't like the taste of meat -> traditional veggie patties
- People who like the taste of meat but are open to eating less of it -> beyond meat, etc.
- People who like the taste of meat and want to eat meat -> meat
I myself fall into the second group.
I don’t know if anyone should even be targeting the second group.
I don’t think a significant number of people who “start” with beyond meat are going to end up vegetarians.
In fact I think it’s more likely that they go back to eating meat the same amount once they’re done with the substitutes. And maybe if they’re as (rigid? closed-off?) as we’re implying (since they are not already actively eating less meat), they might even walk away with the mindset of “vegetarian food is not as good as meat” and therefore in future avoid the wide variety of delicious vegetarian food.
If people truly want to eat less meat, just throw in some of the most delicious off-the-shelf replacements (like veggie patties) once a week or once a month. The water’s fine, as they say.
Yes, exactly! And I think most people fall into the second group for a majority of their meals.
> So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat
No!!!
The target market is habitual meat eaters. People who grab a hot dog as a snack. Eat a burger for lunch. Make pasta bolognese for dinner. Get chicken nuggets for the kids.
The vast majority of meat consumption is done without a strong craving for meat. People are just buying and eating dishes they like. Asking that all of these people consciously substitute those meals with vegetarian meals is not going to happen in a million years.
But if the cheapest hot dog is fake meat, and taste the same, they'll switch. If the cheapest burger is fake meat, and taste the same, they'll switch.
These products will never replace a steak dinner.
It's not as impossible as you make it sound IMO, I would guess it's more a matter of pricing. If plantburgers and plantdogs where considerable cheaper than meatburgers and hotdogs I would guess people would follow the money and shift to consuming the plant based alternative if they were otherwise close enough.
Well, we're running that experiment right now with soaring meat prices and it looks like you're wrong. Turns out if you make one type of meat more expensive then people just switch to a different kind of meat. If you make all meat more expensive, people buy cheaper cuts and get creative with how they prepare it. My bet is that if you make it prohibitively expensive then people will get creative about sourcing their meat instead so rather than go to the grocery store they'll put in a group order direct from CSA or a small independent meat producer and just store a years supply in a deep freeze.
It turns out a lot of people just prefer eating meat over other options regardless of price. I'm not really surprised.
I think your comment acknowledges that we're not running this experiment. These "fake meat" products are still way more expensive than actual meat. If fake meat actually drops substantially below the cost of meat, we can see what happens, but as you suggest there's really no sign they can compete on price yet.
I do think that if the target market for Beyond really was meat eaters, they've been deluding themselves. Maybe they can shave off a few meat eaters due to the ethical issues, but how many? Ultimately, I have to assume the only way to win many over is on cost, which would have to be a high volume low margin business (if it's even possible to get the prices that low).
I'm not 100% sure it's a product issue and not a market positioning issue. Current gen "new fake meat" veggie brands try to position themselves at premium, which looks like the wrong place to be in. At premium fake meats loose to meat, hands down.
It's like you are trying to position fish sticks on the same slot as fresh salmon.
Huge marketing campaign, target low price segment - that would be the market experiment I would be really interested in.
Tells you that the industry's sole purpose is catering to the moral sensitivities of the bourgeoisie.
Maybe. Maybe not. Poor people are pissed off these days and boy that sends the message “we’re taking meat away too now! For a hundred years you knew at least you had meat on the table, but we’re going back to the good ‘ol days of serfdom. Enjoy the slop!”
I have already seen this sentiment among poor people.
Well, it's about marketing and positioning isn't it. Veggie based diets are plausibly healthier due to higher content of fiber - and health is generally considered an admirable trait. So the marketing should not be about selling a cheap offering, but something like Coca-Cola (everyone likes it!) and celebrities enjoying the product and so on. A campaign that draws everyone to the product basically (like cigarettes in olden times). I'm not sure if you can achieve something like that today though. But at least US food industry used to be really great at selling a cheap product to the masses if they put their marketing muscle behind it :)
I'm a meat eater and I really prefer no meat over fake meat. A good vegetable curry, ratatouille, stew, pasta or a portobello mushroom burger really beats all of the fake meat substitutes for me. If meat becomes too expensive, I'll just cut it out completely... Until lab grown meat becomes a viable alternative. All these fake meat substitutes are just awful, to me.
> It's not as impossible as you make it sound IMO, I would guess it's more a matter of pricing.
This sounds like people at a startup with no product/market fit telling the market that it is wrong.
I'm definitely a habitual meat eater. I don't have a vegetarian bone in my body. Yet I'd prefer a vegetarian burger to have beans and carrots, to having one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste.
That is, while I'm happy to eat a perfect meat substitute, I'm also don't have a problem with vegetables and I'd rather have a totally-not-meat burger than a not-quite-meat burger.
> one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste.
I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley?
I love meat but eat it rarely. And I like burgers, even the cheap McDonald’s stuff. But burger patties are basically entirely their own texture, which is only loosely related to beef meat.
Now a burger with lightly cooked and well seasoned, real fresh ground beef? It’s a different product altogether. But it’s also less popular and I don’t think it’s what beyond meat tries to replace.
> I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley?
Yeah what they need to imitate faithfully is the fastfood variety. I'm sure that's slightly easier than imitating the "proper" thing. What they have now is the not-quite-a-fastfood-thing even.
Which is why OP complains about "One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus".
Yes, true, and I sympathize with that complaint.
As a meat-eater, these products have been great as an option for sharing a meal with my vegetarian friends. I don't really know good vegetarian recipes, but I know how to cook a burger.
I mostly don't eat meat now, but actually started for this reason alone - I wanted to level up my vegetarian cooking skills, so gave myself a challenge of not eating/cooking any meat for a month.
The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat, and if you go by bio availability of the nutrients, a fraction of the same nutritional value as actual meat. And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land.
So either way, it wont work that well in it's current state.
> The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat
That's only because we are "subsidising" meat production cost through immense animal suffering. Once you have regulations that make the animals we keep in captivity have a somewhat good life, then meat price goes through the roof and those alternatives are the only reasonable option for the non-rich.
> And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land.
And where do you think the animal food is grown? Instead of feeding it to animals, make veggy dishes out of it.
It's true that some land can't be reasonably used for growing and harvesting crops, and keeping animals there which turn this into high quality protein is the best option, but that's only for certain regions on the planet.
I buy ethically raised %100 pasture raised ground beef at ~$6/lbs from whole foods, and a 1 lb packet of "beyond burger" is even more expensive than that at $11/lbs (!) at the same shop. There is barely any profit margin in beef, while beyond burger does have relatively healthy one at that price looking at the ingredient list and price. I can also buy a quarter cow for $8/lbs locally raised similarly. %100 pasture raised is how you think it is, eating grass in some field for %100 of it's life, protected from predators, which is pretty much the type of life it would have in the wild with less stress. Not to mention it's better nutritionally than the standard %75 pasture raised / %25 grain finished beef you buy at a costco.
Impossible burgers take an order of magnitude less land to produce than beef. They're not made of vegetables. Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease. Putting soy in a veggie burger results in way more nutrition than putting soy in a cow.
Vegetable or edible plant food is a bit of splitting hairs, they require the same kind of agricultural land that can sustain vegetable crops. Looking at the ingredient list of beyond burger, it's mostly grain and vegetable based, and of that the bulk of it is rice & peas along with 3 kinds of plant oil:
"Ingredients: Water, Pea Protein†, Expeller-pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Protein, Natural Flavors, Dried Yeast, Cocoa Butter, Methylcellulose" (there are a bunch of ingredients that are less than %1 that I'm excluding)
On top of that, there is a vast amount of land you will never be able to use for vegetable crops, and the ONLY way you will get food out of it is ruminant grazing. Removing that from the food supply is going to create price shocks and even more soil depletion as food demand concentrates on that %25 of land left. On top of that, animal food production takes a lot of uneditable plant material and turns it into something human edible, which subsidizes vegetable prices. Without that either plant prices will go up.
This focus on plant only nutrition reminds me of 'environmentalists' shunning nuclear power, and in the end cause more damage to the earth via increased coal power production in the end, like Germany. While the actual answer is nuclear and solar power. Cows and other ruminants are the nuclear power of food.
> Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease.
That is fairly outdated science, it's quite the opposite actually! In 10 to 20 years, your doctor is going to start singing the praises of saturated fat and it's going to be quite hilarious. You can look up research papers today.
It is all magical and ideological driven thinking that ignores scale. Solve one problem and pretend the solution that works at a micro scale has no issues scaling up.
I am completely down to eat bugs even but eating bugs at a scale anything close to meat in general is a laughable amount of bugs. We would probably need 10 times the long haul trucking to ship that many bugs around.
No, in ground-up form you can ship much more bug protein than meat because you are transporting a lot of water (and refridgeration tech) with that meat. Not to even speak of transporting animals, especially live ones, which is a suffering desaster in and of itself.
If water weight is the case, you can dehydrate the meat already? Beyond / impossible burger is shipped wet, and most unprocessed raw plant food is shipped wet too.
> while being cheaper
There's the kicker; the "meat replacement" industry is not in it for the good of humanity or whatever, they're in it for the money. They know there's a demographic of people who feel guilty and who are willing to pay extra to soothe their conscience.
I'm going to sound like a gatekeeper here, but Real Vegetarians know how to cook without something that looks or tastes like meat. Meat replacement patties are just... uninspired and lazy conscience comforting food products. IMO and such.
I wouldn't object to better stimulus from up above, that is, make vegetable options more available, diverse, and affordable. Frozen is fine.
> Real Vegetarians
Yes, and how's that ideological conversion going?
If you truly want to lower global meat consumption, fake meat is the only realistic way of achieving that.
Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process (maybe lab grown meat will get us there someday). Human grade food is more expensive, often considerably so. Animals essentially get the leftovers that we can't eat so they are afforded a huge price advantage and it is not clear how that is to be overcome sustainably.
Circumstances – widespread disease, for example – could see the price of meat exceed these products for periods of time. At which point these products could become contenders on factors of price, but as soon as the market starts to shift the price of meat will fall on the decrease in demand, and you're back to square one. Especially as meat has lag time to market so the price will fall further than you might expect before meat producers are able to pull back on production. There is nothing to keep people eating these products if there is nothing to differentiate them in the market.
The real value proposition is that it is different. A new food option to choose from. If it can be made great, where it is craved as much as meat, then they might have something. Until then, I can see why they are struggling.
You are missing the core technology point that drives the underlying thesis here - ‘every manufactured good, gets cheaper per unit as you make more and more of it’.
Whether this is from the lab, a recipe of plant inputs, or some other currently unknown thing - if you are able to develop and commercialize a product around a ‘specific technology’, you can drive the cost of that down through experience and scale.
Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue).
By taking a technology with a much higher theoretical efficiency, and then scaling that up - creates the classic technology disruption scenario. ->‘It’s the cheaper version of X commodity, why wouldn’t I choose that?’
> Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’.
That would be pertinent if they were eating the same foods, but they don't eat the same foods. They eat the stuff we won't eat, produced largely either as a byproduct of the production of the foods we do eat or produced on lands that cannot support the foods we eat.
The more efficient we get in producing plants to eat, the more efficient byproducts there are for animals to eat, so you get a continuous relationship of meat becoming cheaper as other foods become cheaper. Economies of scale can only get you so far when the raw material inputs are your main cost centre.
The industry will have to move towards using those 'waste' products in order to be competitive, but at that point you're essentially just replicating animal processes and you're up against a 'machine' doing the same that has had millions of years to develop itself.
> Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue).
This really is such a cool take on it that it bums me out to say…
>why wouldn’t I choose that?
…because I just[0] don’t wanna eat fake meat.
[0] On a very deep, perhaps primal level. I can feel it rooted so far in my brain it’s hard to convey. Rather eat peanut butter at every meal.
> Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process
I'd say cheaper doesn't seem feasible without duplicating the subsidies received by the meat industry (including farming of animal feed). Give similar subsidies to the plant-based-meat industry, and I'd bet that meat replacements will be much cheaper than meat.
But there's a political risk at that: Meat industry has huge political influence. If their profits are hurt, they would probably demand even more subsidies for covering their "loss". Or you can expect farmers on the streets, and your political oposition taking advantage of the situation.
> Meat industry has huge political influence.
I'll grant you poultry (chicken, turkey) producers with their sweet, sweet supply management deal. But producers of other meat products? I'd say they are essentially ignored in political circles. If they actually had huge political influence they'd be all over supply management like the poultry producers are afforded. If you venture out into the backroads it's painfully obvious how much richer the poultry producers are compared to their beef and pork producing neighbours, and it is downright sad when you look at those producing less common meats.
The government pays 40% of the insurance premiums for crop insurance (insurance against mother nature) which is a subsidy to plant growers, and is sometimes claimed to by a subsidy to animal producers by extension, but the program doesn't factor in where the product goes. Navy beans grown for humans are very bit as eligible for those subsidies as corn grown for cattle. While it is fair to call it a subsidy, it would be quite disingenuous to claim that is a meat subsidy but not a 'meat alternative' subsidy as well.
Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not.
The idea of a lettuce tomato onion burger stack on a bun is that there's a taste and texture contrast between the stack of vegetables and something that's not another stack of vegetables but mashed. (Doesn't mean it has to be Beyond or Impossible, see last para.)
I suspect displacement happened because folks paying $25 for a "burger" when out are less interested in the garden mash, want something a little edgier. FWIW, before Beyond and Impossible, at any restaurant or diner where I took time to explain the difference in alt-burger types, they were willing to try ones I mention below, and they reported customers preferred it. In many, someone had just told them "have a vegetarian burger" and they just got the mashed veggies patty or mashed beans cake since that's what most products are. Not being vegetarian themselves, they weren't aware of other availability. By contrast, Impossible and Beyond essentially went door to door "educating" them, so they switched.
While Impossible and Beyond displaced the meat alternatives, that doesn't mean you have to go meat in a vat at home, you can do products such as Morningstar Farms Grillers Original, or maybe Boca All-American Flame-Grilled Burger. Those taste stack more reasonably with what goes on a burger than the mashed vegetables patties, without the weirdness (fake blood look, why?) of Impossible or Beyond. Your local diner will probably be happy to stock them as they're simple frozen goods.
> Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not.
I can agree that "mashed vegetables" does not describe a good veggie patty. I don't agree that a good veggie patty fails in "burger" format.
I can easily imagine that some people have simply never tasted a good veggie patty in "burger" format, because they are rare.
This is the root of most "meat alternatives" in average restaurants -- much of the restaurant world hasn't figured out that providing vegetarian options isn't about finding equivalent "meat replacements" but instead about cooking up options that stand on their own and taste great.
> While Impossible and Beyond displaced the meat alternatives
In my experience the "meat alternative" patties have not displaced the good veggie patties in the restaurants that had good veggie patties to begin with.
> ...that doesn't mean you have to go meat in a vat at home, you can do products such as Morningstar Farms Grillers Original, or maybe Boca All-American Flame-Grilled Burger. Those taste stack more reasonably with what goes on a burger than the mashed vegetables patties, without the weirdness (fake blood look, why?) of Impossible or Beyond. Your local diner will probably be happy to stock them as they're simple frozen goods.
A beef burger patty has the wonderful property that it is simply made of meat -- a good beef patty has no ingredient lists because it isn't a packaged food.
A good veggie patty is also made on site of simple whole foods, in the same way a good burger is and in the same way any other good meal is.
Any frozen puck taken from a bag and slapped on a grill fails the test, be it comprised mostly of beef, soy, beans, "beyond beef", wheat, or whatever. Those things are about convenience, not taste.
I agree, another good meat alternative that has sufficient contrast in taste for me is fried Halloumi cheese.
FWIW, to each their own, but I have the complete opposite experience and opinion:
1. First off, the vast majority of restaurants that I've been to that offer Impossible or Beyond Burgers still offer at least one traditional veggie burger. In fact I don't know if I've ever seen a restaurant that will only offer a faux meat burger but not offer a veggie burger.
2. I love a good Impossible Burger, fundamentally because it satisfies my cravings for meat in a way veggie burgers never do. Faux meat burgers have very similar protein/fat/carb ratios to real meat, while veggie burgers are nearly always a ton of carbs. I can eat an Impossible Burger and feel full for hours. I eat a veggie burger and I'm hungry again really quickly.
Complete opposite experience on both counts, anecdotally. I've been vegetarian for years, and the texture of meat (and substitutes) creeps me out. My town has like 10 restaurants that dropped their veggie burgers for beyond/impossible.
I'm not a vegetarian but I used to sometimes enjoy eating the old style veggie burgers that didn't try to taste like meat. I can't find them anymore and I absolutely loath beyond meat and impossible.
I lean vegetarian/vegan these days and have echoed on this very forum that Beyond/Impossible have crowded out any form of unique approaches. It's led to everything at restaurants tasting way too similar.
Fake meat probably isn't for vegetarians. It's for meat eaters who are interested in "meatless mondays" or the like.
Exactly, and it displaced veggie options in my area.
I'm a vegetarian but I very much agree and I'm surprised to see the dislike of these product on this thread from both camps.
I want the full fat, greasy, meaty nostalgia of my very American-diet childhood and Impossible/Beyond have finally gotten 95% to achieving that. I definitely do not want some bean/vegetable patty with low fat, low salt, and weird texture.
Additionally, my Midwestern-diet wife happily eat Impossible (not Beyond) burgers with me which is a pleasant surprise.
I disagree. I much prefer a Beyond pattie to more traditional veggie options.
It is quite literally a matter of taste though, so you aren't wrong, but your perspective is just your own.
I agree with OP. Fake patties taste like... erm... But a nice veggie patty with peas, corn and stuff is great.
Maybe I agree, that this modern crappy fake food is make by meat eaters for people who try to not eat so much meat, but they forgot that a normal veggie patty doesn't need to taste like meat.
I think I'm probably the target market. I don't want to eat meat but I also love cheese burgers, sausages and other processesed meats.
Beyond is amazing for me because I get to enjoy something that's close enough to the food I love without eating any meat.
I love Beyond Sausages for that very reason. they cook up like a sausage, they even have a sausage like skin. I think its pretty great, although highly processed and not suitable for staple food IMMO.
> highly processed and not suitable for staple food IMMO
Well, neither are regular sausages haha
> a nice veggie patty with peas, corn and stuff is great.
That's irrelevant - someone who is in the mood for a meat patty burger won't be happy with a veggie patty no matter how great it tastes, unless it tastes like meat.
There's tons of comments here saying how nice veggie patties can be[1], but none of the posters saying this have the self-awareness to realise that the taste of veggie patties are irrelevant if they don't taste like meat to people who want a meaty taste.
[1] I agree, they can be very nice, and when I'm in the mood for one, I choose it.
Yeah, I agree, but most fake meat doesn't taste like meat. It tastes like made out of grain and stuff. Sure, there are some brands who can mimik the taste quite good, but this stuff will never ever really taste and feel like meat, because it isn't. And some people might try it, think that it nearly is meat maybe, but not 100% and then never try it again. Like me :D I would always prefer a true veggie patty, but maybe I'm not the target audience. But I should, because I often tried to not eat so much meat but failed because of bad tastes.
I hate veggie patties and feel like they were always the frost-bitten-back-of-the-freezer-kept-around-in-case-a-vegetarian-one-day-visits option that a restaurant falls back on. Not a vegetarian any more, but I don't think in the years that I was that I ever ate an enjoyable veggie pattie. As you said, it's 100% matter of taste so there's no right or wrong, but the opposing viewpoints are fascinating...
Same here. I’ve tried many veggy patties at restaurants and only ever had one that I liked, and even going back to that same restaurant is hit or miss. It is rare to find one that isn’t either very dry and flavorless or soggy, mushy and impossible to bite without squeezing out of the patty.
Beyond and Impossible aren’t amazing but they are decent and consistent.
Same here, I don't care either way whether it's trying to taste like meat or not - I've had too many tasteless, dry bean burgers that any alternative is welcome
I much prefer Beyond Burgers as well, and the sausages. I even invested in the company, and it's surprising to me the negative press and Wall St shorting action.
Me too. I'm eating Beyond pattie in my veggie bowl right now and I think it tastes fantastic.
>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
Veggie burgers are in a weird position because it's hit or miss on whether they are made with eggs. So it alienates vegans. I don't even bother checking at restaurants if the veggie burgers are vegan anymore. But with Beyond and Impossible, the name recognition is there. Vegetarians and vegans alike know they can eat it. It alienates fewer people. That said, I want as many choices as possible when I go out to eat, so being able to choose a (vegan) veggie burger would be great.
I used to go to Dos Toros once a month or so. They used to have a burrito option where the protein was replaced with a vegetable selection. I’m sure that it varied by region, but around me it was usually a roasted variety of squashes. When combined with all the other burrito toppings, it was hands-down the best thing on their menu.
Then they replaced that with beyond/impossible at a higher price. I tried it once, and it basically killed the aura. Now it’s just another burrito shop, no different than any other.
It's very sad that so much veggie food is now with egg. A horrible rancid flavour that meat eaters and veggies alike don't like. But it's cheap and heavily subsidised so goes into everything as a filler.
The thing is BM (and others) aren't trying to create vega/vegetarian meat. They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way, so it has to taste more like beef/pork than chickpeas or tofu if they want to get the main market.
They are still not there.
As a pretty hardcore meat-lover (we had sous-vide filets tonight at home), I think Impossible is close enough on the taste and feel side for a lot of dishes that use beef (including hamburgers).
They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.
Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.
>Economies of scale will push the cost down over time.
This is, of course, true, but as a business proposition it's a bit daunting.
When you're competing with industrial agriculture, you're competing with a technology stack that's tens of thousands of years old, spans the globe, and employs literal billions of people. It's not quite the same as accepting a couple years of unprofitability when scaling up a social network. What if it takes centuries?
And yet...
"The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today."
https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:....
Those numbers don't make sense. If you follow the chain of references, they seem to be made up.
(Why do I say the numbers don't make sense? a) That subsidy works out to about 35 cents per person per day. How could that possibly reduce the price of a pound of hamburger by a factor of 6? b) In other countries, a Big Mac costs at most $6.71. The $13 figure seems to be nonsense.)
I agree the reference is weak and there is most likely a large amount of conjecture behind that number, but the numbers don't a priori not make sense.
Subsidies can have both > 1 multiplier impacts and non-linear impacts. For example, subsidies allow for artificial economies of scale to kick in that can then bring the price down significantly. However, were those subsidies to dry up, then certain thresholds may no longer be met and you may see again a non-unitary and non-linear rise in price.
Indeed this is the main theoretical reason why a society would be interested in subsidies: they can get back more benefit than what they pay for in the form of the subsidy.
AFAIK there is no subsidizing of the beef industry in the US directly. There is subsidies for the sales of common feed plant crops and that's an indirect subsidy for growing beef, but that also applies burgers made directly from plants.
Looks like the main method for direct livestock subsidies is commodity livestock purchases: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/02/usda-livestoc...
This is dwarfed by feed subsidies. Feed subsidies don't convert directly to edible-food subsidies; the 'big five' staple crops are subsidized independent of 'specialty' crops, and the vast majority of corn is grown for feed and ethanol in the US, and is of a variety not used for any kind of human food production.
https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/primer-agricult...
The corn for feed is just used as a protein source though. I'm not sure why you couldn't grind it up for use as a protein source in say a plant-based burger.
Isn't most of the meat subsidy via the feed? Shouldn't competing plant-based products be able to benefit from the same subsidy? Buy a ton of corn, extract the zein (protein), make a burger, use the excess carbohydrates for ethanol (fuel or liquor).
Of course any government that makes a staple food unaffordable is not going to last long.
Agreed. The first time I had an Impossible burger, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just the weird name the hotel bar in SF I was at gave its burgers. Loved it, they made a great burger. I had no idea it was nonmeat until weeks later when I learned what Impossible was.
Now, if I'd known to look out for it, I'm sure I could have picked and found out. But since I wasn't looking for a difference, I didn't notice one. And that's coming from someone who eats a ton of (real) burgers.
Same experience as you. Quite tasty for a burger, but not affordable at 3x the price of a beef burger patty.
I’m surprised by this… they’re possibly 20% more expensive in the grocery store here in the UK, but not 3x. More like on the order of what you’d pay for a meat product that was particularly high quality.
Yeah, I'm in Croatia. Our wages are way lower than yours. Local beef is adjusted for that, imported veggie patties are not.
I don't understand how you can say this. The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all. The texture is wrong, the feel chewing it is wrong, the taste is wrong unless you slather it with enough condiments that you can't taste it anyway. It is exactly the sort of highly processed industrially-created food that health experts tell us to avoid.
I’ve seen huge improvement, from what felt like a lump of shredded beetroot and corn 18 months ago and made me swear off veggie patties, to being a patty that will permanently replace beef burgers in my diet (not a huge component anyway, maybe 1 /2 a month).
In general I’d rather eat vegetarian than fake chicken or sausages, but beyond meat’s current product makes me feel optimistic about a future without methane emissions.
> The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all.
To you. Which is legit -- if it's not to your taste, that's fair. But to a lot of people, it really is close enough -- which is equally legit.
I had seen a family of 8 people by accident grab our order of impossible burgers from BK by accident and consuming them, while we were waiting for our order. When we figured out what happened and tried to explain to them that they just ate meatless burgers, they couldn’t understand what we’re talking about. It was believable enough for them, I guess.
Yeah, price is the problem. If it costs more than ground beef, what's the point?
The point was always to cause less death and suffering, these days for many it’s also about ecology, but it was never about saving a buck.
You’re not going to get meat eaters to eat your plant burger with that attitude alone.
It's why I eat beyond, so they got at least one.
There’s levels to the hamburgers.
That’s the issue here, veggie folks think meat tastes gross and everyone who eats it is evil and carnivores think vegetables taste gross and vegans are just NPC henchmen for the Illuminati
Hilarity ensues. Thus, beyond burger.
Non-animal protein has two main traditions that are quite different: on the one hand you have the tradition that since antiquity has avoided animal protein and don't try to imitate texture or flavor (say South India) and the other tradition which does not completely avoid animal protein and often complements animal protein with plant analogues ("temple food" with origin in China) These offerings sometimes try to come as close as possible to animal and fish protein in texture look and taste. It's the difference between your veggie burger and your impossible burger. One is not trying to be anything but itself the other one is attempting to pass for the other.
Sometimes it seems these BM and IF, etc., are trying to simultaneously cater to both customers at once. That will likely not work as they are different customers.
> They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way
I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier.
I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm animals.
This is a bit old, but it thoroughly examines why the livestock industry is not sustainable.
https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
I think it’s fair to say that an industry that’s lasted ten thousand years[1] is sustainable.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle
Densely-quartered urban dwellers eating like sparsely-populated pastoralists is not sustainable. A theory behind the sanctification of cows in India is because a cow kept for its meat feeds far fewer people than one kept for its milk. The same would apply to some of the climate effects, such as the feed crops, although I don't know if it would change the cow-emitted methane.
Was looking for this kind of comment in the thread. I think our cities are the main causes of many problems we are creating in our environment.
Are you a climate change denier? Are you unaware of the changes that have happened in the last ten thousand years?
What is the time span requirements for 'sustainable'?
Everything on Earth will be toast in ~5 billion years.
Not sure what your point is, but agriculture needs to change dramatically in the next couple of decades.
Human civilization/all life that wants to keep existing also needs to change dramatically in the next five billion years but I think that is to be expected.
The problem is scale and cumulative effects.
The water usage requirements and methane emissions present challenges to sustainability.
Water usage is heavily region dependent - grass fed beef from a region which does not depend on well irrigation essentially has net zero water usage. The cows eat grass and drink water, which they then piss out watering the grass. This is for sure a problem in an arid region dependent on aquifers to raise livestock, but for instance the midwest has plentiful rain (sometimes far too much in fact) and "water usage" isn't a meaningful limitation. Often times the water usage numbers quoted include all the rain that fell to grow the silage that the cows eat, which still ends up in the same aquifers and rivers eventually whether it passes through a cow or not. There are concerns if there is a poorly managed high point source concentration of manure which causes nutrient runoff into waterways, but that's a far different conversation.
Methane is a better example, but ironically factory farming has the answer there. Collecting manure in a waste pool and turning it into biogas turns it from a negative to a net positive.
"We find irrigation of cattle-feed crops to be the greatest consumer of river water in the western United States, implicating beef and dairy consumption as the leading driver of water shortages and fish imperilment in the region. We assess opportunities for alleviating water scarcity by reducing cattle-feed production, finding that temporary, rotational fallowing of irrigated feed crops can markedly reduce water shortage risks and improve ecological sustainability. Long-term water security and river ecosystem health will ultimately require Americans to consume less beef that depends on irrigated feed crops."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0483-z
How is factory farming not 100x more sustainable than pasture raised organic beef?
It's probably sustainable for everyone to eat a large fraction of a pound of meat per week. The average American eats over 4lbs. of meat per week. This is not sustainable.
And developing countries with rapidly growing middle classes are catching up with the west very quickly.
Beef/pork is just pre-made by the aninal. People who eat well-prepared chickpeas and tofu enjoy it.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.
I love meat, and the best non-meat burgers I've eaten that I would absolute eat again and again, didn't try to be non-meat. They were just really tasty vegetable burgers.
Me too (regarding the best veggie burgers) — the best I’ve had were nothing like meat burgers, but were awesome nonetheless.
One is in a cookbook called “the vegan Korean”, and it’s a legitimately memorable food experience. I’d much rather find that at a restaurant than some kind of run-of-the-mill faux meat burger.
https://thekoreanvegan.com/best-ever-black-bean-burger-with-...
I think what companies who want to cater to vegetarians and vegans should do is focus more on providing plant based foods that AREN'T pretending to be meat. I'm not a vegan, never have been, but I quite like a lot of vegetarian foods. But I tried a beyond burger once just out of curiosity and it just... smelled wrong. There was something about it that put me off immediately on a primal level. My guess is that sales surged initially as curious non-vegans tried the fake meat, only for most to realize that it wasn't nearly as tasty and go back to actual meat, leaving the main customer base as vegans trying their best to convince themselves that no it tastes good actually. Providing options such as grilled vegetables that are actually super tasty is a way better idea than just trying to mold weird processed plant matter into a vague approximation of "meat".
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
This is literally the whole point of the Food Chain and why species counts generally decrease as you go up the chain. Plants make up the vast majority of biomass on the planet. Animals that eat plants make up the next largest chunk. Animals that eat those animals make up the next largest. Etc.
I eat meat, but it's undeniable that vegetation is far more economic than meat on sheer scale.
A classic: https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo?t=26
"Ten pounds of grass make a pound of steak. And ten pounds of steak make a pound of tiger.
But these have the same number of calories - so you might as well just eat the cow and save yourself a lot of work."
Might as well eat the tiger and save yourself even more work.
Or, let the tiger eat you, and never have to worry about food again.
Unlike the conversion from grass to cow, the conversion from cow to tiger doesn't improve the nutrition for the consumer.
I was being sarcastic there :)
I have eaten land-based predator meat before, and it's usually very oily and not good for you at all. I wouldn't recommend them. Fish that eat other fish, like Tuna, can be tasty but are still not very nutritious.
But I don’t want a veggie patty. I want a hamburger that doesn’t involve killing animals. Beyond/Impossible is close enough.
Understood that you dont; But before Beyond/Impossible came, there used to be veggie patty that vegetarians enjoyed. And many of them have never tasted meat, and don't want to eat something that tastes like meat.
OP's point is that Beyond/Impossible replaced the veggie patty with a non-meat version of meat patty, instead of adding a new item in the menu.
And, honestly, as a meat-eater I really enjoy certain veggie patties. It's not meat, but it shouldn't be. They're their own delicious thing.
When I'm in the mood for a veggie burger, I don't want a hamburger. Restaurants shouldn't replace veggie patties with imitation meat -- they should have both.
The thing some vegetarians do not understand is that traditional cuisine from all over the World is basically 90% vegetarian, because poor people had to survive too.
I'm Italian, I could eat vegetarian meals everyday for a month without ever eating the same thing twice.
Same goes for all of Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa or South America.
Vegetable dishes are the foundation of every established culinary tradition.
There's absolutely no need for incredible|magical|impossible|whatever meat.
> The thing some vegetarians do not understand is that traditional cuisine from all over the World is basically 90% vegetarian, because poor people had to survive too.
You're saying that vegetarians don't know this?
> You're saying that vegetarians don't know this?
Arguably some don't.
Read again: some.
Sure, some people of every ilk are likely to be uninformed about some aspect of the world or the other. How does that apply in the current context? Most meals for most people worldwide are essentially vegetarian, even if the people are not obligate vegetarians. Are there some vegetarians unfamiliar with the reality of practically all world cuisines? Sure - and? Impossible meats aren't directed towards these people, and they aren't looking to substitute the taste of a burger. They're likely not averse to it, for what it's worth.
> Sure, some people of every ilk are likely to be uninformed about some aspect of the world or the other
I am absolutely not claiming that, I am absolutely claiming that beliefs based on feelings and not hard truths tend to reject rational arguments, hence their members are usually not the most curious people around and it's common they ignore things that are obvious to the rest of us.
Take a western vegetarian, we all know a few of them and some vegan too.
Most vegetarians/vegan inform themselves in vegetarian communities, which are based on the same western principles where they were born, mainly North America.
Most vegetarian communities are based on spurious correlations, like the fact that 80% of people from India are Hinduists, a religion that promotes a lacto-vegetarian diet letting people believe that 80% of Indians are vegetarians, which is obviously completely false.
Christianity promotes a mostly vegetarian diet too, there's a list of food that you should not consume on certain days, nobody follows those prescriptions anymore, they are thousands years old and come from the Jewish traditions.
But if I say that 30% of the World population is Christian, a religion that promotes a mostly vegetarian diet, things sound completely different.
Don't also forget that in vegetarian circles meat is the root cause of everything bad: from cancer[1] to diabetes[2], deforestation[3], being overweight [4], depression[5] and even infertility[6] (yes, you heard right!)
All these claims have been either debunked, highly exaggerated or correlated when there is no factual evidence. Yet they resist in the narrative of these communities, like the idea that Christ died on a cross and then came back to life 3 days later. It's false, we know it is, but people still believe it and there's nothing we can do about it.
It's easy to understand the stigma that these manipulatory lies can create around "traditional food", these people often think of themselves as revolutionary going against the status quo, so their enemy are their local traditions, not just the meat (everyone eats some meat around them, so it must be "the others their ways and they do not see it").
So they end up eating a lot of food that is not local nor traditional (tradition equals bad, remember?), such as tofu, that in Italy is totally not traditional nor commonly used, yet most vegetarians and vegans rely on it.
The reason why?
Vegetarianism in the west is a business, if you can sell the dirty cheap tofu at 5-10 euros/kg (that's the price in Italy) while poultry costs 3-5 euros/kg (raw, raised on the ground and antibiotic free) you can understand how convenient it is to sell people the idea that you need to eat tofu instead of pasta with tomato sauce (1-1.5 euros/kg), you are in for the big bucks.
Don't dismiss what I say just because you disagree, I've researched the topic a lot, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
> Most meals for most people worldwide are essentially vegetarian, even if the people are not obligate vegetarians
Sooner or later people in the west will understand that there are people among us priding themselves for not eating meat while our pets, for example cats, every year eat 10 times the meat an average central African person has to eat, suffering the horrendous consequences of malnutrition, like watching their children die of hunger or curable disease that their bodies weakened by the forced plant based diet hadn't the strength to fight, and we don't see a problem with that.
The irony is that those people are in developing countries, they are developing, they will eventually eat more meat, no way they will keep dying for a made up belief, for those who care about animal suffering I have an advice: renounce to pets. They eat too much meat, they kill too many animals, they are not sustainable.
[1] https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/cancer-causing-foods-2/
[2] https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/diabetes/
[3] https://thehumaneleague.org/article/meat-industry-deforestat...
[4] https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/obesity/
[5] https://psychcentral.com/depression/foods-that-cause-depress...
[6] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-to-avoid-when-try...
I think you're conflating the median North American vegetarian with the median vegan. Your comment makes a lot more sense if I substitute "vegan" for wherever you've used "vegetarian". If you do indeed mean "vegetarian", then I think it makes much less sense in contemporary America, for example.
Yes, almost every vegan I've known is optimizing to minimize animal "cruelty", defined on their own ideological terms. Meanwhile, almost every vegetarian I've known is either one for religious reasons (and have their tradition's cultural cuisines to draw from) or simply don't like meat. I also know many Muslims who avoid meat at restaurants since it's not halal. I am struggling to recall any vegetarians that eat an average American diet by simply replacing meat with something like tofu.
If your intent is indeed to refer to vegetarians, I think that hasn't been the case in the US since perhaps the 90s. American vegetarianism really took off in the cultural context of the 60s and 70s, where Eastern ideas & sensibilities were imported but not the people or their cuisines. If a median American in the 70s wanted to maintain a meat free diet, their options were genuinely restricted. That's certainly not the case now, where the median American vegetarian is likely of recent immigrant descent, and has their heritage cuisine to inspire vegetarian meals. Changes to American immigration policy and the segment of countries where immigrants have come from have changed American vegetarianism. I also think something like Impossible burgers have very little appeal to the median vegetarian, since they're not interested in the taste of meat to begin with.
Yes, unlike the median American vegetarian, the median American vegan tends to appear spontaneously among families that are not themselves vegan. Unlike vegetarians, they don't have a rich family tradition to draw from, and plenty learn to just wing it. That said, I do think even this is likely not the case anymore. Today, in any big city, good vegan/vegetarian food is easy to find. As an illustrative example, I asked a relative who's lived in NYC for 40 years what his favorite restaurant meal has been (he absolutely loves steak). His favorite restaurant is a vegan Korean BBQ. Similarly, I've been informed by Mexicans of an amazing Mexican vegan place in Brooklyn.
Heck yeah. It's like pasta primavera and pasta bolognese. If you want one, you're not going to be happy with the other.
I love a good veggie patty burger. I also like the Impossible burger. I'd love to see both on a menu so I can choose the one I want. And heck I'll eat a meatburger on special occasions as well. There are a couple of local restaurants that had really nicely done veggie patties that have been displaced by Beyond/Impossible burgers, and it's a shame.
> But I don’t want a veggie patty. I want a hamburger that doesn’t involve killing animals
so basically you want a veggie patty disguised as an hamburger.
but there's a catch: agriculture kills as many animals than we do to eat them.
You might not see them, but billions of insects, worms, small rodents etc are killed in the process of making agriculture a viable business.
Pesticides are not exactly environmental friendly.
But then the crops need to be protected from their natural predators: herbivores!
You might have asked yourself sometimes why we don't see deers, boars, jackrabbits, cows, goats (the list is endless) roaming free close to crop fields and the answer is simple: they eat the crops, so they have been killed in the past and are now kept away, maybe not shooting them directly, but not asking gently either.
That causes massive repercussions on natural fauna too: coyotes, wolves, bears, cougars, bobcats etc cannot survive in absence of preys.
So basically veggie patties are not made of dead animals, but a lot of animals died so that we could eat them.
I appreciate the very good points you are making, however I do not consider these morally equivalent. Specifically the indirect affects of agriculture on local wildlife vs direct and largely unnecessary killing and suffering of animals.
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/vegans-kill-animals-too/re...
I am aware of the objections coming from vegans, I really have nothing to say to them other than I am in favour of freedom of worship, but I am also an atheist who tries to stand on the side of the scientific method as much as my abilities allow me, so I think National Geographic and PNAS are a more reliable source of information.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/insec...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118
Most importantly: loss of vegetable specie due to mono cultures farmed specifically for humans (tomatoes for burgers, for example - McDonald's is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, purchaser in the world of potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes - or avocados for fancy sandwiches, that consume 300 liters of water to produce a single fruit) is not be underestimated.
As an example, this sentence
> vegans are inflicting far less damage because most of the cereal crops that are mono-cropped (wheat, corn, soy, etc.) are fed to the animals people consume.
is almost completely made up and numbers are greatly exaggerated for propagandistic purpose.
The reason why original Parmigiano cheese is so worshipped by Italians and it's so expensive abroad, is exactly because cows are not fed with crops, bu with natural grass.
The reason why in USA many animals are fed with farmed crops is because crops are subsidized by the govt, making them cheaper than the alternatives.
Another reason why herbivores are fed with crops is because they can eat the remains we can't eat, which is around 85% of the whole plant
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5caca181348cd9...
According to FAO (United Nations Agency for food) "only 13% of global animal feed (all animals for food, including chickens, pigs and cattle) is comprised of grain crops"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22119...
Crops are also heavily subsidized to produce bio fuel, which is not great, I agree, but that has nothing to do with feeding animals or eating their meat.
I don't think any of the sources you mentioned here actually justify animal agriculture on the grounds of causing less death, though. The first two sources aren't specific to agriculture specific to human consumption, just agriculture in general. Also, whether or not global livestock is primarily fed on human consumable crops isn't the issue. For example, a very large portion of the feed mentioned in one of your sources (the third one) is still coming from farmed crops, so even if it isn't human consumable that doesn't mean we don't consider deaths coming from it. The last source is just unrelated, as you acknowledge.
I think you'd need to have sources that prove that specifically crops grown for human consumption result in more deaths, or that we'd have to grow more of those crops to feed humans compared to the crops grown to feed animals.
Again, just to clarify, the third source you mention has categories for things like "by-products", "Other non-edible", "Oil seed cakes", etc. Whether or not humans can eat those is irrelevant. The point is that all those things could still be coming from crops grown in the same general way as the crops grown for human consumption. Does that make sense, or am I being too religious for your logical atheistic brain?
> I think you'd need to have sources that prove that specifically crops grown for human consumption
I think you don't understand the issue.
Vegetarians (and vegans) don't kill less animals, they simply don't eat them (or at least that's what they say...)
> The point is that all those things could still be coming from crops
The point is that eating meat, unless you are from the US, does not mean you're killing billions of animals for fun.
American domestic cats kill billion of birds and other small animals every year.
Why are vegetarians obsessed only with non vegetarian people and not with domestic cats, which they love?
Because it's a religious fight, not an ethical one.
They want to blame someone and found this.
Anyway: scientific method implies that if you say "vegetarians kill less animals" you should prove it with numbers, as humans their activities kill billion of animals every year all over the World.
Vegetarians are not outside of the human realm, they live in societies as we all do and the major source of animal killing and suffering is not eating some meat, that's only selection bias at work.
It would be the same as saying: plants produce oxygen, if you only eat plants you're robbing our planet of breathable air, you should replant every plant you eat.
But every normal well functioning human knows that it's stupid to divide people into good and bad.
That's exactly what vegetarians do.
If you believe in veganism, it's OK, religions are allowed in our societies.
If you believe "vegan facts" from a vegan website is the truth, I don't know what to say to you, you can't fight made up beliefs, I got the Pope in front of my house, I know you can't beat blind faith.
But, the claim has always been that vegetarians don't kill less animals, not that they kill more. Which is arguably true. You won't find vegans in poor countries, you'll find denutrished children starving to death, they'd eat some meat if they could, just to survive. Veganism is a first World problem and as many other first World problems it's completely disconnected from reality.
When you'll eat an entire plant of wheat from roots to the top, we can talk about eating only vegetables.
Until that day you are only wasting resources, as any of us western humans do so well.
On average each year every American eats 3 chickens. Are you sure vegetarians on average don't cause the death of 3 birds each year? Can you prove it? Can you prove the industry you rely on for food is more ethical and kills less animals?
If your objection is "but I don't eat chicken so I kill 3 chickens less than the average" remember that other people could reply "I don't eat vegetables as much as you, so the damages produced by the agriculture industry are much more on you than on me"
Waiting for the data, please refrain if you wanna answer with more propaganda.
> Vegetarians (and vegans) don't kill less animals
Source? Your claim, thus the onus is on you to prove this, which you haven't.
> American domestic cats kill billion of birds and other small animals every year.
Completely irrelevant whataboutism. Like, that's a textbook example of the fallacy.
> Vegetarians are not outside of the human realm, they live in societies as we all do and the major source of animal killing and suffering is not eating some meat, that's only selection bias at work.
> It would be the same as saying: plants produce oxygen, if you only eat plants you're robbing our planet of breathable air, you should replant every plant you eat.
I don't even know how to respond to this. If we include fish, then _trillions_ of animals are killed every year for their meat and body parts. How is that not the greatest source of animal suffering?
> If you believe in veganism, it's OK, religions are allowed in our societies.
This is such a lazy insult. Why do you insist on acting like you argue in good faith, yet say nonsense like this? Genuinely, why?
> You won't find vegans in poor countries, you'll find denutrished children starving to death, they'd eat some meat if they could, just to survive. Veganism is a first World problem and as many other first World problems it's completely disconnected from reality.
What is the point you're making here, exactly? Because some people in the world have limited access to non-animal based sources of nutrition then veganism as an ethical framework is entirely debunked. How on Earth does that follow?
Your style of debate is _not_ working, my guy. Your comment history in other threads seems to paint a picture of you not really arguing in good faith. If you want to continue this discussion, I'll only do it on a video call. My email is in my profile if you'd like to set that up.
Unfortunately I doubt Beyond/Impossible don’t involve killing animals.
>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.
This upsets me because as a vegetarian the last thing I want is to be reminded of what meat tastes like. Who exactly is this for? Because the last I heard it was being marketed primarily at meat eaters.
I’m a meat eater and I would love to find a faux ground beef or faux ground pork that I can use in the kitchen exactly the way I use beef/pork in my recipes. I would prefer such a food if it was similarly priced to animal, but more sustainable, because I would rather be vegetarian but not to the degree that I need to give up my favorite recipes. I need it to provide essential umami, salt, fat, flavor. Often vegetarian recipes suggest minced mushrooms for this purpose but maillard browned pork bits hit different. My favorite recipe uses something like 80g of ground pork and 540g of soft tofu. Clearly I’m not eating the pork because I prefer meat protein! But making the dish without the pork leaves it tasting a bit hollow. Adding a bit more MSG helps sometimes but isn’t a general fix.
(Note that beyond or impossible might fit the bill, but availability has been so inconsistent here for the more “raw” ground-X products versus patties/sausages that I haven’t gotten to try it. I don’t care much about burgers.)
I am omnivorous, but I have a sibling who is vegan. When we were both in the Bay Area, Golden Era ( https://www.goldeneravegan.com ) was a place that we found that... wasn't bad.
This was quite a while back but the first time we went in and looked at the menu the question of "is all of this vegan except for these two items with an asterisk?" (It was the 'classic' Chinese style menu with about 200 things on it with numbers to identify them).
I found the "drumsticks" and the pot stickers to be quite good. For an entree, I would have the Mongolian (now the 'Spicy Mongolian Delight') which was again quite good. The only problem with eating there is on the drive back home I'd have a hankering for some beef jerky.
The problem with many vegetarian meals is described in Vegetarian meals that aren't just brown gack - https://everything2.com/title/Vegetarian+meals+that+aren%252...
We encountered that with a vegetarian restaurant in Mountain View (or was it Palo Alto? somewhere on El Camino Real) that had vegetarian food... but it was entirely boring without much flavor, texture, or... spirit. It was a bowl of bland vegetarian chili... with kale. No spices from onions, or garlic or anything really interesting. It was brown and green.
And so, that's what made Golden Era somehow different - it had flavor and did a lot of work with the sauces to make them interesting and desirable.
This is interesting. There's a few successful "vegetarian/vegan" places in my area, but they're all basically some variant of Chinese food and are from moderately to pretty good. There's also a few Indian places, but they don't really seem to register with the local vegetarian population as such, but at least can be quite good if you know where to look and have the usual amounts of flavor that Indian food tends to have.
However, there's a couple "Western" vegetarian/vegan joints in my immediate area that I've tried a couple of times. To be fair you get lots of food for the money, but both places produce a product that really is quite flavorless -- even with pretty different menus. Things like extra spicy vegan chili go down with the flavor profile of water, other dishes taste like salad baked in an oven, it's really dreadful shit. Yelp reviews for both places? 4+ stars. shrug
They make fake ground beef in a number of brands now and they all taste pretty similar once you season it to what the dish would be with meat. Imo the hard part is actually cooking the stuff. Theres no fat to render out to keep it from sticking to the pan really so you have to add your own, which it absorbs like a sponge because its so dry. In the end theres no way the nutrition facts are reflecting the final meal with it taking on so much oil in the pan.
Where I live in Australia, Coles has a vegan mince option that is pretty excellent. It requires longer to cook though, but it works brilliantly in chilli and pasta. $7.50 AUD for half a kilogram (and $4-5 on special), which is close enough to the price (and sometimes cheaper!) for real beef mince that I'm happy to use it regularly (as a vegan). It doesn't taste identical, but its close enough that my vegan partner who has been vegan for over a decade dislikes the smell haha
The trick is you must add a fair bit of olive oil to the pan, as it does not have the same fat content actual mince does. Once you do, it tastes brilliant in the dishes I'd use it for, with the seasoning and such we use.
Everything is of course flavour preference but I found that liquid smoke is a great add-on that makes much veggie food taste good to meat eaters; it takes care of the smokey/charred flavour that you get using ham or frying your meat before you add other things.
And for umami tomato (fresh/canned & condensed) works wonders.
Try tempah or mushrooms. (You might want to pan fry the mushroom first.) You could also try shelled edamame.
They aren't a one-to-one replacement for meat, but even when I've tried the impossible or beyond meat replacements, I find they taste like tofu instead of real meat.
Seitan is also nice for a ground sausage type texture.
It’s unfortunately not as appealing to many because seitan is wheat gluten. But it’s definitely worth trying; Chinese Buddhists haven’t been eating it since the sixth century on a whim.
YMMV, but tempah is the single most disgusting soy product I've ever tasted.
The only tempeh I like personally is when we make our own using the Okara left over from making our own tofu -- that tastes fantastic fresh. I've never enjoyed eating the store bought stuff, even from the amazing Asian grocery stores here.
Meat from all kinds of animals is delicious. I'm a die-hard omnivore, but don't mind going sans meat for a few meals if the food tastes good -- think more "bear" diet than obligate carnivorous "T-Rex".
Intersect those two sets of food products and you get exactly who this is for.
Actually even more particularly, it's for food products where the absolute quality of the meat, and the way in which it is cooked, doesn't really matter all that much ... burgers, sausages, chicken nuggets, etc.
The problem really with these products is that the prices are absolutely hilariously ridiculous. If I could walk into a Burger King tomorrow, have no meat-based burgers and only Impossible burgers, but all the prices were 20% lower, I would eat...at least 20% more Burger King. Maybe more.
But right now the prices for an Impossible Whopper can be 20% more than the one made from an animal raised at great expense.
Beyond Meat's real problem is that it's not as convincing of a meat substitute as an Impossible Burger, leaving it deep in the uncanny valley while an Impossible product can often times be imperceptibly the same as a low quality fast food burger patty.
Ethical vegans? I have a vegan friend who loves the taste of meat, but does not eat meat entirely due to ethical reasons.
Fake meat is a replacement for meat, not for existing vegetarian food.
It is a common misconception that vegetarians want food that looks and taste like meat, but is vegetarian or vegan. Most vegetarians already know what to eat. Fake meat is for the carnivores who don't want to go cold turkey and have no idea what to eat otherwise.
And omnivores who occasionally want something that tastes like meat without going backwards. For me, BM patties are spectacular at this.
Yeah but the comment was pointing out that in restaurants they are replacing the latter not the former.
From that comment:
> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.
Which to me shows that restaurants/BM assume that fake meat is what vegetarians want.
Interesting you should mention that. I used to really like the spicy beanburger at McDonald's. There was no reason to make something that pretended to be meat with even more additives, except to drive the marketing of the non-meat meat industry. I'm happy to eat rice and beans, I don't need no pretend meat. Although I do eat meat about half the time.
Interesting I'm reading Michel Pollan's book the Omnivore's Dilemma, about large scale agriculture, it's quite worrying, although I don't feel the UK is quite at the stage of the US yet. I see quite a lot of animals roaming and diversity when I'm out walking, but it's definitely going in that direction.
> aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus
I've found a similar trend in the supermarket frozen aisles. I used to be able to reliably find "veggie crumbles" at most largeish stores, perfect for pizza, chili, or mapo tofu. My favorite brand was Quorn (not quite vegan, includes egg whites) but there were often several decent options. Now it's rare to find anything other than Beyond or Impossible, packaged to look and feel like ground meat, very fussy. They taste okay, but I prefer both the crumbles' flavors and form factors. I've gone back to using TVP. (I'm not vegetarian -- I'll happily brown my TVP in bacon grease.)
I also quite like Quorn but it is non existent in North America unfortunately.
Can't edit this now but looks like I was mistaken. Non existent in Canada but it is available in the US these days?
Reliably present in all the major grocery chains here in the Pacific Northwest.
Honestly, the best approach is not making “fake” anything—black bean burgers and other home-made options not only taste way better, but they are not highly processed.
The more stages in processing a food undergoes, the worse it is for people. It’s really that simple.
People are trying to over-science food in my opinion. Sticking to good, wholesome ingredients is the way to go. Support local farmers not some large conglomerate factory.
Here’s a good recipe for example:
https://minimalistbaker.com/smoky-bbq-black-bean-burger/
> black bean burgers and other home-made options not only taste way better
A lot of people making this kind of point, but it's subjective and you have no idea if you're in a majority or not in your preferences.
If you have a home-made option that is built-to-taste, how can anything else be better? It’s tailor made for each individual. Hence “… and other home-made options.”
Whereas, a factory made thing is mass-produced and has to target the lowest-common-denominator.
Not everyone is good at cooking.
As a rule, the animals from which meat is derived do not eat vegetables.
In particular, much of meat consumed by us is that of ruminants, which depend on eating foods which must be fermented internally to be assimilated, such as grass. [1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2017.01.001Livestock eat quite a bit of corn / maize, which we think of as both a vegetable (fresh) and a grain (dried). I took the original comment to be tongue in cheek though, and to just mean that eating plants is more efficient than eating plant eaters.
I'm with you and a lot of people apparently. I became a vegetarian a few decades ago. I'm of the opinion that there are plenty of vegetarian dishes that feature the vegetables, and I don't seek out dishes that are vegetables pretending to be meat. Probably the most well-known example is ToFurkey. I mean, I've had it, it's OK, but it's a salty processed food product. Just give me something featuring vegetables, no faux meat.
My conclusion is that we are not the target audience for fake burgers, because we are not missing what it's presumably giving some people. I'm pretty sure these patties are meant to assuage meat cravings in psychologically-obligate carnivores. Because otherwise, you're right. Almost all meat substitute dishes are missing the point; just cook vegetarian cuisine from the start. There are all manners of unhealthy deep fried deliciousness with plants, that don't involve heavily processing the plants to look and vaguely taste meaty first. And most of them, frankly, taste better than fake meat. But if you're in burger withdrawal, no onion rings or curry will help. Only meat, or perhaps, fake-meat, will sate that desire.
Been a vegetarian and enjoying veggie burgers for over 30 years now. The Beyond Meat patties taste too much like actual meat - that is, awful. The meat eaters don't like it because it's close, but not quite, like meat. The vegetarians don't like it because it tastes too much like meat and we have other, better tasting, options.
They've kind of hit an uncanny valley of food. As such, I say good riddance!
I'm not a vegetarian and I eat meat almost daily.
This resonates though. A lot of restaurants have vegetarian dishes prepared to taste sort of like meat (e.g. paneer tikka instead of chicken tikka etc.). It was telling that the reverse was never there. I never liked the trend but understood it since the vegetarians would like to enjoy the taste of the other food and this was a compromise. This seems to be next step in that evolution but from what I've read, the stuff is highly processed and has a ton of chemicals added for flavour, stability etc. There are several vegetarian dishes that I enjoy for the vegetarian taste and the last thing I want is for them to pushed aside for these highly processed products that try to approximate meat.
Ive been a vegetarian for nine years. I very quickly learned that you can tell the quality of a restaurant by the type of vegetation dishes it has. 'meat substitution' is lazy and generally means a poor chef.
As a note - many traditional curries are vegetarian, which isn't surprising as India has a long history of vegetarianism. Paneer curries have been around for at least a few hundred years with reasonable evidence for a few thousand. Whilst it may be a substitute for meat in a westernised 'x tikka masala', and half decent Indian restaurant should have some established dishes designed around the paneer.
Yep, most will have saag paneer or muttar paneer.
Ten years ago, I found that the good-tasting veggie burgers invariably consisted of mostly carbs. The rare high-protein soy burger wasn’t very pleasant.
Most restaurants have plenty of tasty ways to deliver vegetarian carbs, but protein is harder to find. The Beyond and Impossible burgers aren’t perfect, but they do allow me to meet my macronutrient needs while satisfying a burger craving. Old-school veggie burgers don’t do the job.
> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus
I'm not vegan, but I've grown to always take the veggie burgers, unless they're beyond meat or black beans-based. They tend to be better than that dry-tasting overcooked patty (in my opinion). Makes me sad when they replace their veggie options with beyond meat
I tried being a vegan for several months. I developed all sorts of aches and pains. As an experiment, I ate a steak. It was the best tasting thing I ever ate. I even licked the plate. I felt great the next day.
What can I say? My body needs meat.
I eat and like to eat meat, lots of it, as well as other foods. I am completely stumped by this push for hyper-processed "substitutes". I regularly ordered vegetarian dishes, and often enjoyed a decent bean or beet based burger. Those things can be delicious. I can only hope this fad of beyond meat bull-crap goes bankrupt and dies, sooner rather than later.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
Isn’t that what BM wants to do though?
I think that’s what they’re going for, not so much satisfy vegans as much as sell their product to non vegans, or everyone.
I much prefer a good black bean patty to a Beyond/Incredible patty. They smell like cat food and never sit right in my stomach.
> It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables!
Not exactly. In pastoral agriculture, animals eat grasses that humans cannot, on land that is not easily farmable (infertile, rocky, hilly, etc). A nice side effect of this is that the animals make the land more farmable by fertilizing it with their poops.
I'm not a vegan but a 5-day vegetarian and I've been enjoying all plant-based meat brands over the last few years.
One problem I find with a lot of their products is that their marketing seems off - it is often hard for me to locate plant based nuggets or tenders or patties or just anything. They often say "Chickn", "Pork" or beef in large font with graphics but only write "plant-based" in small text at a location on the packaging which you really have to pay attention to notice. It's not hence, easy to distinguish these things from actual meat by simply glancing at the packaging through the glass.
I don't know whether they want people looking for actual chicken to buy these and give up on returning them later, or whether they're reluctant to highlight the plant-based part of the label as they're often in a small corner in a store.
I’ve been vegan for many years now, and I hate those bean burgers, to the point that I’d rather have nothing than them. I love impossible meat and have no problems with it. I eat it almost every day for years now. I’m almost 40 now and my blood work is better than when I was 30.
It’s funny to hear how a person who eats meat thinks that I should be satisfied with a sausage made out of a carrot. I eat enough of veggies in their original form, but they do not make a great burger or sausages. I also really don’t think that meat alternatives are pushing out anything – it’s the consumers that prefer them. I know I am.
I would like to clarify that for me eating healthy was not the reason I became vegan. We need to stop the torture and extermination of sentient beings for the sake of pleasing our tastebuds.
> One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. . . The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
”Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
> I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day
The reason you don’t see the value prop of beyond burgers is that you’re eating the real thing regularly. As a pescitarian who loves meat, I would bet the farm that if you went vegetarian, you would think Beyond is a godsend.
> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach.
Similar to how nuclear fusion is better than fission, and self-driving cars are preferable to human-controlled, etc etc.
> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.
for taste yes, for vegan and vegetarians it depends. that audience is so heavily diluted by a dozen different goals they want to represent or embody.
some don't like the inflammation (according to their sources) that a meat diet causes within humans, in which case this wouldn't satisfy them
some don't like harm to animals, in which case this would satisfy them
some don't like the environment impact, in which case, who knows? sustainability study and audits needed
others...?
I see alot of Vegans / vegetarians responding in support but let me say as a carnivore that will never go Vegan / vegetarian I agree 100%,
I have eaten vegan dishes that were excellent, I am not opposed to them at all. One of the best Tikka Masla's I have ever had was vegan. However I can not stand when they attempt to make be believe X is Y meat, no, it is not and no amount of marketing will get me to believe they taste the same. They do not.
Just like Cauliflower Mash does not taste like potatoes, it tastes like puréed Cauliflower...
What does "meat" taste like? Do beef, chicken, pork, and salmon taste the same?
Not the same obviously, but they have a lot in common. It's not accidental, as those meats are all the muscles of vertebrates.
Other organs like livers, brain, or lung from various vertebrates also taste similar, but different from muscle meats.
Exactly, these things are all analogous to eatint something called 'meat pie' to me - Well ok but what is it?
I make vegetarian burgers sometimes, either something grilled(broiled)/griddled stacked up like halloumi & aubergine, or a patty of shredded jackfruit or something. Why would I want to eat nondescript 'vegetarian patty'?
It's not just burgers, 'vegetarian lasagne' etc. is (aside from not being good appealing marketing) a reliable negative signal for a menu.
> what is it?
The meat pie is the (unofficial) national dish of Australia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_pie_(Australia_and_New_...
I wasn't referring to that, so apologies if that sounded offensive, I thought I was making something up.
Elsewhere though, unless presented as intending to be a specific thing from down under, 'meat pie' is a lot less appetising than 'steak and kidney pie' or whatever, because who wants mystery meat (implicitly perhaps the cheapest odds and ends available).
Similarly though to be fair 'fish pie' in the UK & France at least is a slightly flexible mixed fish fare.
You're good, I understood what you meant. Just trying to spread the joy that is the Aussie meat pie!
For a vegetarian burger option, nothing beats a potato patty burger done to perfection. It's incredibly simple, essentially just mashed potatoes formed into a patty, breaded and fried. It can be seasoned to your liking with herbs, garlic, salt, etc. and the traditional burger toppings nicely compliment it. You can somewhat emulate it by replacing a burger patty with the fries that often come with an order but it's not the same as a purpose made one.
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat
One of the reasons that the vegetian options are more expensive is because the margins are higher. People compare supermarkets based on meat prices, so they accept lower margins on meat to attract more customers.
Another thing is that people don't typically buy brand name meat, which allows supermarkets to more aggressively negotiate on price.
At least this is how it is in the Netherlands (according to a newspaper article I can't find right now).
Completely agree, I hate it when products attempt simulate meat. There are so many delicious vegetarian recipes! I could eat Indian food everyday for the rest of my life.
That's also my experience. Not a vegan but (before covid and wfh) I used to like eating 1-2 times a week in certain vegan restaurants because the food was good and very well prepared and seasoned. The stuff that tries to imitate meat however is nasty at best. Not only it tastes horrible but what's the point of choosing a supposedly healthier diet if you eat that industrial sludge?
I'm not a vegetarian. I recently bought packaged sliced baloney for a sandwich, as well as sliced sharp cheddar. The baloney I accidentally bought was fake baloney. (No meat.) I didn't notice until I was making my sandwich. It tasted absolutely disgusting, like chemicals. I am not a picky eater and I think it is the only disgusting food item I've ever bought in a grocery store. As I tried to finish eating it, I kept thinking, how can my grocery store sell something that tastes so disgusting? I mean aren't there taste tests during product development? My sandwich literally tastes better without it. And not just because of the cheddar - I nearly bought hummus and it also would have tasted great. Hell, a single leaf of lettuce would taste better in my sandwich than that. It was horrible.
The thing is, I think the only criteria it was judged by is that it has to look completely like baloney. It did, it had me fooled. But tasted disgusting.
> how can my grocery store sell something that tastes so disgusting?
Earnestly answering your question, it's because every person perceives taste differently (eg to some people, cilantro tastes like soap!). The complexity of vegan substitutes is high, because they're trying to simulate a completely different flavor. So likely you're just sensitized to whatever happens to be in that particular product. If you tried a different fake baloney, you'd likely have a completely different experience (not saying a good experience necessarily, depending on your expectations, but at least different).
>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus.
The homogenization of veggie burgers into one particular type of patty is the reason I don't even try Burger places anymore. It used to be that if you had 5 Burger places near you, you'd get 5 very different veggie burgers (e.g. black bean, quinoa, mixed veggies, all with a different mix of spices). Now you basically get the same veggie burger at every place, just with different dressings/sauces.
I suspect it's better in big cities (e.g. NYC) where there's enough of a customer base for a veggie patty and a engineered meat patty on the menu. But in other places, I think the customers numbers are just too small. So I understand the logic from a business perspective, but for some customers it just sucks to have lost the veggie patty.
In the UK that's rarely the case. The veg options are usually the same price as the meat. In some places.
At Gourmet Burger Kitchen the Beyond Meat cheeseburger costs 30% more than its beef counterpart.
https://gbk.co.uk/menu
Clearly just one example but it's rare the veg option's cheaper.
The point being made was that these fake meat patties are more expensive, whereas the old vegetarian options were cheaper or bottom priced.
I've been a vegetarian for nine years. It becomes noticeable when your meal jumps 50% in price and goes from being the cheapest in a group to the most expensive.
But in the UK the burgers made of veg are at least as expensive as their meat counterparts. On the menu I posted the bean burger is 50p more expensive than beef.
I have had exactly one good veggie patty at a restaurant. The recurring problem is a complete lack of structure so that 90% of the patty squishes out the sides when you try to take a bite. And the restaurant with the good one closed last year, so I might never have a good veggie patty again.
Veggie patties mostly taste fine, but the entire point of a sandwich is that I can pick it up with my hands and take a bite out of it. If the patty can’t stay on the sandwich, it’s not a good sandwich. Just put it on a plate and call it a veggie loaf or something that I can eat with a fork.
Even the older products you get at the grocery store from Boca and Morningstar Farms could be structurally acceptable, but whenever a restaurant tries to make a veggie patty I swear they’re just sticking some vegetables in a blender, putting it in a round shape, and hoping it stays that way. I’ve eaten soups with more structure.
I've been vegetarian for 40years and prefer my food to not be like meat. I also know plenty of people that avoid if too like real meat. Not sure what market they go for. People that dont want meat but miss it I guess. The idea of the latest lab grown meat I also find disturbing
I don't eat much meat outside of the occasional fish but I did welcome the fake meat fad.
It's not that I enjoy eating the product, it's that I need to find protein somehow when I'm at "American food" restaurants (fast food or otherwise). In most of these places there's no veggie protein options other than the "veggie burger" - and the fake meats have made these a little more ubiquitous.
I think its important to note that animals don't get fed human quality vegetables.
They get the cheapest possible bits that can't be sold for more to humans but are still enjoyed by animals.
Animals tend to eat human waste products which is a form of recycling, turning essentially rubbish into bioavailable protein
This.
I've been asking myself ever since this beyond/incredible/whatever fad got started: Why spend all the time and energy trying to make something taste like beef that isn't beef? Why not spend that same time and energy creating a new, appealing of its own (and then market that)?
Perhaps to cater to people who love meat but won't eat it? What's hard to understand about that? There are plenty of great tasting vegetarian options, now there are plenty of faux meat options as well. The more the merrier in my opinion.
I think the idea was to disrupt the... looks like $3 billion dollar a year[1] hamburger patty market. This is a market that already exists. Presumably there's room for two main competitors, so pretty decent market, plus vegetarian meat is a premium product which makes it a good investment vehicle. On paper it's a convincing argument. I think the pizza market is pretty well mined-out at this point and the major players are well entrenched since the mid-1990s with tombstone red barron and digornio. There is no national level alternative meat product yet and most americans who eat pizza will eat a cheeseburger. Like the article says though, it looks like they took the inital interest as tremendous growth, and it's mostly plateaued. I personally have zero interest in even trying the product as a novelty.
[1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/packaged...
decrease the hurdle to transition to plant based food
Meat is a lot more nutrient dense. You would have to eat 4x the veggies to get the same nutrition. Better to let the farm animals concentrate that energy for us. They also eat a lot of grass, which is great for carbon capture. So just eat a balanced meal and be done with it.
Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to the climate crisis, so I don’t think your point about carbon capture is valid.
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
Actually, as far as I recall, a counter argument to this, is that fresh vegetables are more expensive since their shelf lives are a lot shorter. I can buy most types of meats (chicken, beef, etc.), freeze them for weeks and the taste would still be great, while fresh vegetables will normally only last for a few days.
Of course you can go for frozen vegetables, but this is only limited to some vegetables, and in my opinion, don't taste as good as fresh vegetables.
"fresh vegetables are more expensive since their shelf lives are a lot shorter"
Certainly if you have sufficient storage, it's possible to buy meat in bulk quite cheaply, some of which might even be cheaper per kg (or per calorie?) than many vegetables, but if you stick to in-season vegies and cook them sensibly (into dishes that last a while), on average they're still going to be cheaper than meat. Plenty are in the order of $1-$2/kg in Aus. (potatoes, onions, pumpkin etc.) - I don't know any meat that cheap.
I'm no dietitian but how much nutrition there actually is per 1kg of beef compared to 1kg of potatoes/pumpkin/onions, etc.?
My sister is vegan, and whenever we have a vegan meal, I'm already hungry 2 hours after the meal. On the other hand, if I eat a burger for lunch, I might not be even hungry by dinner time. Again, I'm not a dietitian so I'm pretty ignorant about these things, but if it has to do with proteins, I think the ROI for meat proteins is going to be a lot higher compared to vegetables.
I realize this gets complicated, but just another counter argument for ROI of meat compared to vegetables.
Certainly meat tends to have much higher fat and protein density, and hence calorific density than vegetables, but the latter invariably have higher carbohydrate content (meat is essentially 0). Multigrain bread can have much the same calorific density as beef, and nuts are often considerably higher (admittedly, they're typically quite pricey per kg, though not more so than quality cuts of meat). I've personally not observed any significant difference in the quantity of food I eat between vegan/ vegetarian/meat-based meals, though I very rarely eat meals that meat makes up more than a small percentage of. It's actually the micronutrients you need to be more aware of if you're on a strictly vegan diet, which are unlikely to make a difference in food cost (e.g. B12 supplements are about $9 for a gram, but that can last you months).
I always liked how Gardenburgers taste. They're not trying to be meat, and that was ok.
Your first point is spot on. I’ve had many many delicious black bean burgers.
You see this all the time with “keto” junk foods. Keto brownies were definitely the worst.
Point being, we waste a lot of resources trying to ape “unhealthy” food and do a disservice all around.
Beyond the taste, most Beyond Meat meals also tend to contain more calories than the meat-based equivalent. I am better off to eat an occasional burger when I fancy it, and go for more healthy vegetarian dishes on other days.
Actually:
One Beyond Burger has 260 calories. There are claims that these are healthier alternatives to beef, but to what end? Calories is certainly not it because this is compared to 230 calories in a same size beef patty.
https://bluebirdprovisions.co/blogs/news/beyond-meat-vs-beef....
That's simply false. Beyond has the same macros as a ground beed
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/food/a21566428/beyond-meat-b...
I am talking about meals. It may not be the fault of Beyond Meat, rather the restaurant adding more condiments on top of a Beyond Meat burger.
But what does your spouse think? I'm an omnivore and agree with you. But if I went a year without eating a real burger I'm sure I'd prefer a Beyond Meat burger over the nice black bean burger I'd currently prefer.
Pretty much what I and the other vegetarians in this thread said. She doesn't like eating things that taste like meat.
We're not going to have many vegetarians if only people who don't like meat become vegetarian.
I don't think the complaint is that, per se. I'm happy to have these products coexist.
But Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers and suchlike have been actively displacing the existing options in restaurants and grocery stores. To my palate and that of nearly all my longtime vegetarian friends, those pre-existing options were much more palatable. My (pesca) kids won't even eat these meat analogue products; they think they're disgusting. I do appreciate that these products might be making it easier for other people to cut back on their meat consumption, but I also think it's fair to miss a reduction in the already meager selection of convenience foods that I liked.
Maybe, but it really shouldn't come as a surprise that there is a correlation between people who don't really like meat and people who choose to become vegitarian.
It doesn't even have to look like a burger patty. The best burger I've ever had was a portobello burger with blue cheese. Just the head of the portobello, blue cheese melted over it, in a bun with all the works.
Exactly. Even if I was a vegan I would not touch heavily processed food like beyond meat. The distinction between processed vs non-processed is much more important to me than the vegan vs non-vegan.
Yeah, I'm not a vegetarian, but I've ordered black-bean burgers and the like from restaurants, just because it's different.
And it is. I think these things work better when they aren't trying to be meat.
I mean, I think there’s room for both.
I eat meat, but I’d replace all my meat consumption with plant based options if it was a similar substitute and matched the price.
But I also want the black-bean burger option, because, as you said, it’s a different taste.
So I think (I hope anyway) that there’s room for both the vegetarian options that are their own thing, and vegetarian options that aim to be a 1:1 replacement.
Maybe they shouldn't just imitate meat. Go beyond or extend the traditional meat, meaning make it more tasteful with better texture. Create new flavors, play with chewiness etc.
As a vegetarian since childhood in the 80s it’s incredibly sad to have seen all the progress made in both shops and restaurants thrown away. Even before meat alternatives, menus were getting blander with a focus on dairy-free options (to be clear, vegan food can and should be extremely tasty, decadent even, but it’s also the dumping ground for healthy options in most menus). That the main options are now explicitly meat flavoured is adding insult to injury.
Veggie burgers can be quite delicious with all the traditional burger toppings, and I'm a pretty big traditional burger fan. The beyond ones always taste kind of dry to me.
I much prefer a good black bean burger patty to a Beyond patty.
>A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
So much, this, I have been vegetarian my whole life and quite honestly the idea of eating something that tastes like meat is almost as unappealing as the idea of eating meat. I get that it helps people give up, but it's not for me.
I’m an omnivore, but I enjoyed a garden burger or two in my college cafeteria… they were fine once I stopped pretending they were hamburgers.
Moreover, I dont think vegetables even need to replace meat in position — vegetables allow for other forms of food formats.. so utilize it. Every time I go to vegan restaurants I get the feeling they don’t actually like vegetables; everything is vegetable-replacements for meat-based dishes. And the tofu crafting is just baffling, with the whole chickin and bacin and whatnot
Agreed, I haven't had meat in a few years now but the key to cooking vegan and vegetarian is to let it be its own thing and not try to make it taste like some specific 'meat' flavor.
Unless the cook has a flame grill or knows their business very well I also find beyond/impossible 'meat' to taste worse than a decently prepared seitan or bean based patty.
> "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."
I'm a meat lover and this annoys me too! One of my favorite sandwiches is a southwestern style black bean burger.
I also flat out hate Impossible Burgers, they taste off, their texture is weird, and they leave me feeling icky after I eat one.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
This is something I always have to highlight to folks. In Australia, personally speaking, the best veggie burger is call the 'Not burger'. It doesn't taste like Meat, it just tastes good! There is a reason why they haven't changed it in almost 20 years I have known about it.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.
I'm not a vegan nor a vegetarian. I just sometimes think I eat too much meat and check out vegetarian restaurants. They all have 100 kinds of fake burgers and little else.
There are thousands of good food recipes without meat. Why are you trying to sell me burgers?
Because in the American society, food == burgers. If you don't want to eat meat, you need to replace the meat bit from a burger.
In many other cuisines, there are naturally non meat dishes, just look at the Indian cuisine. Heck, even my own country cuisine, Romania, has plenty of meat free dishes that taste very good.
Haha I'm Romanian. I know about meat free dishes. But try to order one ready made in my area (Iasi). They'll have ... burgers.
Ciorbe? I think there are quite a few of them that have no meat component.
I really don't understand why people want to simulate the taste of meat. It seems like a completely uninteresting problem to solve, plant foods are already perfectly fine.
The availability of "perfect substitutes" for meat wouldn't affect my food choices at all and this is likely true for a lot of people.
I actually dont like meat because of the texture. If you give me meat which tastes like beans, I will eat it
The other very annoying trend is to remove the vegetarian option and only have a vegan one. My wife is a vegetarian and obviously the food can be far better if you can have butter, milk, cheese, and eggs, but they often insist on only having either meat options or vegan options
"Vegetables " are not cheaper than meat. Grains are cheaper than meat. Most vegetables are very expensive per calorie compared to meat.
Chickens in particular are very efficient at turning feed corn into usable protein. 3000 calories of fully cooked chicken costs $5 at costco.
Most westerners are not calorie starved. You can get cheap calories everywhere (e.g. calorie-bombs of expiring chicken covered in oil and salt, roasted and sold super cheap to get rid of them ASAP). Reductio ad absurdum - just eat palm oil. I would argue it's not a good metric.
Just add olive oil to any food you want more energy in. As long as the base food meets the nutritional needs, adding oil is a pretty good strategy.
A lot of fat plus carbs with little protein? That's the exact opposite of what I'm going for when I eat a chicken breast.
Same. I ate plenty of vegetarian or vegan stuff that's just tasty food.
I'm already picky for burger meat, I'd rather have plain sandwich than burger with mediocre meat, and at best those emulate that, mediocre burger meat, at cost of way more processing.
> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.
Sure, you are married to a vegan and learned to appreciate the taste. In the same way, I enjoy a level of Indian spices that would make an average American's eyes bulge out. But for habitual meat eaters there is nothing that really replaces the texture, the feeling of substantial satiety, reality of not being hungry again for 8 hours... To each their own?
> Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.
We have herds of goats eating dry brush to prevent wildfires around here. I don't suppose you would enjoy THAT vegan dish? :-)
I can't understand why some entrepreneur saw vegetarian food existing, and decided to make a startup about ultraprocessed vegetarian food. It's as if they thought ideology was more important than health or environmental benefits.
> can't understand why some entrepreneur saw vegetarian food existing, and decided to make a startup about ultraprocessed vegetarian food
I'm a fan of real meat. But isn't the environmental impact of Beyond Meat lower than that of meat meat? Sure, a vegetarian meal would be even lower. But that's not the competition. Those folks are already eating vegetarian, or so the thinking goes.
I think the complaint is that in restaurants often they're replacing the veggie option instead of the meat option.
It seems fairly apparent to me that vegetarian != minimally-processed. Definitely a lot of "junk-food vegans" who eat lots of chips and other heavily processed food. Processed also != bad for the environment or for health.
Don't get me wrong -- I think there can totally be some questions around health and environmental impacts of vegetarian/vegan foods entering the market! But I think the mapping between "there are preservatives in it" and "it's bad" is, uhh, not necessarily strong.
Thank you for sharing your personal anecdotes and opinions. However true they may be, I'm kinda concerned that this sort of post is at the top of a highly commented Hacker News thread.
I don't like beans, peas and lentils. I do however love plant-based meat. There is a market for people like me but I don't know if it justifies the valuation of these companies.
I'm not vegan or vegetarian however some of those veggie burgers were great because they didn't try and fake it as meat.
This was an ideological value prop, not one based off customer pain points.
Good post
Animals eat really cheaply compared to the produce humans eat. The real reason meat is more expensive than vegetables is simple supply and demand.
Totally agree; my wife and I have 100% stopped burger places now, since most of them have replaced veggie patties with impossible/beyond meat.
I am a vegetarian who loves Black bean burgers. Apparently I can't find good ones in India. It used to be a staple one for me back in US.
> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach.
It's a better approach if it's economically viable. And there are doubts it ever will be, see e.g. https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...
The animals eat the vegetables because they evolved to eat the vegetables.
Humans did not.
My wife is a vegetarian, we have the same complaints about restaurants.
What's your favorite veggie burger patty recipe?
Wait til you find out about Christians
This post is crowded with responses from people explaining why they hate Beyond meat
FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a few shares since I figured they'd do well.
I've tried Impossible Burgers too (both prepared by others and myself), and I don't like that it has hemoglobin in it and for some reason it's more in the uncanny valley than Beyond meat is for me - Beyond Meat is just different enough that it doesn't taste to me like moldy beef the way Impossible Burgers seem to.
What _did_ eventually get me to stop making Beyond Burgers is that the fat and sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef. Reducing red meat consumption to once a month or so achieves basically the same benefits, and occasional red meat consumption + no more frequent beyond meat burgers is healthier in the long run than what I was doing before. I think an under-appreciated advantage to the veggie and black bean burger options out there is they tend to be way better w.r.t. fat and sodium, and taste just as good once you give up on the "almost beef" taste of these new-wave alternatives, but Beyond Meat _did_ work for a few people out there and just never tweaked their product enough to seriously compete with cheaper alternatives as inflation has gotten worse.
> sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef
Hasn't the dietary sodium thing been found to be a non-issue, except for a few individuals with high blood pressure?
https://www.cochrane.org/CD004022/HTN_effect-low-salt-diet-b...
High sodium diets are "associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" "in a hypertension-independent manner". They are associated, among many other ailments, with strokes, cancer and heart failure.
https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32738302/
Thanks for the input. Not sure to what extent the links support the assertion > "associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" "in a hypertension-independent manner"
> https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s... Excess levels of sodium/salt *may* put you at risk for: Excess levels of sodium/salt *may* cause increased water retention that leads to: (my emphasis)
> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32738302/ "Some studies have shown that HSD has a positive correlation with albuminuria, an important risk factor for the development and progression of kidney disease in a hypertension-independent manner "
A correlation with a risk factor .It asserts "is associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" with no citation. The paper itself is about feeding a high-salt diet to mice.
I'll see your citations, and raise you:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351135/ Sodium intake, life expectancy, and all-cause mortality
"Our observation of sodium intake correlating positively with life expectancy and inversely with all-cause mortality worldwide and in high-income countries argues against dietary sodium intake being a culprit of curtailing life span or a risk factor for premature death. These data are observational and should not be used as a base for nutritional interventions".
> I'll see your citations, and raise you:
> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351135/ Sodium intake, life expectancy, and all-cause mortality
Good overview of the poor design of that study and many others that make statements that very much go against the plurality of high quality evidence:
"While calling for a controlled trial to provide “robust evidence” to support the current global policies, Mente et al. lend their support to an “ecological analysis” of global statistics by Messerli et al. [78]. There are many inherent limitations of such analyses. Messerli et al. [78] correlate sodium and outcomes by country, not by individual. The study design is unable to remove unmeasured confounding (ecological fallacy), a well-known methodological concern that the authors acknowledge and then promptly dismiss. Many countries do not have data on sodium intake and, when available, it is often of poor quality. When comparing “high income” countries (in World Bank Income Class 1), the authors aggregate data from the USA, UK and Canada, Trinidad & Tobago, and Equatorial Guinea. The distribution of wealth in these countries and the ensuing disparities in individual health will have huge effects on life expectancy due to factors other than sodium intake, none of which are accounted for. In addition, Messerli et al. ignore the hard evidence from previous human trials. Yet, Messerli et al. claim their results “argue against dietary sodium intake being a culprit of curtailing life span or being a risk factor for premature death”.
from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13668-021-00383-z
Thanks for that, a valuable paper. Seems it's not straightforward as a lay person to get a clear answer on the state of knowledge. And it's a shame that as you try to check citations, so many of them are behind firewalls.
The second study shows that the mice were fed chow with up to 8% sodium by weight... is it fair to compare that to a Beyond Burger?
larger metastudies have found no such correlation
Maybe reduce the other 99% of sodium intake so a single Beyond Meat burger wont push you over the edge...
1000% this!
IMHO, Health / Nutrition is very K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid), but it feels like so many people get caught in the trap of finding "one weird trick" to keep them lean / healthy and then setting common sense on fire - so long as they obey that rule.
> Vegans are healthier and leaner than Omnivores. Therefore I can eat pastries for breakfast lunch and dinner, and as long as they don't contain animal products I'll lose weight!
> What _did_ eventually get me to stop making Beyond Burgers is that the fat and sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef
Exactly. As a vegetarian, I do choose a Beyond burger when I go to a burger restaurant, but I never buy it to make at home. There are healthier alternatives that are also delicious.
For me it's the exact opposite. I'm a vegetarian for ideological reasons, not health ones. I'm not the healthy kind of vegetarian at all. For me the only flaw of Beyond Meat is that it's a bit too salty and it sits a bit funny (weird-flavored burps after you eat it).
They have a solidly good product, it's a shame they can't make it work.
As a parent one big problem I had with them was that for home use they only sell the huge quarter pound patties (while they do shrink when you cook them, they do so less than beef) which were too much for my kid. I had to thaw them, slice them down the middle (which is tricky) and cook the two halves separately. They're much too big for a standard burger bun. It seems obvious they're going for a prestigious form-factor but missing out on being able to sell something more universal.
> FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger...
I tried two burgers 1-2 years ago: when I opened the package I smelled alcohol, the same while frying them in the pan and while eating them (I cooked them "medium/well done" without cheese nor anything else as I was curious and just wanted to try this stuff out) => is this normal?
Asking because I never read anywhere anything that mentioned this... . (btw. I'm in Switzerland, so maaaybe here the product is "different" to comply with the country's regulations..., just a wild guess).
In the end I didn't like it because of that smell (I'm in general ok with alcohol, I'm drinking a beer right now), the texture and taste was acceptable/good.
> FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a few shares since I figured they'd do well.
You are the target demographic; you're looking for a vegetarian or vegan meat analog so you can continue your existing eating habits and the meals you're familiar with, instead of the more difficult task of changing your lifestyle and diet.
That said, chips are vegan.
What do you see as the benefit of reducing red meat to once a month?
There was a widely-publicized article recently questioning some "well-established" science that had, previously for decades, linked red meat to higher rates of heart disease, etc.
Not a vege, but that study doesn't really say say as much the article made it out. The core thesis was essentially:
"Eating red meat at most causes increases in risks of cancer and similar by 15%. If people replace calories that could come from vegetables with red meat, that risk gets worse because they're eating less vegetables"
So yeah, eating red meat isn't that bad, but if it reduces your vegetable intake significantly, it probably is worse for you. And it's harder to get the right amount of vegetables if you eat a lot of red meat (unless you just want to increase your calorie intake)
Same with sugar. For most people, Sugar is either pushing you over your calorie threshold or it’s displacing healthier food you could have eaten instead which is reason enough to reduce it.
I don't think it's about health, it's about not having to unnecessarily farm cows.
Could you or someone link this article please? Thanks
Here[1] is the article post on HN and the OP[2] on case you want the article directly.
Tangentially, seems to me the science on every food seems to change every few years. Sugar, fat, MSG, eggs, butter, meat, fish, milk, the list goes on.
As others in both this and the linked article stated, I think just reducing consumption would drastically reduce the amount of necessary livestock, which would reduce everything else in the chain. I definitely became more conscious of what I consume from all the secondary and tertiary effects.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33655321
[2] https://bigthink.com/health/red-meat-cancer-not-health-risk/
I tried to do a deepdive on nutrition a few years back when I went on a diet. My conclusion was that there are far too many confounding factors for any population studies to be taken too seriously. That's why the field is so vogueish like you point out.
Long term, highly controlled trials are more useful, but much rarer.
What is “burger sauce”?
2 mustard, 1 mayo, 1 ketchup
Ketchup + mayo oftentimes
I thought that was fry sauce.
Needs mustard too.
Basically a sugar mixture then? We already get enough unintended sugars.
Not sure why you think that. I actually do eat burgers, on the rare occasion I eat a burger at all, with no sauce, which I think is fine if the burger itself is not overcooked and made with sufficiently good meat. The patty should be plenty juicy.
I'm also not a fan of mayo or ketchup because I think they're disgusting, but go look at the nutrition information: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91q08lhAYAL... https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/56/4a/5a564a60d38dc88d97e3...
A 1 tbsp serving of both will set you back 4g of sugar. Sure, they each have "high fructose corn syrup" on the ingredient list, but it's a small enough amount to have no nutritional impact. In reality, the bulk of the sugar in the ketchup is coming from the tomatoes and the mayo doesn't have enough to even warrant listing measurable calorie content from sugar at all.
So you eat your burgers dry?
Pickles, lettuce, tomato, a whole fried egg. All of these are options that don't include sugar. There are options outside of ketchup (corn syrup) and mayo (probably corn syrup). Except the pickles. I bet those have sugar.
But I'll fight anyone who eats hamburgers without pickles.
Or you could just use good ketchup/mayo/mustard that's not doused in corn syrup. Those do exist.
> Pickles, lettuce, tomato, a whole fried egg. All of these are options that don't include sugar.
All of those except for the egg have sugars as a major source of calories, they just aren't, except for the egg, particularly calorie dense.
How much sugar is in lettuce?
I wouldn't want a burger without some kind of sauce. I'm a mayo guy.
On sandwiches I can do vinegar and oil.
I'm a meat eater, but am a big fan of fake meats - to the point where I prefer them in some situations.
Overall I'm not a huge fan of Beyond Meat. While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience. Beyond kinda just tastes like lower end beef to me. This means Beyond is facing a Coke vs Pepsi situation here - effectively halving their market.
From a price standpoint, they're more expensive than beef is. While economically this makes sense due to heavy beef subsidies around the world (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person), it's still a heavy expense for consumers. This means despite being cheaper to make, they're still the more expensive option. This means they're a premium product, not an economic option.
When these are the factors at play, it really cuts down the market size. You're really only targeting people who prefer your version, are willing to pay a premium for a sub-par version of a burger while not choosing plenty of the other food options out there. IMO these plant based meats are really doomed to fail unless we stop subsidizing the beef industry. If they become an economically viable choice, they become an option for many more people. Right now they're too niche.
The irony is that there is no reason these plant based alternatives should be priced higher than meat. The raw ingredients are dirt cheap.
You can get pound of TVP or soy protein is like $3-4; and certainly less at wholesale prices. It comes dehydrated, so back of the napkin I'd guess the cost for a company producing fake meat products is like $1/lb or less.
I paid $8.50 at a gas station for 2.47 oz of "Noble Jerky." Ingredients: soy protein, sugar, black bean paste, spices.
I imagine the profit margins for these products approaches that of soft drinks.
These companies are losing a lot of money. That the raw ingredients are cheap doesn’t matter much if the cost and complexity of processing is high.
I don't understand why the cost of processing can't achieve significant economies of scale when the company is supplying food at the national level. Can someone explain that to me?
Sometimes, economies of scale don't just come automatically with scale. You actually have to make economies of scale happen when you invent new processes - this often means creating new machines or new methods that can be done by untrained people.
The process for creating these fake meats is complicated and long, so there are certainly a few novel steps in there. I'm guessing that a few key steps do not scale well today and have significant technological barriers to scaling. I have no idea what they could possibly be.
I assume the process is a guarded trade secret, and if so, you might not have a forthcoming explanation.
So you seem to know what's complex on this products. Share your knowledge. I claim that this products are not complex or not more complex as meat based products
Let’s see what we know:
1. Raw materials are cheap 2. Expensive end product 3. Company is losing money
The most straightforward explanation is that the processing is expensive in some way, unless I’m missing something here. I feel like the burden of proof should be on you to establish that the straightforward explanation is not accurate beyond just a claim.
> unless I’m missing something here
Yes, marketing.
Could it not be R&D, instead of, or on top of, complex production?
R&D is not a total black box. Management sets a budget, "Scientists you are allocated $XXX this year for reagents + equipment." Sure there are plenty of unexpected gotchas (equipment X broke, unexpectedly announced equipment Y is a must-buy, etc), but more or less there should be some ability to forecast expenses. If the company is in the red, cut that number down.
All conjecture, but as a former bench scientist (spending money, not making budgets), it felt like our burn rate was reasonably constant.
I have no idea what goes into making these plant-based meats, but I vaguely remember that for Impossible Foods specifically, that they had to do a lot of experimentation and genetic engineering of a yeast to make their product. I think that's part of the reason why they have to charge so much.
I would love to have harder numbers on their product. I want to eat less meat and the Impossible Burger feels a totally adequate substitute to me, but the price has greatly limited my conversion.
TVP is so damned excellent. That reminds me, I really need to write up the recipes I've come up with using them and post them somewhere. Magic cheap protein with an awesome flavour if you rehydrate it with vegan beef/chicken stock and season it well and cook it correctly.
It's even excellent just chucked into some instant ramen (after frying it) with some spring onions!
Would def want to see some of those! I've been doing TVP and beef stock as my backup meal for years and it's amazingly good for the price. 500g for like €3 that'll last absolutely ages coupled with one of those stock cup things (think they're like 4 for 90 cent now).
Originally only tried it due to a serious lack of fridge/freezer space.
Please share when you do write them up!
Are Impossible and Beyond just regular TVP? I thought they were more sophisticated than that?
I find the Beyond product has a strange artificial odor to it. Like it's trying to recreate the smell of fully cooked meat product, but before it's even cooked. It's odd in the way that artificial smoke can be weird. I bought a package of Beyond patties at Costco (I think it was like 20) and had a hard time getting through them after the first 4-5. The Impossible equivalent tended to just make my kitchen smell like a decent meal instead of some kind of weird laboratory experiment.
The problem with both of them is I can get a sack of burgers from Costco, like 50 of them, for less than I'd pay for 20 of the fake ones. and they'll taste and smell the right way and be usable in more recipes.
That US subsidy, $114 per person, if removed and offset by higher prices at the supermarket, would amount to under $10 more a month per person in grocery costs. I can see there being a reduction of consumption at the scale of the industry in the US, but generally speaking I don't think the industry would notice it all that much. The subsidies are almost certainly not the reason that meat is cheaper than beyond burgers.
The apparent source, AIER a think tank, claims it's a difference between a $5 and $13 big mac. If true, that would be noticed
That math doesn't add up though.
$10 a person is naive math, sure, there would be reduced demand which means that some of that cost would be bourne by other purchasers to keep industry revenue stable, and there would be a reduction in production which further compounds this. But it's not a doubling in cost, I think the true number would be between 20 and 30 dollars per person (10-20% of their monthly food budget) that continues eating as much meat, per month, and close to that percentage in production decline. A big deal, but not a complete upheaval in the meat industry.
The subsidies aren't really about keeping meat costs down for consumers so that meat producers can remain profitable. They're more about manipulating the global meat market to compete against other producers and ensure domestic food security.
I didn't do the math so can't comment on that. Just noting the claims of the apparent source, without any sort of agreement or disagreement.
I'm sure that if the subsidy went away, McDonalds would reformulate the big mac so that it's only $5.50. It's gross, but that's what fast food companies do.
> While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience.
Interesting. I've always felt the opposite: Impossible closer to beef, Beyond much tastier.
But I haven't eaten a real burger in a couple decades.
I don’t know that $114 over a year would be an amount I would notice/ make me buy a lesser product.
I’ve no issue with removing the subsidy but I’m not sure that changes much either.
That is what bit over 2$ a week. Which I think is less than current inflation. So it would not actually change much.
> (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person)
I think that number is basically made up. It comes from a chain of references by activists and lobbyists (against meat and dairy subsidies) who are basically playing a game of broken telephone with statistics.
AIER cites a Columbia SIPA article, which cites the book Meatonomics. Meatonomics is written by a lawyer who advocates against meat and dairy and seems to have synthesized the number by adding numbers from several sources. He cites an article by an anti-meat/dairy law firm which estimates dairy subsidies at $19 billion. (Meatononics includes dairy subsidies in the $38 billion figure.)
But those dairy subsidies aren't from payments to dairy farmers. They're looking at indirect subsidies, the largest of which is food stamps and other nutritional assistance programs. They estimate that Americans spend about 11% of their food budget on dairy products and based on that they estimate the amount of food stamp money that goes to dairy farmers.
tl;dr: The number is a rough estimate based largely on the government giving poor people food stamps and people choosing to spend some of that on meat and dairy. The numbers are also from advocacy groups, not peer reviewed journals.
One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead.
IMHO this is the wrong approach and hardly ever works well or relies on luxury products like beyond meat(1).
The best vegetarian food I had eaten was such which was designed as vegetarian food, not as a dish with meat and then modified to somehow work. Pretty much the only times I ended up with vegetarian food which tasted disgusting was with meat replacement products.
At the same time beyond meat isn't the only producer of meat replacement products, and you don't need massive international cooperation for them either. For example the local butcher around where I live has meat replacement products, self-made based on the recipe they licensed from another smallish non-international company. It doesn't taste like meat, but it tastes good and has properties similar but not quite like meat wrt. taste direction, consistency and texture so you can swap it in to get a quite different but still good tasting result (through it's not stake like, more pulled pork like, suited for dishes which need pulled pork or minced meat).
(1): Now part of the reason why it is more expensive then meat is probably state subventions but on a pure resource level meat is much more resource intensive to produce then most vegetarian stuff.
I was wondering this the other day when eating a saag paneer curry instead of my normal meat-based order: why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options which can be treated similarly to how we treat meat in cooking. Paneer is not 'trying to be chicken', but it can be put in a curry or fried, so can serve a similar purpose -- but is distinctly delicious in its own right!
A chap I worked with years ago had his wife cook us some food for a week or so, and brought it into work each day in little plastic tubs. Lentil curry, chickpea curry, all sorts of vegetarian food, and it was amazing. One was even a soya-chunk curry, which tasted better than meat, and zero chance of bones. I think playing to the strengths of the vegetables is always going to work better than creating stuff like facon and such. It always looks so...unappealing. That being said, perhaps the reason we eat so much meat in the UK & USA is because we're also taught that to cook vegetables you boil them...in water. Nowhere else in the world do they think it's a good idea to do this. They have flavours, they incorporate vegetables into meals, not just a spoon of boiled carrots, a spoon of boiled broccoli, and a spoon of peas.
Same with tofu. I have fried tofu sandwiches with gochujang and spring onions. Treat your meat-free foods as the unique items they all are!
Because our culinary repertoire and tastes are cultural.
People know how to pan fry up some chicken/beef, this their fake analogs too, but not how to make saag paneer curry. Or some pan fried chicken is what they crave while they’ve never had these foods you consider superior.
Our relationship with food is very weird and delicate. It’s more of an identity trait than a rational choice we make daily. We like our comforts.
Thanks for sharing, that's a good point!
>why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options
Because meat tastes better, and I want it. If I can have that taste without an animal involved then it’s all the better. If not then I’ll continue eating meat.
Vegetarians and vegans just don’t seem to understand this. Food is all about personal preference but the extreme majority of people eat and enjoy meat. They enjoy it because they find it delicious. If people felt vegetarian options were as delicious as meat we wouldn’t be having these discussions.
People who don’t have a taste preference for meat are obviously not the target for plant based meat.
Vegetarian here, you're wrong. Boil a chicken breast and eat it and tell me it tastes better. If you handed me a plate of boiled peas and a spoon I'd probably hand them back to you too.
Good _food_ tastes good. Most times you eat it's complemented with sauces, marinades, etc. Cooking vegetarian requires the same effort. People who slather a Midwestern meatloaf in ketchup likely wouldn't even notice if it was vegetarian unless you told them.
> If people felt vegetarian options were as delicious as meat we wouldn’t be having these discussions.
Meat is a luxury and a status symbol. Eating meat every day is something my parents did because they could afford to because their parents _couldnt_. I'm not going to sit here and tell you a bone in rib eye with a pan sauce isn't delicious - it is, but so is a paneer masala, or huevos rancheros.
> Vegetarian here, you're wrong.
Legitimately laughing out loud at this response. You're sitting there at your keyboard telling other people that their food preferences are wrong? Seriously? No one is going to take you seriously if you can't acknowledge the basic premise that food preferences are personal opinions.
"Food is all about personal preference"
Then maybe your original post shouldn't say: "Because meat tastes better, and I want it."
> Because meat tastes better
I don’t think you can reasonably state this as objective fact.
I eat meat mostly because it’s the easiest way for me to hit specific protein targets. I personally prefer vegetables in most circumstances though.
I'm not a vegetarian and I have a taste preference for meat on many dishes.
> Because meat tastes better, and I want it
Sorry, as a person who eats both, meat doesn't "just taste better". If by vegetables, you're referring to standard meat and 3 veg that western countries were used to, then yeah meat tastes way better. But if you're trying Indian/Thai, etc, vegetables can taste as good as meat, and in some cases, even better.
The number of people chiming in on this article proclaiming food preferences as "wrong" or "correct" is truly astounding. No, my preferences aren't wrong. No, yours aren't wrong either. Food preferences are personal.
The only thing "wrong" here is all the people chiming in to tell others that their differing preferences are incorrect.
Well, you're one of them. Your comment has a blanket statement "Meat tastes better" like it's an objective fact.
> One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead.
As somebody who does not really eat meat but is very concerned about protein targets, this isn't quite so simple. Various meats (chicken, some fish) can be extremely cheap extremely high protein foods. When you don't have these to work with you need to think a lot more about your options.
I often "replace" a meat protein option with seitan, tofu, or tempeh just to hit my goals. These things aren't engineered in a lab the same way that Beyond etc have been, but they are processed/made and fill the "chunk of protein" requirement in a way that whole plants struggle with.
If you don't toss in a "chunk of protein," you need to be incredibly careful working in proteins. Anything with a low protein/calorie ratio becomes difficult to work in. Cheap staples like pasta and rice are even questionable because their protein ratios are relatively low, and then you find yourself eating only beans...
This is easier for vegetarians who eat cheese and eggs, of course. Nutritionally these things act more like meat and you can use them as such.
Food is highly cultural and habitual. Changing their diet can take years for some people. Also, many people probably never have tried many truly vegetarian dishes, so there is a learning curve.
I for one really gained an appreciation for curry, and since they're stewed to fuck anyway you barely notice whether or not there's meat in them.
I hope that people trying to improve their diets will discover spices beyond salt, pepper and chillies, lol.
I do believe part of it is that western diets are more about the ingredients and the textures / mouthfeels / flavors thereof than spices. Which is ironic, given the whole colonization and world spice trade thing from some time ago.
Completely agree with you. I'm not a vegetarian at all and honestly most of my dinners are vegetarian anyway because half the time I'm just too lazy to deal with meat. Plenty of delicious cheese centered meals, for instance. Mac and cheese can be made in a million different ways. Sometimes I'll make my chicken rice and mushroom casserole but throw in legumes instead. Lots of great things to make with eggs for protein too.
I've accidentally cut my meat consumption down drastically through sheer laziness, so I always find it puzzling that people make a fuzz about it.
I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Beyond Meat had a mad run up in the same way that loads of companies had a mad run up in the ZIRP environment, and now the real questions are being asked: What's the actual TAM, what's the long term margins, what are the competitors in this space. Their market cap was like $7Bn, compared to Kraft Heinz at 45Bn. In the long term, do plant based meat alternatives form anything other than another type of food in the existing market? No. Do BYND have a monopoly on plant based meat alternatives? Also no. So why would BYND trade like anything other than comparable food companies?
On top of that, does BYND really seem likely to be a independent company long term considering the other consolidation we see in the market? This is a market where on the supply side you have Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Neslte - massive consolidation. On the demand side you have Walmart. What does that mean? It means it needs to either grow massively to the point where it can be independent, or the price needs to come down to the point where an acquisition is attractive. We're probably reaching the latter of those two right now.
It could be that plant based meats in general grow to became atleast as big as the meat industry, but the likelihood of that being reflected in BYND's stock price is slim.
I think you are on the money. Despite the article's headline (and anecdotes) implying a broader downturn in the sector, I'm inclined to write this off to Beyond expectations being completely out of touch with reality, and possibly some mismanagement / marketing problems specific to Beyond.
This statement from Impossible (which is included in the article) directly contradicts the "plant based meats are failing" subtext the article seems to want to push otherwise:
> “We’re not experiencing anything like what Beyond Meat has reported or some of the other brands in the space,” Keely Sulprizio, a spokeswoman for Impossible Foods, said in an email. “Quite the opposite: We’re seeing hypergrowth, with over 60 percent year-over-year dollar sales growth in retail alone.”
> The IRI data show that while volume sales of Impossible ground meat and faux burger patties were down slightly, volumes of other categories, including frozen faux meat and chicken, soared.
If you know cars are problematic, the solution isn't to produce a bicycle that has a "car-like experience". The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful.
I have at least 8 vegan dishes I can make that are just amazingly delicious. A mushroom risotto, veggie tajine, chana masala, ramen, moussaka, general tso's cauliflour, cuban black beans, jajangmyeon. Make it vegetarian and I have even more; give me eggs, chicken or pork, and a whole universe opens up. It's very rare that I ever cook red meat anymore, just because there's so many recipes that don't make use of it.
My favorite fast food restaurant is Pollo Tropical. Their franchise has 140 locations in South Florida. Most of their menu is rice, beans, vegetables, salad, roast chicken, and roast pork. The white rice and black beans with sauteed onions is delicious enough (and big enough) to be a meal in itself. The fried plantains are like savory candy. It's healthy[ish], fast, and definitely not typical American fare. Yet it won't work outside of Florida, because Americans think rice and beans equals "mexican" food.
American culture simply hasn't incorporated foreign cuisines in a way that makes them actually tasty. If it's not smothered in cheese or bacon, they don't want it. It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's. We have a lot more variety in restaurants today, but the home cook is still left with garbage "Americanized" recipes you find on Google Search. We need a new revolution in home cooking to introduce the people to meatless dishes, and we need restaurants (especially fast food) to push them outside the home too.
Finally, we're gonna need to clamp down on meat. There's no way around it. As long as animals can be farmed so cheaply that a few pounds of meat costs $5 or less, people will not stop buying it and restaurants will not stop selling it. Just like we need to make cars less convenient in city centers to emphasize bikes, buses and trains, we need to make meat less convenient.
> The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful.
I disagree with the last part on a philosophical level. Society should push forward, and that doesn't mean we need to take convenient things and make them less convenient, so that alternatives seem more attractive in comparison. We need to make the alternatives better in-and-of themselves, otherwise there will be more pushback from people who currently only use cars, as opposed to a more positive "oh, we can use our car for X and then use this other thing for Y because it offers Z advantage vs the car"
Philosophically I agree that this would be pretty nice.
Realistically though I don't see how to make bike travel safer and more convenient in an already packed city, without taking away road space from cars. Same for bus lanes.
I don't mean that improving other means of transit shouldn't negatively affect car travel, just that we shouldn't go out of our way to make car travel more painful. e.g. maybe we don't need to remove a car lane from every street in the city to replace it with a bike lane, but rather restructure flow so that every other block is car/bike/car/bike, or something similar.
There is nothing harder to change in this world than culture. Sometimes you can't just make the alternatives better. Sometimes they already are better, and still nothing changes. People are stubborn, interests are entrenched. Sometimes you have to force society to change. It's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world.
I don't see how you are going to make this stick. Suppose some politician adds a meat tax or something like that. He will just be voted out enmass in the next election and the ruling will be quickly reversed. Furthermore with the way these things go in a country like the US, that successor will not only roll back and tax he will then tax vegetables to help subsidize the meat eaters.
That's what everybody says about every kind of dis-incentive program, but we have hundreds of them on the books. It would be one thing if it were just trying to correct people's health, but the issue is far greater, spanning ecological impact, water rights, feedstock, farm subsidies, animal treatment, land use, etc. We will one day reduce our use of meat, if only because eventually it won't be feasible to keep farming it at scale. But the sooner we start, the better.
From a French perspective, American cuisine is bland and unimpressive.
Clamping down on meat is not enough, you need to also get around cooking everything in oil, and added sugar (basically, everything about your cuisine).
Hey, Spanish here! If at least it were good oil... ;)
That's not sugar, mon ami, it's high fructose corn syrup
I don’t get why hfcs gets so much hate. I bake with it all the time and use it when formulating my recipes on purpose. In an alternate universe it would be the premium and cane sugar would be the substitute. There has to be something there because people without access to it make invert syrup as a substitute.
This seems crazy to me, I can buy unimpressive because that’s a matter of taste and American cuisine is kinda samey but American cuisine is practically defined by “punch the eater in the face with massively over the top flavor.” Like if anything it’s putting too much and too many flavors without thinking too much how they interact.
From an American perspective, French food is as bland and tasteless as your people.
Spot on.
Safety also matters, US meat industry is really strictly controlled and paradoxically it's safer to eat meat than veggies, especially fresh like a salad. It'd be tough to solve, this. No one would vote to remove meat controls but comparable controls over pesticide/soil/cleanness would be unpopular too as they'd increase prices and make veg tougher to sell.
I'm very surprised to read this, because my understanding (from the UK) is that US chicken and egg farms have a horrendous salmonella problem stemming from high numbers of chickens per sqft and low regulation on things like clean bedding.
This is the reason US eggs are washed, removing their natural antibac coating, and therefore need refridgeration whereas UK/EU eggs are not and do not.
I remember reading a lot about this subject during the Brexit debate, but have forgotten a lot of it since. So, what am I missing?
They're claiming that it's safer to eat _cooked_ meat than _raw_ vegetables in the US, I'm assuming. I'm not sure if this is true (it's certainly possible if wastewater from animal farming is poorly controlled there), but it's not really comparing like for like.
Comparing what people eat / mainstream parts of recipes. Most people don't eat raw meat but eat raw veg...
You are saying USDA controls may not be so successful at this which could be true but then in veg there seem to be just no controls of similar extent (different from "have controlls but they don't quite work). Some comment on HN mentioned every single dead animal in US meat industry is inspected and signed for, imagine like this but with each carrot
European farms cram their chickens together in a pool of their own shit too. The only difference is they vaccinate for salmonella.
While vaccination is one difference, the EU has banned conventional battery cages, and some countries have banned all cages. Where cages are allowed, the legal minimum area is 0.075m^2/chicken; the US doesn't seem to set a minimum on a national basis, but average seems to be ~0.04m^2. So there's a significant difference in density, which likely has some impact.
This is a really great perspective. Thank you for sharing!
Regarding this part:
> It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's.
I feel like this should be obvious but I'm ashamed to know I don't know who you're describing. Can you or somebody else happening to read this please elaborate?
I believe the parent commenter is referring to Julia Child :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Child
> Make it vegetarian and I have even more
I mean... pizza.
Why though? Animals can be farmed cheaply, so what’s the problem?
Chicken probably yes, but not Beef...
I married a Vegetarian and I converted to a mostly Vegetarian diet myself and I have made a very real realisation over the last 10 years:
The one group that really hates Vegans more than meat eaters are Vegetarians. Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder. It's so hard to find a Vegetarian pizza nowadays with real cheese. It's either meaty or fully Vegan. Same for burgers. Vegetarians don't want to eat a shitty meat like patty. They want a Vegetarian burger, made of a bean patty, mushroom or some other vegetables which is not some form of dystopian processed food. Unfortunately Veganism has pushed all real Vegetarian burgers off the menus and repalced them with Beyond meat.
Look, I don't mind Beyond meat, I tried it and thought it was nice, but currently it costs as much as a real prime cut of beef which doesn't make sense to me and doesn't taste nearly as good. Our (Vegetarian) household actively refuses overpriced Vegan food because it starves menus of good creative Veggie options and therefore is a net harm at the moment.
I've been vegetarian for a couple decades and have no problem with vegans.
I don't think I've ever been to a pizza place that didn't just let me choose a vegetarian pizza with real cheese. I also love Beyond Meat, but most veggieburgers I ate prior to Beyond Meat were vegan too, though few places used cheese or egg. You can make a vegan black bean burger, or a great vegan portobello. Veganism isn't what converted places to Beyond.
Vegans are and were as happy as vegetarians to eat non-processed vegetables patties. I could push this point further by stating that a high percentage of vegans are turned off by the meatiness of those fake meat products. Those who pushed or asked for the product are companies and clients with an environmentalist motivation. It also appears that the product is easier to manage for restaurants which is also a reason why most restaurants are picking this product. The meat-like is really just an industrial product designed to please the largest crowd as possible which also includes vegans. So please, don’t say it’s the vegans that pushed all “real” options off the menu because the situation is much more complex than that.
“Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder.” This is a bold claim. Those people you met needs to chill because the problem you described is light years of being a “real” problem. Adding or removing ingredients is possible in most restaurants and quite easy: “Please can you substitute the absence of cheese or the vegan cheese for real cheese.”
In London (UK) Veganism is a REAL problem to Vegetarians. I am not saying that it is the Vegan people's fault, but simply that currently Veganism is the lowest common denominator between Vegans and Vegetarians and 7/10 restaurants have mostly replaced their Vegetarian options with Vegan options and Vegetarians are getting really pissed off.
Vegetarian here (though often I end up going many days without eggs or dairy), I don't have any beef with Vegans.
I'm fine with eating vegan options as well, I only use eggs and dairy products at home because I can't replace everything yet. I'm currently looking at some new egg replacement products, which would allow me to get far closer to the ideal, 100% vegan, diet.
That said, I actually like Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Nestlé's Garden Gourmet's Incredible Burger, Rügenwalder's products, etc. When I started living vegetarian in 2011, all the replacement products were shit and I ended up just making all food from scratch instead.
I'm genuinely happy that all these options exist nowadays, while I don't use them every day, they've become a staple of our diet by now, as they make adapting omnivore recipes much easier. I can always adapt it further later.
And I know some vegetarians who get "meat cravings" every few months, which these products help with – they allow fulfilling the craving without resorting to actual butchered animal flesh.
This is an unusual point, and one that I've never heard before.
If anything, since veganism started becoming popular, the options in restaurants have increased. There are places that previously didn't offer any or many vegetarian options, and now have more options (Gregg's and KFC are two that come to mind).
(Conspiracy hat on) I wonder if Big Meat is deliberately pushing veganism to dissuade vegetarianism similar to how Big Oil pushed for “carbon footprint”.
> They want a Vegetarian burger, made of a bean patty, mushroom or some other vegetables which is not some form of dystopian processed food.
Speak for yourself. Vegetarians are not a monolith, and I know many that eat beyond/impossible as a staple of their diet.
"Its stock has slumped nearly 83 percent in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33 percent this year, are now likely to show only minor growth."
So they still showed growth, the stock just crashed; and the others in the segment who don't have to report numbers are doing better. Just sounds like a discounted stock to me.
Not really, if you look at the last 2 years their revenue has been flat and their cost exploded.
This stock doesn't look discounted at all, they don't make any money and don't have any growth. I haven't checked their strategy to turn this around but just from the financials I'd say the stock is about where it should be.
That, or it had previously been overvalued. The company was very hyped for a while.
We can't really say that anybody should be shocked to see irrational exuberance and hype of the stock value of a freshly IPOed tech company in the post-2010 economy, after things recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.
Be careful with this logic.
Even at this 'discount' their market cap is 2x their revenue, which doesn't sound so bad until you compare it to someone like Tyson foods who has a market cap that is 0.5x their revenue.
Given BYND isn't growing much and its got a bad cost structure, it's still 'expensive,' just less so than before.
Have you even looked at their costs?! They’re losing so much money and much more than ever before. They’re playing the growth game but they don’t have software margins. It’s trouble.
Is there really a market for that product? I tried their burger patty and couldn't finish. Might be personal taste, but it just didn't work for me.
https://app.finclout.io/t/kRPQyAo
There is such a large market for this that one of Germany's largest meat processing companies, Rügenwalder, is heavily pivoting towards vegetarian products, and now makes more money with vegetarian meat replacements than with actual meat. And they're not even the largest seller of meat replacements in the country.
The market is huge, but it's quite literally a matter of taste.
It’s not “might”. It literally is personal taste.
Sounds like it was pushed hard and still is.
I try hard to avoid red meat for reasons but I do like a burger. I tried the Beyond when it was new and I was really impressed. I thought it tasted great and held together as a patty in a way that a lot of "traditional" bean and veg patties fail to do.
Unfortunately after I had cooked a bunch of them I realized what the smell of uncooked Beyond reminded me of: wet cat food. Now I can't get that association out of my head and the smell of the uncooked patties is so revolting I can't really enjoy them any more :(
Out of curiosity, are you also ok with how raw hamburger looks, because to me personally that's also super gross. I guess everyone is different though.
Many people happily eat raw ground beef. I don't know anyone having an Impossible or Beyond tartare.
I gag a little at the thought of that, but objectively i guess all i can say is: to each their own.
You're absolutely right. "Normal" is just a relative concept.
Japanese cuisine has a substantial part of it built around eating raw produce. Such that many sushi are deemed ok for expecting mothers to eat.
Meanwhile balut is a delicacy in South East Asia.
Scottish people eat haggis, and Iceland eats hakarl (which traditionally used urine)
Asians eat durian while the French love blue cheese. I think all tastes can be acquired.
> Iceland eats hakarl (which traditionally used urine)
I don't think hakarl was ever processed with urine - it just smells like it because of the high urea content. Do you have a source that it was processed with urine?
It’s super popular in France, Spain, and other European countries. While even some meat eaters dislike it, most people love it.
I think "Impossible Tartar" or "Beyond Tartar" was referred to here, not actual beef tartar.
That does sound disgusting, indeed.
IMO ground beef can look bad but it doesn’t have a distinct smell.
When you go vegan for a few years, you can absolutely smell raw ground beef. It's not a good smell.
Are you sure it is the beef and not something about the packaging?
Not the parent, but you can absolutely smell raw meat. It also lingers on dishes, and it seems at some level to also be a cultural thing whether you can detect the smell. Arabs also have a word for the smell - "zankha"
Why is wet cat food smell revolting to you? It's meat, after all.
Have you… smelled cat food? Not appetizing. It is meat, yes, but does not smell like ground meat, pâté, or hot dog meat, even. I'm not sure if it's because of the way the meat is processed (akin to potted meat), or if it's because of potentially added aromas, as cats do prefer fishy doors.
Yeah, I feed my cats wet food every day. It smells a bit funny, but not repulsive.
Personally I don’t eat cat food. Most of the meat I prepare smells completely different.
Lot of nonsense in the comments, absolutely nothing wrong with the taste of Beyond. Problem is that it is outrageously expensive and the market has become saturated with plenty of more cost-effective alternatives, many of which taste even better. There was a time when Beyond was the only really "good" option, that is simply not the case anymore.
When I see those 2-packs of Beyond Burgers on the shelves in the supermarket, they are marked down 40%, and they are still more expensive than a 4 pack from other brands. Makes zero sense to buy them.
I agree. I'd also add the fact that much of the world is experiencing a cost of living crisis, and luxury products are often the first to be cut in difficult times.
Food is not a startup company, people's tastes are shaped by their culture/religion, childhood favorites and decades in between. Expecting exponential growth is unrealistic how good the product is, and financial considerations quickly come into play once you run out of early adopters. Whoever is up to the challenge must prepare for a lot of patience, optimizing production on thin margins, tweaking product for different recipes and demographics and lots of advertisement and community outreach. Having the product on average grocery shelves is already amazing success for this category, now the hard work begins.
Really satisfying, foodie-quality meals can exist without meat or fake meat.
From a blind taste and smell perspective, animal flesh on a grill is very hard to beat. But if one wants to avoid eating animals, it is possible to do so very happily without resorting to manufactured creations that resemble meat.
Unfortunately, good creative vegetarian meals do take more work than throwing a nice steak on a grill. It seems that humans have a predisposition for appreciating hot animal fat with something to chew on.
All this is to say that we don't need fake meat. But it takes more effort and work, especially at first. Once the ingredients and skills are in place, however, vegetarial dishes can be more satisfying than typical meat dishes.
We should not be wasting business effort to provide fake something, but instead we should be working to teach good alternatives.
I think the reason we are in this situation is that companies need to sell things. Selling cooking lessons (good vegetarian cooking recipes and skills) is not as easy as pushing to the grocery store a plastic container with something resembling a hamburger patty.
I think this shows us that "technological innovation" solutions are not always the right answer to our problems.
I've had these fake-patties and they're good, I've gone to burger king and it's more than good enough. But then again, when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat and the flavor profile is not as good. So I they would have to come up with a really killer product, but how can that happen when adoption is so slow? They are not going to get money to really improve things to the required level to dominate the market.
In this regard, I think anyone who was hoping for plant-based meat to replace meat was being a little naïve. Imo, the solution to phasing out meats should come more in incentivising proper vegetarian/vegan meal plans, restaurants, etc. Probably through education plans on the benefits and the right ways to approach plant-heavy diets as well as tax incentives and so on.
But... do we even want to phase out meat? I think for a large majority of people the answer is no and so we end up with products like "beyond meat". I think vegans are right, ethically and politically but in many cases it is very difficult for us to admit how wrong we are and it really doesn't help when the counterpart comes off as morally superior. There needs to be humility but at the same time, this is not a problem we can really ignore.
I think our societies are addicted to meat and so the solution to our meat problem should be the same kind of solutions we apply when we have systemic addiction problems. Education, rehabilitation, support. It's difficult for us to admit that we do have a problem, and being such a systemic world-wide scale problem... well, yeah, it's almost impossible.
Isn't the reduced cost of regular meat due to subsidies? https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.
$38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 -> $5 cost reduction.
>No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.
This is such a wild thing to say without any proof. SA, for example uses way more petrol than the EU, largely because of direct subsidies that keep the price low [0] Now, notice how my example was a consumer subsidy, and consumers can't easily export petrol.
What you're maybe confused by is the concept of tariff-free trade that's become popular in the past few decades.
The US subsidizes corn farmers (who are free to sell corn to whomever they like anywhere in the world) not corn consumers. Most Western subsidies are to producers, for a variety of reasons.
A single global prevailing price isn't evidence of subsidies not working, it's just evidence of free trade.
The true counterfactual for Western subsidies is the global price if there weren't subsidies, which is usually pretty extreme, for example:
As we have seen, corn is one of the most highly subsidized crops in the US, with subsidy levels as high as 47% of farm income. Other important distortions characterize US corn markets, some more important to prices perhaps than high subsidy levels. [1]
Now keep in mind, that's not 'Corn is 47% cheaper because of subsidies' that's '47% of the effort dedicated to growing corn would not happen if not for subsidies.'
>$38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 - $5 cost reduction.
To make the claim you did just has no basis in logic. The US does not participate in direct subsidies like you claim. It instead gives farmers $38bn when the total value of cattle marked for slaughter in the US is $135bn. [2]
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locat... [1] https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/15590/ [2] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...
1) He was talking about beef not other products
2) What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?
>What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how supply and demand work. The money is not given directly to people so making it per Capita is an intellectually dishonest red herring.
$38bn creates an unknown amount of incremental supply of beef (since it is given to farmers). It does not lower aggregate beef prices by $38bn, it increases the effort dedicated to beef production by $38bn (even then, that's still a 25% subsidy relative to the entire market, you can't just make things per Capita to make them seem like a small number without context).
The increased supply form that new effort then interacts with demand. Both of those curves have slopes, so the interaction is much more complex than you're making it out to be.
> the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.
Through no-tariff trade agreements, countries like the US who massively subsidize dump on countries that don't.
That would just make the 100$pp figure smaller.
To add, Americans average around 60 pounds of beef per person per year.
Nobody likes actually looking at the numbers whenever they cry “subsidy!”
Easily-available meat is Pandora's Box; we're never going to be able to move away from it. It is what it is. People's eating habits are so fucking hard to change. It should be insanely obvious that talking down to people like they're children and saying "your eating habits are bad and you should feel bad" doesn't work, and often backfires. We should focus on trying to bring efficiencies to our current pipelines instead of making these processed monstrosities and trying to shove them down everyone's throats from some imaginary moral high ground.
Our current pipelines of CAFOs and the majority of crops being dedicated for livestock and methane pollution is not acceptable, however. It's not possible to significantly improve the efficiency of the fundamentally inefficient process of growing plants to feed animals before feeding ourselves.
Burger King uses Impossible. You could be right about the business side, but I point this out because I think Impossible is substantially better than Beyond.
Like I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second (and it's not as explicitly their intention), whereas Impossible is pretty damn convincing in certain contexts.
Also, Impossible started out strongly focused on the restaurant industry, and AFAIK still doesn't even bother with supermarkets. Whereas Beyond started as a supermarket item. Even if I did like Beyond I agree I'd be less inclined to buy these to cook myself.
> I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second
Anecdotally, my partner modified the menu at the bar he used to run to change the burger to be Beyond by default and beef optional. While it was clearly labelled on the menu, people didn't seem to read it/realise that the default was vegetarian. Everyone was very excited about the "new" burger, and most people were (happily) surprised to find out it was vegetarian.
So at least at this one bar in Amsterdam, Beyond fooled many meat eaters.
> Impossible started out strongly focused on the restaurant industry, and AFAIK still doesn't even bother with supermarkets
They are now widely available in supermarkets. In my big city they are carried by all the major chains, Safeway, Walmart, Giant, Target, Harris Teeter, Wegmans and Trader Joes.
Like I don't think Beyond could fool a meat eater for a second
Eaten 'naked', no. Cover it with cheese, bacon, bbq sauce, onions, tomatoes etc. and I think it can easily compare to a Burger King pr McDonald Burger.
Covered with all that and you could probably serve it with no patty at all and half wouldn’t notice.
People would notice. There needs to be meat in there so customers can worry about food poisoning and complain that it isn't cooked exactly the right amount, regardless of how it is cooked. It is part of the burger tradition.
They are, currently, expensive for sure. This is largely because of lower demand than beef. The longer term plan is that with increased demand they will be significantly less expensive than beef, because they have lower input costs: instead of processing plants through cows, you remove the middle-man-cow.
I wonder if any of those same microeconomics textbooks could give them any clues as to how they could increase demand...
> when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat
I never looked, but if the above is true, then that is the issue. People will always buy cheap. And to many people, if more expensive than 'real' meat, then they will not buy "beyond meat". Why, real meat in people's mind will always equate to higher quality.
For reference: I looked up prices at a local grocery store just now and Beyond products are in the $12-16/lb range. I've never understood how something that is almost entirely pea/rice protein + vegetable oil can be so expensive.
That is top-shelf filet minion around here; even the fanciest hamburger meat doesn’t hit that price.
I don't consider eating meat a problem. Its the Vegans who seem to have a problem with it. Not everyone else. And they are a loud minority.
The "problems" with meat have more to do with how the industry operates than the actual practice of eating meat itself. We are omnivorous. And the health issues with meat are overstated by those with an agenda to force their diet on others.
the problem with meat has to do with green house gases that will make living on this planet quite uncomfortable for most people
And solution to that does not require forcing everyone to eat meat. Lab grown is a thing and realistically the direction things will go.
its mostly a castle in the air
What about a price to CO2 (with equivalence calculation) emission? This would automatically make the (beef) meat significantly more expensive. And it would essentially just put a price on something which costs a price later anyway.
What about a price to CO2
Until that price shows up at the supermarket it is irrelevant.
Wouldn't that happen pretty quickly? I don't think meat producers would just happily cover for that extra fee.
no
It really is not that complex to understand:
You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes.
The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less processed and taste as good or better
My gf is vegan, she makes home made black beans patties, cauliflower patties, spinach patties, &c. they're all excellent, it's more of a question of habit than taste in my opinion
This is a very common theory on Beyond/vegetarian meat-like alternatives. At least in my perception, this is incorrect. I eat vegetarian, and know many others in my circles (24-32 year olds, mostly in Ams and NYC) who do, or who try to eat less meat. This:
> you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes.
is very false for my circles. All this means for these people just means "no meat" or "no animal products". These people around me (and I) eat just as many frozen pizzas, microwave meals, and junk food as any other person. We just substitute meat versions for non-meat versions. That usually means making fully vegetarian/vegan dishes, but it's not at all uncommon, especially among those who eat less meat, to substitute meat with meat-like alternatives.
I know very few people who actually care to put in the time to home-make their own patties etc.
I’m from Texas. Total opposite experience.
Vegans and vegetarians are rare pokemons here.
One of my coworkers was a vegetarian and went on a business trip to Texas. His associates there took him out for dinner at a steakhouse. After looking over the menu, he asked the waitress, "Do you have anything without meat in it?" She thought for a moment and then cheerfully replied, "We have chicken!"
When I was in Switzerland I ordered a vegetarian dish at a restaurant, and it came with bacon in.
"I think there's been a mistake. There's bacon in my vegetarian meal."
"Oh, that's not a mistake. Bacon isn't meat, we think of it as a garnish."
This happened in two places, one of them the canteen at my workplace.
Lol yeah. I figure those are common experiences anywhere ppl take their bbq so serious.
That’s why I do buy the idea that there’s a hard cap on the market size. I think all beers and wines tastes the exact same shade of gross.
When I say this, most ppl think I’m being an edge lord or I’m just a stupid asshole. it’s practically attempted murder!
“MONSTER!” “HOW DARE YOU?!”
As a Texan, just the thought of fake meat gives me indigestion. Im nauseous just writing this. My stomach won’t stop gurgling.
My morning is in ruins.
I do believe in some states of the US it was more popular, but I don’t think it’s everywhere. I bet you that as per usual it’s the red-blue divide.
I guess I don't exist then.
I want to eat less meat not because of mumbo jumbo health stuff but because the meat industry is just cruel to animals. I wish I had the fortitude to eat no meat, but my hope is fake meat will get to the point where I don't miss real meat anymore, so I support it.
And sorry, impossible burger tastes better than most vegan varieties, which aren't really just "vegan" by the strict definition but must fulfill some other strange moral criteria.
Have you considered buying whole or fractional beef? In most places it's not hard to find small farms that will sell you a quarter, half, or whole steer that was raised in open pasture. You'll need a chest freezer, but it doesn't cost much more than supermarket beef.
If you don't know where to start, look for 4H programs. You could literally buy and eat some kid's loved school project. No cruelty required.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole
I think this is wrong, and you're missing where the market is.
From what I've read, the meat alternatives actually sell primarily to meat eaters who feel like they should occasionally substitute meat for health reasons or variety.
Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.
I stopped eating 99% of the meat I used to eat. I didn't stop liking burgers. So has one of my daughters. Both our concerns are ethical. I would 100% eat bacon if it was vegan and tasted like actual bacon.
There are some vegan bacons where I am in Australia that, while they aren't bacon, are close enough in a BLT to leave me happy. But like a lot of these alternatives, the trick is you need to add the fat yourself: use a fair bit more olive oil than you would with actual bacon, and it rehydrates it and gets the taste and texture way closer :)
But if you are a meat eater that want to eat healthier, you'll be very suspicious of what appear very heavily processed food and just eat actual vegetable-looking food.
That's at least the case for me. Note I'm not saying that these meat substitutes are actually unhealthy, they just look very suspicious to me.
I mostly avoid meat for environmental reasons rather than health reasons. So Impossible and Beyond are nice alternatives. you shouldn't be eating hamburgers super regularly either way so the healthiness of alternatives really doesn't matter to me.
If I'm eating vegetarian, it's probably indian food. They know how to make it tasty and still resembles vegetables and lentils
The problem is that these fake meats are worse for you than grass-raised beef.
Are they? I use Meet Co products a few nights a week in the various stir frys and pastas and such that I make, and got my blood test results in last week. And I am incredibly healthy at least by all the normal markers (and amusingly have too much iron saturation despite not supplementing it, which is weird, likely a genetic thing that they're screening me for now, that my vegan diet is probably keeping in check through coincidence).
Is there something I should read on this topic?
I don’t know what studies have been done in these products; they are too new and their processing steps are trade secret. But in general every processing step removes/denatures nutrients and increases the likelihood of toxic side reactions. And fake meat products involve a LOT of processing steps.
Think of it this way: every molecule in a cut of beef is something that was safe to be in a cow, and is generally safe for humans too. That’s true of beans and peas too. But every processing step denatures the organic matter further through a sequence of noisy organic chemistry reactions with lots of byproducts. Each inorganic processing step is making carcinogens and such, in trace amounts. A raw beef steak is 99.99% stuff that you have been evolved to eat. A beyond burger is probably 98-99% ok. But that extra 1-2% is very important to your health.
Unfortunately this isn’t something required to be studied by the FDA, so it isn’t.
My cholesterol levels beg to differ. When I became vegan, my LDL/HDL ratio dropped from 1.9 to 0.8, triglycerides dropped by 35%. My doctor told me she's never seen such a turnaround without statins.
I've been vegetarian since 2011. I never liked the shitty bean burgers or saitan sausages.
But in 2018, some flexitarian friends showed me these new meat replacements, like Rügenwalder's veggie lineup, Nestle's Incredible Foods and later Beyond.
And it's only at that point that I started including meat replacements in my meals. Now we're including at least one type of meat replacement a day.
And 9 of my closest friends have got pretty much the exact same experience. We're all between 20 and 30 years old.
> Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise
Not all of them!
I don't buy meat for myself any longer, and am trying to get away from dairy. However, my childhood furnished me with possibly lifelong cravings for jerky, burgers, nuggets and sausages-- all of which the meat substitutes totally satisfy now. I'm very glad for these options!
Now I just need a good cheese substitute and I can go mostly vegan (I will still likely eat meat & dairy when it comes to leftover food that would otherwise be thrown out, though; my desire to avoid waste is greater than my desire to avoid those things because my body will be garbage all too soon no matter what I do anyway... life is far too short to justify being a purist imo).
> Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.
This was my experience. A month or two after dropping animal products, my body just stopped asking for them. I couldn’t care much less if I ever had meat or cheese again. I’ve got a massive repertoire of other stuff I crave instead now.
I just substitute meat for legume or dairy based products. For instance, I love black bean burger patties and paneer. If I want to eat meat, I'm going to eat meat. Not some weird frankensteined up soy bullshit.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole
I love meat and regularly buy these instead of hamburgers. While shopping for vegan Thanksgiving guests I saw some patties that imitate chicken. Going to try those out soon too.
I hope they stick around (Impossible should be ok). They're not the healthiest, but they're a rare semi-reliable vegetarian/vegan option for when you go out to restaurants. Otherwise you usually have to eat french fries or pasta. And they're also higher protein which is difficult to find going out unless you want to cook all your food at home.
It varies a lot depending on where you live, I'm in Berlin and a lot of restaurants have more vege/vegan options than meat ones these days. Hopefully it'll continue and that path everywhere.
Well prepared tofu/seitan/mushrooms are delicious, nutritive, much more environmentally friendly and you don't have to ask yourself if they were raised ethically or in hell like conditions
It's not perfect, and I have nothing against meat per se, but I acknowledge that we can't eat meant 1-2 times a day every day sustainably/ethically and affordably
I have a coworker who came from Germany and that seems to be the case. USA still has very limited options. I don't mind, but I've come to stop going to restaurants outright due to the lack of decent options and only really go with friends for the social aspect.
Or you eat meat, take care of what you in your body, and know these meat substitutes are a gimmick to put "health halos" on highly processed soy products that were formerly just sold to prisons.
For me, and I'm not sure how widespread this opinion is, it's not a health halo. I treat beyond/impossible burgers like I treat beef burgers: an occasional dietary splurge. I like them for a few reasons: more sustainably sourced, signalling with my pocketbook that alternatives are important, getting my kids ok with not eating meat occasionally (meatless Mondays sort of thing).
The main feature then is that these products make you feel better about your consumption.
Personally, I'd say: These products make me feel like part of the solution rather than part of the problem WRT climate change and Lake Mead drying up.
Yes that's what they're designed to do. Make you "feel" like you can contribute to meaningful solution not by pressuring large industrial polluters to do something but rather just make minor changes in your personal consumption habits.
I'm not sure why you're putting "feel" in quotes, voting with your pocketbook is a legitimate way of signalling to large industrial polluters to do something, right?
Not in the least. Consumerism is not a substitute for real policy.
Imagine if instead of freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln just instead made "Freedom Credits" that were issued to businesses that didn't use slave labor, but it allowed companies that used slave labor to purchase surplus "Freedom Credits" as offsets so they could claim they're making progress towards their ESG goals. Maybe it would become part of these companies advertising like "Fairtrade" has. The net result is that we would still have some kind of chattel slavery.
As ridiculous as this sounds, this is what we are doing when we defer to market based solutions to help nibble away at real policy issues. Also, consumer choices are already highly constrained by what the market bares.
I think you're mistaking me for Abraham Lincoln... I can't impose policy on the beef industry. Comparing the actions I took to the actions a historic US president took is not really appropriate commentary.
Millions voting with their pocket books can have the same impact; causing the industry to change because of reduced revenue. Especially if we can reach the tipping point where beyond/impossible becomes less expensive than beef.
In this analogy, Mark Rober would be your Abraham Lincoln, his video helped tip me towards eating more plant-based burgers, and has been seen 54M times.
Where I agree with you is that _policy_ is a much more direct and effective method of achieving similar ends. However I don't think eating less meat is comparable to carbon credits. The IPCC specifically lists it as a tried and true strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions.
The substitution of meat for other protein sources has real (albeit lagging) effects on the agricultural economy. Less people buying meat leads to less production of meat at scale, which in turn results in reduced deforestation (and potentially reforestation). Producing less meat leads to less greenhouse gas production at several points in the chain, most notably from reduced number of animals, but also during production and logistics. More forests contribute to carbon capture and biodiversity.
Probably the two biggest obstacles to consumer based solutions have been policy that subsidizes the cost of meat, and the cultural backlash to the idea of eating less meat (despite the many health + environmental incentives to reducing meat consumption overall).
I used to think so too but have long ceased to believe in its effectiveness. Industries love saying they need consumers to lead though.
Because it is a gimmick to make you feel like you're doing something, for the sole purpose of getting money from your pocket into theirs. You're not doing anything. The dr. feelgood insect and vegetarian "meat" products are heavily processed, requiring extra energy, fuel, and manpower.
> You're not doing anything.
Eating plant based meat instead of meat directly causes less animals to be factory farmed as demand is reduced. That reduces suffering, seems like something to me
He he.
Do you have leather shoes? Boots? Jackets? Other leather accessories like a wallet?
Leather upholstery in your car? A leather couch?
Do you consume dairy in any form (ice cream, yogurt, regular milk, sour milk, sour cream, cheese, ...)?
Lobsters were formerly just sold to prisons, but I still love eating the little dudes. This isn't a very persuasive argument.
They're processed, but not soy. Mostly pea protein.
Pea protein is a garbage incomplete protein too.
You're moving the goalposts here, but neither the person I'm replying to nor you are really providing anything compelling about how unfit these are for consumption.
Wrong. Whether it's pea or soy, it's a distinction without a difference. They're substitutes that really offer no real quantifiable or societal health benefit that make people feel better about their consumption.
Sure dude.
What is an "incomplete" protein? I'm aware that the human body needs certain fatty acids that it can't produce. But protein?
Protein is made up of different amino acids. If a food has all 9 essential amino acids humans need its called a "complete" protein.
It really does not matter, since presumably that is not the only food you eat. You need all the amino acids, but like any other nutrient, you don't need them all from the exact same source. As long as all the food you eat balances out the needed nutrients, you are good.
It'd be like saying, apples are unhealthy because it doesn't have literally every nutrient and if you only ate apples for the rest of your life you would be malnourished. Which is true but also a silly thing to say because nobody eats only apples.
Incomplete protein refers to amino acid profile.
There are a group of amino acids that the body has to get externally. There are a few veggies that do have all those amino acids, but I guess soy and peas don't
> There are a few veggies that do have all those amino acids, but I guess soy and peas don't
You guess incorrectly. Soy is a complete protein. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19145965/
Complete in the case of containing relatively minute amounts of some of them. You would have to eat an amazing amount of soy per day to get enough.
This firmly puts you in the first category
That explanation doesn't really work for me. Meat eaters aren't all yee-hawing tailgate BBQ addicts, and vegetarians aren't all paragons of healthy/natural virtue. I know plenty of people who are happy carnivores, who also enjoy a Beyond or Impossible patty. Usually it's an "every little bit helps" thing, cutting down just a little bit on the health or environmental negatives of meat. Sometimes it's just for variety. Either way, there are people who love meat and also will touch these products gladly.
The "variety" contingent includes me BTW. I've enjoyed all sorts of vegetarian meat alternatives over the years - old school soy or peanut-based "TVP" in a can back in the 70s, tempeh, bean-based and rice-based and mushroom-based kinds, etc. I make both lentil and potato burgers according to my own recipes. One of the reasons I prefer Beyond to Impossible is that Impossible tastes too much like meat. I can easily tell the difference with Beyond, though, making it less of a direct replacement for beef and more like a different meat to experiment with. That's far more interesting to me.
Unfortunately for Beyond, I think I'm in the minority. Most in-betweeners seem to have settled on Impossible. Consumers want a direct replacement, apparently. Beyond has simply not won in a finite market. There's no need for a Manichean "two types of people" model to explain it.
> you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body,
That's a false dichotomy there - you're making the assumption that there's only two types of people: 1) meat eaters, and 2) people who care about what they eat.
I can assure you, you are incorrect.
Yep, I dated a 'pastatarian' for a couple years. I don't remember her ever eating a salad, despite being vegetarian. She made a mean potato pizza, though!
I’ve heard of the nickname “beer and potato chips” vegan. There is no reason to think that your protein choice === the healthiness of your diet. I mostly eat chicken and veggies and fish. Not a very rare exception.
As for beyond meat - I find the taste and texture unsettling and a little too sweet. Kind of like it had beets in it. Impossible meats I eat about once a week
Its even less complex than this: its more expensive than its meat or vegetable equivalent, so you're either eating meat or you're eating vegetables and there's no point to sub in plant-based meat.
If you're doing it for cost reasons you'll eat cheaper meat or vegetarian, or if you're doing it ideologically you're eating vegetarian.
There's, at least, a third group that stopped eating meat on ethical or climate related grounds rather than taste or health grounds. My daughter was one, as were a decent number of her peers. Whether or not that's a sufficiently large segment that can sustain an industry, though, I'm not competent to judge.
Climate impact is what made my daughter become vegetarian. I am not yet completely convinced (I eat meat, but in smaller amounts than I used to), but do find the argument persuasive.
Things like BM aren't appealing to me, though, because of the price point. I can just eat non-meat things instead.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or [...]
I'm 90% plant-based (I occasionally eat meat). I love beyond meat and prefer it to real meat, but it's more expensive than real meat. One of the more significant egoistic advantages of a plant-based diet is the cost, which generally means it tends not to end up on the shopping list.
Their target market is all wrong. They need to drop the cost below "luxury food" and cater to the crowd who are scraping together cash for a McDonalds.
I'm vegan, but our numbers are so vanishingly small, we're a distraction in this conversation. Essentially the ~entire market for these products is meat eaters, and I don't believe meat eaters care about what they're eating even if they pay lip service to their health, the environment, or animal rights. Meat substitutes will win in the market because the food labs will (and I believe already have) succeeded in making them cheaper and tastier. You can't add extra salt, sugar, and MSG (not there is anything wrong with it) to a 100% beef patty.
I am 100% rooting for Impossible to win regulatory approval here in the EU, even though it's an uphill legal battle. The USA leads the world in junk food technology, and we need better junk food to get us through the energy transition.
> or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes.
First, for many vegetarians it is primarily moral position, not health position. It does not imply the know or care more about healthy eating.
Second, even people who care for health food, that does not mean they subscribe to junk/processed cultural labels, which are illdefined and often irrelevant to whether the food is healthy or not.
> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole
Assuming you can afford to eat meat, which many meat eaters might find themselves less able to do if prices continue to climb and/or beef subsidies end.
Ground beef could easily cost $15+ per pound without subsidizes: https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
Assuming you can afford to eat meat
Last I checked, Beyond Burgers cost almost 50% more pr lbs than the cheapest bulk ground beef in the store. If that changed then there might be a market.
Around here (Cambridge, MA) when it's on sale, maybe it's only 50% higher than ground beef's regular price. It's normally 250% the price of ground beef, with Impossible being even slightly higher priced.
That's the gag with Impossible. Unless you or your parents are owners of a climate non-profit flush with cash, their products are impossible to afford.
Beef subsidies are not going to end.
I'm a meat-eater who is aware of the negative health consequences of excess meat consumption and Beyond Meat has been a great gateway/transition food for me. It tastes great, I'm not too worried about how processed it is because it's still better than how meat is processed (e.g. nitrates), and I hope it sticks around. The biggest downside to Beyond Meat for me is the cost.
I've tried many of the traditional alternatives. Tofu can be great, but getting it there is a lot of effort. Tempeh is ok but only works with some dishes. For me there's nothing quite as easy as throwing a Beyond Meat sausage or patty on the barbecue in the summer.
One thing to watch out for with Beyond and Impossible is that they still contain pretty crazy amounts of saturated fats. I know they’re better overall, but for a lot of people those fats are evidently one of the most substantial risks to their health.
I know it’s considered contentious, but the balance of research around this strongly indicates that reducing saturated fats has profoundly positive impact on health outcomes.
I’m not saying don’t eat them or they’re terrible. They do seem better than real meat as far as health goes. I’ve just been blown away by the amount of fat these things contain and I wonder if people realize how much it is.
FWIW, i'm a vegitarian. The reason i don't eat beyond/impossible is because the one time i tried it, it was lackluster. Nothing to do with health.
Agree. I grew up vegetarian and nowadays (sometimes) eat meat. So vegetarian food for me is not some make believe meat substitutes. And when I do feel craving I would eat normal burger, chicken or lamb curry. It is just eating less meat not looking for daily substitute for meat.
I agree. People complain about GMO seeds like crazy, then expect people are going to eat lab grown meat in large amounts?
Also their obvious social media astroturfing is very on the nose. I don't like being gaslit when I ask questions about why people would eat lab grown meat
It’s either a false dichotomy or there are other alternatives.
Contrary to many comments, being a vegetarian/mostly vegan (with a pause) for 15+ years, I do enjoy an artifical meat burger every second month. At McD in Germany they are out of stock too often though and I have to leave.
Before artificial meat I had to forgo burgers, as I never liked veggie patties.
We actually prefer the Beyond Meat patty to a real beef one about 3/4 times in my house. We also prefer their Italian sausage for several recipes.
They aren’t the same by any means; we just happen to like the Beyond Meat alternative for those dishes. I really hope they stick around.
I agree. My favorite foods, that I rarely eat for health reasons, are brisket & wings.
I believe the Beyond meat burger tastes much better than most beef. I prefer them to the black bean patties, etc.
I got some push-back from my family on Beyond Burgers, we were grilling them somewhat regularly this summer and I was perfectly happy with them, but then towards the end of the summer my wife said, and my kids agreed: they didn't like them. I think the Impossible is the better product.
But, Beyond is listed on the stock market, so it's easier to see that they've been struggling?
I do think that their patties are a bit easier to get tired of; that's why once in a while we will do a beef patty instead.
One place they absolutely don't work for us is Loco Moco. For whatever reason a soft real meat patty just works so much better there.
I'll give a try to Impossible and see what we think.
Why am I not surprised the vaunted NYT failed to do basic research that might contradict their narrative. They dont even mention the bombshell story from last week regarding a whistleblower complaint about Beyond factory conditions: mold, bacteria, and string found in the meat. They even lied about being inspected by Pennsylvania state officials but havent faced any punishment. see https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-11-21/beyond-mea...
This reminds me of the early days of every new technology when the media predicted doom and gloom.
Every time an electric vehicle caught fire it was national news, and then someone in the comments would point out that they weren't catching fire any more than gas cars, but that wasn't newsworthy.
The early days of the Internet, the media constantly portrayed it as full of child porn and hackers.
Now the ultra-critical lens is on meat alternatives. But in 10 years that'll be the default when you order a Big Mac and nobody will think of it as any weirder than any of the other ingredients in packaged and prepared foods.
It also reminds me of the late days of every failed technology, like 3D TV.
They might have to get the price down, the taste better, or better marketing/management.
After having tried both Beyond and Impossible's offerings, I can't understand why anyone would buy Beyond. It's no surprise they are struggling
Seems like it must be personal preference. My experience is the exact opposite of yours, I love Beyond Meat but don't really like Impossible.
No soy?
Just a minor note, beyond burger was always subpar compared to impossible meat, which according to the article, is doing well.
Makes sense to me. I'm a now 7 year vegetarian and I've tried somewhere between most and all of the meatless options I've encountered in restaurants and at grocery stores. I eat probably 15-20 meals a week based around meatless burgers, bacon, chicken, steak, sausage, etc.
In that time (well, 2020-present) we've gone from having Beyond burgers constantly in the fridge + inclusion in a meal every few days, and seeking out restaurants that have them, to completely avoiding them. I cannot tell if the flavor has actually changed or my family has become too accustomed to alternatives-- Impossible is king to us and I'll happily take Gardein or even Boca options over Beyond now, althought I'll happily take a Beyond patty over the average black bean burger, my original standard, back before the Brave New Meatless Times (black beans feature heavily in my diet still, but not on bread :).
It's worth noting their sausage- and chicken-type products are really quite excellent. But the standard bearer, the burger patty, doesn't compete these days, IMO.
>> “on average, plant-based meat is 2x as expensive as beef, more than 4x as expensive as chicken, and more than 3x as expensive as pork per pound.”
Source:
- https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Reducing-the-pric...
At the risk of stating the obvious, “impossible” meats are about IP and high-margin products in a notoriously low-margin sector.
This is capitalism, not ecology.
There are better alternatives[1] than Beyond Meat at least here in Switzerland. There are several competitors that create much better tasting non-meat products without any of the additives that Beyond Meat uses, locally made and sustainable.
Beyond Meat spent an enormous amount of money to have their foot everywhere but if your product is mediocre a better products will take your place.
Also very interesting is that different countries have different priorities when it comes to such food items. The planted CEO stated that it was quite difficult to enter Germany because price was a much bigger factor than taste.
[1] https://en.eatplanted.com/
Beyond Meat is a lot worse than Impossible Burger. They're losing to someone in their same vertical who has a superior product.
Unless you are a strict vegan, in which case, you can't eat Impossible Burgers. [0]
[0]: https://oopsvegan.com/en/blog/is-the-impossible-burger-vegan
That article is trash, so I'll save future readers a click:
> soy heme had to undergo animal testing
That's it. You have to be that strict a vegan to think it doesn't count.
Trust me, I agree. I just found the first link that explained it more or less. I am the furthest thing from vegan and I couldn't care less, but wanted to produce some source on why Impossible Meat is not technically vegan certified. Whatever that is.
I'm not aware of any standard of vegan certification. If there was one, and it counted this against Impossible, then it would have to count a whole lot of other ingredients that were animal tested too wouldn't it?
Agreed. And as an aside, the Impossible Mince is pretty excellent, though too expensive for me to use regularly over the cheaper vegan mince alternatives.
If you’re vegetarian, why do you want the uncanny valley version of meat? Be a vegetarian.
I have always thought that the target market for Beyond/Incredible/etc was not vegetarians, but rather partners of vegetarians. They don’t really want to give up meat but they want to support their partner and/or avoid conflict.
For some people, meat tastes good, but they want to reduce meat intake or remove it from their diet for health or environmental reasons. The status of 'be a vegetarian' is irrelevant to the material effect.
These companies only really target the environmental, since they're not actually any healthier than actual meat.
Apologies, I think I used "health" in a misleading way.
My intention was not to suggest meat substitutes are strictly better than meat for losing weight, or reducing heart disease, general public health advice (I am not qualified to even make those comments!).
The scope I was hoping to address was situations where an individual needs to replace meat for their specific dietary requirements. In this case, meat substitutes may be useful if, say, there is something in meat causing inflammation for the individual.
This is largely "what-if" though, and would probably require a doctor's consult to confirm.
If you're vegetarian, go vegan, otherwise you still support the meat industries, as well as the exploitation of living sentient beings.
If you're vegan, eat whatever you want as long as it doesn't exploit an animal in any conceivable way.
Who cares about this uncanny fake-meats? Only people that exploit animals.
As a vegetarian, I'm going to eat the vegetarian food I like, and that includes fake meat.
I've lived with dozens of other vegetarians, and I've heard the "I don't like fake meat" position a lot, but it's not a clear majority, and far from universal.
My grocery store sells five+ brands of fake chicken at this point, in addition to vegetarian burgers, fish, and sausage. There's very obviously a market.
The play was to be well positioned when the big meat brands (think McDonald's) eventually make the switch which they theorized will have to happen both because of climate change and because they'll have a cheaper, less resource intense substitute.
It's really the same play as any technology, the first generation jumps the gun and strikes too early given their ambitions.
But someone's gotta be the Yahoo! It's a necessary step in the path.
Why? Because I love(d) meat. It's the closest thing I can find, while still being vegetarian. Does that make sense to you?
Restaurant menu and supermarket shelf space is expensive. Yet I almost never see it purchased at anything like what would justify the frequency - it's like it's offered out of pure politeness, like a decorative menorah at a "holiday celebration". Ofc it's not, the company has to be subsidizing it at effectively negative cost. Even in their 10K they keep their "promotional activities" confidential, but their "selling, general and administrative expenses" are 50% of the value of their actual cost of goods sold.
It's sort of an irritation finding it lumped in the meat freezer section at Costco, it's like noise in my search space looking for the real stuff. It doesn't help that they try to simulate the visuals to appear the same as well. Many times I have looked at some packaging and thought "that looks like a good chicken nugget", but then quickly ascertain it's not a chicken nugget. I wouldn't mind if there was some distinct boundary labeling of the shelf to identify the cluster of products under a certain identity, it's just when the border isn't identified and the customer has to determine it each round that causes the friction. It has seemed to stabilize in our region to in this third left quadrant of the freezer but it shifts one or two columns left and right it feels like depending on the inventory coming in.
I mean, you can pretty much make the same argument about brands you don't like: they look similar to those by brands you do, and occupy the same shelf space.
(And for chicken nuggets specifically, I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference, haha.)
true, I think there's a basis for that. When you jump stores like enter a Sprouts freezer aisle you can get disarrayed from the unfamiliar brands and logos and all that and have to orient yourself first in those scenarios too at times.
It's probably because people have been judging a food company like a tech stock, and now things are leveling out.
I'm in tech, and (for whatever reason) I feel more kinship toward Beyond Meat than I do Swanson. It hyped itself up as an innovative product (it is!), raised money like an innovative product (sure, why not) and now is being valued like the product it actually is.
This happens all the time (Peloton! Airbnb!), and every time news articles act aghast. At some point, products collide with the industry they're competing with, and start to be valued by the same metrics.
You don't see meat eaters trying to make their broccoli taste like hamburger patties.
Vegetables are supposed to taste like vegetables. They're good without needing to be processed. Nobody wants to buy uncanny valley meat substitute, except as a novelty. And novelty business models work, but these guys misread their market and thought it could be a daily meat replacement, for a group of people that don't eat meat, or a group of people that eat real meat, not the fake stuff. Of course they failed.
Considering Rügenwalder, one of Germany's largest meat processing companies, managed to pivot to primarily selling veggie meat replacements, and grow their business at that, your conclusion is wrong.
There's definitely a niche for this, and it's large enough to build a multi billion dollar company.
And if it can work in the country that's home to the Currywurst, then it can work everywhere.
There is a niche for it, I'm not saying there's not. All I'm saying is they went about marketing it wrong because they misread the market and targeted the wrong demographic. Meat eaters dont want it, vegetarians don't want it, it's a novelty item, that's your niche.
> Meat eaters dont want it, vegetarians don't want it
But that's obviously wrong, vegetarians and meat eaters are buying it én masse, the product is clearly a success, at least in Germany. And not just once, but repeatedly, again and again.
I am a former meat-eater. I became vegetarian for ethical reasons, and I don't really miss meat much (except for the very occasional chicken wings craving).
A couple of years ago I was at a restaurant (Beach Chalet in GGP in SF) and ordered their "veggie burger". It was one of those Beyond Meat/Impossible burgers. One bite and I recoiled in horror: did they give me real meat instead of the veggie option? Now, it has happened in the past that I have been given meat when I specifically ordered something vegetarian. For example: "beef burrito" at a taco place when I wanted a "bean burrito". It brought back those bad memories and I could not take another bite.
The problem here is a marketing one. Beyond and Impossible have a market, but it's those people who would just like to lower their meat consumption. _It is not the veggie burger eating hippie!_ By forcing us vegetarians to consume these fake burgers, the industry is embracing a lose-lose proposition: most vegetarians want nothing to do with these because of the taste, and most meat eaters would rather just eat the real thing.
I think what companies who want to cater to vegetarians and vegans should do is focus more on providing plant based foods that AREN'T pretending to be meat. I'm not a vegan, never have been, but I quite like a lot of vegetarian foods. But I tried a beyond burger once just out of curiosity and it just... smelled wrong. There was something about it that put me off immediately on a primal level. My guess is that sales surged initially as curious non-vegans tried the fake meat, only for most to realize that it wasn't nearly as tasty and go back to actual meat, leaving the main customer base as vegans trying their best to convince themselves that no it tastes good actually. Providing options such as grilled vegetables that are actually super tasty is a way better idea than just trying to mold weird processed plant matter into a vague approximation of "meat".
I can't say I'm surprised. Before I left the UK, I regularly enjoyed bean burgers and Quorn burgers. I haven't seen either since I moved to Germany, but I have seen plenty of other meat alternatives including this, and none of them are quite as good as the Quorn or the bean burgers.
Im a meat eater, but you can wake me up anytime if some good Indian vegetarian food is being served. I don't think its necessary to call chemical slop "meat" but okey.
I really like Beyond Meat, though it's not as good as some of the other meat replacement options I can find at the grocery stores around here. I also think of all of these meat replacement options as junk food and not replacement for actual whole vegetables.
There's a fast food chain called "Max" that has veggie patties. When I tasted their burger for the first time I thought they might have messed up my order and given me real meat, the taste and texture seemed so realistic. But I hadn't eaten real red meat in around 20 years, and didn't trust my own taste, so I got my meat-eating boyfriend to try it. He was also confused and suspicious, so he went to the cashier to confirm that this was definitely not meat. I was pretty blown away!
One thing I thought was cool was, a few years ago, seeing a plant-based patty + bacon burger. At that time these replacements were only really marketed for people not wanting to eat meat at all, so at first I was confused about whether the bacon is vegetarian, too. But no - the bacon was real. After the initial double take I realized how cool it is, and how these kinds of partial-options can help normalize eating _less_ meat even if you still want real bacon (for example).
For the long term though, I'm hopeful for lab-grown meat becoming a more common and accessible option.
Since the rise of Beyond and the whole hype of this lab-grown alternative products, something has really changed (at least here in Germany): There are a lot of good tasting meat-like products on the market and they improved very well over the last couple of years. They improved in texture (IMHO a completely underrated factor) and flavor. I mostly buy steaks and sausages for BBQ. Nowadays there are some differences in taste and texture but when I was beginning eating only vegetarian (20+ years) there was nearly nothing on the market and that, what was on the market, was disgusting.
But I have to admit ... the best products are products which don't want to be meat replacements. That are well flavored (with herbs and smoke) tofu products from one german company/brand. They are too expensive for day to day use like the most other meat replacements but if I want to spend my money on that than I buy the really good stuff.
Vegan/Vegetarian has, depending on the intention behind this decision, often a health related reason. Meat alternatives are often highly processed food which is not healthy at all. Proteins from peas, soy, mushrooms or whatever remind me more at dog food with hydrolyzed protein content for allergic dogs ;-)
The replacements may or may not taste good ... at the end they are not as healthy as self cooked food.
Unfortunately beyond / impossible meats were just mimicked by all the incumbent meat alternative brands and it turns out what they are doing isn't that special or proprietary. Most people eating them are not hardcore vegans / plant based folks, tried them for novelty and switched back to beef. People don't want to eat this regularly and when we do, there are 10 brands on the shelf with it on offer and it's a race to the bottom.
The product is gross and unhealthy.
I also think that the anti-meat trend has peaked out. The people yakking about Soylent were yakking about fake meat, and their attention span is limited.
It is interesting how they mention in the article that some Deloitte analysts think there is a segment of consumers who think this plant-based meat is "woke" or is otherwise related to politically-left leaning ideas. I think this kind of resistance to the fake meat is irrational, but there is definitely memes and other ideas on some corners of the internet that associate certain foods/dietary choices with the "Other".
The people who promote fake meat are also often promoting banning real meat or making it more expensive by adding carbon credits. You can see some of them in this thread.
The issue is that the business strategy for all these companies was to convert meat eaters into plant eaters which is never going to happen in the long run. Sure sales surged in the beginning cause it was the "new thing" and everyone wanted to try them if nothing else, as a comparison. Like ever other gimmick though, once the surge ends the company has no idea what to do next.
I don't think demand for Beyond will ever hit zero but I do think recent demand seems to have been temporary & can see it falling into a niche.
In the past, vegetarianism/veganism was mostly the reserve of activist types, dogmatic in their approach, with little interest in fake meats (though they existed, demand & competition was low enough for them to be pretty poor substitutes).
Then, more recently, there was a big trend of vegetarianism becoming more mainstream, with many people trialling it: during that trial, there's naturally a lot of reliance on products like Beyond. Similarly, with the mainstreaming of it all, many old-timer vegetarians become more comfortable/open with liking/trying meaty things & also as the product quality/variety improves, many old-timer vegetarians will be naturally curious excited to test new options. So this all results in big spikes in demand for Beyond.
Now I think we're entering a phase of (a) long-term dedicated vegetarians have tried it out & the novelty has disappeared and (b) "trial" vegetarians are settling into a "flexitarian" / low-meat diet, where they just eat real meat when they want to, but do their best to reduce consumption. So the demand drops.
There's still going to be the odd "trial" vegetarian who likes meat but stayed strict & there's probably some old-timers who developed a taste for it, but it's a much lower % of people than at the peak of novel interest.
---
There's also a few notable exceptions where new substitutes have succeeded in gaining a culturally iconic status - e.g. the Greggs sausages in the UK. These will probably retain some popularity I guess, but they're very much the exception.
The number of vegetarians/vegans in Germany is strongly increasing [1]. The reasons vary and range from the horrific and inexcusable environmental impact of mass meat production to simple ethics. I personally have been convinced by my conscience and empathy.
I make an effort to reduce (and hopefully stop) eating meat after witnessing the insane cruelty we subject smart, intelligent and emotional animals to. The cognitive dissonance required to eat tons of pigs but on the other hand love dogs and cats is just weird. I mean if you get the chance, check out some cows and pigs. They're awesome and form a bond with you.
So hearing pigs scream in pain from CO2 suffocation is absolutely psychotic to me. Their cries burned themselves into my mind. Especially considering that most of them probably never saw the sun or could ever lay down in the grass to doze off... :(
For me, eating meat doesn't justify this pure horror. However, I still make a distinction between this sort of meat and, say, animals that had happy free roam years on a farm. I get a lot of heat from vegans but it doesn't matter. ANY reduction in the consumption of live animal products is a positive thing and there will always be political radicals.
So in the end, I find myself in your category (b) at the moment with severely reduced meat consumption. Beyond Meat temporarily helps to bridge the gap, it's akin to the nicotine bandaid, only this time it's for the meat addiction. But in that way the subsutition products are temporary and the majority of vegan/vegetarian food we cook is way tastier than the ready made substitutes.
[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-mea...
In Europe, it seems to be the opposite.
https://heurafoods.com/
Not only they taste like the real thing or better, but they are multiplying in variety, number and availability.
The 'fake' versions of meat dishes starting to taste much better seems that they should start being called new, actual dishes instead of being considered clones.
Dear apparently-f'ing-everybody:
Yes, there are plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes that don't require any kind of fake meat. We know. Please shut up since this isn't what fake-meat products solve.
Fake-meat products are for when I have meat cravings, when I go to a restaurant that doesn't normally do vegetarian cuisine, and ditto cultural events like cookouts.
I stopped buying beyond meat burgers simply because they disappeared from the shelves (of Tesco). For no other reason. The burgers were excellent. To me Beyond Meat just “got it”. I wanted a burger that delivered tasty high energy content and they delivered. The other meat alternative companies went down the health food route which I think is a mistake.
My wife taught a business class using the Beyond Meat company as one of the examples. We got a costco box of beyond meat patties to check them out and I cooked and served them (just to the family). They reminded me of a puck of cat food when frozen/de-thawing. Smelled weird cooking. Then for just the time I was eating, came really dam close to a real burger. But no one had any desire to reheat any leftovers. My opinion was they are close, but the concept needs a bit more work. I also think they might be better in a restaurant setting as it's kind like sausage, it's best not to know the process and just enjoy the finished product.
We also have a Next Level Burger in our local Whole Foods we occasionally eat at and if they added Beyond Meat to the menu I don't think I would order it over the other vegi patties they already serve...
I'm a huge fun of Beyond Burger. It's awesome!
...but it is so expensive. In my country (EU) it's easily 2x the price of real meat. And sells frozen in packs of 10. And there is ONE store that sells it.
At reduced price, packs of 2 would be a hit. Like this it's "yeah I tried it once, it was good... nope, not going to buy again"
All a matter of time... the same exact sentiment was once said for flat screen TVs, laptops, cell phones, etc.
IMHO this is the same sort of issue that hydrogen as a car fuel has. It's a stop-gap, interim measure that people hope will succeed prior to full bore measures like lab-based meat.
But, it's more than that. It's also economic. These things cost more than meat themselves. They also cost more than other vegetarian friendly (and tastier, but that's subjective), patties. Even worse, they've trying to drive up consumer cost of alternative burgers in general. I can either spend 32 NIS on a 4 pack of really good vegan burgers, or I can spend 24-30 NIS on a 2 pack of "plant based meat burgers". Heck, they actually cost ~25% more than meat burgers here.
I may have personal reasons to not like them. But from a purely economic point of view, they just don't fit here. Interestingly the data shows that they also don't sell here.
'Plant-based' is such a nice way to hand wave away just how terrible these meat-replacements are.
There is nothing natural about it at all and it's a shame as it's pushed vegetarian offerings off the table, options that are from what I can see healthier and more accessible to a broader consumer base.
I’ve tried the product and I always thought it silly to produce a plant-based version of an unhealthy meat product so that all the healthy dieters that switched away from said foods now have an unhealthy option restored to them that is more conscionable than what they chose to avoid in the first place.
I always thought their target market wasn't vegetarians, but omnivores.
Had an Impossible Whopper today. Tastes very close to a real burger, but damn did it wreck my stomach.
Humans have consumed animal meat for several million years. Now we need to start eating an artificial concoction consisting of:
water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, beet juice extract;
as a substitute for beef?
See https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/evidence-f...
> Palaeolithic diets were diverse and prehistoric cooking complex, involving several steps of food preparation.
> mounting evidence of plant consumption by both early modern humans and Neanderthals, in addition to meat. Wild nuts and grasses were often combined with pulses, such as lentils, and wild mustard.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/23/oldest-cooke...
> Cooking in caves: Palaeolithic carbonised plant food remains from Franchthi and Shanidar
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/co...
I don't think he's saying that.
He's saying that we ate all of those AND meat, and meat was actually meat, you know, a tried and tested substance on which entire species subsist, while the new thing is a super complex mix of stuff we don't really understand.
Which is just an appeal to nature and/or tradition. If they want to say something of value then they should present data showing that these products are not as healthy as an otherwise identical diet consisting of real meat.
> Which is just an appeal to nature and/or tradition.
An appeal to nature and/or tradition is not inherently a fallacy.
We KNOW for a fact that meat is a valid food, and we also know almost all of its downsides.
We definitely don't know the downsides of all these new "foods". And unfortunately it's the kind of thing that will take decades and decades to figure out.
See for tobacco, for example: https://youtu.be/GMOyNgLSX2g?t=1801
But in any case, since I don't have conclusive evidence this is bad for us, I'm perfectly fine with others being Guinea Pigs and I'll be perfectly happy to eat it once there are government mandates in place to ban meat consumption and have it replaced with artificial meat :-)
In this case, it is definitely fallacy. These new "foods" are made of all the same stuff as the things we have been eating for centuries [0]. Soy, peas, rice, various plant fats, vitamins, etc.
This is the part where you bring out the "processing" boogeyman, right? Like people haven't been eating processed foods for decades too?
[0] with the exception of the heme in Impossible burgers I suppose, which did undergo animal testing and was approved by the FDA same as drugs you've likely taken that were approved in the past decade.
> Like people haven't been eating processed foods for decades too?
And guess what, saturated fats are killing us. Saturated fats found in abundance in processed foods. Less processed foods don't have as many saturated fats, so this isn't really a problem you encounter with a traditional diet.
This is just an example of why're right that processed foods are bad for us.
It's not a boogeyman if it can be proven right with a 2-minute Google search.
And not this kind of Google search: https://youtu.be/Cxqca4RQd_M?t=286
Excuse me for not trusting blindy J. Random startup making food from stuff at the bottom of a glass tube. I'm sure their incentives are perfectly aligned with mine :-)
I think meat mimicking is a wrong approach. When I was 12-15, my grandma made a lot of plant-based menu, I don't even know what it is back then, so I don't know it's supposed to be meat alternative. It's just one strange menu that has a good taste.
I mean, should they try create a new naming system, stop advertising as anything related to meat at all. Create a whole new menu set, they don't even need burger! Look around the world of feed, mediterranean, italian, portuguese, south east asia etc. Plant-based chelf should be the whole new study as well. The current plant-based industry is so mediocre or too early.
Early in the pandemic, during my first trip to a grocery store, I saw that the meat aisle was bare - but for a meat substitute (was either Impossible or Beyond, can't recall). Even in the midst of a global health crisis no one wanted it.
I mean, people didn’t want hoard it. It’s as equally intuitive that there’s little overlap between people who eat meat alternatives and those who stockpiled staples and caused the shortages their stockpiling was supposed to protect them from.
Some of the worst displays of poor manners in the “civilised” world was of people fighting over piles of toilet paper.
Meat substitutes are almost always sold out at my local grocery store. Last week beyond was entirely sold out and I managed to get the last 2 packs of Nestlé's Incredible? Impossible? Whatever it's called, yesterday veggie bacon and salami were sold out, I got like meat's last like gyros pack, and had to get a separate like meat like chicken pack to somehow substitute the missing like gyros pack. Oh and I got Rügenwalder's last Leberwurst.
Sometimes I cycle another 2½km to the the next grocery store, because they usually have more like meat and vivera products, but often they're sold out there as well and I've got to try another day.
In India, which has the world's largest vegetarian population, there seems to still be a rapid expansion of fast-food burger restaurants taking place (e.g. https://www.burgersinghonline.com/menu). They cater to this large demographic with low-cost burgers where the meat patty is replaced with a range of existing Indian foods (deep fried cottage cheese, potatoes with mixed vegetables and spices, etc).
A single Beyond Meat patty at the U.S. supermarket price is equivalent to the Indian rupee price of ~4 full vegetarian burgers at Burger Singh (the Indian BK).
To be fair, vegetarian Indians probably wouldn't eat something like the Impossible burger anyway for fear of eating meat, nor is the taste or texture of real meat appealing to them.
At some point we are spending millions and millions to cater to a specific cultural niche - India has 1.5 billion people whose idea of home cooked food isnt meat and certainly not a burger, China and Nigeria pretty much the same.
Yes we need to stop farming animals (climate, space, cruelty, cost) - but there are alternatives.
Edit: yes vegetable dishes are prepared in the home usually by the wife and tend to take hours - so the convenience aspect plays a huge role as society changes - but ready meals are not the only solution - humans used to be good at social - we might need to relearn how to design our cities and discover our neighbours
The problem in a nutshell is their price point. It’s way, way too high and not competitive with similar products, which is why people aren’t buying it. If they can’t figure this out, then they probably don’t deserve to be in business.
Strong tangent here, but y'all vegetarians in the Bay Area ought try Dad's Luncheonette in Half Moon Bay for their mushroom sandwich, a vegetarian's alternative to the hamburger sandwich.
I got no affiliation with Dad's aside from thinking that they make a couple of fine sandwiches, and the mushroom sandwich is a great example of a vegetarian hamburger "alternative" that doesn't try to be a hamburger but tastes real good.
I'm omnivorous but like that mushroom sandwich sometimes (and the hamburger sandwich they sell is probably the best sandwich in the state, so that's saying something).
I can’t for the life of me figure out how they're losing so much money, yet their product is still far more expensive than actual beef.
Can a more informed follower provide some insight? Are they just grossly mismanaging their production costs?
Creating "actual beef" used to be fairly expensive, but, over the decades, companies have found out how to produce it for as cheap as possible, while still earning billions in profits, without consumers feeling as though beef is expensive. That efficiency comes with time. Plant-based meat is still in its infancy by comparison. So, even though the costs to consumers is high, the amount of profit the plant-based companies earn may be similar, or even lower than, what the beef industry earns.
Then there's Beyond itself. Striking a deal with McDonald's likely involved a lot of time and money — and then the "McPlant" product immediately failed. If you're going to convince Americans that plant-based meat is good, meeting them where they're at with fast food may seem like a good idea. But the type of people who find themselves in the McDonald's drive-thru, and the type of people who will pay extra for plant-based meat, is a tiny sliver of the theoretical burger Venn Diagram.
Now, you could call that grossly mismanaged, or you could call it the best possible shot they had at catering to a wide audience and breaking out of the niche vegan market. But the fact is, the product failed. Where can they possibly go from here to continue growth?
Growth will come when the price comes down. They should be producing this stuff far below the cost of beef.
There’s economies of scale, sure, but the ingredients they use are far cheaper than the inputs required to make beef.
There is effectively no market for this product at costs that exceed beef
> That efficiency comes with time.
And subsidies! Don't forget the subsidies!
I'm vegetarian and I get asked how I like these "meat replacement" things often enough. The thing is that I just…don't like burgers, steaks, etc. so these are basically of zero interest to me (e.g., every veggie burger I've had I would consider to be better than every beef burger I've ever had; there was one kind of steak I liked growing up and it being mostly pre-marinated juices was most of what I liked about it). These products are not, IMO, for vegetarians for vegans but more for meat eaters looking to reduce their (actual) meat consumption.
i've always wondered why these meat alternatives don't try to target exotic & rare meats rather than aiming for the most common staples. i would think you would have much more leeway with something where there is less familiarity and not to mention the price tag could be framed much more favorably rather than trying to compete with one of the most highly subsidized proteins on earth. why don't we have beyond alligator or beyond ostrich or even better yet, some kind of hypothetical dinosaur meat?
I try to eat less meat, but to be honest I haven't really found a "plant-based" product that actually tastes good. At best it works for products that are highly processed, and over-spiced anyway.
But e.g. things like minced meat alternative just taste awful, no matter which brand. I'd rather just put more veggies in my food, or mushrooms, or more natural things like tofu and spice it myself...
I see those plant-based products only as an alternative to very cheap, low quality meat. E.g. Id rather eat a plant based "chicken" nugget, than one made from meat scraps full of bone splitters and cartillage.
Seems weird to me to insist that the human culinary apex is the burger and we just gotta replicate it sans animal product. It is hilarious that billions in R&D have been poured into such a ridiculous cause.
Will it eventually be possible to use technology to make plant-based meat taste identical to real meat? Yes.
Will it be cheaper to manufacture this future plant-based meat than real meat? Very likely yes.
Then, it seems obvious that eventually everyone eating meat will switch to plant-based meat.
The real question is if BYND will survive this technology shift. Whoever does will have at least tens of billions in revenue (and be worth some multiple of that) given that the current size of the meat industry is $1.3t (1% market share = $13b). At a $800m market cap, the stock seems cheap.
The goal should be to eat HUMANE meat if you want to eat meat but can't for ethical reasons.
When I was a kid, my gram grams in Ukraine treated our animals like family members. That cow and hog dinner cooked for them smelled so good I wanted to plant my face in it myself.
My grandfather even built a sun deck for the pigs. A sun deck.
We wanted them to be HAPPY and PLUMPY, and when it was time to get the household through the winter, the dispatching was done quickly.
Humane meat should be scarce and expensive. The problem is that it's hard to know whom to trust with the claims of humanely raised stock.
> The goal should be to eat HUMANE meat if you want to eat meat but can't for ethical reasons.
To a lot of us, it will never be considered humane to kill something that is perfectly healthy for no other reason than that we want to eat something that tastes a certain way.
> When I was a kid, my gram grams in Ukraine treated our animals like family members
Think about this for a minute.
This is called "sustenance". They are not your pets. You treat the animals well because they literally feed you through the cold months. People don't understand that in many parts of the world not eating meat is a huge luxury.
That's a big goalpost shift. You went from "treat animals like family members" to "some people need meat to survive" those are entirely different arguments.
You didn't make an argument from the perspective of needing to eat meat to survive though, did you?
I was first person to get a beyond burger from a&w in my city. Compared to traditional veggie burgers it was amazing. I can't believe anyone would go back to veggie burgers now the beyond burgers exist. I assume the other brands are similar.
I dont care at all the beyond burgers are everything nutritionists claim is bad for you. I know nutritionists are outright lying.
Personally however, it didn't hit the threshold of being better than meat. So that was the last time I had beyond meat.
In other news, FDA approved lab grown meat. Chicken is first at bat.
Impossible Burgers are the best-tasting non-meat burgers I've had.
It’s just too expensive, pretty simple.
It’s a price issue. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it.
Given the popularity of the vegan diet among millennials and Zoomers I expected this type of products to skyrocket.
The marketing was building a lot of hype, and targeting fast-food was smart, because I think that meat is usually very low quality so changing for a plant-based recipe could have been a double win: the taste is not worse or better, and the concerns about animal cruelty and bad ecological footprint is the worst for the type of meat used in this industry.
Is there a smear campaign going on against BM? Noticed a few of these stories — I just can’t work out whether the stories are causing their issues or vice versa!
Whenever this story comes up I think about how their now-former COO recently "allegedly punched a motorist and bit that man’s on the nose so hard that it tore his flesh" [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/20/beyond-meat-...
Knowing nothing else about the story, it's amusing to pretend that he was simply desperate to taste any kind of meat after months/years of being forced to give it up due to his position.
Yeah like it's just a notable headline - "beyond meat" "literally takes chunk out of other human being's nose"
I like them for how easy they are to cook. I tend to eat them once a week. I alternate my protein sources: fish, seafood, chicken, beyond/impossible, egg/dairy, turkey.
I avoid pork and beef most of the time, except on occasions.
In that sense they're a nice addition to my selection, I find they have a unique flavor to them, but most often they're the protein that I cook when I'm lazy, because of how they don't need any prep.
The major problem is that they lose money on every burger sold. They have negative net margins. That was never sustainable. It's not quite like a scaling business ala Amazon where you can eventually stop expanding and collect profits. Their entire production process is cost intensive, even if the marginal cost shrinks over time, it is still a loss. So, this was/is no surprise.
What I don't get here is that this really is only about beef. Chicken and Pork isn't actually that bad for the environment as they are very efficient production wise.
So if you want eat a burger and don't feel bad, just eat a pork or chicken burger and you should be fine.
For me, Beyond Meat was pretty terrible when I tried it. Maybe if you put it in burger with many other things its not as bad.
So I rarely eat processed food at all. More often than not that slightly upsets our stomaches.
Impossible, beyond and whatever all the brands are called did all heavily upset my and my partners stomach so far. Just the same ugly feeling like after a burger king visit but for longer.
No issue with black bean, Quorn or veggie patties. No issue with actual meat. We aren't picky.
As a vegetarian I always despised the idea of chewing/eating something that "just tastes like" meat! I do hope Burger King/McDonald's bring the real veggie patty burger (black bean or anything that is real vegetable/grains) back on their menu - so much convenient when traveling on the road!
I think its a positioning problem: "alternative" meat is not good enough to substitute real meat + some people just dislike meat and its taste completely, not just concerned about animal cruelty etc.
Vegetarian food can be very tasty and beautiful and it does not have to be a substitute or an imitator of meat and other non-vegan food
My mom and sisters are vegetarian and they haven't really liked this "wave" of vegan burgers because they taste and feel like meat (which they don't like). From talking to them, they preferred the old school veggie burgers that didn't attempt to replicate meat 1:1 in attributes
So now we will get catastrophic articles about meat trying to sell plant-based meat as alternative.
This "we have problem, so consume this..." pattern in all kind topics is obvious "divide and conquer". Especially when politics come in.
I'm curious when anti-plant-meaters will became enemies of the planet.
I regularly buy and eat Beyond Sausage. Not a fan of their other products due to texture/taste. Just like with other food companies, I like some products, dislike others.
Nobody should be treating food stocks like growth stocks imo. Food doesn't scale that way and the margins aren't great.
Every week I try a different meat-substitute product just to see if I like them.
I keep visiting supermarkets which claim to sell Beyond and I’m yet to find one.
The other issue with many meat subs: they usually have insanely high saturated fat content. At least if replacing beef, make it a healthier alternative.
Wow that's some dedication. What are you hoping for exactly doing this? Are you not scared it will likely plain poison you eventually trying all those experimental stuff?
hacker news has really gone downhill.
Are you trying to insult me?
All the plant based companies try to cater to the meat eating folk. I don’t know if it’s a winning strategy. There are tons of possibilities with vegetarian patties, they are super tasty and flavorful. I would eat them if catered as vegetarian but with the same protein content as meat.
https://archive.ph/wB2s4
I simply cannot afford it. The price for what you get is too high. I never understood why these supposedly cool new things have to be so expensive all the time. I'm better off eating neither meat nor beyond meat or at least in lesser quantities.
The mistake they're making is hammering it as a consumer brand. Really it should just be an alternate behind the scenes where people don't know. Or need to know.
Long term tho, I think lab grown meats will prevail and non-meat meats will age like margarine.
I never understood why their patties are so thick. That's a thing you do with high quality meat. They should have aimed for the masses instead of gourmet. If people are skeptical of a new food why would you use a form factor that is only used with trusted meats?
My 7 year old son is vegetarian - Neither of his parents are (although we've always tried to be awake to the ethical implications of what we eat)
When I asked him why he'd gone so all-in on vegetarianism, he said "Daddy, animals are my friends. And you don't eat your friends"
The little bastard derived the whole thing from first principles, with no input from his parents.
I've tried to use the vegetable-based mince alternatives in pasta sauce, and we're always really unsatisfied with the results. He much prefers lentils / tofu / tempeh and frankly so do we.
We're in the target demographic for these products, and I can tell you: THe problem isn't the price, the branding or the level of ethical awareness. It's the product! It's a lousy substitute for the meat-based alternative, and it doesn't even stack up well against the raw ingredients they're derived from, which have the advantages of being cheaper and tasting better.
Meat subsidies are one huge reason for keeping meat prices too low. At least here that's the case. These vegan meat alternatives are naturally more effort to make than the original veggies but still cheaper than meat. But the subsidies fuck this up.
Maybe chicken meat is just easier to replicate with plants? I was really surprised about how good https://www.eatplanted.com/ is (I am not a vegan).
Somehow I'm not surprised that I had to come this far down to find a reference to Planted. Nowadays if one doesn't know the meme term involved (in this case plant based meats directly means BeYoNd MeAt), there are no other examples that come to mind.
In fact, however, there are _plenty_ of plant-based companies doing just fine (like Planted). I'm a fan of nearly all of their products and have watched their growth over the past few years, which has been nothing short of incredible.
I wouldn't worry about plant-based "meats", as the tech improves and we bring another 2+ billion onto the planet, they'll find their market share more and more.
What I've noticed is that plant meat got very popular over a few years, and then price increased 50-100% during Covid, and then plant meat got less popular.
There might not be any story here besides inflation and Covid supppy chain problems.
Make sure you sniff Beyond before eating it. I had Beyond mince that was a couple days away from the sell by date almost knock me off my feet when I opened the pack. It doesn’t go off like meat does. It smells like hydrogen sulfide.
Beef is different from pork and chicken and turkey. Why can't these new meats stop trying to be beef, and just be tasty? A different kind of tasty is ok.
E.g. I just ate some Impossible chili, and it was great!
The new age meat substitutes are just too expensive. In my grocery store they cost 40% more than an equivalent amount of beef.
Also, I kind of prefer a good veggie burger over an impossible burger. Let veggies be veggies and meat be meat.
For the price point, it's a novelty. I've tried them once, but it wasn't good enough for me to pay such a premium on an, ultimately, inferior version of the real thing - or even other vegan products.
Speaking as a vegan, I really don't want food that imitates the taste of meat and I will refuse to eat anything that's been prepared on the same griddle or using the same utensils as meat.
Pretty much how fast food outlets in India work - the kitchens are divided into vegetarian and non-vegetarian sections, with separate utensils, fryers - everything. You can walk into a KFC in India and get vegetarian options that were cooked in an entirely vegetarian section.
Do you mean if the utensils have been used to prepare meat since last being washed, or if the utensils were ever used to prepare meat?
The best meat-alternative for me is still fried seitan;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitan#History
I can't wait for lab grown meat, that's the actual next frontier
McPlant burgers are available in the UK - have they stopped in the USA?
Yeah, apparently it didn't sell. I thought they tasted great though, and that's coming from a meat eater.
They sell just fine. McDonald’s in the US is ideologically against them. I think I posted about this before. I was in a situation where I got to discuss it with a high level executive. They don’t want it no matter what the consumer demands.
The store manager we were buying ours from said no one was buying them there. But then again I don't recall seeing any marketing there that they even had it. We only found out through the app and after looking around for one. I imagine McDonalds wouldn't want something that makes their other burgers look 'unhealthy'. I bet their profit margins were smaller too.
Back in the 1990s, Burger King had (in the UK at least) a really tasty 'Spicy Bean Burger'.
I wonder what % of people would prefer, like I do, one of those, over beyond/impossible or similar?
I am seeing it in my local super markets. One has delisted the Beyond Meat ground beef substitute. Which makes it harder to get, which means I probably buy it less often too
BM is probably something that should have been acquired by a larger food company. Their product line is really limited for a public corporation.
Like "I can't believe it's not butter" the premise over-promised and under-delivered.
I totally could believe it wasn't butter btw.
By struggling… they mean >$1B in debt, a few hundred million in cash and a net cash flow of negative a few hundred million
They’re beyond “well done”
I’ll see myself out.
And still chugging along... methinks it's being pushed. Synthetic meat being "environmentally friendly" is the same as considering EVs environmentall friendly.
beyond meat sucks imo. It tried and it seemed very bean paste like in texture. whereas Impossible Burger was much much closer to burger.
Trying to imitate meat van only go so far. Ordinary plant products have their own flavors and textures that dont need to copy meat.
https://youtu.be/iiui110FlZM?t=847
Maybe the industry will realize that most vegetarians and vegans find anything like meat revolting. They much prefer vegetarian meals that are not ultra-processed and still resemble the vegetable used to make them.
Personally, the taste and look of beyond meat make me urge and feel like vomiting. It looks and tastes too much like a dead animal. I never miss the taste of meat, in fact, I hate the idea of eating anything that used to be alive.
Even in one of the countries with the highest percentage of vegetarians (India; though you can argue that poverty has an impact, since we know that meat consumption goes up with revenue), vegetarians and vegans only make up about 30% of the population. In the rest of the world it's generally max 10%, if not 5% or lower.
So for any of these companies go make it big, they need to cater to the 90%+ of people who like meat.
While 30% of Indians are strictly vegetarian, I would suggest that probably another 40% are largely vegetarian, only eating meat occasionally. Growing up in a major city in India, we ate maybe a single chicken based meal a week, and this was largely the norm in my social cohort. While a major reason was definitely money (poultry and red meat is ridiculously expensive in comparison to the vegetarian staples), it's also just cultural. My family grew up seeing meat as a special treat, and most of our meat dishes are very rich and can only be eaten occasionally.
True, but let's revisit those cultural norms in 60 years, when most of India is middle class according to developed country levels :-)
Sure, we are definitely eating more meat, simply because we can afford it.
as a vegan, my only gripe with beyond meat products are the prices. If it was cheaper I'd eat a lot more
Plant based meats are full of sodium and chemicals. Now, I’m not saying real meat isn’t; most places stuff meats full of antibiotics etc.
If I had to choose one or the other, real meat hands down. I just don’t eat meat that much, maybe twice a week now.
I’m looking forward to vat grown meats, but the aluminium foil hat person in me thinks it would be used as a carrier for other crap the government decides to throw in there.
This stuff tastes ok but if you buy it at the store to cook at home, it smells like dog food.
that's too bad...I buy beyond burgers because the pea protein in beyond burger is good to me. I can't eat others like impossible burgers which use soy protein (cross sensitivity to soy from peanut allergy)
I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole so good riddance
Economic recession. This hipster food is not cheap.
We live in Aldi and Action times.
"Meat alternatives" are highly processed plant waste glued together with countless chemicals and too much salt, often more expensive than average meat.
I am all for a less meaty diet, but those trendy lifestyle companies like Beyond are not the solution.
I read somewhere in French press that some fake food company allegedly put melanin in their products to trick the FDA, that the peas they use for their fake food are from China and that those peas are full of poisonous chemicals like Bisphenol A.
First, what is "fake food"? Second, why would a company try to get caught on purpose?
Food is composed of naturally occurring ingredients, whereas fake food is made from synthetic ingredients. Food is typically healthier, fresher, and more nutrient-dense than fake food. Fake food is often made to look like real food, but it contains artificial flavors, colors, and other additives that are not found in real food.
I don't think they would try to get caught but they could try to pass the tests to get a FDA approval.
The amount of plastic they use in the packaging is atrocious.
I think they have poor marketing. Always start with the why.
after seeing downvoted comments I guess there lot of politics, maybe fanatism on this subject. not sure what should I say to not being downvoted…
I raise my own cows on grass, slaughter them and fill my freezer with the beef. My wife and children help with the process and love the results. (I can't wait to see how many downvotes this gets.)
Paywall so I can only speculate. I have thought about if the idea of wanting to eat meat-like food is a construct created by meat eaters speculating about what vegetarians want.
But in reality I think that there is a large portion of vegetarians that view the texture of meat as "gross" and so realistic meat substitutes have no appeal to them.
I don't know if this is true or not, and I have no way of proving this other than the times that I've offered beyond meat at a party but not gotten any takers. It's just an idea that perhaps meat eaters are pushing a narrative at a demographic that doesn't have a desire for it!
Paywall so I can only speculate.
Not commenting on an article you didn’t read is always an option.
As an unrepetenting meat lover and eater I can guarantee you that we simply do not care, AT ALL, about what vegetarians and/or vegans decide to eat. We're just tired of people trying to impose their own conscientious objections on to us. We just want that the people that do not want to eat meat to stop trying to dictate what WE, the ones that love meat, want to eat. There is zero chance that those fake burgers were the brainchild of meat lovers, we simply don't care.
Looks like no one tried doing Venn diagram of people who think "I do not want to eat meat" and "I do not want to eat processed food".
Was a vegan for 15 years. Then switched to carnivore abruptly. Changed my life for the better.
Would never eat any plant based fake meat products.
Concotions of processed vegetables is going to be inferior to practically anything else that isn't that.
I'm vegan. I became vegan because my partner is vegan, and I started eating vegan food (like Beyond) when I was at her house, out of respect. I gradually transitioned to a non-strict vegan diet for health reasons (my Dr. said she's never seen such a turnaround in Cholesterol w/o statins), and then became fully vegan for environmental and animal welfare reasons.
None of this would have been possible without meat substitutes like Beyond and Impossible, as I would not have had the discipline to stick with the diet. I've had previous generation veggie burgers which tasted like fried cardboard. I think these nasty tasting products of the past have left people with the impression that vegan food just tastes horrible, and vegans have to be crazy to eat them (Boca, I'm looking at you). I certainly expected the worst the first time I had a Beyond burger, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I even evangelized it to a guy at the next table who was asking the waiter if it was good. I think once more people try these products, they'll really take off.
I think part of the problem with Beyond uptake is the way that these fast food restaurants test their products, and the way they package them. These chains are national, and they assume that demand for products will be similar across locations, but that's just not true. Like it or not, Vegans live in mostly "Blue" metro areas, not fly-over states. So if you're McDonalds, and you test your products in Dayton OH, or middle-of-nowhere Alabama, then you're setting them up to fail. They should be tested in LA, SF, NYC, Miami, Chicago, etc, and they should gradually spread out from there.
The other problem is how fast food chains package their plant based products so that vegans can't eat them. The Impossible Whopper is an example. Since I'm vegan, I can't eat eggs and dairy, which means I need to order the Whopper w/o cheese and mayo. This means that I almost never get an Impossible Whopper, since I like cheese (and mayo) on my burgers. I'll instead order from a local vegan place that actually offers vegan mayo and cheese. Similarly, McDonalds in the EU has a plant-based chicken sandwich, but the BREAD contains dairy. So I have to order it w/o the bun, meaning I almost never order it, and instead order something fully vegan from a local place. There's a Qdoba just down the street that has an Impossible Burrito. But again, no vegan cheese, so I tend to order from a smaller local place.
My feeling is that once these 2 things are corrected, vegan meat alternatives will take off. I talked to a grocery store manager a few weeks ago in a middle-sized US city (Richmond, VA), and he said that Beyond products are flying off the shelves, and often backordered. After that conversation, I invested in Beyond stock. I figure if they are doing well in Richmond, then there is a huge market opening up.
im confused by eating food like this, sure ethics are important, as is sustainability, but within the ingredients list of something like BM is pretty horrible:
Tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), Red #3/erythrosine, Sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), Propylene Glycol....
not in my lunch/dinner thanks.
I'm all for reading labels, but don't go around spreading misinfo. None of those are on the packaging[1].
[1]: https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/products/the-beyond-burger
I’ve even heard of such products containing hydroxocobalamin, and even a form of triphosphate.
Only thing plant based in that meat is that it comes from a factory aka a plant.
Good. Beyond Meat's production practices were not sustainable in any way!
GOOD
i would rather eat a proper diy organic soup rather then a veggie burgger….
Good.
Basically we are talking about TV dinners and fast food. Meat is cheaper and better in this realm than the expensive and highly processed vegetarian stuff.
I'm fine with either but I don't eat much fast food or TV dinners.
For homemade the processed fake meat is more expensive and harder to work with than just grilling some steaks.
When you push “meat” made of soy, not not helping the narrative. Vegetarians are “pussies” to begin with and you pile on that stereotype with “soy boy”. It doesn’t stand a chance.
Oh no, what will we do without more processed garbage?
I wonder if it's because it's disgusting????????
Have seen Beyond Meat ground beef substitute in supermakret but it plant like and unfulfilling
i really want to say this.
there is chinese demand for... sea cucumbers...Nostoc flagelliforme..i dunno...all kinds of crab and lobster...shark's fin? that they are prepared to pay good money for..
why are the lab grown food firms trying to compete against the domestic chicken? why not lab grown shark's fin or sea cucumber?
Are those people paying for the flavor of the food, or because they think it'll cure incontinence or something?
flavor/texture/appearance
Good they are nothing but refined seed oils which is junk food. Eat a mushroom or bean burger instead, duh!
Go woke, go broke.
Does "woke" just mean "thing I don't like now"? In what way is a soybean oil burger substitute "woke"?
Is anybody surprised at this, except maybe people who get their news, opinions, thoughts, beliefs from mainstream institutions and their woke ideologies and agendas?
Beyond was never good, pretty obvious they were trying to ride a wave. Turns out true veggie people are not stupid and tasteless enough for this con job to turn a real profit. Good, there is still hope in the world!
These companies are failing because the vast majority of people eat meat and are not interested in disgusting fake vegan food.
I wouldn't be surprised if Beyond and Impossible have to provide product for free or even pay the grocery stores to carry the products.
I'm surprised we've got this many comments without anyone mentioning Soylent Green.
SPOILER
Soylent Green is both the name of a 1973 science fiction film and of a wafer-like food product in the film. The film is a police procedural set in the future, based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! The food is a processed protein ration made of human beings and distributed to an unsuspecting populace.
Veganism should be outlawed. Everyone should eat meat, period.
I'm wary of female vegans since I believe pregnant women should eat meat to deliver a healthy baby. When she's not pregnant she can stop eating meat for all I care.
I'm not sure if anyone's ever been frank with you, but this comment is a colossal red flag... it's not only incorrect, but quite aggressive about it.
Aw man. Sorry you have no friends.
I do. But few vegans.
People are stating that fake meat is more expensive than real meat. I'd pay more for real meat before I'd ever pay for fake meat.
I don't know a single person that eats this stuff on the regular. I know a handful of people that have tried it, that was it. Nobody is being fooled that this product is healthier than real meat. I can't figure out who's buying this stuff.
I buy a bunch of it.
I quit eating meat a few years ago for ethical reasons but I still like to have a burger or brat or have a meat-like product in a pasta sauce or whatnot, and Beyond meat fills that role well.
Beyond and Impossible are full of chemicals. Definitely not a healthy alternative to traditional veggie patties. I wouldn't even call them food really. It doesn't even really qualify as a veggie burger (it's pea protein isolate, which doesn't really count). Beyond that (no pun intended) it's got a lot of seed oil, which is awful for you.
Chemicals for those interested:
Beyond Meat: water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, beet juice extract
Impossible: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Sunflower Oil, Coconut Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% Or Less Of: Methylcellulose, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Yeast Extract, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), L-tryptophan, Soy Protein Isolate, Zinc Gluconate, Niacin, Thiamine Hydrochloride
Definitions of the less common ones:
Methylcellulose: A common fiber/laxative. Non toxic. Deemed safe by the FDA and EFSA.
Tocopherols: Vitamin E. Often used as a supplement. Naturally occurring in egg yolk and leafy vegetables.
L-Tryptophan: An amino acid. Often used as a supplement. Its presence in turkey is what thanksgiving celebrants often assert to be the reason of their "food coma"
The ingredient list overall is pretty tame, so not sure which the OP is calling out specifically. There definitely are high oil counts in these though.
Aren't veggie patties full of chemicals too?
The Bizarre Truth About “Natural Flavors” https://branchbasics.com/blogs/food/the-bizarre-truth-about-...
Regarding MSG, isn't it naturally present in many savory/umami dishes including tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peas, salted and shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, walnuts, etc.?
Not to mention salted meat, fish, fish/worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, vegemite...
Good! Intellectual dishonesty and self-deception of all kinds is wrong and weak, and it should be stopped.
Fake meat is just as dumb as those CVT transmissions that have fake shift points, or setting your watch 10 minutes ahead so you will never be late.
If you think eating meat is wrong, then stop doing it. It's a defensible moral position. But don't try to trick yourself into thinking you are still doing it -- instead, have the mental strength and willpower to admit to yourself that you are eating vegetables. Maybe even learn how to cook them in a way that does not impersonate meat.
They are not targeted for vegans, the huge majority of customer are curious people that wants to transition into vegetarian/vegan diet and need the help of plant based meats.