Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 464 posts

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#271

Post by tremon »

mindslight wrote: post #74
ergothus wrote: post #26

I've been a vegetarian for the last decade and change, and I simultaneously think that finding a cheaper, appealing alternative to meat is both a fantastic opportunity for the world and a really difficult thing. I used to love meat when I was a meat-eater, and I'm a fairly picky eater that dislikes many vegetable options. (Green peppers are nasty and food-destroying in my opinion, which immediately removes over half…

The way I see it, selling anything to meat eaters as a "meat equivalent" is setting it up for rejection. I'd bet that if you took even real meat and told people it was "fake", a good portion of them would reject it as somehow weird. The "burger" is just a convenient form factor. Each kind is really its own thing, with its own taste and mouthfeel. It needs to be tried and appreciated as such, or disappointment is inev…

Totally agreed, on both points. I think selling "fake meat" to meat-eaters is missing the point (as they could just as easily eat the real thing), and selling "fake meat" to vegetarians is a weak offer (as it reduces them to imitating meat-based recipes).

As an example of your second point, one of the more succesful alternatives in NL is Valess [1], which mostly comes in the "burger" form factor but does not try to sell itself as imitation meat.

[1] https://www.frieslandcampina.com/en/brands/valess/

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#272

Post by Sacho »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #214
pombrand wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge problem with the vegan meat replacements is that they're a lot more expensive than beef, around $7/lb vs ground beef at $3/lb. Like with coal vs solar, for imitation meat to win the market it needs to get less expensive than real meat (and taste as good).

Or the subsidies that hide the facts. Beef is very expensive in the sense of TCO, but not that expensive at the grocery store. See: http://michaelpollan.com/profiles/the-high-price-of-cheap-fo... for a good read on the matter. a snip: "The industrial food chain does produce food more cheaply, in terms of the price you pay at McDonald’s or the supermarket,” replies Pollan, “but the real cost of cheap food is not refle…

$20 billion comes up under $100 per person per year in the US. Even giving it a generous x4 multiplier to account for the people subsidizing the industry without being consumers, at $400 per year, given the $3 and $7 prices by parent, you would need to eat under 100 pounds of meat for meat replacements to be viable. The average American allegedly consumes close to 200 pounds of meat[0] per year, so it ends up still being quote economical.

[0] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-(per...

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#274

Post by ergothus »

kbenson wrote: post #194
ergothus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually ties into an interesting problem: People who are vegetarian/vegan for ethical reasons and lab-grown meat. One idea is, instead of trying to make plant-based food taste like meat, just make meat that doesn't involve raising and killing animals. Efforts thus far have had only mild success (IIRC, it's been done at great cost, and it reportedly tasted terrible). Assuming these efforts succeed, where does th…

> Efforts thus far have had only mild success (IIRC, it's been done at great cost, and it reportedly tasted terrible). I have so much hope for this. I'm not vegetarian, but I wouldn't mind cutting out animal cruelty from my life as much as possible, as it is a place I recognize cognitive dissonance in myself. I'm really hoping they can get the cost down, and since it's controlled, can start experimenting on ways to i…

> What animals are harmed to help us get better lab-grown meat?

I'm assuming the acquisition of the original cells is not done at all kindly, (as in, I suspect the animal doesn't survive it), and that this is done many, many times before they perfect the process, but I'll admit that's an assumption on my part and it could be well within my ethical boundaries.

I don't plan to prejudge any options until I actually know, this was more of a hypothetical exercise that I've pondered now and again because I assume the day will come when it's actually real and the question will no longer be hypothetical. Knowing what matters to me then is better than trying to figure it out on the spot.

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#275

Post by Keats »

ergothus wrote: post #61
homero wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good fungus based chicken nugget, do you know this one?

I'm assuming you mean Quorn, which is a mycoprotein (the history of that company is fascinating!). Those are the nuggets I mentioned that are quite similar to "real".

I (omnivore) actually find Quorn chicken nuggets better than the real chicken ones you get in supermarket somehow.

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#276

Post by dang »

exabrial wrote: post #96

Believe it or not, some of us don't want to be vegans. I quite enjoy the taste of meat. I harvest my own by ethically hunting when I have the time. No I do not want a vegan substitute.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947747 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#277

Post by dang »

ukyrgf wrote: post #174
exabrial wrote: post #96

Believe it or not, some of us don't want to be vegans. I quite enjoy the taste of meat. I harvest my own by ethically hunting when I have the time. No I do not want a vegan substitute.

Is this the beginning of your autobiography that you have randomly decided to share with us?

Please don't be rude in comments here, even if another comment was unsubstantive.

When responding to a bad comment, try to raise the quality of the thread instead of lowering it further. If you can't or don't want to do that, please just don't post anything.

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#278

Post by nradov »

tim333 wrote: post #269
nradov wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excess iron consumption is a risk factor for heart disease. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140423170903.h...

Glancing at that I'm guessing it's just that people who pig out on steaks and burgers tend to get more heart attacks and it correlates with iron consumption.

No there's more to it than diet. Similar findings have been found in multiple studies. There is evidence to indicate that this is why pre-menopausal women have a lower risk of heart disease than men and post-menopausal women (after controlling for other differences).

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#279

Post by tamana »

Manishearth wrote: post #187
pyre wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, gelatin is considered vegetarian by some, or at least there are some vegetarians that don't realize that gelatin is an animal product (just some sort of "mystery" ingredient, I guess).

This can become an issue for religious vegetarians, too. In India when you say that something is vegetarian it contains no gelatin or animal fat or anything like that. Vegetarian food is prepared separately. Orthodox Hindus who move to the West often struggle with this. Even ice cream (marked as vegetarian) sometimes has gelatin. You can ask for vegan food, which is an approximation, but "no milk" is the antithesis o…

Where is ice cream marked as vegetarian? I have never seen a label. I also never saw gelatin as a listed ingredient in ice cream

Re: Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat

#280

Post by tamana »

downandout wrote: post #134
ergothus wrote: post #26

I've been a vegetarian for the last decade and change, and I simultaneously think that finding a cheaper, appealing alternative to meat is both a fantastic opportunity for the world and a really difficult thing. I used to love meat when I was a meat-eater, and I'm a fairly picky eater that dislikes many vegetable options. (Green peppers are nasty and food-destroying in my opinion, which immediately removes over half…

>Decent imitations of highly processed meat exist already I am a meat eater and I can tell you that, in my experience, this simply isn't the case. Your opinion is colored by the fact that you really, really, want it to be a decent imitation because you're a vegetarian. Every imitation meat product I have ever tasted has been immediately recognizable as such, and was almost inedible. Unfortunately, the idea of fake me…

Your opinion is colored by the fact that you really want to hate vegetarian meat, as is seen by calling it "inedible" when in reality is is merely different and bland.
Post reply on HN