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Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

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421–430 of 528 posts

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you have some first hand experience here, but this is a very HN-style axiomatic argument --- "restaurants must have issues with meat going bad that ordinary people don't, ergo their meat must somehow be mummified with preservatives". Isn't it in fact the case that fast food restaurants have, relative to supermarket consumers as an entire cohort, extremely high and predictable turnover? A neighborhood sus…

> I'd trust any well established sushi place with ahi and salmon than I would my own fridge. FYI, in the US it is common to mummify fish with carbon monoxide. It preserves the fish's color despite age. The best way to stop oxidation is to add a reducing agent! I don't think CO is a problem, but it is a hack restaurants use that consumers are unlikely to be aware of which masks the visual indications of freshness.

AFAIK this is specific to tuna and done by places like fish markets, that publicly display it. A restaurant would most likely be getting it frozen and vac packed.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. I wish this urban legend would die. Fast-food beef and chicken at major chains is no different in quality from what you buy at the supermarket. A McDonald's burger is 100% ground beef and salt, no "additives" or "fillers". And Taco Bell ground beef is ~90% bee…

last i checked, soy, oats, etc were not spices

I don't see any oats, and the soy is soy lecithin, which is an emulsifier for the beef and fat.

https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/05/tacobell-beef-ingredien...

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. I wish this urban legend would die. Fast-food beef and chicken at major chains is no different in quality from what you buy at the supermarket. A McDonald's burger is 100% ground beef and salt, no "additives" or "fillers". And Taco Bell ground beef is ~90% bee…

last i checked, soy, oats, etc were not spices

Soy is an emulsifier, and oats are used for texture. Last thing I'm going to complain about eating in fast food is oats, though.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#424

I'm preparing a large dinner for an organisation at the moment and decided that we'd make the menu vegan/vegetarian (we use a wonderful Italian caterer, so flavour isn't going to be missed). When I mentioned it to some omnivore colleagues, they asked why and I shrugged and said "the Amazon is burning". They shrugged back and said, makes sense. It's not many years since I would have expected complaints at not catering…

vegan/vegetarian

Which is it? Vegetarian would hardly be worth complaining about, but I'm really struggling to come up with a vegan Italian menu that sounds appetizing.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#425
post #84
post #2

I think it's fascinating how all these fast-food chains are jumping on artificial meat. It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper and less gross at the same time, and it migh…

Can you make a clearer, better-cited case for "low cost chains serve meat that could barely even be called meat"? KFC serves (primarily) whole muscle chicken†, and the general US appetite for "dark meat" chicken is so low that we've been accused of "dumping" it on other countries and messing up their markets --- KFC seems to have no trouble sourcing its inputs effectively. KFC's suppliers include all the major chicke…

I've presumed that the reason Taco Bell uses the word beefy was because they can't legally call it beef. Much like cheap "cheese" is a processed dairy product and not actually labeled as cheese.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#426
post #222
post #2

I think it's fascinating how all these fast-food chains are jumping on artificial meat. It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper and less gross at the same time, and it migh…

Why do you think plant-based meats are lower calories than regular meat? IIRC they are pretty similar as far as calories go. There's no evidence plant-based burgers are healthier. Why would eating something super processed and filled with carbs be better than eating meat?

> Why do you think plant-based meats are lower calories than regular meat?

It's totally possible they aren't; just a reasonable guess.

> There's no evidence plant-based burgers are healthier.

There's plenty of evidence that eating red meat on a regular basis is bad for you. Chicken is admittedly a different story.

> Why would eating something super processed and filled with carbs be better than eating meat?

Many veggie patties are filled with fiber and most are filled with protein (from beans, soy, etc.). I don't know the nutritional details of the Impossible Burger or the meatless chicken featured in the article, but generally meat substitutes are not just carbs.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#427
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you give it a name that alludes to it being meat you're setting the product up for failure because people will ofcourse compare it to meat and since its not meat they will judge it as "worse."

Soy milk is an entirely different product than animal milk and they don't taste at all similar, yet I'm ok with it being called "soy milk" because "soy-based beverage that looks similar to milk" just doesn't roll off the tongue.

Call it soy juice.

Soy beans don't have nipples.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. I disagree entirely, but there is no need to relitigate this debate here. If by any chance you have never read the pro-meat argument, the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is a pretty good primer.

I realize that sourcing wikipedia is kind of lazy but I lack the time to read entire books full of every sort of misinformation that happens to be going around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vegetarian_Myth From the article: --------------------------------------------------------- For the earth to survive, Keith thinks, the human population needs to be reduced by more than 90 percent. She also argues that the hu…

Every book taking a stance on a controversial subject is going to have those kinds of criticisms from the opposite side. It doesn't make those criticisms true.

I don't endorse the book or her particular worldview 100% but I believe she does bring some true evidence to light about the good aspects of meat.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#429
Not to get off topic but the History Channel's three-part mini-series The Food That Made America is fascinating. You get to see where we were, what changed, as well as what hasn't changed.

I found the bit about Heinz more or less inventing the assembly line to be fascinating.

Re: Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you give it a name that alludes to it being meat you're setting the product up for failure because people will ofcourse compare it to meat and since its not meat they will judge it as "worse."

I imagine it's easier to compare it to a burger than it is to spend marketing dollars on a new plant-based sandwich. I also imagine that because it's comparable to a burger, you're not alienating those who are on the margin that still like meat, but are open to trying a plant-based "burger".

I think "burger" is diversified enough that people can accept it not being meat and not compare it directly to meat. When you name a specific meat though like "plant based chicken" you can't think of anything else.
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