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

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

#451

Post by rayiner »

inimino wrote: post #450
rayiner wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re conflating two different things. One is the meat used in the Taco Bell filling, which is 100% beef. Two is the overall composition of the filling, which you’d obviously not expect to be 100% beef. (If you put onions in your taco filling, by that same math, your taco filling isn’t 100% beef either.) There is also nothing “gross” about the additives used in the filling, which are primarily there to improve textu…

High end restaurants aren't skimping on ingredients to survive on razor thin margins in a cut-throat value-driven market segment.

What difference does that make?

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

#452

Post by icebraining »

Symmetry wrote: post #211
maximente wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the economic argument has always been the strongest in my eyes, and it's unstoppable. animals are a huge liability health wise, pollution wise, environment wise, activism wise, logistic wise, etc. most companies don't care about all that stuff at the surface level, but it all translates into dollar signs, which they do care about. as soon as the economic-taste-weirdness function reaches a certain point, i'll expect y…

I'm not sure the environmental arguments support entirely eliminating cattle agriculture. Factory farming with cows kept indoors and fed purpose grown feed, certainly. But there's a lot of scrubland out there that doesn't have enough water for agriculture but which can still support grazing. That can't support anything like our current beef consumption but it could support a fair amount

> a lot of scrubland out there that doesn't have enough water for agriculture

That's for the solar panels!

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

#453

Post by yowlingcat »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #439
tptacek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and the general US appetite for "dark meat" chicken is so low Which is sad, IMO. "All white meat chicken breast" is a bug, not a feature, IMO. Leg and thigh meat has so much more flavor and is much more juicy than breast meat.

Agreed. The fried thigh meat here in the fancy-recreations-of-blue-collar NYC restaurants is delicious, decadent even. I wonder how long until folks catch on.

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

#454

Post by tptacek »

toxik wrote: post #447
phonypc wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parmesan (cheese byproduct and sawdust) Nitpicky, but this is itself misleading. Canned parm is mostly actual cheese, it's just... not very good. "Sawdust" is there in small amounts for anti-caking purposes, not bulking.

I can only speak for myself but I strongly prefer zero sawdust in my parmesan.

Unless you're grating it from a block every time you use it --- which, yes, is what you should do --- you probably shouldn't worry too much about which anti-caking agents are being used.

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

#455

Post by megaremote »

_bxg1 wrote: 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…

It is not just that, growth in fast food has been stagnant for a while now. Anything new they are looking to adopt in a hope to change that. And they will all jump in in case that new thing does have a big growth effect.

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

#456

Post by [deleted] »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #376
tptacek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Can you make a clearer, better-cited case for "low cost chains serve meat that could barely even be called meat"? Taco bell famously admit a few years ago that their beef filling was only 88% beef. CBC did an investigative report in Canada recently that revealed subway's chicken was only 50% chicken. [0] The rest being a smörgåsbord of fillers. The 4 other chains studied in the tests didn't do much better. [0] https…

[deleted]

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

#457

Post by yters »

sterkekoffie wrote: post #446
yters wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, they are using the connotations of common venacular usage of 'meat' to market something that is the opposite of the venacular 'meat'. Newspeak is all about naming one thing by its opposite, and using the connotations of the latter to hide the real meaning, like 1984's ministry of truth. So, it leaves me with the impression that this is not merely normal advertising by association, but a more agenda driven…

A Beyond Burger is not the opposite of a hamburger. They are the same category of product, much like turkey sausages and pork sausages. I think you need to reevaluate your worldview if you think it's a more sound business model to try to trick unwitting people into buying a plant-based product than to just appeal to the base of people already interested in buying it.

If they were only doing the latter, then their packaging would be much more straightforward. You can find other commentators in this set of comments that see the social agenda I'm identifying, although they are in favor of it.

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

#458

Post by michaelmrose »

devinhelton wrote: post #387
namdnay wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. o_O > how fashionable vegetarianism has become I don’t think it’s a question of fashion. However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. Whether it’s in 50 or 500 years’ time, one day our descendants will look back at us and wonder: “they ate corpses?!”

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.

Instead of debating a bad book or whether meat is good or bad for you which I don't know enough about would you like to talk about the ethics? I eat meat myself.

Where do you draw the line as far as ethical behavior towards animals? I think even most who eat meat don't think things need suffer right? After you admit animals CAN suffer and that such suffering ought to be minimized the logical minimum suffering is not raising animals for food save to the degree that is required for the health of human beings. Essentially balancing the 2 factors.

I'm personally hoping that particularly knot can be untangled by artificial meat. If we can ultimately cheaply produce fake meat that is identical insofar as utility there remains zero reason at that point to justify killing animals.

Do you disagree?

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

#459

Post by tobtoh »

hervature wrote: post #137
tobtoh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my issue is that we're intentionally making it harder to sell vegan/vegetarian alternatives by trying to replicate something unachievable instead of coming up with entirely new products. Except they are achieving it. I've eaten Beyond Meat patties and they are close enough and good enough. As a 'vegan-curious' eater, products like Beyond Meat are a halfway point which eases the transition to a vegan diet (or at lea…

That's the general line of reasoning. I don't really buy it since a well cooked meat burger is going to be better than the beyond meat at a much lower cost. For perspective, the price per lb is more than a sirloin steak. Very few people eat sirloin steak everyday and so Beyond Meat isn't going to do much for the in terms of transitioning people who primarily eat cheaper meats. On the other hand, Margarine (invented i…

> Beyond Meat isn't going to do much for the in terms of transitioning people who primarily eat cheaper meats.

That's not really their target market at the moment though. They are aiming their product at 'vegan-curious' people. People who are not adverse to eating more vegetarian products, frequently want to because of environmental/animal welfare reasons, but don't want to cos they like the taste of meat.

Also, it's still very early days though - Beyond Meat can barely keep up with demand and haven't optimised their production at all. I see no reason their price curve wouldn't follow the traditional curve of almost any product where the early premium prices drop as production process matures and output ramps up.

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

#460

Post by webninja »

_bxg1 wrote: 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…

Meat has been highly produced because the gov’t of Nixon’s era and today’s era has been buying up tons of bushels of grain(1). The gov’t bought grain to help support & subsidize farmers and ranchers. Grain is convenient to offload as cattle feed. Cheap cattle feed encourages raising cattle. Cow farts contribute over 40% of the world’s methane(2). Methane contributes 34 times more towards global warming per unit than carbon dioxide.

Thus if we want to tackle climate change, we should rethink our Cold War era grain subsidies and ultimately reduce our dependence on cattle.

Sources:

(1) Freakonomics Radio Podcast

(2) Earth and Space Science Honors course

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