Plants can taste great without using mad science to change them to taste similar to animals.
Vegan eggplant India curry comes to mind, so good.
McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
81–90 of 577 posts
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#82I had a "Beyond Burger" the other day. It was larger than you'd ever get from either BK or McD's, but it was still a licensed product. The flavor was pretty good (if a bit too "meaty" as it were), but the texture was very wrong. There were sizable globs of rubbery material in them which was a bit disturbing (think Pearl Tea style tapioca, only 2-3x more resilient). It was as if globules of gristle had made it into th…
They came up with a new formula somewhat recently and I had the same experience. I think it's just awful. Impossible Burger has been a consistent, very burger like experience.
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
"McPlant" is a fairly horrible sounding burger! Burger King here in NZ have plant-based burgers called the Rebel Whopper which is quite a catchy name. Technically, it can't be classified as vegetarian though, because it's cooked on the same grill as the beef burgers. Not sure if the McPlant will be cooked on different grills or not?
What on earth? Why would that matter? Does somebody lose their vegan powers if a particle of fat gets into their burger?
Very simply, you can't sell it as vegetarian if it has meat in it. Vegetarians may choose to abstain from meat for many reasons, including religious ones. Burger King's duty is not to question those choices; it's simply not to deceive their customers.
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder to what extent farming subsidies and implicit subsidies such as the under pricing of carbon emissions make meat burgers less expensive than they ought to be.
The meat (and dairy) industry receive massive subsidies from the the US federal government, and they have massive externalized costs. Some externalized costs are greenhouse gas emissions, downstream downstream pollution, reduced health outcomes in consumers, heavy fresh water usage. The meat & dairy industry received the majority of the benefit from the $867 billion farm bill passed in 2019.
In exchange for these subsidies, farms have lots of regulation and little control over prices. I wouldn't consider that to be a benefit. The main downside is that it keeps around the bad farmers and makes it harder for the good ones.
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#85Plants can taste great without using mad science to change them to taste similar to animals. Vegan eggplant India curry comes to mind, so good.
This is McDonald's we're talking about. They are very much more concerned with mad science than taste. They're concerned with keeping costs low and their food easy to transport, store and cook (or reheat).
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#86>somewhat unsurprisingly, will be called "McPlant." Is it just me that didn't find the name obvious, and perhaps not a good one? Many people have an aversion to something if it's called plant, healthy or natural. I think Impossible Foods was right in marketing their products for meateaters rather than vegans.
> Many people have an aversion to something if it's called plant, healthy or natural. Moreover, to many "McPlant" will sound like a healthy alternative, when in reality many plant-based meat replacements are a similar number of calories or higher than meat, and are unlikely to be healthier in general.
Can we decouple the idea of "healthy" from calories? Calorie density doesn't make a meal unhealthy.
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#87In several countries in Europe, McDonald's has served plant-based alternatives for years. In Sweden they serve the McVegan, for example: https://www.mcdonalds.com/se/sv-se/product/mcvegan.html
The plant based hula burger didn't do so well in the US. Times are different now though...
Although, I do also wonder if a plant is the same thing colloquially as a "plant based alternative".
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#88>somewhat unsurprisingly, will be called "McPlant." Is it just me that didn't find the name obvious, and perhaps not a good one? Many people have an aversion to something if it's called plant, healthy or natural. I think Impossible Foods was right in marketing their products for meateaters rather than vegans.
Mc something it had to be. The question is what is the something. McVeggie doesn't work, because veggie burgers became synonymous with the last generation of plant based burgers. McPlant does sound awkward right now but with the full backing of mcdonalds marketing / their resturant footprint it will roll of the tongue within a few months of launch.
Betting on people ridiculing the name as "McP"
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder to what extent farming subsidies and implicit subsidies such as the under pricing of carbon emissions make meat burgers less expensive than they ought to be.
The meat (and dairy) industry receive massive subsidies from the the US federal government, and they have massive externalized costs. Some externalized costs are greenhouse gas emissions, downstream downstream pollution, reduced health outcomes in consumers, heavy fresh water usage. The meat & dairy industry received the majority of the benefit from the $867 billion farm bill passed in 2019.
>The meat & dairy industry received the majority of the benefit from the $867 billion farm bill passed in 2019.
No, they didn't. The majority of the 10 year funding bill went to SNAP (food stamps). [1]
I do hate how I have to waste my time researching your ridiculous claims, I do wish such extreme takes could just be out right deleted before they cause any damage.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/11/massive-867-billion-farm-bil...
Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu
#90Imo this is a big win, I used to work at McDonalds in France and a big market was the muslim market that would only buy the fish burgers.