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McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

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Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#281
post #44
post #16

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We have the McVeggie over here (Portugal) which are meh, but I recently discovered Linda McCartney's veggie burgers and I have fooled a couple of people thinking it was meat. They are very very good IMHO.

Interesting! Where do you buy those in Portugal?

You have some stores around Lisbon, there is one in Estrela. You can also google it and some major chains say they have it but I haven't tried ordering online.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#282
post #143

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What is the appeal of a vegan pizza? Is it even pizza without cheese?

As someone who has eaten vegan pizza, no, it's not, it's an abomination. Just make a veggie/vegan lasagna instead...

If anything that's a reflection on the vegan pizza available to you. Where I live (Melbourne, Australia) there are plenty of really excellent vegan pizza places.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#283

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"buried the news about reduced calories and fat in the tiniest type on the remotest corner of their Web site." Exept how do you reach your target audience now? Vegans wont be checking the remotest corner of the mcdonalds website every sunday. Worst of all, you'll probaly piss off meat eaters who might feel deceived, your main customer.

Would they really get that angry? Most people know that "Chicken" McNuggets are only modestly-chicken-based (and are primarily corn starch and whatever other stuff). McNuggets are still a top seller, even though real 100% Chicken Tenders were on the same menu right next to them for years. Similarly McChicken "nugget-paste-based" sandwiches are on the McDonalds menu, right next to 100%-real Buttermilk Chicken sandwich…

>Most people know that "Chicken" McNuggets are only modestly-chicken-based (and are primarily corn starch and whatever other stuff).

This is not true. Lookup the ingredients

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#284
post #109

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The price of animal agriculture products is artificially lowered by direct subsidy, price controls, and indirectly lowered by the unaccounted ecological costs. It is largely a matter of policy rather than a reflection of market forces. On a level playing field, the cost competitiveness is there. For instance, in New Zealand, one of the largest dairy export markets, I can buy a vegan pizza for the same price. In fact,…

What is the appeal of a vegan pizza? Is it even pizza without cheese?

There is no appeal. Not for me anyway. I actually like fruits and vegetables, so I don't need to mutilate them into some sick facsimile of meat and dairy in order to enjoy them.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#285

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I'd guess because vertical integration is way better for margins at scale. Why be dependent on another company if you don't have to? It's way better to own your own product. McDonalds partnered with Beyond briefly probably to test demand in the market. They're better off investing in their own recipe if they're able to pull it off. I'd guess they can afford to pay the people they need to do it. When I first had an im…

What's weird is McDonalds is a huge food corporation and the process Impossible and Beyond (and 50 other plant-based meats use) are pretty much open secrets. Why don't they just make their own? They're very good at making tasty stuff. I think some of the earlier players like Morningstar that use seitan etc. are actually much closer to what McDonalds wants - especially for breakfast sandwiches.

I'm not sure this is an open, non-patented secret , because there are only 2 companies that make their burger quite similar to meat, and even with that, impossible is much more similar.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the appeal of a vegan pizza? Is it even pizza without cheese?

The appeal of vegan pizza is that no animals were industrially farmed to make it. If you think your cheese is suffering free you are lying to yourself.

You shouldn't make assumptions about how others see the world. I'd prefer that my cheese came from an animal that didn't live in abysmal conditions, but TBH I just enjoy the cheese and don't care all that much where it came from.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#287

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> Many people have an aversion to something if it's called plant, healthy or natural. I don't think this is the issue. Nobody would eat something called "McMeat", it begs the question "What kind of meat?" and usually the assumption is the worst. When I hear "McPlant", what comes up in my head is eating a tree or grass. If you leave it to people's imagination, often what comes to mind is the worst not the best. This i…

The McRib is coming back again? (insert guy looking at girl meme, with McPlant being overlooked for McRib is Back)

It always comes back.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#288

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According to the WHO class 2 is "probably carcinogenic" and what was effectively a meta (or meta-meta) analysis showed that the increased risk was 18%. Do we know how bad vegetable oils are for people yet? Is there any reason to think that they're 100% A-OK? Humans have been eating meat for 10s or 100s of thousands if not millions of years. Humans have been eating highly refined vegetable and seed oils for what, a co…

>>Humans have been eating meat for 10s or 100s of thousands if not millions of years. Technically that may be true but humans only ate meat when the hunt was successful. Most of the time , they had a plant based diet. Meat has always been unaffordable luxury for most peole. The farm grown , tax subsidixzed, growth hormone loaded meat industry is a rather new phenomenon.

Humans might have been eating a lot more meat in the past when they were hunter-gatherers: it's just that their entire existence was centered around getting that food. Look at Inuits and how little plant based food they consumed.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#289
post #58

I think it’ll be a big win when plant-based burgers are cheaper than animal based burgers. From a raw ingredients standpoint plant based food should almost always be cheaper than animal based food because the costs associated with farming plants is lower than the costs associated with farming animals. Hopefully, with McDonald’s scale and with their vertical integration they can make affordable, tasty, and comparably…

Yes, this being cost competitive in the marketplace is a huge win.

Lets not leave out the sole most crucial factor, other than price, being taste.

My proposition has always been the following, and in fact, has gotten me to switch a number of things in my diet to vegan over the years, its really simple

If you blindfold me, and tell me what I'm eating, and I eat it, does it taste like what I'm expecting it to?

When it does, I switch to that thing, if its something I don't care enough about that I want it to be an exact replicable experience, I may switch to it anyway since its often healither and better for the environment.

Given the texture and general makeup of the average McDonald's patty (its not 100% beef, per say, it has alot of veggie based fillers like soy), this may not be a hard test to pass.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#290
post #2

>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.

Agreed it is a terrible name. Honestly I think food companies have no idea how to do vegan options. They keep trying to compete directly with meat and dairy and the results are just kind of unsettling. Just the phrase "no-meat meat" by itself is mildly horrifying. I prefer my food to be recognizable, describable.

Taco Bell did a good job: they just give you a burrito full of beans. The only problem was they have no idea how to cook vegetables with seasonings so the bean burrito is just bland and nasty. For McDonald's, make an actual vegan sandwich: spinach, cucumbers, sprouts for texture, some kind of sauce, tomatoes, a dash of salt and pepper. Vegan food is just like meat-based food: if the recipe is good, and the cook does a good job, it tastes good.

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