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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

#331

Post by chrysoprace »

markdown wrote: post #141
elif wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't know why your comment was downvoted so heavily. I'm sure a baked bread dish topped with a red sauce and cheese-imitations taste nice, but they simply aren't pizza.

Now if you remove the cheese-imitation you have marinara pizza.

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

#332

Post by grecy »

iknowstuff wrote: post #86
danpalmer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Calorie density doesn't make a meal unhealthy

Can you list a five things that are calorie dense that are healthy, and five things that are not calorie dense that are unhealthy?

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

#333

Post by grecy »

fullshark wrote: post #33
belltaco wrote: 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.

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.

> Mcsomething it had to be

Why?

Their burgers are BigMac, Quarter Pounder, (and Quarter Pounder WITH stuff), Cheesburger, McDouble, Hamburger, McChicken, Fillet-o-Fish.

While "Mc" is the start of some of the names, it's certainly not a must.

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

#335

Post by rsynnott »

golemotron wrote: post #209
bane wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifelong meat eater here. I'm really happy about this news and hope it sticks over the long-run. These new plant-based burgers are basically zero penalty ways to eat more responsibly. They taste about as good as the normal "ok" burger from FastFoodJoint(TM), cost about the same, and are less worse for the planet and everybody on it. It's also more accepting for people who have various dietary restrictions and opens u…

> It's also more accepting for people who have various dietary restrictions Except for those on a ketogenic diet.

I can’t imagine McDonald’s is a great option for that, anyway.

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

#336

Post by bArray »

I've enjoyed for years beetroot burgers - they're not meat but with goat cheese they are epic. These newer plant based burgers do of course address some ethical concerns around meat and certainly seem more sustainable.

With any eye on public health rather than sustainability: I wounder what these plant based burgers will do in the long run. I've been on the keto diet for quite a while now which leans heavily on animal-based fats and proteins, never felt healthier. With animal fats for example most of them are quite good for you. It's some of the plant based fats that are really problematic (typically the ones that melt at room temperature).

I really suspect the "sugar crisis" might actually be the "carbohydrates crisis" (i.e. not just fizzy drinks and sweets, but bread, pasta, rice, cereal, etc). I think most people have diets such that they run off pure carbohydrates 24/7 and then get the "shakes" when they go a few hours without them. I think plant based burgers will still be packed full of carbs, nothing to say of the buns and additional toppings.

I understand that these plant based burgers aim to break the perception of "plants taste awful, meat tastes good", but I wish more was done where it really counts in McDonalds meals, like chips, buns, batter, etc.

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

#337

Post by detaro »

markdown wrote: post #306
detaro wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that relevant to the question of what appeal vegan pizza has to people that consume it?

It isn't. It's a response to the person I was replying to, who called me a liar.

... but you don't seem to think that the cheese is suffering-free, you just don't particularly care according to your post?

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

#338

Post by simias »

dasudasu wrote: post #288
manishsharan wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

Inuits are often used as a gotcha in support of meat-based diets but it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. For one thing they're so often brought up because they're the exception, not the rule for human diets, their diet is a consequence of the very dire living conditions in the Arctics that makes agriculture impractical. For an other, their diet is not similar to your average meat lover in modern Europe or USA: a lot of fat, not a lot of carbs, meat is eaten raw (which changes its nutritional content), they eat organs and skin (not just the flesh):

>Vitamins and minerals which are typically derived from plant sources are nonetheless present in most Inuit diets. Vitamins A and D are present in the oils and livers of cold-water fishes and mammals. Vitamin C is obtained through sources such as caribou liver, kelp, muktuk, and seal brain; because these foods are typically eaten raw or frozen, the vitamin C they contain, which would be destroyed by cooking, is instead preserved.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine#Nutrition

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

#339

Post by crooked-v »

falcolas wrote: post #11

I 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…

It sounds like they probably cooked it wrong. From what I understand cooking both the Beyond and Impossible burgers can be a bit finicky and easy to overcook/undercook, which is part of why they've been so slow in rolling it out to restaurants.

For a point of comparison, last time I had a Beyond burger it had texture basically identical to a beef burger cooked medium (a little more dry than my usual preference).

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