How to lower the price of plant-based meat • Hacker News Board

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#341

Post by nkozyra » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

drukenemo wrote: post #231

tashoecraft wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. So many non vegetarian/vegan people say stuff like this and it’s just wrong. Or they’ll say “why have a fake burger, can’t you just enjoy vegetarian food, why does it have to be a burger? If you want burger just eat one and stop trying to copy meat, innovate on your own”. It’s just people completely missing the point. If you get fake meat close enough in taste/texture/price you’ll move a large amount of produ…

Plant-based food aimed at replacing meat is often a too-many ingredient, industrialised nightmare.

Not to mention they still don't taste like meat. The Impossible Burger comes closest and i think it's fine for getting a meat eater to give it a shot but I'd rather eat a black bean burger with just a few ingredients at a fraction of the cost.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#342

Post by dnhz » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #275

markdown wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. People elsewhere in the world pay 50% to 100% more than what Americans pay for beef. Removing some subsidies and making beef slightly more expensive would save money and people would just eat beef one day less/week.

And they'll replace their meat with what? More sugar? Bread? Sugary bread? I think you underestimate how big of a deal food is to people. I believe that any change will be towards food that's even worse for people.

Hopefully with less food in this theoretical scenario because most people are overweight.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#343

Post by krapht » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #240

m463 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I wonder if a meat-based production system is a hedge against catastrophic/extinction events. For example, let's say we have another potato-famine style event. Even a bio-engineered attack that takes out a crop or crops. We could scale back meat production and use the crop capacity we use to support the "meat pyramid" to feed people directly until the crisis has passed. Subsidizing crop capacity might make…

Government encouraging overproduction of food makes absolute sense. It's this or to store backup because to run food production at an efficient "only as much as I needed" models a disaster waiting to happen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

That's an interesting question: how much would it cost to keep 3 years of food (let's assume the bare minimum - refined white flour) in reserve for the entire United States? What is the cost of food subsidies over the same period?

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#344

Post by shagie » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

tashoecraft wrote: post #203

henrikschroder wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it pushes away those who are on the cusp of moving towards plant-base foods. I think you are completely wrong. People eat meat because they like the taste and the texture, but at the same time everyone knows that meat is produced by killing animals, and that it's much less sustainable than vegetarian food. If you want to get people to switch to meat alternatives, you have to keep everything that's great abo…

Agreed. So many non vegetarian/vegan people say stuff like this and it’s just wrong. Or they’ll say “why have a fake burger, can’t you just enjoy vegetarian food, why does it have to be a burger? If you want burger just eat one and stop trying to copy meat, innovate on your own”. It’s just people completely missing the point. If you get fake meat close enough in taste/texture/price you’ll move a large amount of produ…

I enjoy eating meat... the texture, the savory nature of its flavor.

Back when I lived in the bay, my brother and I found a vegan restaurant - Golden Era. He had taken me to other vegetarian restaurants and they always felt lacking for something. Golden Era... the 'chicken' drumsticks - ok, they were on a wooden stick, but the texture of whatever it was was right. Then Mongolian 'chicken' had a texture to it too and the sauce provided a nice savory to it.

Since then, some others suggested that the texture may have been from jackfruit (some day I'll hunt up some around here and see if I can make a reasonable BBQ Jackfruit sandwich.

But yea - the thing that had me not pass on my brother asking if I wanted to head to Golden Era was that it felt right when it was being chewed.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#345

Post by odessacubbage » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:48 AM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #143

A tangential topic - I really think that in general calling plant-based things "meat", a terrible idea. It does not promote plant-base diet or meat consumption reduction. It is trying to be what is not. I think it pushes away those who are on the cusp of moving towards plant-base foods. Why? Because the consumer is told it is "meat", so they will compare it to meat. They will compare these patties to a real, prime An…

the best veggie burgers are the ones that don't try to imitate meat. my local burger place does a falafel burger that i'd honestly take over beef pretty much any day of the week.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#346

Post by nkozyra » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:48 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #325

snakeboy wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethics aside, I think the parent comment was referring to weird additives and oils in things like the Impossible Burger. That being said, I think it's only fair to compare that to all the antibiotics, hormones, and fertilizers that your average low-grade ground beef has been exposed to or fed.

> I think the parent comment was referring to weird additives and oils Weird, how? Weird, because they have funny names that are hard to pronounce, and are therefore magically "unnatural" and bad for you? Or weird, because their effects on nutrition, digestion, and human health hasn't been widely studied yet?

Both. This pursuit of tasting "kinda like meat" has incurred a lot of odd ingredients most people would normally eschew if they knew the extent of study in human consumption. Plain meat has a much better track record. I don't blame any meat eater for rolling their eyes at this stuff.

And the decisions are sometimes odd. Like beet juice being added not for flavor but so it looks like the patty is bleeding. Meat eaters aren't sold because the veggie burger looks rare.

The truth is meat eaters aren't, en massé, abandoning meat for a plant based alternative that provides little to no health benefit and costs just as much or more.

Will we get there? Probably. But we're in a weird limbo area that is barely appealing to either side of the fence other than as a novelty.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#347

Post by ianai » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:53 AM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #143

A tangential topic - I really think that in general calling plant-based things "meat", a terrible idea. It does not promote plant-base diet or meat consumption reduction. It is trying to be what is not. I think it pushes away those who are on the cusp of moving towards plant-base foods. Why? Because the consumer is told it is "meat", so they will compare it to meat. They will compare these patties to a real, prime An…

Agreed. I described benevolent bacon to someone as “you’re not going to eat it and think “oh wow I just ate bacon” but you will think “oh wow who needs bacon?””

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#348

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:53 AM UTC

M2Ys4U wrote: post #281

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve read, plant-based meat isn’t much healthier than normal meat, it’s benefits are primarily environmental and ethical. True plant-based food should have a health benefit at least, especially over meat.

>True plant-based food should have a health benefit at least, especially over meat. Why?

That’s a good question I guess. Vegetarian food doesn’t have to be healthy, it just generally is in the west.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#349

Post by ianai » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #340

henrikschroder wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or they’ll say “why have a fake burger, can’t you just enjoy vegetarian food, why does it have to be a burger? If you want burger just eat one and stop trying to copy meat, innovate on your own”. It's hilarious, because there's one comment just like that below yours now. > The high high majority of meat consumption is not high quality product, but the absolutely lowest quality possible. Yes, this. A lot of people,…

> The Impossible Whopper is almost there now. It just needs to get a couple of notches better, and be the same price as a meat Whopper and there'd zero reason to choose the meat Whopper anymore. And if you can get the Impossible one cheaper than the meat one, it will be the default choice, I'm not sure about cheaper , I think that might have some of effects - perceived inferiority, etc.

If it means more people are able to eat more nutritiously I say do both. They can pump some more oil into a higher priced version or something.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#350

Post by aylmao » Sun, Feb 07, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #330

aylmao wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but as someone who is not vegetarian/vegan and is from a country with a cuisine that revolves heavily around meat (Mexican) I have to agree with OP. > If you want to get people to switch to meat alternatives, you have to keep everything that's great about meat (taste, texture, proteins), while removing everything that's bad about meat (slaughter, livestock industry). I think one thing is making sure it's grea…

> Trying to offer solutions that don't tackle the underlying problem make hard to guarantee long-term sustainability. Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place. Asceticism doesn't work. Asking people to do the right thing only has a tiny marginal effect. The only solution to get long-term sustainability is to offer people a better, greener, more sustainable alternative, t…

> Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place.

I disagree on two fundamental points. Firstly, current levels of meat consumption, I'd argue, are very much not "human nature". It's more to do with advertisement, and cultural trends which are artificial. Secondly, I'd argue "human nature" has been _modified_ or _overcome_ plenty of times before.

In short-term thinking, yeah, finding a replacement is the straightforward solution. In the long term, the only certain and the most sustainable solution is to address the consumption problem.