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Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

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Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#51

Post by at_ »

Their stuff is good. Here in the UK every supermarket chain now has their own vegan ranges putting out stuff almost (admittedly not quite) as good, priced very competitively. Even a couple of years ago that simply wasn't case.

Random stray thought I had earlier is how interesting things are going to be when we move further away from emulating existing meat products, and become more comfortable eating plant-based stuff that doesn't necessarily resemble (or have names that are a play on) anything else in nature, in the same way Pepsi is just Pepsi. I'd love to take a peak at what menus are gonna look like in 20 years, assuming this shift is the real deal. Are we gonna have to memorise a slapstick sounding list of dozens of engineered protein sources to get by? (Oomph, tofurky, shroomdog... and of course, quorn! etc)

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#52

Post by silicon2401 »

ngngngng wrote: post #29
drewg123 wrote: post #2

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…

Raising cattle can easily become a net negative to carbon emissions if cows are given slightly more space to graze and moved around more often. If all cattle were raised in this way there would be slightly less cattle production but a far more positive environmental impact than if we all switched to vegan "meat". https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grass...

> less cattle production

This idea would lose the interest of anybody with influence over cattle production right here. It's almost impossible to make people simply want less, but it's more feasible to make them want something different than what they want today.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#53

Post by hannob »

drewg123 wrote: post #2

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…

Unfortunately the documentary Cowspiracy is operating with massively exaggerated numbers (it claims meat is responsible for more than 50% of ghg emissions, it's explained on the wikipedia article of the film).

Real numbers from credible sources are that greenhouse gas emissions from the meat and dairy industry are around 15%. Which is large enough to take this problem seriously, but it's still far away from those claims.

I think this is harming the case. The problem is big enough to be passionate about fake meat. No need for exaggeration.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#54

Post by loceng »

partiallypro wrote: post #11
drewg123 wrote: post #2

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…

Are there stats to back up that non-vegans begin consuming more vegan based meals if they have the option? And I mean more than once. A consumer might try it but then go back to normal. At there good stats on repeat buying on a large scale?

There will certainly be people who are indifferent and eat whatever, and be lead/manipulated via the propaganda that "vegan is healthier" - which arguably isn't true - but eating high-quality, fatty, red meat is healthy; it's the other junk people also eat with red meat that causes problems.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#55

Post by ukyrgf »

Impossible is definitely better tasting, but I'm happy to see Taco Bell is included in this deal (though not in the headline here on HN). I haven't been there since they got rid of potatoes, so having a vegan option would make my taco consumption during lunch break skyrocket.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#56

Post by jdavis703 »

partiallypro wrote: post #11
drewg123 wrote: post #2

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…

Are there stats to back up that non-vegans begin consuming more vegan based meals if they have the option? And I mean more than once. A consumer might try it but then go back to normal. At there good stats on repeat buying on a large scale?

I’m just a single data point... But I’m not vegan, but I eat fake meats multiple times a week. In fact I haven’t eaten any real meat in 3 weeks.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#57

Post by silicon2401 »

leereeves wrote: post #4

On a somewhat related topic, has anyone seen any information about how well the Impossible Whopper is selling?

In hopes of boosting the Impossible Whopper, it's the first thing I've eaten from BK that I've enjoyed in over a decade. No hyperbole, it just tastes good whereas to my taste, the rest of BK food tastes pretty dismal.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#58

Post by est31 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #52
ngngngng wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising cattle can easily become a net negative to carbon emissions if cows are given slightly more space to graze and moved around more often. If all cattle were raised in this way there would be slightly less cattle production but a far more positive environmental impact than if we all switched to vegan "meat". https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grass...

> less cattle production This idea would lose the interest of anybody with influence over cattle production right here. It's almost impossible to make people simply want less, but it's more feasible to make them want something different than what they want today.

What you are looking for are subsidies. In the EU you can get subsidies for not touching a plot of arable land at all.

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#59

Post by elktea »

drewg123 wrote: post #2

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…

The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant and the environmental impacts have been greatly exaggerated. See below:

Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%. At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].

and methane: "As argued above, this is not wishful thinking as there is still ample potential for mitigation of biogenic methane in global food systems. Moreover, the global cattle population has not been increasing during the last decade, making its contribution to global warming debatable [Shahbandeh 2020]. It is, however, true that methane has nonetheless been suddenly increasing since 2007. Yet, this can be ascribed to a multitude of potential reasons, incl. geological and fossil fuel emissions, wetlands, rice farming, and landfills [Gramling 2016; Nisbet et al. 2016; Alvarez et al. 2018; Rasmussen 2018; Etiope & Schwietzke 2019; Malik 2021], or a decrease in hydroxyl radical levels, the main sink for atmospheric methane [Turner et al. 2017]

https://aleph-2020.blogspot.com/2019/06/greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Re: Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut

#60

Post by pat2man »

ngngngng wrote: post #29
drewg123 wrote: post #2

This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…

Raising cattle can easily become a net negative to carbon emissions if cows are given slightly more space to graze and moved around more often. If all cattle were raised in this way there would be slightly less cattle production but a far more positive environmental impact than if we all switched to vegan "meat". https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-negative-grass...

I think both solutions work hand in hand. We replace the lower quality meath with vegan alternatives. This allows meat producers to focus on higher value, grass fed products. So we still eat steak but frozen processed meat patties are replaced with plan alternatives.
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