Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by ska » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

DetroitThrow wrote: post #290

maxerickson wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not magic shit in meat, it's mostly water and amino acids and the remaining fraction is mostly bad for you. (I eat meat all the time, but we know a lot more than barely anything about nutrition. Figure out vitamin RDAs in milligrams if you want an example)

I'm shocked that people seriously believe that the fundamentals of nutritional science are a virtual mystery or has enough "wiggle room" to make ridiculously broad claims about diet necessities. We know almost exact micrograms of iodine we need per day to be healthy. We have a pretty great idea of what the body needs to function optimally and are getting a clearer picture every day. Is this why GMOs became such a par…

If what you were saying were true, we wouldn't have wildly divergent (macro) diet and nutrition claims being made in cycles without clear resolution. Most of them are wrong, it seems, but the science is hard.

You are right we have some pretty good information on deficiency problems with key things like iodine, B12 (topical) etc. We have much less understanding of how even dietary source actually work even with some key nutrients outside of lab conditions, and beyond that dietary nutrition is absolutely full of handwaving. We are nowhere near a clear picture; lot's of people will tell you we are but they still contradict each other regularly. This is not a mature science.

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

#322

Post by leadingthenet » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

hamax wrote: post #194

nightski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 15% is globally also. In the US it's as low as 7% (all of agriculture is 10% - directly from the EPA website). We buy a 1/4 a cow from a local farmer once every six months. It's a pretty low impact way eat meat.

Except for the cow.

The cow wouldn't even exist if it weren't useful to us. Let's treat them as humanely as possible, while not pretending they're something they're not.

If you want to help animals, let's tackle the issue of rewilding and reforestation more seriously.

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

#323

Post by arcturus17 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #277

arcturus17 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find seitan and tofu completely unpalatable, and I can’t rely on eating hundreds of grams of peanuts to fill my protein needs. Lentils are fine... I lift heavy, which I believe is integral to my good health (the evidence on the health benefits of strength training is overwhelming). You do need significant amounts of protein if you lift - this is backed by both research and empirical evidence. Designing 3000-4000kca…

> You do need significant amounts of protein if you lift - this is backed by both research and empirical evidence. Specialized athletic hobbies like powerlifting are sort of irrelevant to discussions involving reducing GHG emissions by scaling up plant based meat substitutes. Niches like that aren't the target market.

I am for plant-based substitutes anyway. It’s a natural vegetarian diet that I would struggle with.

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

#324

Post by gonehome » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #300

gonehome wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are." This was my position for a long time until finally making the jump at the beginning of the pandemic (vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes). For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the envi…

Drawing the line at cognizance is not something you do "in theory". That is where the vast majority of people on the planet draw the line. You going one step further doesn't make the line you've drawn any more objective.

It's not that the line is drawn 'in theory'. It's that they think they've drawn it in the right place (usually humans on one side and everything else on the other).

I think this is pretty empirically wrong and I don't think humans are likely to get it right.

Even ignoring that, there's still the suffering issue.

There is objectivity at drawing the line to the left of neural nets.

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

#325

Post by kmm » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

leadingthenet wrote: post #308

raws wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly dubious of the statement that growing plants to eat them is lightly less polluting than growing plants, feeding them to cattle and then preparing the cattle to eat the meat. Cattle does not sequester CO2 like plants do and emits greenhouse gases. Also uses way more treated water.

Right, but cattle can be raised where growing plants is impossible, and they can be fed by-products of plant agriculture that is not fit for human consumption. It's really not an either-or, something that I feel is often lost in these discussions. Eating plants and meat is complementary, and has been for all of human history.

What percentage of cattle actually subsists on otherwise barren lands, and what percentage is fed soy and grains explicitly grown for them.

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

#326

Post by NoOneNew » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

kekebo wrote: post #315

NoOneNew wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, animals being alive is the general problem now when it comes to climate? At that, the greenhouse gas problem in livestock fed artificially large amounts of grains has been solved by introducing a small amount of seaweed to their diet. That's been kind of a non-issue for the past few years as more and more commercial feeds have seaweed included already. Just because you're not in the agriculture industry doesn't m…

Do you happen to have a source for this?

Let me google that for you: "seaweed livestock feed"

But here, Yale, have a blessed day. God speed. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c...

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

#327

Post by thekyle » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #190

jandrese wrote: post #23

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I agree, Beyond overdoes the fake smoke flavor. But they seem to be better equipped to scale up than Impossible, they've beaten them to mass market in almost every location I've seen.

I bought a package of Beyond Meat. It was right next to the ground beef, and looked like ground beef. I assumed I could substitute it for ground beef in my spaghetti. Big fat nope! I opened the package, and it smelled exactly like dog food. The smell when cooking it was horrible. It completely ruined my batch of spaghetti. I don't know how people are cooking this stuff and enjoying it. Maybe there's some other way to…

Actually that's an interesting idea I wonder if Impossible or Beyond meat have considered selling their stuff as dog food. I'm sure vegan dog owners would love that.

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

#328

Post by DetroitThrow » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #173

dzhiurgis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what undeniable value do forest provides? I live in NZ where which still somewhat recently used to be covered in forests. There’s tons of pastures and forests certainly look nice (and native bush is just something else), but other than that I don’t know why forests so important? Properties with shading are more expensive here, but that also causes more issues with your rain water tanks.

I live in NZ as well - forests provide a myriad of benefits, the ones you'd probably consider most importation is the sequestering of co2 and the production of oxygen (that thing you need to live). Beyond that they are a habitat in which much wildlife finds a more suitable environment (forested areas are protected from birds of prey), act as wind breaks across areas such as the Canterbury plains, help with retaining…

The o2 production that forests and rainforests provide always seems a bit overstated - your surrounding oceans are even better at that, but algae don't help with regional smog much, do they?

Carbon sequestering, wind breaks, increased biodiversity, topsoil protection, game reserves - they may not seem huge to the average person, but like you say they are crucial for our continuity.

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

#329

Post by blackearl » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #292

exyi wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond Meat is not like tofu or so, it is designed to be unrecognizable from meat by tasting it - so you won't have to give on our beloved meat. I also don't want to go with a vegan diet just because "environment", but having a reasonably priced substituent which does not contain tortured animals and has lower env. impact - then just why not.

I've consumed a lot of Beyond and Impossible, and it's good! But still a far way from unrecognizable. In fact, one thing they have made me appreciate is how good some of the "traditional" meat substitutes are. I actually quite like Boca and Garden Burgers et al! Still, the once or twice a year I go to a steakhouse and get a nice medium rare steak - we're a long, long way off from that.

I'm sure Burger King's meatless burger is recognizable to some, but when I tried it I don't think I'd really be able to tell the difference. It's easier to hide when the meat is already super processed like fast food meats.

Agreed that there's still no comparison to a fine steak.

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

#330

Post by yboris » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

elktea wrote: post #59

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 woul…

As I understand, there are places where you can just put cows and they feed themselves off the land. But there is also a tremendous amount of deforestation happening because those lands are then used to grow food for cows that are in other locations.

I find it amazing how well avoiding eating meat aligns good things:

- less animal suffering

- less pollution of air, water, and land

- less waste (inefficient way to get calories)

- better health (assuming you substitute meat with vegetables and not highly-processed food)