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

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351–360 of 947 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. This seems to presume two things: 1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment. 2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math. To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is real…

> "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…

> vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes

> Even if humans could draw this line perfectly (which I'm skeptical of), you'd still need to kill the 'lesser' animals in a way without suffering or fear. I just don't think that's logistically possible.

So your line sits far above vegetables and below legged animals with fish near it on lesser side, I see...

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

#352
post #59
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…

Real climate change can only happen with the cooperation of the worlds biggest polluters: China and India.

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

#353

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…

> vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes > Even if humans could draw this line perfectly (which I'm skeptical of), you'd still need to kill the 'lesser' animals in a way without suffering or fear. I just don't think that's logistically possible. So your line sits far above vegetables and below legged animals with fish near it on lesser side, I see...

I'm not perfect, I probably shouldn't eat fish either. Maybe I'll stop at some point.

Just because you don't do something perfectly doesn't mean it's not worth doing at all.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm less inclined to believe a blog post than I am to believe published & cited articles. Most estimates I've found put overall GHG from diet at about 15-20% of total per capita. And sources like [1] indicate that switching to a plant-based diet cuts that number in half for western countries (the UK in this study). That's 3x your number. Granted, meat substitutes are higher on GHG than eating straight plant-based mea…

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…

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

#355

I wish companies were not able to label and sell these textured vegetable proteins as "meat". They are great products but they are not meat and as scale increases and they become less expensive than meat there will be strong commercial profit motives to replace real meat with "* meat" for monetary reasons. I'd strongly prefer for increased funding to isolated tissue culture methods. That way we could have real meat w…

there was a small push by the meat lobby to do exactly that a couple years ago [1]

I think it's a silly form of regulation. there are plenty of non-milk milk products, or "fruit flavor" things that don't have any fruit

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/technology/meat-veggie-bu...

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

#356

All of the sudden - I get it. These co's are dealing with a really shitty, commodified form of beef that they'd love to develop an alternative to. So the immediate benefit is they get to serve vegetarians, but the long term is they can transition off their price-above-all meat supply chain.

Kind of a win-win-win. Companies like it if they can just press soy or peas and fats into patties, environment likes having less bottom of the barrel meat farms, animal welfare is better at the high end farms, maybe the veg patties are a bit healthier(?).

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Every anthropologist: Human brain development skyrocketed and were able to maintain them when meat became a regular staple to their diet. Just pick any documentary or book on the evolutionary development of humans. Any! I'm tired of hearing this same bulls…

>The one thing I agree with vegans is the fact they want people to get the processed trash out of their diet. Except, i don't think i've yet met a vegan that doesn't consume ultra processed soy and or gluten based products. All these meat alternatives are ultra processed to make them resemble meat. They're made of ultra processed protein and vegetables, spices and additives to improve taste, colour and texture and to…

Here's a perfect example of the ultra processed vegan food: https://www.mccormick.com/spices-and-flavors/other/bacn-piec...

It's not surprising that the ingredients list is similar to Doritos: Textured Soy Flour, Canola Oil, Salt, Caramel Color, Maltodextrin, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Lactic Acid, Yeast Extract, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate (Flavor Enhancers), and FD&C Red 40.

It's basically and engineered umami delivery system.

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

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Every anthropologist: Human brain development skyrocketed and were able to maintain them when meat became a regular staple to their diet. Just pick any documentary or book on the evolutionary development of humans. Any! I'm tired of hearing this same bulls…

I think this is a strawman. It can be true that meat provides a lot of good nutrition. It can be true that the human cooking/eating of meat led to better nutrition and development in ancient times (when people ate less of it). It can also be true that in the modern world you can get that nutrition without meat and there may be other good reasons to do so (animal suffering, environment, ability to feed more people, mo…

It may be that the extra nutritional benefits of meat can be matched by plant products. But the Beyond Meat offerings do not achieve anything close to that. They are made of highly processed industrial ingredients that are designed to approximate the texture of meat but not the nutritional profile. Pea proteins are not as complete nor bio-available as meat proteins, and the fatty acid profile is very different (and IMHO very inferior). To the extent that your purpose is greater health for yourself rather than less suffering, these products don't provide good value.

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

#360
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taco meat [EDIT: in Taco Bell's usage] is a perfect application, since its texture is already squishy and the flavor is dominated by spice. Plus, it's wrapped in a shell and mixed with lettuce and other things. Even a mediocre fake meat is enough to pass. Beyond Meat should have no trouble producing a virtually-indistinguishable taco meat.

Taco meat is a perfect application, since its texture is already squishy and the flavor is dominated by spice Cheap fast food is a perfect application, There are plenty of higher quality tacos in the world.

Well yeah but this is a Taco Bell thread haha
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