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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

#361

Post by p1necone »

rarefied_tomato wrote: post #286
mathgorges wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fat percentage criticism strikes me as a bit odd. At least where I am (USA) ground meat is categorized by its fat percentage and 20% fat is the standard I usually see in the supermarket. I guess what I'm saying is: 20% is indeed a high fat percentage, but it's also the typical fat percentage for conventional meat so it feels disingenuous to use it to criticize plant-based meats.

The discussion of the fat percentage misses the relevant concern. Mineral oil, unlike vegetable or animal fat, is a petroleum product and carcinogen that bioaccumulates in body fat. The oekotest.de link also discusses methylcellulose as a cause of indigestion (a symptom mentioned in this thread), and the presence of genetically modified soy. GM crops are a concern because of their tolerance to high pesticide levels.

The 20% fat does not consist of mineral oil. The mineral oil content is separate, and from contamination from machinery etc (presumably much much less than 20%).

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

#362

Post by dilap »

endisneigh wrote: post #118

Is beyond meat actually healthier than meat? If you search my question you’ll see the results are hardly conclusive. What’s everyone’s take?

Personally, I very much doubt it.

Meat is an ancient food. We've evolved as hunter-gatheres, with most of our calories coming from hunting. It would be very surprising if we were not well-adapted to eating a lot of meat. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes which eat a lot of meat, like the Hadza, have excellent health.

Something like Beyond Meat is novel; it may well be OK, but I'd certainly exercise a lot of caution before trusting it.

Another way to look at the question, while incomplete, is just to look at the breakdown of the nutrients. Per cronometer.com, here's specimen A:

https://imgur.com/a/uEWhL7E

and specimen B:

https://imgur.com/a/zcAXeya

Which of those looks healthier to you?

To me, they look pretty similar, except for A has a lot more PUFA, and a lot less vitamin B. There is a lot of controversy about PUFA, but my belief is too much of it is one of the main causes of disease in people eating "Western-style" diets.

So I'd guess specimen B is healthier; that's the cow burger.

(Tangentially, is there a good website to easily share pngs? Imgur compression is pretty brutal for text stuff.)

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

#363

Post by jimmygrapes »

gonehome wrote: post #324
fastball wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If at some point in the future we discovered a way to identify and measure "suffering" in all creatures, and (given this) further found that the animals we eat do not experience it, then what? What if we managed to measure the opposite of suffering (whatever you want to call that; I'll go with pleasure for now)? What if the animals experience quantifiable higher pleasure when raised as food? What then?

I'm sure you have thought of these scenarios in some way and have a more nuanced judgement, as most people I've talked to have. I'm just curious what are your reasons? Maybe they'll convince me!

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

#364

Post by mywittyname »

giarc wrote: post #112
aphextron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and yet their stock price is down..... this market is hard to read! Stocks don't just magically go up forever on good news. They've run a loss for the last 4 years in a row, and they've missed their last two earnings by more than half. They're already massively overvalued as it is.

But those factors would have been priced in prior to this announcement.

Traders were expecting better news than they got.

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

#366

Post by hammock »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #148
elktea wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

.

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

#367

Post by redisman »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #41
JoshTriplett wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer Impossible Burger as a substitute for grounds, but Beyond Meat also makes things like hot dogs and breakfast sausage, which Impossible doesn't.

YES, Beyond has some incredible sausage products! I go with them for sausage and Impossible for burgers.

Those sausages are definitely better than the burger patty to me. I just wish Impossible would get more products out since their burger patty is the first uncanny valley leaping veggie meat I've had.

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

#368

Post by havelhovel »

NoOneNew wrote: post #306
nickelcitymario wrote: post #148

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…

>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 thought the argument was that fire allowed us to process meat and acquire the calories needed to be more productive.

Regardless, your argument seems to be that eating meat is better than starving. That isn’t an argument for eating meat. It’s an argument for food security. Guess what food security depends on. Reduced emissions.

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

#369

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

>> This is the best news I've heard all week.

Not meaning to snark, but I don't see the good news. A manufacturer of mass-produced, low-quality, highly procesed food has struck a deal with large companies that specialise in selling exactly that kind of food. That the food in question is plant-based makes no difference at all. Companies like McDonalds, KFC and PizzaHut are responsible for the normalisation of industrial food production that is causing widespread environmental destruction and they have no incentive to solve the problems it creates. Switching to plant-based alternatives will simply change where the damage is done. This is just typical greenwash.

As a for instance of how companies like McDonalds encourage industrial farming and agriculuture tactics that are detrimental to the environment:

A Mongabay investigation, prompted by a report done earlier this year by the NGO Mighty Earth, suggests that customers buying chicken from some of Britain’s largest supermarkets and fast food chains may unwittingly be fuelling rampant deforestation in the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian savanna.

Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald’s buy their chicken from Cargill, the biggest private company in the world, which feeds its poultry with imported soy. The U.S. food distributor purchases its soy from large-scale agribusiness operations that often burn and clear large swathes of native forest to make way for their plantations.

https://www.mightyearth.org/ukmeatinvestigation/

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

#370

Post by einpoklum »

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…

I'm no biologist, but even assuming all of that blog post's sources are reliable - it is still cherry-picking findings:

* Not counting livestock contribution to GHG, but rather an estimate of how much removing it would reduce GHG (which is room for a lot of speculation that is very hard to support).

* Preferring a figure taken from a single paper by two individual researchers over the United Nations' official FAO statistic, which is 14.5% of emissions due to livestock lifecycle.

* Focusing on how forestation is challenging, while the source acknowledge that the de-forestation is very damaging.

* Ignoring the huge amounts of land necessary for growing livestock (Example: ~55 times the area for peas for same amount of protein [1])

* Ignoring the question of the distribution of meat consumption among people in the world today, and the feasibility of a meat-rich diet for everyone.

I'm sure there's more, but this is enough not to be very receptive to the claim of misguidedness.

PS - Due disclosure: I eat poultry and occasionally other meat. But I am still worried about the environmental impact of its production, with the foremost aspect being de-forestation.

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=15588468

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