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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

#381

Post by telchar »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #27
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…

I truly don't understand the methane issue. Historically worldwide the # of ungulates is probably well below historical averages. It looks like today we have around 98 million head of cattle in the US. Historically we had bison in excess of conservatively 60 million. This doesn't even begin to count all the animals in Africa. Overall wide life is declining. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194297/total-number-of-c…

Prior to the industrial revolution the CO2 in the atmosphere was significantly less than today, around or under 250 ppm, so a bit of methane wasn't a problem. Now even the same amount of methane when added to the 410 or so ppm CO2 we have today and it becomes a problem. Of we can reduce atmospheric methane it takes off a bit of the pressure on us to reduce CO2 levels.

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

#382

Post by yrgulation »

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…

As a beef “fan” i was amazed by the taste of beyond meat. I am trying to reduce meat (due to practical moral considerations) so dont be harsh. Happy to try such alternatives.

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

#383

Post by hammock »

legitster wrote: post #129

I enjoy eating meat and have no plans of going off of it completely. But we eat so much of it as a culture. And when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too! And I know people blast tech companies for focusing too much on making things flashy and cool…

>when you add up every hot pocket, frozen pizza, slider, hot dog, or chicken nugget, it's hard to argue that most of meat actually being consumed can't be easily substituted. For something healthier and cheaper too!

Read the labels more closely the next time you eat that hot pocket or frozen sausage pizza. A large number of these products already have "textured vegetable protein" (TVP) or other meat substitute in them to pad out the protein on the label and reduce overall cost to produce.

For example, here are the ingredients for Digiorno Meat Lover's (you may have to scroll and click "Nutrition" dropdown. They call it "TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE": https://www.goodnes.com/digiorno/products/rising-crust-three...

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

#384

Post by jay_kyburz »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #352
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…

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

China's one / two child policy is doing a lot more for the environment than what we are doing in most western countries.

That's a sacrifice I can't image us ever making in our democracies.

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

#385

Post by redisman »

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #76

I stopped eating meat in January 2018 and I can honestly say the only thing I miss is a Big Mac! This is VERY good news for me and a long overdue! That being said, whilst I do love a Beyond burger, here in the UK, I was surprised to hear it was Beyond that McDonalds selected for this. While in Orlando 2 years ago, I tried an Impossible burger for the first time and it was incredible. The size, texture and taste would…

I tried a Big Mac recently and it's really not that great, pretty dry. The sauce is the amazing part. I prefer getting a Impossible burger from a slightly more expensive burger place instead now. Maybe I just need to buy a gallon of that sauce and pour it on there.

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

#386

Post by gonehome »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #363
gonehome wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> "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?"

Then I'm okay with it (assuming in this hypothetical the result is true). I'd be surprised since fear/suffering is a pretty base level thing, but it'd change my mind.

> "What if the animals experience quantifiable higher pleasure when raised as food?"

There's still the issue of slaughtering them and the suffering/fear associated with that. Maybe you could argue on net that it's ethical from a utilitarian standpoint if their happy life outweighs their unhappy end. I think though, that I'd find it hard to overcome the negative suffering value they'd incur from getting killed.

One thought experiment is imagine a pig that was historically bred to get happiness from being eaten. Its life dream is to get killed and eaten and that's its main purpose/goal in life, its only source of happiness. In this instance while breeding this animal may have been unethical, it already exists. Now is it ethical to not eat the pig?

I think in the above example I think it'd be fine, but it's also pretty far removed from reality.

Reminds me a bit of this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worl...

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

#387

Post by throwaway5752 »

dilap wrote: post #362
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 befor…

"Hunter-Gatherers"

There is a great deal of misinformation about hunter-gather diets: https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers... or https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-ha... (I didn't invest much effort in finding illustrative links, there are many more, and academic research).

Walking around constantly and digging up/harvesting edible plants, insects, fungi, possibly carrion, and the occasional meat (including organs) is much more likely.

Most of our ancestors' calories didn't come from hunting in most areas. Those that did had lifestyles so different from a modern one that it makes no sense to compare them.

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

#388

Post by p1necone »

ausbah wrote: post #355
superkuh wrote: post #339

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...

I think it's very silly. I as a consumer would like to buy a substitute for cows milk that is not animal based. Being forced to call it "almond juice" or something is just making my life harder (and not making anyone elses life easier).

Nobody is going to think that "almond milk" is actually the same as cows milk and accidentally buy it instead of the dairy product, so what's the problem?

(Also, almond and soy milk are not new products, they've been consumed for hundreds of years in Europe and Asia respectively)

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