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

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511–520 of 947 posts

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

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That'd probably do a lot of damage to their brand, as silly as it sounds, since people wouldn't want to be eating something used as a meat substitute in dog food (which has historically been not very safe/good for humans).

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

#512
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…

Think about it. Cows release carbon based green house gasses. Where does that carbon originally come from? Plants absorbing carbon based green house gasses. I'm not saying that they cancel out, but there must be some consumption of carbon from the atmosphere in order for cows to produce carbon.

If you're an environmentalist trying to convince people to support your cause, you aren't going to talk about the carbon that raising cows removes from the air. You're only going to mention the carbon that gets put back in the atmosphere. That way, the problem seems like a bigger deal. This is not a slight on environmentalists -- its just politics.

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

#513
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a really strange argument. Even though you wouldn't exist if not for your parents, but you would still probably agree that they shouldn't have you for dinner?

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

#514

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.

80/20 is very typical for ground beef, although some people shop specifically for 85/15 or even 90/10. I find the 90/10 lacks flavor.

https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/nutrition-101/how-...

says that you end up with 2.6oz for 80/20, 2.7oz for 85/15 and 3.1oz of meat for 90/10. Not disagreeing with you on flavor, just thought it was interesting that you end up with less burger.

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

#517

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…

I've never seen plant based meat labelled in a way that could trick a reasonable person into thinking it was animal meat. I don't see what you'd gain from not allowing the word "meat" to be used - it's very clearly a product that's trying to imitate various kinds of animal meat, and I want that communicated to me efficiently.

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

#518
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a crusade against meat, it's a crusade between Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as to who will capture the (niche) alt-beef market. McDonald's signed an agreement making BM their preferred supplier of fake beef, so Impossible is put at a disadvantage. Absolutely none of this replaces any real beef with fake beef, or even results in less real beef eaten or sold.

Here's the flip side - Beyond meat makes basic veggie burgers. There's nothing special about them you couldn't make without the recipe. Impossible foods has the yeast sourced heme thats supposed to make it taste and cook more like meat. That's patented, and not easy to replace. So BM can be in every McDonalds for a year and then be replaced by a McFakeMeat Burger and there's nothing they can do. Impossible actually h…

Yup, we don't know what price concessions McDonald's obtained. Really these press releases don't provide a lot of info and are not very good news sources.

I also think there is a good chance MCD will announce their own fake beef product in the future. At least that's what I'd do if I were them -- they probably know a lot more about food science and also know their requirements well.

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

#519
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows need to eat thousands of pounds of plants before they are at a size to get slaughtered and prepared as food. Humans evolved to eat meat as a way to survive through winter. Early diets relied heavily on gathered foods.

how much of that was human edible callories? free grazing cattle will eat plant humans won't/can't. there is alot of land thats used for grazing that is not suitable for planting crops for a variety of reasons.

Except we aren't doing that, the demand for (cheap) beef far, far exceeds the supply of beef that could be made with just grazing land.

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

#520
post #194

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.

You could say the same thing for plants right? They probably don't want to be eaten.
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