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Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

nytimes.com

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Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#251

Post by plaguepilled »

Sebguer wrote: post #244
plaguepilled wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people, meat tastes good, but they want to reduce meat intake or remove it from their diet for health or environmental reasons. The status of 'be a vegetarian' is irrelevant to the material effect.

These companies only really target the environmental, since they're not actually any healthier than actual meat.

Apologies, I think I used "health" in a misleading way.

My intention was not to suggest meat substitutes are strictly better than meat for losing weight, or reducing heart disease, general public health advice (I am not qualified to even make those comments!).

The scope I was hoping to address was situations where an individual needs to replace meat for their specific dietary requirements. In this case, meat substitutes may be useful if, say, there is something in meat causing inflammation for the individual.

This is largely "what-if" though, and would probably require a doctor's consult to confirm.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#252

Post by girvo »

jitl wrote: post #65
tjpnz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. This upsets me because as a vegetarian the last thing I want is to be reminded of what meat tastes like. Who exactly is this for? Because the last I heard it was being marketed primarily at meat eaters.

I’m a meat eater and I would love to find a faux ground beef or faux ground pork that I can use in the kitchen exactly the way I use beef/pork in my recipes. I would prefer such a food if it was similarly priced to animal, but more sustainable, because I would rather be vegetarian but not to the degree that I need to give up my favorite recipes. I need it to provide essential umami, salt, fat, flavor. Often vegetaria…

Where I live in Australia, Coles has a vegan mince option that is pretty excellent. It requires longer to cook though, but it works brilliantly in chilli and pasta. $7.50 AUD for half a kilogram (and $4-5 on special), which is close enough to the price (and sometimes cheaper!) for real beef mince that I'm happy to use it regularly (as a vegan). It doesn't taste identical, but its close enough that my vegan partner who has been vegan for over a decade dislikes the smell haha

The trick is you must add a fair bit of olive oil to the pan, as it does not have the same fat content actual mince does. Once you do, it tastes brilliant in the dishes I'd use it for, with the seasoning and such we use.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#253

Post by sdenton4 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #167
techno_tsar wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.

>Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. This is, of course, true, but as a business proposition it's a bit daunting. When you're competing with industrial agriculture, you're competing with a technology stack that's tens of thousands of years old, spans the globe, and employs literal billions of people. It's not quite the same as accepting a couple years of unprofitability when scaling up a social netw…

And yet...

"The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today."

https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:....

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#254

Post by picture »

JasserInicide wrote: post #195
jerojero wrote: post #4

I think this shows us that "technological innovation" solutions are not always the right answer to our problems. I've had these fake-patties and they're good, I've gone to burger king and it's more than good enough. But then again, when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat and the flavor profile is not as good. So I they would have to come up with a really killer product, but…

Easily-available meat is Pandora's Box; we're never going to be able to move away from it. It is what it is. People's eating habits are so fucking hard to change. It should be insanely obvious that talking down to people like they're children and saying "your eating habits are bad and you should feel bad" doesn't work, and often backfires. We should focus on trying to bring efficiencies to our current pipelines inste…

Our current pipelines of CAFOs and the majority of crops being dedicated for livestock and methane pollution is not acceptable, however. It's not possible to significantly improve the efficiency of the fundamentally inefficient process of growing plants to feed animals before feeding ourselves.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#256

Post by girvo »

aidenn0 wrote: post #210
gwbas1c wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try tempah or mushrooms. (You might want to pan fry the mushroom first.) You could also try shelled edamame. They aren't a one-to-one replacement for meat, but even when I've tried the impossible or beyond meat replacements, I find they taste like tofu instead of real meat.

YMMV, but tempah is the single most disgusting soy product I've ever tasted.

The only tempeh I like personally is when we make our own using the Okara left over from making our own tofu -- that tastes fantastic fresh. I've never enjoyed eating the store bought stuff, even from the amazing Asian grocery stores here.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#257

Post by lelanthran »

brettermeier wrote: post #60
nicpottier wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I much prefer a Beyond pattie to more traditional veggie options. It is quite literally a matter of taste though, so you aren't wrong, but your perspective is just your own.

I agree with OP. Fake patties taste like... erm... But a nice veggie patty with peas, corn and stuff is great. Maybe I agree, that this modern crappy fake food is make by meat eaters for people who try to not eat so much meat, but they forgot that a normal veggie patty doesn't need to taste like meat.

> a nice veggie patty with peas, corn and stuff is great.

That's irrelevant - someone who is in the mood for a meat patty burger won't be happy with a veggie patty no matter how great it tastes, unless it tastes like meat.

There's tons of comments here saying how nice veggie patties can be[1], but none of the posters saying this have the self-awareness to realise that the taste of veggie patties are irrelevant if they don't taste like meat to people who want a meaty taste.

[1] I agree, they can be very nice, and when I'm in the mood for one, I choose it.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#258

Post by girvo »

notjulianjaynes wrote: post #179
jjcm wrote: post #136

I'm a meat eater, but am a big fan of fake meats - to the point where I prefer them in some situations. Overall I'm not a huge fan of Beyond Meat. While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience. Beyond kinda just tastes like lower end beef to me. This means…

The irony is that there is no reason these plant based alternatives should be priced higher than meat. The raw ingredients are dirt cheap. You can get pound of TVP or soy protein is like $3-4; and certainly less at wholesale prices. It comes dehydrated, so back of the napkin I'd guess the cost for a company producing fake meat products is like $1/lb or less. I paid $8.50 at a gas station for 2.47 oz of "Noble Jerky."…

TVP is so damned excellent. That reminds me, I really need to write up the recipes I've come up with using them and post them somewhere. Magic cheap protein with an awesome flavour if you rehydrate it with vegan beef/chicken stock and season it well and cook it correctly.

It's even excellent just chucked into some instant ramen (after frying it) with some spring onions!

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#259

Post by jamal-kumar »

Whenever this story comes up I think about how their now-former COO recently "allegedly punched a motorist and bit that man’s on the nose so hard that it tore his flesh" [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/20/beyond-meat-...

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#260

Post by alostpuppy »

gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

Completely agree, I hate it when products attempt simulate meat. There are so many delicious vegetarian recipes! I could eat Indian food everyday for the rest of my life.
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