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

nytimes.com

271–280 of 1001 posts

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common theory on Beyond/vegetarian meat-like alternatives. At least in my perception, this is incorrect. I eat vegetarian, and know many others in my circles (24-32 year olds, mostly in Ams and NYC) who do, or who try to eat less meat. This: > you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat subst…

I’m from Texas. Total opposite experience. Vegans and vegetarians are rare pokemons here.

One of my coworkers was a vegetarian and went on a business trip to Texas. His associates there took him out for dinner at a steakhouse. After looking over the menu, he asked the waitress, "Do you have anything without meat in it?" She thought for a moment and then cheerfully replied, "We have chicken!"

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

#272
post #215

If you’re vegetarian, why do you want the uncanny valley version of meat? Be a vegetarian. I have always thought that the target market for Beyond/Incredible/etc was not vegetarians, but rather partners of vegetarians. They don’t really want to give up meat but they want to support their partner and/or avoid conflict.

If you're vegetarian, go vegan, otherwise you still support the meat industries, as well as the exploitation of living sentient beings.

If you're vegan, eat whatever you want as long as it doesn't exploit an animal in any conceivable way.

Who cares about this uncanny fake-meats? Only people that exploit animals.

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

#273
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.…

I have had exactly one good veggie patty at a restaurant. The recurring problem is a complete lack of structure so that 90% of the patty squishes out the sides when you try to take a bite. And the restaurant with the good one closed last year, so I might never have a good veggie patty again.

Veggie patties mostly taste fine, but the entire point of a sandwich is that I can pick it up with my hands and take a bite out of it. If the patty can’t stay on the sandwich, it’s not a good sandwich. Just put it on a plate and call it a veggie loaf or something that I can eat with a fork.

Even the older products you get at the grocery store from Boca and Morningstar Farms could be structurally acceptable, but whenever a restaurant tries to make a veggie patty I swear they’re just sticking some vegetables in a blender, putting it in a round shape, and hoping it stays that way. I’ve eaten soups with more structure.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and I think it’s the soya protein. I don’t have any problems with pea protein, but the soya protein makes me feel queasy. I think those meat replacements are good for people who have just become vegan as they give you a sense of familiarity, but after a while you realise that it’s possible to eat a delicious vegan diet that doesn’t consist of mega-processed things trying to be meat.

Probably also the pesticides and industrial oils.

Photos and internal documents from a Beyond Meat plant in Pennsylvania show apparent mold, Listeria and other food-safety issues, compounding problems at a factory the company had expected to play a major role in its future https://trib.al/q1SAHYO

https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_...

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not eaten a real burger or sausage since the 80's and I've only had two of these impossible burgers but they tasted quite nice when I had them and no adverse reactions, but at NZ$14 (US$8.50) for two frozen burgers at my local supermarket, they wont be on my menu often.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is hard at work trying to figure out how to make ground up bugs affordable and palatable

That really needs rebranding. We already eat plenty but of insects… we just call em things like crustaceans, shrimp, and crayfish.

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

#276
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably also the pesticides and industrial oils.

Photos and internal documents from a Beyond Meat plant in Pennsylvania show apparent mold, Listeria and other food-safety issues, compounding problems at a factory the company had expected to play a major role in its future https://trib.al/q1SAHYO https://twitter.com/business/status/1594742995647070214?ref_...

[deleted]

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

#278
If you know cars are problematic, the solution isn't to produce a bicycle that has a "car-like experience". The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful.

I have at least 8 vegan dishes I can make that are just amazingly delicious. A mushroom risotto, veggie tajine, chana masala, ramen, moussaka, general tso's cauliflour, cuban black beans, jajangmyeon. Make it vegetarian and I have even more; give me eggs, chicken or pork, and a whole universe opens up. It's very rare that I ever cook red meat anymore, just because there's so many recipes that don't make use of it.

My favorite fast food restaurant is Pollo Tropical. Their franchise has 140 locations in South Florida. Most of their menu is rice, beans, vegetables, salad, roast chicken, and roast pork. The white rice and black beans with sauteed onions is delicious enough (and big enough) to be a meal in itself. The fried plantains are like savory candy. It's healthy[ish], fast, and definitely not typical American fare. Yet it won't work outside of Florida, because Americans think rice and beans equals "mexican" food.

American culture simply hasn't incorporated foreign cuisines in a way that makes them actually tasty. If it's not smothered in cheese or bacon, they don't want it. It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's. We have a lot more variety in restaurants today, but the home cook is still left with garbage "Americanized" recipes you find on Google Search. We need a new revolution in home cooking to introduce the people to meatless dishes, and we need restaurants (especially fast food) to push them outside the home too.

Finally, we're gonna need to clamp down on meat. There's no way around it. As long as animals can be farmed so cheaply that a few pounds of meat costs $5 or less, people will not stop buying it and restaurants will not stop selling it. Just like we need to make cars less convenient in city centers to emphasize bikes, buses and trains, we need to make meat less convenient.

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

#279
post #35

"Its stock has slumped nearly 83 percent in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33 percent this year, are now likely to show only minor growth." So they still showed growth, the stock just crashed; and the others in the segment who don't have to report numbers are doing better. Just sounds like a discounted stock to me.

That, or it had previously been overvalued. The company was very hyped for a while.

We can't really say that anybody should be shocked to see irrational exuberance and hype of the stock value of a freshly IPOed tech company in the post-2010 economy, after things recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not eaten a real burger or sausage since the 80's and I've only had two of these impossible burgers but they tasted quite nice when I had them and no adverse reactions, but at NZ$14 (US$8.50) for two frozen burgers at my local supermarket, they wont be on my menu often.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is hard at work trying to figure out how to make ground up bugs affordable and palatable

Snowpiercer vibes
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