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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

#311

Post by steve_adams_86 »

sho_hn wrote: post #10
lm28469 wrote: post #7

It really is not that complex to understand: You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or 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 substitutes. The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less…

> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole I think this is wrong, and you're missing where the market is. From what I've read, the meat alternatives actually sell primarily to meat eaters who feel like they should occasionally substitute meat for health reasons or variety. Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.

> Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.

This was my experience. A month or two after dropping animal products, my body just stopped asking for them. I couldn’t care much less if I ever had meat or cheese again. I’ve got a massive repertoire of other stuff I crave instead now.

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

#312

Post by kodah »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101
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.…

I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint. But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger o…

My partner is a vegetarian and she doesn't eat the fake-meat patties, however, she does get these: https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/mornin...

They're really good with no awful side effects or tastes. I like some vegetarian options, but honestly, most of it either tastes nasty or has poor texture.

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

#313

Post by jxramos »

Vinnl wrote: post #306
jxramos wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of an irritation finding it lumped in the meat freezer section at Costco, it's like noise in my search space looking for the real stuff. It doesn't help that they try to simulate the visuals to appear the same as well. Many times I have looked at some packaging and thought "that looks like a good chicken nugget", but then quickly ascertain it's not a chicken nugget. I wouldn't mind if there was some distinc…

I mean, you can pretty much make the same argument about brands you don't like: they look similar to those by brands you do, and occupy the same shelf space. (And for chicken nuggets specifically, I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference, haha.)

true, I think there's a basis for that. When you jump stores like enter a Sprouts freezer aisle you can get disarrayed from the unfamiliar brands and logos and all that and have to orient yourself first in those scenarios too at times.

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

#314

Post by throwaway290 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #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 b…

Spot on.

Safety also matters, US meat industry is really strictly controlled and paradoxically it's safer to eat meat than veggies, especially fresh like a salad. It'd be tough to solve, this. No one would vote to remove meat controls but comparable controls over pesticide/soil/cleanness would be unpopular too as they'd increase prices and make veg tougher to sell.

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

#315

Post by User23 »

ChadNYC wrote: post #282
prepend wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier. I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm ani…

This is a bit old, but it thoroughly examines why the livestock industry is not sustainable. https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

I think it’s fair to say that an industry that’s lasted ten thousand years[1] is sustainable.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle

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

#316

Post by dwohnitmok »

kens wrote: post #284
sdenton4 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/#:... .

Those numbers don't make sense. If you follow the chain of references, they seem to be made up. (Why do I say the numbers don't make sense? a) That subsidy works out to about 35 cents per person per day. How could that possibly reduce the price of a pound of hamburger by a factor of 6? b) In other countries, a Big Mac costs at most $6.71. The $13 figure seems to be nonsense.)

I agree the reference is weak and there is most likely a large amount of conjecture behind that number, but the numbers don't a priori not make sense.

Subsidies can have both > 1 multiplier impacts and non-linear impacts. For example, subsidies allow for artificial economies of scale to kick in that can then bring the price down significantly. However, were those subsidies to dry up, then certain thresholds may no longer be met and you may see again a non-unitary and non-linear rise in price.

Indeed this is the main theoretical reason why a society would be interested in subsidies: they can get back more benefit than what they pay for in the form of the subsidy.

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

#318

Post by cat_plus_plus »

Food is not a startup company, people's tastes are shaped by their culture/religion, childhood favorites and decades in between. Expecting exponential growth is unrealistic how good the product is, and financial considerations quickly come into play once you run out of early adopters. Whoever is up to the challenge must prepare for a lot of patience, optimizing production on thin margins, tweaking product for different recipes and demographics and lots of advertisement and community outreach. Having the product on average grocery shelves is already amazing success for this category, now the hard work begins.

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

#319

Post by steve_adams_86 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #33
lm28469 wrote: post #7

It really is not that complex to understand: You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or 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 substitutes. The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less…

I'm a meat-eater who is aware of the negative health consequences of excess meat consumption and Beyond Meat has been a great gateway/transition food for me. It tastes great, I'm not too worried about how processed it is because it's still better than how meat is processed (e.g. nitrates), and I hope it sticks around. The biggest downside to Beyond Meat for me is the cost. I've tried many of the traditional alternati…

One thing to watch out for with Beyond and Impossible is that they still contain pretty crazy amounts of saturated fats. I know they’re better overall, but for a lot of people those fats are evidently one of the most substantial risks to their health.

I know it’s considered contentious, but the balance of research around this strongly indicates that reducing saturated fats has profoundly positive impact on health outcomes.

I’m not saying don’t eat them or they’re terrible. They do seem better than real meat as far as health goes. I’ve just been blown away by the amount of fat these things contain and I wonder if people realize how much it is.

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

#320

Post by RupertEisenhart »

tptacek wrote: post #308
SoftTalker wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.

The idea that processing determines the healthfulness of a foodstuff is fallacious.

This source says differently [0], at least for meat. Do you have any evidence or reasoning?

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/

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