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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

#371

Post by olyjohn »

bpye wrote: post #240
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find that Beyond Meat is 'okay' in a burger when it's got all the other flavours going on, but I was recently playing around with using it in other dishes like meatballs and wasn't nearly as happy with it. It has a weird aftertaste that I can't quite identify, and whilst not awful, isn't terribly pleasant.

I bought a pound of the "ground beef" to try it out. Pretty sure it was Beyond beef, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't smell and taste like cat food when I opened up the package. It was fucking revolting, and totally ruined the dish I was making.

There must be some special way to prepare it to make it taste good. There's no way I'll take this stuff and make burger patties out of it just like I would regular ground beef.

I'm not the only one either, do a search for "beyond smells like..." and look at the autocomplete results.

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

#372

Post by mlindner »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #316
kens wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

AFAIK there is no subsidizing of the beef industry in the US directly. There is subsidies for the sales of common feed plant crops and that's an indirect subsidy for growing beef, but that also applies burgers made directly from plants.

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

#373

Post by ninth_ant »

frankzander wrote: post #341
xyzzyz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies are losing a lot of money. That the raw ingredients are cheap doesn’t matter much if the cost and complexity of processing is high.

So you seem to know what's complex on this products. Share your knowledge. I claim that this products are not complex or not more complex as meat based products

Let’s see what we know:

1. Raw materials are cheap 2. Expensive end product 3. Company is losing money

The most straightforward explanation is that the processing is expensive in some way, unless I’m missing something here. I feel like the burden of proof should be on you to establish that the straightforward explanation is not accurate beyond just a claim.

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

#374

Post by arrrg »

oifjsidjf wrote: post #365
tptacek wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quoted post unavailable.

You mentioned a ton of things that change (which, sure, they do, after all it would be weird if, after processing when things taste differently, nothing would have changed), you did not make the causal link to things changing in a way that is detrimental to health.

Just because it changes doesn’t mean it‘s bad.

Even your only point where one could argue that there is a potential obvious negative health effect (the vitamins) is only an issue if there are actual vitamin deficiencies that matter.

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

#375

Post by friend_and_foe »

You don't see meat eaters trying to make their broccoli taste like hamburger patties.

Vegetables are supposed to taste like vegetables. They're good without needing to be processed. Nobody wants to buy uncanny valley meat substitute, except as a novelty. And novelty business models work, but these guys misread their market and thought it could be a daily meat replacement, for a group of people that don't eat meat, or a group of people that eat real meat, not the fake stuff. Of course they failed.

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

#376

Post by agentgumshoe »

ajmurmann wrote: post #367
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.

To each their own. I greatly enjoy the flavor of meat, but feel like a serial killer when I think about the animal suffering and to a lesser extend carbon emissions. While I also get a slightly odd feeling in my stomach from Impossible beef (doesn't happen with their cyber chicken), it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger without feeling like I just tortured a puppy.

You'd be surprised how many animals die in the process of scaled agriculture and displacement that occurs to create these replacement goods. But they're not the big fluffy animals we anthropomorphise, so it's easy to accept.

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

#377

Post by bryansum »

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.

Not exclusively, of course, but the degree of processing of food greatly influences our body’s insulin response, which can over time have huge impacts on health (leading to fatty liver disease / metabolic syndrome / obesity / diabetes). This is why, for instance, fruit juice is so much worse for us than the whole fruit — most of the fiber is removed which would otherwise slow down digestion and temper insulin response. For more info I’d highly recommend Jason Fung’s Obesity Code book — he’s a nephrologist specializing in diabetes treatment.

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

#378

Post by Double_a_92 »

I try to eat less meat, but to be honest I haven't really found a "plant-based" product that actually tastes good. At best it works for products that are highly processed, and over-spiced anyway.

But e.g. things like minced meat alternative just taste awful, no matter which brand. I'd rather just put more veggies in my food, or mushrooms, or more natural things like tofu and spice it myself...

I see those plant-based products only as an alternative to very cheap, low quality meat. E.g. Id rather eat a plant based "chicken" nugget, than one made from meat scraps full of bone splitters and cartillage.

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

#379

Post by friend_and_foe »

henrikschroder wrote: post #267
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.…

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. You are not the target group for these products! The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper , we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's t…

So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat and actively seek it out? And they're catering to them by... replacing existing vegetarian options? They must not have read your comment. Sounds like a bad market fit.

The number of people who eat meat and don't care if their meat is made of meat has got to be in the 7 figure range worldwide. The number of people that don't eat meat and want their vegetables to taste like meat is probably larger, though still miniscule. It's failing because there's no market for it.

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

#380

Post by adastra22 »

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…

Why though? Animals can be farmed cheaply, so what’s the problem?
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