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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

#531

Post by tcfhgj »

thereddaikon wrote: post #55
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…

I don't consider eating meat a problem. Its the Vegans who seem to have a problem with it. Not everyone else. And they are a loud minority. The "problems" with meat have more to do with how the industry operates than the actual practice of eating meat itself. We are omnivorous. And the health issues with meat are overstated by those with an agenda to force their diet on others.

the problem with meat has to do with green house gases that will make living on this planet quite uncomfortable for most people

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

#532

Post by vnorilo »

pvaldes wrote: post #514
Cannabat wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture. What do you think the animals humans like to eat, eat? A heck of a lot of grain and other plants. "Animal agriculture" includes the fluffy animals (with whom we may empathize - they ain't robots) and the massive farms that grow their feed. Animal agriculture incidentally kills and displaces far more other…

> It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture. Is exactly what happens. Without cattle there is not the need of meadows anymore. Not wildflowers, butterflies, hedgehogs, molluscs or birds. Soy fields have a biodiversity composed of: Soy. Period.

The bulk of soy production is for cattle feed.

https://ourworldindata.org/soy

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

#533

Post by kuschku »

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.

I've been vegetarian since 2011. I never liked the shitty bean burgers or saitan sausages.

But in 2018, some flexitarian friends showed me these new meat replacements, like Rügenwalder's veggie lineup, Nestle's Incredible Foods and later Beyond.

And it's only at that point that I started including meat replacements in my meals. Now we're including at least one type of meat replacement a day.

And 9 of my closest friends have got pretty much the exact same experience. We're all between 20 and 30 years old.

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

#534

Post by herbst »

So I rarely eat processed food at all. More often than not that slightly upsets our stomaches.

Impossible, beyond and whatever all the brands are called did all heavily upset my and my partners stomach so far. Just the same ugly feeling like after a burger king visit but for longer.

No issue with black bean, Quorn or veggie patties. No issue with actual meat. We aren't picky.

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

#535

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

walthamstow wrote: post #517
throwaway290 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm very surprised to read this, because my understanding (from the UK) is that US chicken and egg farms have a horrendous salmonella problem stemming from high numbers of chickens per sqft and low regulation on things like clean bedding. This is the reason US eggs are washed, removing their natural antibac coating, and therefore need refridgeration whereas UK/EU eggs are not and do not. I remember reading a lot abou…

European farms cram their chickens together in a pool of their own shit too. The only difference is they vaccinate for salmonella.

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

#536

Post by antihero »

ls15 wrote: post #360
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.…

Fake meat is a replacement for meat, not for existing vegetarian food. It is a common misconception that vegetarians want food that looks and taste like meat, but is vegetarian or vegan. Most vegetarians already know what to eat. Fake meat is for the carnivores who don't want to go cold turkey and have no idea what to eat otherwise.

Yeah but the comment was pointing out that in restaurants they are replacing the latter not the former.

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

#537

Post by Traubenfuchs »

musiciangames wrote: post #510
Willish42 wrote: post #347

This post is crowded with responses from people explaining why they hate Beyond meat FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a…

> sodium content is as bad or worse than just plain regular beef Hasn't the dietary sodium thing been found to be a non-issue, except for a few individuals with high blood pressure? https://www.cochrane.org/CD004022/HTN_effect-low-salt-diet-b...

High sodium diets are "associated with chronic degenerative diseases including renal diseases" "in a hypertension-independent manner". They are associated, among many other ailments, with strokes, cancer and heart failure.

https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32738302/

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

#538

Post by Rob_Polding »

Maybe the industry will realize that most vegetarians and vegans find anything like meat revolting. They much prefer vegetarian meals that are not ultra-processed and still resemble the vegetable used to make them.

Personally, the taste and look of beyond meat make me urge and feel like vomiting. It looks and tastes too much like a dead animal. I never miss the taste of meat, in fact, I hate the idea of eating anything that used to be alive.

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

#539

Post by SilverBirch »

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Beyond Meat had a mad run up in the same way that loads of companies had a mad run up in the ZIRP environment, and now the real questions are being asked: What's the actual TAM, what's the long term margins, what are the competitors in this space. Their market cap was like $7Bn, compared to Kraft Heinz at 45Bn. In the long term, do plant based meat alternatives form anything other than another type of food in the existing market? No. Do BYND have a monopoly on plant based meat alternatives? Also no. So why would BYND trade like anything other than comparable food companies?

On top of that, does BYND really seem likely to be a independent company long term considering the other consolidation we see in the market? This is a market where on the supply side you have Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Neslte - massive consolidation. On the demand side you have Walmart. What does that mean? It means it needs to either grow massively to the point where it can be independent, or the price needs to come down to the point where an acquisition is attractive. We're probably reaching the latter of those two right now.

It could be that plant based meats in general grow to became atleast as big as the meat industry, but the likelihood of that being reflected in BYND's stock price is slim.

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

#540

Post by sfusato »

I think what companies who want to cater to vegetarians and vegans should do is focus more on providing plant based foods that AREN'T pretending to be meat. I'm not a vegan, never have been, but I quite like a lot of vegetarian foods. But I tried a beyond burger once just out of curiosity and it just... smelled wrong. There was something about it that put me off immediately on a primal level. My guess is that sales surged initially as curious non-vegans tried the fake meat, only for most to realize that it wasn't nearly as tasty and go back to actual meat, leaving the main customer base as vegans trying their best to convince themselves that no it tastes good actually. Providing options such as grilled vegetables that are actually super tasty is a way better idea than just trying to mold weird processed plant matter into a vague approximation of "meat".
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