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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

#541

Post by kuschku »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #375

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…

Considering Rügenwalder, one of Germany's largest meat processing companies, managed to pivot to primarily selling veggie meat replacements, and grow their business at that, your conclusion is wrong.

There's definitely a niche for this, and it's large enough to build a multi billion dollar company.

And if it can work in the country that's home to the Currywurst, then it can work everywhere.

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

#542

Post by mprovost »

mathieuh wrote: post #487
drewm1980 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the EU. The thing that makes cheese cheese is arguably the mix of fungi and bacteria growing in it. We have some excellent cheeses here that are traditional except for the substitution of nut milk for mammal milk. They are currently specialty items, but that may change. We may have to give up meat and dairy to get through the energy transition, but fortunately the same mold and bacteria responsible for blue…

Could you recommend any blue vegan cheeses? I'm in the UK so I might have trouble getting them, most of the vegan cheese I have access to is basically the same flavour just in different shapes and forms.

Newington Blue by Nettle in London is great. You can find it at Planet Organic sometimes.

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

#543

Post by Traubenfuchs »

"Meat alternatives" are highly processed plant waste glued together with countless chemicals and too much salt, often more expensive than average meat.

I am all for a less meaty diet, but those trendy lifestyle companies like Beyond are not the solution.

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

#544

Post by cogman10 »

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.

Cattle do not eat solely from a meadow. Even if cows are free range, that's generally only a spring to fall state, in the winter they are eating farmed foods (usually hay).

For factory farmed cattle (which is the most common) the situation is far worse.

An individual cow needs 24lbs of food per day. How much soy does one person consume in a day?

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

#545

Post by johnnymorgan »

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 not vegan or vegetarian however some of those veggie burgers were great because they didn't try and fake it as meat.

This was an ideological value prop, not one based off customer pain points.

Good post

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

#546

Post by jlokier »

nradov wrote: post #271
esparrohack wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

When I was in Switzerland I ordered a vegetarian dish at a restaurant, and it came with bacon in.

"I think there's been a mistake. There's bacon in my vegetarian meal."

"Oh, that's not a mistake. Bacon isn't meat, we think of it as a garnish."

This happened in two places, one of them the canteen at my workplace.

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

#547

Post by cik »

IMHO this is the same sort of issue that hydrogen as a car fuel has. It's a stop-gap, interim measure that people hope will succeed prior to full bore measures like lab-based meat.

But, it's more than that. It's also economic. These things cost more than meat themselves. They also cost more than other vegetarian friendly (and tastier, but that's subjective), patties. Even worse, they've trying to drive up consumer cost of alternative burgers in general. I can either spend 32 NIS on a 4 pack of really good vegan burgers, or I can spend 24-30 NIS on a 2 pack of "plant based meat burgers". Heck, they actually cost ~25% more than meat burgers here.

I may have personal reasons to not like them. But from a purely economic point of view, they just don't fit here. Interestingly the data shows that they also don't sell here.

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

#548

Post by sfusato »

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 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".

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

#549

Post by johnnymorgan »

sph wrote: post #497
froggychairs wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know red meat isn’t healthy. Most (not all) fake meats try to replicate red meat. What proof do you have them being unhealthy? Impossible for example has fairly simple list of ingredients. Better macros than burger ground. Anecdotally. My father in law has had to stop eating red meat due to health concerns. He enjoys impossible products just fine with no negative concerns in blood biomarkers or examines (several y…

> We know red meat isn’t healthy. I think you mean we have studies of dubious quality blaming red meat. And scores of people repeating the same trite arguments. It's the same people that brought to you salt causes high blood pressure and saturated fat causes atherosclerosis, pushing the low fat craze and the obesity epidemic. Sure, meat is bad, go eat hyper processed fake meat.

Thank you!

Those studies were all ideological driven and would never pass replication.

Mongols vs China, diet was a defining factor in the Mongols victories.

Meat and dairy, the dairy gave them tons go vitamin D as well.

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

#550

Post by johnnymorgan »

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.

I never considered this aspect, really good point.
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