Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

I think you’re right that that is the intent. But since it is more expensive and has worse macros, it doesn’t seem like a good substitute.

If it was healthier and cheaper, I would gladly swap it out. But it’s not, so I don’t.

Alternatively, if it tasted better than meat, I would pay more. But it doesn’t, so I don’t.

I think the market remaining are vegetarians who don’t eat meat for ethical reasons, so they are willing to pay more.

I actually prefer the old veggie patties like boca burgers as they are quite a bit cheaper than beef for the same protein.

I raise cattle (one day for a living, but now a side job and for my enjoyment). Your read on the feed is very true for the feedlots, not trying to discredit that, because if you buy your beef from a feedlot than this is very much the case -- chances are if you don't know where you beef came from, then it came from a feed lot. If your packing says "Grass Fed" than it just means they spent most of their lives in a pasture before being shipped to a feedlot for a miserable last three months of life, so chances are you probably don't know where your cattle came from, even if you're going on the packaging in a grocery store, and it's actually grained to some extent.

There are a few exceptions to this, even in stores. If you buy from Whole Food and get their brand beef, it's grass-only. I know the largest rancher selling to WF, we're friends -- my teeball team beat his teeball team in the season finals last summer.

I mostly raise dairy cows, but if you're going to go through the effort to raise one sort of breed of cattle, it's trivial to add in an even lower maintenance cattle as well. As a result I have three or four animals in my pasture right now who are getting ready for freezer camp. My neighbors are all beef ranchers, I am the exception. But none of us are feeding grain to our cattle. My area sells a massive amount of grass-only beef. We have the luxury of this being basically free for us to do and then having found a niche market willing to accept a lot more money for their beef if it was raised right and fed right. I don't sell my beef the way most folks do, so unless you know me personally, you've never eaten my animals or had our farm's dairy products.

All that to say, there are very good alternatives to feedlots. My beef cattle only need supplemental food (aka more than the green grass in my pastures) between December and April. I did the math, it costs me $140 / year to feed out cattle and it takes two or three years for an Angus to be butcher-weight. That's $420 on the high end for a grass-only steer that'll dress to like 600lbs of beef.

I'd get by with even fewer days feeding except I also own and breed Appaloosas and horses are much harder on the pastures than cattle. If I ran two herds my cattle would keep the pastures in grass until about January -- and with this warm weather I know folks who have YET to feed hay! But with my horses mixed into the herd it means that the grass is killed if I keep them on it -- horses have top and bottom teeth, they can cut grass clear to the dirt but cattle only have bottom teeth and they'll leave about 1/2" of grass on each blade, meaning the grass can continue to regenerate all winter if it's wet and warm enough.

At least in the UK, the plant-based meat business appears to fall between two stools.

In the high-end niche market, plant-based meat is up against organic, grass-fed, free-range, 30-day aged and the like. While itself frequently including awful ingredients like Palm Oil, being (of at best) unknown impact on health and never (so far) being anything other than just about *acceptable* in terms of taste and texture to a meat eater.

While at the other end where there is little concern for animal welfare, climate change, health and even taste. It costs more for the same quantity.

To achieve its potential, the plant-based meat industry either needs to figure out how to do better than millions of years of evolution and target the high-end. Or figure out how to churn out mass-market products at a lower cost than the dead-animal equivalent.

(For my money, churning it out at least appears tractable)

I wouldn't take driving advice off someone that hasn't driven for 10 years, even if they passed their test.

I wouldn't take health advice on faith from someone who has a medical degree but never practices medicine.

It's about relative interest. My point wasn't that vegetarians can't know, but that their advice isn't as valuable to me as a recommendation from a current meat eater. The meat eater has less agenda and more recent experience to base their recommendation on.

> If a steak chef says an alternative to steak is X, I'll listen.

There is definitely more and more meat alternatives in the stores now. One other curious development are these blended meats like 50% meat, 50% mushrooms or 50% meat and 50% plant.