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Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

bloomberg.com

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Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#371

Post by inferiorhuman »

koliber wrote: post #320

When my wife and I tried these meat alternatives -- a burger, and Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sausage -- our conclusion was that they have a real chance at replacing low quality meats. If you've ever eaten good fresh sausage or a quality burger, you know how it differs from the fast-food burgers and breakfast sausages served at chain restaurants. Beyond and Impossible will have a hard time competing agains the quality s…

I'd flip that on its head and venture to guess they can do well against most meat except the nicest stuff. It works a treat for the super low end stuff (e.g. fast food like McDonalds or Burger King). For a lot of dishes I'd cook meat is a background flavor (e.g. mapo tofu) where the nuances of super fresh ground meat would be lost and for that Impossible did well enough. The issue I had is that Impossible has a more beefy flavor when I'd typically use pork in that dish.

For the mass market high end stuff I'd expect lab grown meat to be the thing to keep an eye on because…

  As long as they can bring the price down, they'll do alright
  in the non-quality meat markets.
Prices are going to continue to increase for the things that go into meat production. Water. Fertilizer. Grain or grass. Depending on how things go I'd bet that the fake meat would only have to keep their costs steady to compete on price.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#372

Post by forgotusername6 »

prepend wrote: post #304
chimprich wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. Proteins, fats, sugars, enzymes, hormones, antibiotics (quite likely with factory farming), microorganisms... it's just our labelling laws that mean they get to be lumped together as "meat". They're still chemicals assembled by organic nanotech.…

> If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. No, I don’t think so. Most of my beef has a single ingredient: grass. Some have two ingredients: grass, grain (there may be different grains though). Even if you listed the molecules, the ingredient list for beef is much shorter than beyond burgers.

And plastic. And other contaminants that have entered the food chain.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#373

Post by brodouevencode »

rob74 wrote: post #229
lampe3 wrote: post #161

Can we add an "in the US" at the end? Since for EU countries this is not true. I'm living in sweden now and lived in germany and poland. Plant-based meat products are growing in numbers and the price of meat is going so high that its cheaper to buy the plant-based one. In Germany one producer of meat sausages want to turn 100% plant based[1]. I will not go into the whats better and not for you. Since this highly depe…

I'm from Germany, and I can confirm that the number of vegan alternatives to any imaginable animal product have increased sharply both in quantity and quality over the last years, to the point that you can get good vegan alternatives at discount supermarkets now. Even in the US, I wonder if what Bloomberg is calling a "flop" is a real flop or just some companies falling short of their over-ambitious forecasts (or the…

Beef prices have fallen in the US over the past year (quite unlike all other meat) because farmers increased production. That certainly contributes to the "flop", but anecdotally no one I know (in the US) likes or even seeks out the fake meat. It's just not accepted here as far as I can tell (and I work in the restaurant/hospitality industry).

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#374

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

lampe3 wrote: post #161

Can we add an "in the US" at the end? Since for EU countries this is not true. I'm living in sweden now and lived in germany and poland. Plant-based meat products are growing in numbers and the price of meat is going so high that its cheaper to buy the plant-based one. In Germany one producer of meat sausages want to turn 100% plant based[1]. I will not go into the whats better and not for you. Since this highly depe…

Yep, i've almost completely stopped eating meat because the vegan and vegetarian replacements are so good.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#375

Post by acdha »

koliber wrote: post #320

When my wife and I tried these meat alternatives -- a burger, and Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sausage -- our conclusion was that they have a real chance at replacing low quality meats. If you've ever eaten good fresh sausage or a quality burger, you know how it differs from the fast-food burgers and breakfast sausages served at chain restaurants. Beyond and Impossible will have a hard time competing agains the quality s…

I think this is the key. This isn’t a business which will be an overnight success but it’ll grow over time, especially as climate change, water shortages, or rising fuel costs start making real beef more expensive.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#376

Post by brodouevencode »

zidad wrote: post #321
blowski wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, but not always. I can get freshly produced sausages from my local butcher.

"fresh" sausages most likely contains some of those preservatives too, as they prevent worse things like botulism. Unless maybe they're made the same day as you consume them?

When butchered a clean facility foods without nitrates will last longer than a day.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#377

Post by thiht »

the-smug-one wrote: post #66
raghavkukreti wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water, soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, 2% or less of potato protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, food starch modified, soy leghemoglobin, salt, mixed tocopherols (antioxidant), soy protein isolate, zinc gluconate, thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B1), niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and vitamin B12. This is the list of…

[flagged]

> That looks like a completely reasonable list of ingredients

22 ingredients in a steak is not reasonable, whatever the ingredients are.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#378

Post by pfdietz »

diydsp wrote: post #319
raghavkukreti wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water, soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, 2% or less of potato protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, food starch modified, soy leghemoglobin, salt, mixed tocopherols (antioxidant), soy protein isolate, zinc gluconate, thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B1), niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and vitamin B12. This is the list of…

Almost all of those are protein and vitamins - good for you. Then there are some carbs. Not horrible. Even sunflower oil gets a bad rap bc it's assoc w proc foods but it's fine just don't get it too hot or overconsume: https://www.webmd.com/diet/sunflower-oil-good-for-you Coconut oil's sat fat is highly contested and mixed. Very hard to untangle its effects but it seems to be nonlinear: A little seems okay.

Excess vitamins may in fact be bad for you in some situations. Studies using antioxidants A, C, and E found they can accelerate cancer growth.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#379

Post by XorNot »

prepend wrote: post #304
chimprich wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. Proteins, fats, sugars, enzymes, hormones, antibiotics (quite likely with factory farming), microorganisms... it's just our labelling laws that mean they get to be lumped together as "meat". They're still chemicals assembled by organic nanotech.…

> If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. No, I don’t think so. Most of my beef has a single ingredient: grass. Some have two ingredients: grass, grain (there may be different grains though). Even if you listed the molecules, the ingredient list for beef is much shorter than beyond burgers.

The naturalistic fallacy doesn't somehow become a good argument because you also don't understand microbiology.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#380

Post by lelanthran »

KaiserPro wrote: post #214
xdennis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meat was a luxury product not eaten every day for most of history And nobody want's to return to those dark ages. This devil's alliance between veganism and environmentalism is what put me off environmentalism. Climate change can be softened by banning airplanes, air conditioning, and other things we don't need, not by banning food.

> Climate change can be softened by banning airplanes, air conditioning, and other things we don't need, not by banning food. you mean softened by removing things you dont use. Look at the moment no one is banning meat. There is a reasonably amount of evidence to suggest that the kind of meat consumed and the volume might be the cause of various cancers. I'm not vegan, and like most people I really wish vegans weren'…

> There is a reasonably amount of evidence to suggest that the kind of meat consumed and the volume might be the cause of various cancers.

No, there isn't any reasonable amount of evidence to suggest that. Vegans get cancer at the same rate as non-Vegans.

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