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Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

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381–390 of 813 posts

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

#381
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What looks reasonable to you might not look reasonable to someone else, like someone that strives to avoid seed oils and other industrial products and live above 90 years of age.

Avoiding "seed oils" is a mania made up by internet grifters; if you cared about science you'd want to replace animal fats with (non-tropic) vegetable oils!

> Avoiding "seed oils" is a mania made up by internet grifters

Yes, a big FU to those guys. They are akin to conspiracy theorists that will cherry-pick quotes from studies they don't understand and don't cite (how to you even cite something on Instagram?) and spread BS opinions for clicks.

Because of that crap, the <1.8% sunflower oil in your favourite milk substitute becomes a substantial health risk overnight, and you have to hold debates with your partner/family to debunk their falsehoods.

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

#382
post #92

It's the cost. We are meat-eaters and have been trying lots of plant-based products. I was never sold as them being health products, but I liked the (presumed) environmental benefits. Plus, I could make a single meal for me and my Vegan friends. Plant-based meats were supposed to be cheaper. But it never happened. So now we've mostly moved back to normal meat products. (It doesn't help that my vegan friends never sto…

I'm very disappointed in the cost as well. It hasn't come down at all. Not just the fake meat, but even tofu. But the cost isn't the main issue to me anymore, over the years I've come to realize I don't want to support the meat industry where profits rule everything. So I grudgingly pay the higher price of Beyond Meat. And to be honest, it's not that much more expensive, for my particular budget. Two Beyond Meat burg…

> I don't want to support the meat industry where profits rule everything. So I grudgingly pay the higher price of Beyond Meat.

BM is largely driven by the profit motive too

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

#383
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 live in the US and I know it's a big country, so I can only speak for my little slice of the country, but we've always had vegetarian & vegan options at our restaurants, and only recently has plant based meat entered into the picture. Lots of food brought to the US from other places, like Mexico, China, India, Italy, etc. is already vegetarian or vegan, so we don't need to have fake sausage on a restaurant menu when we can have huitlacoche quesadillas, sesame noodles, chana masala, tomato pie, or vegetarian variations of other dishes.

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

#384
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Depends where you live, in SF, LA, Vegas, Austin, and Miami I have impossible burgers all of them time - even Mighty Taco in Buffalo has impossible meat and Buffalo is last to get anything (they “allowed” Uber ten years after everyone else).

The high quality fake meat is great - really satisfies the want for a burger or hot dog since becoming vegetarian and makes a lot of dishes where something like ground beef is usually called for very similar to what I used to have.

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

#386
I'm not sure that this is true but for me personally it doesn't work. I prefer to eat vegetables as 'themselves' rather than to fake it, it just doesn't really sit right with me to expend a ton of energy and processing to make one food into another when the original is just fine. So what if it isn't meat and doesn't look like meat. It feels a bit like a surrogate for a drug: if you're at the point that you mentally need the surrogate you are still not facing the problem squarely, at that point you're telling one part of your brain that 'this is meat' and another part of your brain that 'this is vegan'.

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

#387
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat sausages and cold cuts are processed as well. And are likely made with carcinogenic preservatives! Edit: cancerous -> carcinogenic

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

Making a sausage is a form of processing. Sausage is a processed food, no matter what. The distinction is whether or not it is highly processed (i.e., amount of additives).

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

#388

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…

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“Natural flavors” frequently used to mean, “this product has a small amount of MSG in it, but we don’t want to list that”. At least in the US. I am not sure if the FDA regulations still allow that though.

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

#389
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat and milk are basic foods.

Traditional or basic? Meat wasn't a staple food 100 years ago, it was too expensive for regular people. Same with milk, if you didn't own a cow, you just didn't drink it. You drank some sort of ale.

My grandfather was a kid at the end of the Great Depression. One of the stories which blew my mind growing up was that he ate beef basically twice a year, when his cousins on a small dairy farm culled the herd.

His mother kept chickens, so they had eggs - to the point that as an adult he never eats them because he got sick of them by the time he graduated from high school.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

> I wouldn't take driving advice off someone that hasn't driven for 10 years, even if they passed their test. That's a faulty analogy. The equivalent would be getting advice on alternatives to driving from someone who no longer drives. I don't think I'd request advice on the best form of public transport from someone who drives everywhere and has taken the train once or twice. > The meat eater has less agenda Ha! Rea…

> I don't think I'd request advice on the best form of public transport from someone who drives everywhere and has taken the train once or twice.

My point exactly.

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