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Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

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

#401
post #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 whe…

Mostly the same for Europe. Varies by country but lots of dishes don’t rely on meat.

But you’re missing the point. The bulk of American sausages sold are fake as hell. If I’m eating fake meat, why not actually eat fake meat

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

#402
post #364
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…

Same in Hong Kong. Recently Impossible, Beyond and (our local equivalent) OmniFoods have been introduced to almost all restaurant menus. It's died down a bit, but still quite popular. And this is the place with the highest meat consumption per capita in the world.

I live in Hong Kong and can only remember one time I saw a fake meat on a restaurant menu, and it was at an extremely western health-focused restaurant of a large gym chain (nood food). It's definitely not "almost all" restaurant menus.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a gross misrepresentation. Ruegenwalder is not turning 100% plant based, in terms of sold products I would be surprised if they turned > 5% plant based, but I don't know the numbers there.

>but I don't know the numbers there When you do know [the numbers]...please let us know. Perhaps before posting?

Luckily, others picked up from where I dropped the ball, and provided useful information. Too bad you are not one of them.

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

#404
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't most food accelerate cancer growth? Cancer needs nutrients to grow the same way normal cells do.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a flop in the UK too tbh. It's been pushed fairly hard, but not that much uptake.

You must live in a very different part of the UK to me then. Every supermarket has extensive plant-based options, Greggs has been expanding their vegan range, McDonalds has the McPlant on the menu permanently now..

The plant burger is not a fake meat patty, it is a vegetable patty. Very different and also tastier than their meat alleged burgers.

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

#406

And we don't need fake meat. It's just something that the food industry can make and sell to us instead of us just eating stuff that grows in the earth. If you want something with a texture similar to meat, many mushrooms will do the job. If you want something reminiscent of ground beef, quinoa with seasoning will suffice. However, limiting yourself to vegetarian approaches of recreating meat dishes, then you are mis…

> However, limiting yourself to vegetarian approaches of recreating meat dishes, then you are missing out on what good vegetarian food can be.

The people looking for meat alternatives are looking for something that looks, tastes and feels like meat.

A

> good vegetarian

dish is not what they are looking for.

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

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, do you believe that olive oil isn't made on a large ("industrial") scale? Or lard, or tallow, for that matter. Man, this is just more FUD, scientists aren't arguing about this, shitty fitness influencers are. But hey, I do hope that you live to 90 or above, cool goal. I just hope you don't waste too much time listening to Joe Rogan. I'm not gonna waste more of my precious (and I guess to you very short) life on…

Large scale is not the same as industrial product. Nearly all food sold is made in large scale. But industrial means going one or more steps further. Processing food changes it. If you sell an apple, even if you harvest a million of them, means you still have an apple. But taking the apple, processing it in some oil, juice, jam and what else, means you have industrialized it, and made something new, with new problems…

Put another way treating meat with ammonia or chlorine and whatever else to turn it into a salable whole chicken or pink slime comes with its own problems.

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

#408
post #7

If any of the planet saving meat substitute promises are true, such a fake meat patty would cost a tenth of the beef equivalent and it would dominate the market. I read somewhere you would need 25 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of beef, ergo one could potentially produce 25 times the amount of substitute. Obviously that isn't true and such a patty is a specialized product of various highly processed plant matter. It is a…

Fake meat isn't just inferior to real meat. It's inferior to just plain old vegetables. It's a crazy product designed for a society with weird eating habits. They're not trying to cook the best vegetable dishes. They're not trying to cook dishes that use less meat. They're not trying to expand your palettes and reintroducing liver, sweetbreads or other weird cuts. All these "green" products convince you to not do the…

For me at least, these fake meats are to get more protein heavy texture options into a dish. Vegetable are way too low in that regard, and there's only so many things I can do with tofu or beans.

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

#409
post #375

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.

Don't count on it. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in the US, the way we solve this problem is to provide ever-increasing subsidies to the entrenched corporate entities that are "sponsoring" the politicians.

It will be exactly like what we've done with hydrocarbon fuels over the last 50 years. To the consumer, gasoline is seemingly half as expensive in the US when compared to the rest of the world; which is why every other vehicle on the road is a 5,000 pound monster truck.

Beef, poultry, and pork are likely going to continue to be cheap because the agriculture lobby is so damn powerful. And the culture war against fake meat hasn't even begun...

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

#410
post #401
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

Mostly the same for Europe. Varies by country but lots of dishes don’t rely on meat. But you’re missing the point. The bulk of American sausages sold are fake as hell. If I’m eating fake meat, why not actually eat fake meat

But you’re missing the point. The bulk of American sausages sold are fake as hell. If I’m eating fake meat, why not actually eat fake meat

No one is making this point, lol. If you want to try to bash America for no reason in particular, at least wait for it to be on topic.

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