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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

#481
This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake meat hasn't *replaced* the real meat industry, that they have failed. Odd criteria, IMHO. I'm quite certain it could be assumed rather easily that such a thing would not happen, especially in a few years time. The fact it has stuck around this long makes it clearly *not* a fad.

(Anecdotal, but noting this:) My nearby Walmart Neighboorhood Market has all sorts of plant-based meat products, and that section has only expanded over time, not the reverse. I have tried some frozen meals by Impossible and really enjoyed them, as well as some other assorted items from those sections.

I do think that price is still an issue, but real meat maintains a much larger, more established market and supply chain so that is to be expected (unless fake meats are cheap to produce and we're being gouged).

But overall I would lean towards them being more popular now than I've ever seen before- or at least all of my local grocery stores' choice to use up more space for these products seems to imply so.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certainly not saying red meat is good, I don't eat red meat. I'm just saying that the whole make a plant burger like a meat burger and bam climate change solved is not going to work. Advertising it as a meat burger won't either, cause it's not. And that just makes meat lovers angry. It would be better to focus on making veggie burgers better. Not making a terrible copy of cow. > Slowly over generations is really…

I AM saying that red meat is good -- both for your health and for the environment.

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021...

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/eating-...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7256495/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eating-less-red-m...

You're going to need to put more effort into that assertion.

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

#483

I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. I know it’s a bunch of stuff to make it look like meat, but it’s basically cow meat vs a burger containing 50 random items and chemicals that is worse or equal in nutritional content then cow. Like one impossible vs cow is 14g of fat vs 16g of fat. 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. They are not even that much better for you. Rather than trying to get…

The goal of the "meat replacements" that are Beyond and Impossible was never being better for you (from what I recall). It was about offsetting the footprint of raising cattle.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Some vegans believe that it is unethical to kill animals, and that they should have the same rights as us. Of course, they're wrong because animals aren't able to think. Others believe that meat is bad for the environment, however I don't know if that is correct as I haven't done any research on the topic.

> Of course, they're wrong because animals aren't able to think.

and you know this by what mechanism?

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

#485

My perspective from France: Fake meat has never been so available. There are several restaurants that serve it that are not your "we are explicitly vegan" restaurants, burger king served some, and all major supermarkets have it in stock in the freezers right next to normal meat. However, the price is still unattainable. A few days ago i bought patties to make burgers and meat was about 1 euro/100g and plant meat was…

I dont think price is the problem. quality is. I pay my meat 3 times the price you pay yours because I go to the butcher and don’t trust supermarkets. but fake meat I wouldn’t even eat for free. the taste is too bad. If they could make good vegan meat even at a high price there will be an audience.

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

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Some vegans believe that it is unethical to kill animals, and that they should have the same rights as us. Of course, they're wrong because animals aren't able to think. Others believe that meat is bad for the environment, however I don't know if that is correct as I haven't done any research on the topic.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest that "animals aren't able to think" before. Could you please explain what you could possibly mean by that?

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

#487
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…

Turns out beating nature is pretty hard. Cows look basically like processing plants. They produce food, fertilizer and energy (biogas).

Depends on your metrics. If you consider land and water use as a factor they are very inefficient. In terms of nitrogen (for fertilizer etc.) we get most of from the air these days (via the Haber-Bosh process). Manure also has a cost as a source of water pollution and food contaminate. The CO2/NOX emissions are a downstream cost. We are paying for these as externalities and subsidizing the industry via our taxes in turn.

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

#488

I'm not a fan of plant-based meat, this is most likely because of my culture ( I'm Sardinian ), we do have many meat based dishes and many plant based dishes, and honestly I don't see the need to cook the meat based ones with processed food that tries to replicate the taste and consistency of meat. I believe that if you don't want to eat meat there's a world of recipes that do not involve meat and are made to elevate…

> I'm not a fan of plant-based meat, this is most likely because of my culture ( I'm Sardinian )

Many of the well-known plant based meat companies make their foods for American consumers. That food taste is not similar to what we are accustomed to in the Mediterranean. You can give a try to Heura's mediterranean items. Its an European company and it knows the Mediterrnanean cuisine well:

https://heurafoods.com/es/productos/bocados-mediterraneos

https://heurafoods.com/es/productos/albondigas-originales

https://heurafoods.com/es/productos/bocados-especiados

https://heurafoods.com/es/productos/picada-troceada

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

#489
post #481

This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake m…

The problem is you could have said the same in the 90s for veggie burgers. Existing and slowly expanding doesn't mean it hasn't been a flop - especially considering the monumental amount of capital & hype that was put behind plant based meat

From that perspective, it's definitely been a flop (so far). Jury is still out on long-term lab grown meat.

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat tastes really good. I think there are many people who want to eat less meat but really enjoy meat. I am one of those people.

[flagged]

> it is the most environmentally friendly option

Its not. You need 30 kg of grain or other edible product to make just 1 kg of meat. We are literally turning more food to less food.

An unrelated statistic showed that if the world has increased its meat consumption just a little bit more, we would run out of food. The conversion rate is that bad.

...

Context:

https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/blogs/hidden-driver-fac...

> It is estimated that livestock consume 70% of the grain grown in the US, and that half of the water consumed in the US is used to grow grain for cattle

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