It doesn’t taste that good, it smells weird when cooked, it isn’t actually healthier, it’s typically more expensive than real meat as it’s “premium”, the nutritional value is suspect… the list goes on and on
Yep, for me it just tastes weird.
Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
721–730 of 813 posts
Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nicotine gum won't ever replace cigarettes, nor will people who don't smoke start chewing it. There are non-smokers who use nicotine gum; I'm one of them. Similar effect to caffeine with a lower half-life, so it's suitable to have later in the day. I'm sure that we're a small group, but if nicotine didn't have the specter of cigarettes hanging behind it, I'd imagine it could be quite a large market. Plant-based mea…
> if nicotine didn't have the specter of cigarettes hanging behind it, I'd imagine it could be quite a large market. It drives me a little bit crazy that people think nicotine itself is what's harmful about cigarettes. The myth is slowly eroding but the common knowledge about nicotine — aside from the reality that it is addictive — remains directionally wrong (as common knowledge often is).
Can you elaborate? My understanding is that nicotine raises blood pressure, which is a big part of what's harmful about cigarettes.
Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#723I'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…
100% agreed. Never understood why vegan evangelists would try to convert me with some God awful meat-free sausage rather than a fresh falafel with tahini.
Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well that's not true. Most cattle is grass fed for the majority of it's life at which point they will have them eat at feed lots to fatten up. Second, feed lots can use things like by-products of sugar production (molasses, beet pulp pellets, etc...) for feed. These are not human consumable and require no extra food to be grown. I've worked with a company that does over half a billion in revenue on this alone. There…
> Most cattle is grass fed for the majority of it's life Nope. The majority of cattle industry has transitioned to factory farming and the cattle in factories are fed with edible produce. Not grass. The current meat demand is not something that mere grazing can support. Even if it was possible to do with mere grazing, that's still not an argument: Grazing is done on land that could be used for many other purposes ran…
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Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fake meat feels similar to my Slovenian eyes. There's a whole world of recipes that just don't include meat and are delicious. It wasn't until I moved to the USA that I even realized those are "vegetarian" ... to me they're just regular foods and recipes. Lots of cottage cheese hearty meals with high protein content. It helps that traditional (100+ years ago) Slovenian culture was that you rarely eat meat because mea…
Someone already pointed out the obvious, meat tastes good, but has some ethical baggage. Ala - fake meat. But I think as you're pointing out, people around the world have made amazing dishes for centuries that are completely vegetarian why not eat those instead? And why there's no satisfying answer is because - It's not an either or. Do both is a perfectly valid answer. I've been vegan for 13 years and my partner of…
> It's not an either or. Do both is a perfectly valid answer.
Good point. I think my confusion as a non-vegetarian comes from my habit to just not eat meat when I don't feel like eating meat. "Oh I had more meaty meals than I'm comfortable with last week? Okay we mealprep a natively meatless dish this week. Done"
Like, the idea of having meat substitutes doesn't even occur. Because when I want meat, I have meat. And when I don't want meat, I don't.
Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#726Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because profits must go up. Anything else is a failure.
This is a non-response. Profits go up when you give people things they want in a way that's sustainable and decently scalable. Plant-based meats have definitely not reached their peak of market penetration, and manufacturing costs are expected to continue declining. If they continue to sell and continue to grow the customer base, profits will go up.
> If they continue to sell and continue to grow the customer base, profits will go up.
What I have found is that "profits is not enough", you must be making more profit than the competition.
Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are not supposed to substitute the vegetarian dishes you eat, but the meat dishes you eat. It works for some people, e.g. me.
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 willi…
It would be cheaper if meat wasn't ridiculously subsidised, which needs to change. In restaurants it costs about the same.
Regarding health it of course depends on product and what metric of healthiness we are looking at. With burger patties I consider them to be at least the same. With sausages I would consider the plant version healthier.
Taste is subjective and also a matter of trying out things and getting used to them. I love meat, but I also like the taste of many plant based alternatives as well and sometimes I even crave them over meat.
Ethical/ecological angle is clear.
(I live in EU and consume more actual meat than plant based alternatives.)
Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> It's a crazy product designed for a society with weird eating habits. Expand your research a little bit. Fake meat has been very popular in buddhism countries for very long time, often to entice people to switching to non animal food. https://www.foodandwine.com/cooking-techniques/plant-based-m...
I don’t want to point out specific cultures. But that article is not the counter point you think it is:
To compensate for her homesickness, Ng decided to sell her own line of vegetarian imitation meats, and partnered with manufacturers in Taiwan to develop and import many of the dishes that she grew up with. In 1994, she opened up May Wah Vegetarian Market in New York City's Chinatown, and stocked it full with packets of imitation steak, spare ribs, shrimp, mutton, and grilled eel—all made some sort of combination of soy, seaweed, wheat gluten, or mushrooms.
It didn't land well. "Unfortunately it was not a good beginning for us. People were hesitant about trying these products," Lily says. "They wanted to stick to tofu and beans, and it was very hard for us to get people to try it. We ended up giving a lot of stuff away.
You can get the Chinese fake meat as snacks from your local Asian supermarket. I have Weilong brand fish tofu and barbeque gluten right now. These are meaty, but no where near as convincing as impossible meat. My fish tofu and barbeque gluten snacks have a fish cake like texture and are full of MSG. They appear to be vegan though.
We’re pointing to a culture that is used to a wide range of flavours and textures every day. They don’t needed that much convincing to try a not meat product, but it’s also easier to fake certain meat products. (Their existing fake meats are way cheaper than impossible meat though.)
But Impossible meat wasn’t designed for the Chinese. Or even Asians in general.