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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

#731

Post by michaelteter »

cr3ative wrote: post #170
michaelteter wrote: post #149

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…

These products exist _because_ your claims about mushrooms and quinoa being acceptable (and somewhat available) just aren't true. There seems to be this army of people who say "compressed vegetables in a circle" are acceptable burger alternatives; they're really not. This market isn't for existing vegans/vegetarians in most cases, it's for people curious about going that way or cutting down their consumption.

You missed my point completely. Mushrooms can provide a nice chewy texture to balance other textures in a vegetarian dish. The effect is similar to what meat provides. It's not a processed meat replacement that attempts to mimic meat.

Quinoa can provide small chewy things and also absorb spices as it is cooked. Then, like ground beef, it can be mixed with other foods.

Just because something is a reasonable substitute doesn't mean it must be a processed "replacement" (as they use the word).

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

#732

Post by PM_me_your_math »

How is anything plant-based considered meat?

By its very nature, it is not meat. It is plant fiber.

Words have meaning, and without meaning we have chaos.

I think the problems with plant-based "meat" is the fantasy that it is "meat."

It will never be meat, just like insects will never replace a steak, even if Bill Gates starts jumping up & down and demanding we eat it to save planet earth.

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

#733

Post by michaelteter »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #192
cr3ative wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These products exist _because_ your claims about mushrooms and quinoa being acceptable (and somewhat available) just aren't true. There seems to be this army of people who say "compressed vegetables in a circle" are acceptable burger alternatives; they're really not. This market isn't for existing vegans/vegetarians in most cases, it's for people curious about going that way or cutting down their consumption.

Crazy that the people who don't eat meat can't see the properties of meat that meat eaters like and look for. Why on earth would anyone listen to a vegetarian about what makes a good meat alternative. If a steak chef says an alternative to steak is X, I'll listen.

You assume that vegetarians have no history or experience as carnivores. That's certainly not the case for many vegetarians, myself included.

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

#734

Post by now__what »

maury91 wrote: post #429

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…

It depends on the dish. With burgers, for example, I much prefer an Impossible Burger patty to any meat-based burger for the flavor alone. I also love vegetable-based dishes, but I seek out Impossible meat in addition to those. I also enjoy mostly non-prepackaged, unprocessed food, but it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can enjoy both.

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

#735

Post by dirtyid »

dubcanada wrote: post #137

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…

Pretty much this, I don't care if taste is 50-80% facsimile, but I expect cost to be so as well, and nutrition profile to be superior.

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

#736

Post by satvikpendem »

Swizec wrote: post #479
maury91 wrote: post #429

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…

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…

Indeed, as someone who is Indian but not vegan or vegetarian, my meals during the weekdays are meatfree and usually vegan as well. This is not by conscious choice, the recipes are simply made that way. I suppose back in the day where meat was expensive, as you mentioned, so people made vegetable based meals and that's what stuck. During the weekends with family gathered, people eat meat, just as I do too on weekends. It becomes a sort of mini feast every weekend.

In the US, it often puzzles me to hear that some people actually don't consider a meatless meal a meal at all, as if they have to eat meat for all three meals of the day. That is unknown to Indians, generally speaking.

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

#737

Post by satvikpendem »

saiya-jin wrote: post #472
maury91 wrote: post #429

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…

When I was backpacking around India and Nepal for 6 months altogether, I just stopped eating meat - their chicken pieces were always just bones with tiny bits of meat here and there, mutton was worse than chewing gum and that was it for the meat, food safety notwithstanding. Now enter a wonderful universe of vegetable curries and masalas where every household has their own twist on recipes and it all tastes so much d…

> their chicken pieces were always just bones with tiny bits of meat here and there, mutton was worse than chewing gum

This is strange, maybe they were exceptionally poor but generally speaking, the chicken or mutton in India is not just bones and definitely is not the texture of chewing gum. Now I don't know what they were doing wrong cooking that mutton but every time I've made it, it comes out incredibly, it melts in one's mouth. I hope you reconsider Indian meat dishes.

I agree on the vegetarian dishes, I mainly eat those during the week, but we get meat on the weekends.

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

#738

Post by akiselev »

legitster wrote: post #24
scantis wrote: 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…

I think the problem with those calculations is that the grain fed to cattle can be incredibly low quality and efficiently grown/harvested (not to mention subsidized). So it's probably a much lower ratio than 1:25 if you factor in plants that are actually high in protein and calories.

A lot of the grain fed to cows is distillers grain [1] and brewer's spent grain [2], which is basically industrial waste that would otherwise go to compost.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewer%27s_spent_grain

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

#740

Post by c256 »

tredre3 wrote: post #701
ricardobayes wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, not the meat itself, but the nitrosamines used to cure it, that's the bad part. According to my old boss who's a cancer researcher, apparently it's pretty carcinogenic. And it's basically unavoidable, the food industry hasn't been able to come up with anything better. Not using it, and having widespread botulism is not very fun.

> Well sure, not the meat itself, but the nitrosamines used to cure it, that's the bad part. Burger meat isn't cured, though.

It turns out that most fast food burgers are made from heavily processed meat that includes various preservatives and whatnot that make it noticeably less healthy than plain hamburger, unfortunately.
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