Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 645 posts

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#121

Post by vladvasiliu »

microtonal wrote: post #95
karahime wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in both the US and Europe, I have to imagine at least some of that comes down to cost. In Europe, the plant based alternatives (at least where I lived) were actually cheaper, and meaningfully so.

Also, they taste better? I have been a vegetarian since 1999. Even in the small village I lived with my parents, the local supermarket had a meat replacement section. Later I moved to a larger city and the product selection at supermarkets is very large and nice. A few years ago, supermarkets also started carrying Beyond Meat products. We tried them a few times, but they taste absolutely horrible compared to local of…

In my neck of the woods you can easily find plant-based alternatives, but I've found that the best ones are those that don't try too hard to mimic meat.

From a "macro" nutrition perspective they're also much, much better (more protein, less carbs) and don't usually contain a bunch of weird oils and other crap.

However, they're usually a bit more expensive than actual meat.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#122

Post by vladvasiliu »

ffsm8 wrote: post #103
dmazin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, in Britain it's completely the opposite. Alternative milk is way more expensive.

Same in Germany (~1€/l for milk, 2€/l for pretty much all milk replacements. You can obviously buy more expensive milk to, which would give it price parity... But there are also more expensive replacement products. On average, the replacement products cost about 50-100% more. The only way to save money via vegetarian meals is by making everything yourself and not the finished products from the supermarkets (at that p…

> [profit margin]

Sure, but if nobody buys them, a 1000% profit margin won't get them very far. So I think that it's a good enough indicator that more people are buying these products.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#123

Post by go_elmo »

kaliqt wrote: post #113
submeta wrote: post #100

The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating meat or reduce their consumption drastically. Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. I have been eating plant based meat alternatives for four…

It is sustainable.

Your word, plausible

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#125

Post by Cthulhu_ »

submeta wrote: post #100

The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating meat or reduce their consumption drastically. Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. I have been eating plant based meat alternatives for four…

> Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that.

Neither do I, but it's a highly competitive market that competes with both the established industrial meat market, as well as people actually educating themselves on cooking without "meat". I've always seen people buying "meat replacements" as kind of lazy, let's just swap one thing out for another, instead of find / cook something different entirely. I see it as a kind of middle-class virtue signaling, which wasn't helped by the fact the meat replacements are (or used to be, I haven't checked) more expensive than meat. Even though on paper they should be cheaper because growing vegetables should be a lot less resource intensive and more sustainable than the meat equivalent.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#126

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kaliqt wrote: post #113
submeta wrote: post #100

The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating meat or reduce their consumption drastically. Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. I have been eating plant based meat alternatives for four…

It is sustainable.

It is. Just not at the rate we consume it.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#127

Post by mawadev »

Over here, beyond meat is simply more expensive than just buying meat. On top of that, it feels like you eat pure ultra processed product magic chemistry and thats not good. So who exactly is the target audience for that? I'd totally buy it, if it competes with meat prices by being cheaper and if there wasn't so much effort into trying to look like meat and taste like meat, which goes against the entire premise.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#128

Post by t0mas88 »

dmazin wrote: post #68

It’s interesting that alternative meat consumption in the U.S. is struggling but taking off in Europe. One thing I noticed after moving to the UK: alternative milk is normalized here. Like, it’s so common to avoid milk that if you order coffee without specifying, you will be asked what kind of milk you want.

It's not all of the UK, you get asked in London, not in the countryside. Same in the Netherlands, you get asked in Amsterdam but not much outside.

I guess San Francisco also has much more oatmilk latte's than rural villages

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#129

Post by makingstuffs »

The problem with Beyond Meat is that it is insanely expensive. I could buy a free range, organic and grass fed beef burger for the price of their ultra processed burger.

Don’t get me wrong, as a vegetarian, I think they taste nice. They are just too damn expensive and not particularly healthy which goes against why I am a vegetarian. In Europe we have so many alternatives that are insanely cheaper and, as an Indian, we have so many alternatives that haven’t been processed to within an inch of their life.

One thing I found to be a great homemade burger maker is simply getting some dried minced soy protein, mix with some eggs, breadcrumbs and seasoning before wrapping in some cling film and pressing it into a patty. Tastes great, holds it shape and has a burger like texture.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#130

Post by aydyn »

submeta wrote: post #100

The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating meat or reduce their consumption drastically. Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. I have been eating plant based meat alternatives for four…

Beyond meat burgers taste like flavored plastic grounds, so until these plant based alternatives can close the taste gap its not going to go anywhere. And they have had years to make it taste better, so I suspect theres something fundamental that makes it very difficult.

It is just too much to ask the public to buy worse tasting food at a higher price, all to feel morally better about yourself.

Post reply on HN