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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#141

Post by danielbln »

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…

Lidl has oat/soy milk for 99 cents, and the NoMilk clones for 1,50. In fact, Lidl had a respectable replacement line up now. If you only buy Alpro Milk then yeah, it's gonna be more expensive, but prices have come down tremendously, especially once the discounters hopped on that train.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#143

Post by Pikamander2 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #70

My experience with Beyond (~4 years ago), was that it wasn't as good as Impossible. Impossible seemed like meat, Beyond seemed like nuts mashed into paste.

Yeah, I never understood the hype for Beyond's products. They must have just had great marketing or something because their meat barely tasted any better than any other frozen veggie burger.

Impossible Foods was always more impressive, both from a taste and scientific perspective. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars into cutting-edge food science, including a new plant-based heme production process. That's in contrast with much of their competition (like Morningstar, or countless other brands) who just slapped together some bean paste and spices and called it a day.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#144

Post by ricardobayes »

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.

Some high street chains already make some of their products with plant-based milk by default. I was shocked to hear the cow milk being an "option".

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#145

Post by jjani »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #91
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.

Here in hill country Texas, even Walmart sells MorningStar corn dogs. H-E-B carries most of the Impossible line including meatballs. I made some dirty rice with the IF ground "beef" and it was awesome. There's almost no oil in it, browning onions and peppers required adding some avocado oil (never use olive oil for high temperature cooking). PS: I'm a lazy vegetarian who will eat a real burger every few months. When…

> When vegan parm and swiss cheese get as good as the real stuff, then I'd go vegan.

Cheese I really doubt will get there any time soon. It's pretty doable to make milk-free cheese alternatives with eggs - at least in terms of taste - which is probably per gram a lot more sustainable than proper cheese, but there wouldn't be any market for it.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#146

Post by AareyBaba »

gonzalohm wrote: post #19
hellcow wrote: post #8

This is too bad. Beyond and Impossible opened up the door to me gradually becoming vegan. It was similar enough to real meat that I didn’t miss meat anymore, and from there I found other substitutions which were healthier. Without them I’m sure I never would have started a plant-based diet.

What have you substituted cheese with? It's one of my favorite foods but no substitute has come close to it

Nutritional yeast has cheese like flavor.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#147

Post by jjani »

dmazin wrote: post #92
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.

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

Here in Korea where soy milk has been a staple forever, its price has more than doubled over the last 5 years, now ~$1.4/L. Still cheaper than milk currently at ~$1.7/L, but it used to be twice as cheap as milk.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#148

Post by buran77 »

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…

> The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed.

I don't see this message in there. If you ask me the real message is that companies trying to sell overly processed, way too expensive, imitations of "something" will struggle. They're trying to sell a very expensive mechanical horse. Just give people a car.

Maybe it's a US thing where people are more emotionally attached to the concept of the burger. But I think these companies would be better off selling plant based stuff that doesn't need to be processed to the moon and back with the associated costs, just to imitate the real thing, and still fall short.

Plant based food has been around for millennia, focus on that. More people would eat plant based food if it was more accessible in terms of price and effort to prepare. Imitating a meat burger wastes resources and results in something most meat eaters won't actually find as a good alternative, beyond the novelty factor.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#149

Post by _9ptr »

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…

Well, that is probably just some kind of perception bias.

Of course vegans or vegetarians have more vegan or vegetarian friends.

If it helps you, I know hardly anyone who eats plant base meat.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#150

Post by touwer »

aydyn wrote: post #130
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.

That says a lot about the public
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