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

171–180 of 645 posts

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#171

Post by aembleton »

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.

The texture and mouth feel isn't right either.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#172

Post by Klonoar »

bluescrn wrote: post #163
globular-toast wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really a problem with Beyond Meat or a problem with our policies not correctly pricing meat due to not caring about the environment or animal welfare?

[flagged]

Food is not just food: it's culture.

These replacements have value because sometimes you want the thing that gives you that nostalgia kick or whatever specific feeling you associate with food. Old school plant based replacements don't always feel right for this.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#173

Post by jakkos »

bluescrn wrote: post #163
globular-toast wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really a problem with Beyond Meat or a problem with our policies not correctly pricing meat due to not caring about the environment or animal welfare?

[flagged]

Same way that I disagree with shooting people, but I can enjoy doing so in video games

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#174

Post by makingstuffs »

mgraczyk wrote: post #157
makingstuffs wrote: post #129

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,…

Why do you believe it's not healthy? Because of the processes food hysteria stuff?

No, nothing to do with hysteria. We simply have not had access to the substance long enough to be able to accurately say what the long term effects on health are and I cannot help but to assume that there has been a lot of unnatural processing in-order to turn a small, green, pea into a patty which resembles beef.

Processing isn’t bad, as such. Turning beef from a steak into mince is processing and it is fine. But unnatural processing (as I call it) which requires labs and loads of chemicals which we wouldn’t otherwise consume is only logical to presume as unhealthy.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#175

Post by jjani »

jurip wrote: post #133
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's one of my favorite foods but no substitute has come close to it Why do you want to? Lactovegetarianism is far more precedented than veganism.

Cheese uses lots and lots of milk. There are questions of ethics (the treatment of dairy cows is often less than stellar) and carbon footprint (cheese is worse than pork, for example.) I'd really love to see some good alternatives, too. I don't really expect to give up all cheese anytime soon, but having a substitute for at least some of it would be helpful.

> cheese is worse than pork, for example

Such figures are usually "per gram of protein", in which case, sure. Thing is, it's very common for people to eat 200+ grams of pork in one meal, whereas e.g. grated cheese on a pasta dish is <10g. A big slice of cheese is 25-28g, and half the time it's significantly less than 100% actual cheese, with a good amount of filler. The only cheeses that one might eat 50g+ of in one sitting are extremely mild ones like mozzarella, and those are the easiest to replace.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#176

Post by globular-toast »

spwa4 wrote: post #158
globular-toast wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really a problem with Beyond Meat or a problem with our policies not correctly pricing meat due to not caring about the environment or animal welfare?

A lot of people would say it is a problem with making the entire population pay for the moral preferences of a few.

True. People would have said the same in defence of colonialism, slavery, genocide etc.

Generations later it's easy to look back and say "of course that stuff was bad, I would have fought against it too".

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#177

Post by mistercow »

ponector wrote: post #167
mgraczyk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that clearly processed foods aren't harmful because they are processed. All the correlations go away when you control for basic things like sugar and vegetable consumption. The whole idea that processed foods are bad for health is a hysteria.

Treating food with chemicals usually it's not good. Also you simply don't know what exactly are they doing. Like ultra processed american bread is not so good comparing with european wholegrain sourdough bread.

Consider how broad the phrase “treating food with chemicals” is, and you’ll start to see the problem with this kind of thinking. The word “chemical” includes literally everything that food is made of.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#178

Post by birn559 »

ponector wrote: post #167
mgraczyk wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that clearly processed foods aren't harmful because they are processed. All the correlations go away when you control for basic things like sugar and vegetable consumption. The whole idea that processed foods are bad for health is a hysteria.

Treating food with chemicals usually it's not good. Also you simply don't know what exactly are they doing. Like ultra processed american bread is not so good comparing with european wholegrain sourdough bread.

Processing by itself is not a bad thing. Everything is "chemicals" in some sense and what you mean in particular is not bad in general.

European bread as of today is highly processed btw.. it's pretty rare to find a bakery that actually bakes starting with the ingredients. Most just bake pre-processed and pre-made stuff coming from a huge factory.

Typical European/German bread is not terribly healthy to begin with.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#179

Post by Klonoar »

mdaniel wrote: post #85

I know this is about Beyond but I figure the audience that would care about this article would be interested in looking at Juicy Marbles: https://juicymarbles.com/collections/all-products I've tried the thick cut filet and just like you're not going to mistake Impossible for actual burger, so too with the filet but it's a good texture and does help fill the longing for steak for me

Juicy Marbles is legitimately the best plant-based replacement if you're interesting in smoking/BBQ'ing on a grill. I use them for pot-lucks with people.
Post reply on HN