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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#301

Post by ben_w »

sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #295
ben_w wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They literally have patented processes to alter protein structures. This is like saying "the main chemical in vaccines is just one atom from bleach!" In that it informs absolutely nothing, is true, and sounds scary. The main chemical in vaccines being water: H2O -> H2O2; and the processes humans have been using for millennia to alter protein structures being "cooking", "mixing it with alcohol or vinegar", or "addin…

You mean peroxide? Not bleach?

Hydrogen peroxide is one of many bleaches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peroxide-based_bleach

Hydrogen peroxide in particular is a common hair bleach, hence "peroxide blonde"

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#302

Post by pif »

That's good news, fake products need to die. We already have real meat and real vegetables, and both are wonderful things.

We don't need this idiot fad of eating one of them while conving us that we are eating the other.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#303

Post by evrimoztamur »

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?

Besides ultra-processed foods 'hysteria,' basic ratios I consider here are:

- protein to fat (which is roughly 1.4 in Beyond Meat (20g protein / 14g fat in 100g) versus 2.5-3.5 in beef (30±5g protein / 12.5±2.5g fat in 100g)) - protein to mass (20% vs ~30%) - micro-nutrients to mass (a very wide variety of minerals, vitamins, and other unknown nutrients present in beef) - carbohydrates (not present in substantial amounts in meat and around the same amounts in tofu/tempeh as in Beyond Meat; but I don't think it's as major a statistic as previous ratios)

I eat chiefly vegetarian, and refuse to see why Beyond Meat exists beyond 'we can do it and it may get more people to eat vegetarian.'

The industrial overhead of producing Beyond Meat and all the effort that went into creating it simply doesn't make sense to me compared to beans and plant-based protein friends like tempeh/tofu/seitan. Latter are an order of magnitude more scalable than both Beyond Meat and Regular Meat.

All the processing plants and factories built to make this ultra-processing possible, the logistics and supply chains set up to bring all the necessary additives and components together, the grandiose packaging and marketing efforts... I don't get it. It's not a product made for a real audience.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#304

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

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…

I think it’s largely a cultural problem though. Good tasting alternatives to meat and vegetarian dishes have existed in other cultures for a long time. But Western cultures, you immediately try and find a facsimile that needs a start up to produce rather than just cook something else.

Same thing with coffee. Just drink black coffee? Nope, let’s work out how to convert nut juice into something that froths using emulsifiers!

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#305

Post by hombre_fatal »

greatgib wrote: post #245
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?

All in all, despite the fact that it is not real meat, nothing proves that Beyond Meat production is better for the planet. If you factor production materials, energy,... Not sure what it gives. From what I understood why BM production was limited and expensive is that nothing beats nature. Cow meat manufacturing process was refined by nature for ten of thousands of years to be the most optimized possible.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Every food is less destructive than beef by a ridiculous margin.

And eating any food directly is less destructive than losing most of the calories to grow animal biomass. Beyond Meat is just mixing together plant products directly which is trivially better than growing animals.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#306

Post by throwsbzhshe »

square_usual wrote: post #289
druskacik wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule of thumb is that the ultra-processed food should not account for a too large part of your diet. The protein powder is usually taken as a supplement and in small quantities, as opposed to food like twinkies people can easily overeat on. But try to make protein powder 80% of your protein intake and see how you'll feel in a week.

> But try to make protein powder 80% of your protein intake and see how you'll feel in a week. What? I've had >100g of protein from whey protein shakes every day for months now. I don't know what you're trying to imply.

I’ve also been consuming 120g daily (about 4 scoops) of whey protein powder for 2.5 months now and feel perfectly fine.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#307

Post by evrimoztamur »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #234
bluescrn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything comes down to world population, which has quadrupled in a century, making the previously-sustainable now unsustainable. But even many of the climate catastrophists can't get away from the mentality of 'we still need growth at any cost'. And 'growth' is most easily obtained by creating more consumers and more workers.

> Everything comes down to world population This is nonsense. The consumptive, energy and material intensity of GDP, as well as GDP/capita, have varied greatly across time and countries. > even many of the climate catastrophists can't get away from the mentality of 'we still need growth at any cost' Degrowth is an extremist dead end. If an environmental movement falls for it, it should be ignored.

HN Bio: FinTech + Space + B2C angel & seed investor. Jackson Hole local; frequently in New York and the Bay Area.

Yeah, I can see why degrowth looks extreme to you. It must be rather frightening to lose your sense of control, comfort, and purpose in an unsustainable path.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#308

Post by hombre_fatal »

carlosjobim wrote: post #255
npteljes wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that for this exact reason Beyond Meat (or other alternatives) need a similar boost, in order to be financially competitive as well.

Aren't they massively subsidized already? It's soybeans, after all.

Most soybeans are fed to animals and only a tiny amount of soybean calories are converted into meat. So a soybean subsidy scales better in the meat industry and makes their product disproportionally cheaper.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#309

Post by ben_w »

spwa4 wrote: post #281
ben_w wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did the Romans brought us really? War, pestilence, famine, and death. An excuse like "everyone else was doing it!" only goes as far as making my ancestors "not spectacularly evil ", it definitely does not make them " good ". The railways are in the plus column, but would you accept your country being taken over by several different groups of aliens who draw random-seeming lines on the maps that even split up y…

The implication of this statement is probably supposed to be that it's the west that did that. However, colonialism never conquered Africa. They took over Ottoman/muslim colonies. Muslims, and by that I mean the now dead state that is the religion, conquered 90% of the colonies, and inherited the remaining 10% from the Romans. The only big exception to that is the US. In America, before the US there were Aztecs and I…

The primary point is that it sucked, not who did it.

> However, colonialism never conquered Africa.

As I'm a British national, and the British empire was famously the biggest, my ancestors managed to get up in basically everyone's business in the colonial era.

Even aside from all that stuff we nicked and put in museums, and the war crimes the British government has even been doing some official apologising for, it was the British empire that invented the concentration camp for use against… other colonists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_...

My forebears don't get an "it's fine" badge just because the target was, in that case, a different bunch of Europeans from what is now a day-trip away.

> In America, before the US there were Aztecs and Incas, both of whom were empires that ruled by fear, by regularly massacring large amounts of people.

Yes, I know. Everything being awful everywhere before the industrial age doesn't mean what the (in that case Spanish) did was fine, it makes it the equivalent of a drug-gang turf war where nobody holds any of the belligerents in high regard.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#310

Post by camtarn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #232
fn-mote wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. I don’t understand this take on what (is / should be) a premium brand. The whole dismissal doesn’t make sense to me. It’s marketed at well-off former meat eaters. The poor will live on rice and tofu or pinto beans just like they have for the last hundred plus years.

> don’t understand this take on what (is / should be) a premium brand It’s not. The premium options for plant-based foods are vast, fresh and more expensive than BM. Beyond Meat isn’t serving premium. It’s premium to the lowest-grade ground beef. But that’s like saying a basic economy seat is premium to Greyhound. Technically true. But misleading relativism. > The poor will live on rice and tofu or pinto beans Global…

The market must be very different in the US. In the UK, Beyond Meat is the most expensive meat free option in my local supermarket, other than one type of fake steak. There are some other premium brands at slightly lower prices, then cheaper brands, and finally supermarket own brands.
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