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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#401

Post by 1024core »

As a vegetarian, the problem with Beyond Meat (and other such products) is that they're too close to the original. I'm a vegetarian; I don't want to eat meat. If what I'm eating tastes too close to meat, I begin doubting it. It has happened several times in the past where I've been served (real) meat when I explicitly asked for a non-meat version (e.g. "beef burrito" instead of "bean burrito", etc.)

This is why I avoid Beyond Meat (and Impossible) products: too close for comfort.

Vegetables and grains have a great taste in themselves; they don't need to imitate meat to be tasty!

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#403

Post by voganmother42 »

nly wrote: post #168
touwer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says a lot about the public

Food is one of the joys in life that people can enjoy no matter where they are on the socioeconomic spectrum. In the modern age, if you're poor, or just time poor, you can enjoy a tasty meal thanks to cheap food coming out of the modern food industry. Why would you pay more for a less enjoyable experience when tasty food might be one of the only joys in an otherwise mundane or hard-up existence? This is exactly why M…

Relatively cheap, it feels like fast food now has more emphasis on convenience/consistency and less on price/value (in my experience in the US midwest).

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#404

Post by 9dev »

pjs_ wrote: post #358

Beans dude. Beans are absolutely delicious. They grow in the ground by accident. A good bean burger is way more appetizing than a biosludge patty. Unfortunately nobody is getting rich selling beans. But they are all we need here

Chock full of nutrients and protein too!

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#405

Post by carstenhag »

pdpi wrote: post #382
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…

More like "hyper-processed plant-based faux-meat may not succeed". Beyond Meat's problem is that they're catering to a tiny, highly-specific niche: people not willing to eat meat but are willing to pay through the nose for hyper-processed fake meat. So their audience is: 1. Vegan or vegetarian 2. Fairly well-off 3. Willing to consume highly-processed foods. 4. Craving a beef burger This is all sorts of problematic as…

And worse: really expensive compared to other brands or store brands. This is my issue with Beyond.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#406

Post by jebarker »

rolandog wrote: post #400
jebarker wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess the primary target market is ex meat eaters that are trying to go vegetarian but have been raised to enjoy the taste/texture of meat. I am in this group. I agree it’s not a very large market for the reasons you stated above. However, maybe BM hoped they could grow that market, I.e. convince more meat eaters to give it up for ethical reasons.

Why would it have to only be ex-meat eaters? It may be just my (admittedly biased) opinion, but I think that Big Meat has managed to turn meat-eating into a quasi-religion — almost like football. I also try to not shy away from knowing where my food comes from, and how it was processed and produced; if you know about the cruel and unsanitary living conditions for cattle, the underpaid and overworked labor that helps…

I totally agree with your strong feelings on the meat industry. The reason I said the main market is ex meat eaters is because if you’re still eating meat then any craving for the taste/texture/smell of meat is at least getting partially satisfied by the meat you’re still eating. There’s definitely some market for people just trying to cut down on meat though, and that’s great too.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#407

Post by 9dev »

thom wrote: post #356

Hate these burgers. As a dairy-loving vegetarian, first the vegans came along and ruined everything by evicting most of the tasty options from restaurants, and then the meat eaters somehow wanted vegan food that tasted of animals and that became the default option on many menus. Vegetarians (who I grant you are difficult to pity as the centrists of the food world) got utterly screwed.

If you’re consuming lots of dairy, and became vegetarian to avoid animal suffering, you can just as well eat meat. Not much of a difference ethically.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#408

Post by JeremyNT »

null0ranje wrote: post #384
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company's products in my and other people's views have caused a significant wane in vegetarian and vegan burger diversity. Gone are the chickpea and black bean burgers on menus—your only choice is Beyond Meat-esque burgers. As someone who doesn't actually really like how Beyond Meat tastes, it's unfortunate that it's the only option sometimes. As someone who likes food variety and practically needs it, eliminatin…

Ive never understood the drive to make meat substitutes instead of celebrating vegetarian cuisine. I’m not a vegetarian, but if I eat some dish that is vegetarian, why wouldn’t I want to celebrate the vegetable itself made from instead of trying to make some fake meat that never quite hits the mark?

As a vegetarian I actually prefer stuff like Beyond when eating out.

The reason is simple: it has higher protein content than most other place based fast foods.

I'd love to live in a world with minimally processed high protein vegetarian restaurant food (like lots of legumes), but the only reliable place to get this that I know of is CAVA.

Products like Beyond are at least a step up from carb heavy pastas and grains or oily fried vegetables and starches which are the staples of most restaurant fare for vegetarians.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#409

Post by mind-blight »

mgraczyk wrote: post #161
fakedang wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hysteria. Beyond Meat uses way too much processing in their food. They literally have patented processes to alter protein structures.

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.

Using the amount of processing - particularly processing that hasn't been studied - as a heuristic for health vs. unhealthy is pretty reasonable. We have lots of examples over the last 70 years of companies claiming a new processed food is better or safe, only for it to be harmful. And a lot of the changes seemed innocuous:

- Partially hydrogenated oils (most margarines in the US for a while) were pushed as a healthier alternative to butter, but turns out those are terrible for you due to trans fat. And the main difference between a trans vs cis fat is that cis fat have a kink in molecular chain and trans fats don't. Small change, but huge health difference

- The sugar industry paid food scientists in the 60s to downplay sugar's impact on heart disease and play up fat and cholesterol (Check out the "Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents" published at UCFS). This lead to food companies replacing health fats with sugars in much of their food over the last 60 years, resulting in much worse health outcomes based on bias, paid for research

- Apples and other fruit generally have a higher fructose to glucose ratio than high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). But, all of the sugar is surrounded by other nutrients and fiber, which make apples a healthy food choice and HFCS pretty bad for you.

One of the common patterns is that new processes introduced harms that were unknown at the time. Food companies have very little incentive to proactively look for harms that occur over a longer time horizon. And one thing has consistently been true: that closer a food is to how we've eaten it historically (chopped/crushed, cooked, boiled, fermented, and filtered), the less likely it is to have an unknown harm

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#410

Post by why_at »

1024core wrote: post #401

As a vegetarian, the problem with Beyond Meat (and other such products) is that they're too close to the original. I'm a vegetarian; I don't want to eat meat. If what I'm eating tastes too close to meat, I begin doubting it. It has happened several times in the past where I've been served (real) meat when I explicitly asked for a non-meat version (e.g. "beef burrito" instead of "bean burrito", etc.) This is why I avo…

As a vegan, hard disagree. I prefer impossible because it tastes even more like meat.

I love vegetables and grains too. Tofu and lentils etc. are delicious but sometimes I just want a burger.

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