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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#421

Post by gruez »

druskacik wrote: post #321
square_usual wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Okay, I genuinely thought that consuming as much protein powder as you describe would make person feel sick, you surprised me. To each his own. The fact remains, research suggests overdosing on protein supplements has potential health hazards. "According to international consensus, the daily reference intake of protein for the healthy adult population is 0.8 g/kg body weight. However, individuals who engage in physic…

Is that from the protein supplements themselves, or from consuming excessive protein in the first place? In other words if you ate the same amount but as steaks/eggs, would you feel the same symptoms?

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#422

Post by redwall_hp »

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 non vegetarian, I also hate how tofu gets treated as solely a vegetarian meat substitute in the US. I have no interest in having a poor substitution in a meat dish, but tofu itself is a core component of great foods that it belongs in...such as miso soup or mapo tofu.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#423

Post by mandmandam »

tcbawo wrote: post #378
ponector wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t understand the downvotes. Replacing foods that have been prepared in the same way for hundreds of years with foods treated with processes that have not yet been considered harmful is inherently risky. There are plenty of examples of unknown byproducts, isomers, and side effects that take years to flesh out.

[flagged]

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#424

Post by anon84873628 »

makingstuffs wrote: post #174
mgraczyk wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

I mean, the cattle itself is turning a green pea into beef through a highly complicated and expensive process. Call me a scientific reductionist but there's no reason you can't theoretically replicate that in a lab.

I don't see anything in the Beyond Meat ingredients which is a scary chemical. It's just various plant proteins, starches, and oils that we've been eating for millennia already. Plus some fruit coloring, vitamins, and the like.

That's not to say it is automatically healthy or a useful product (e.g. one can certainly argue about too much "tropical oils"), but that also doesn't make it automatically dangerous either. That is called the naturalistic fallacy.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#425

Post by gruez »

thoroughburro wrote: post #235
mgraczyk wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

By “processes food hysteria stuff”, do you mean “the growing research consensus around ultra-processed foods”?

The problem is that it's not necessarily the case that ultra-processing that actually makes the food unhealthy. It's a good rule of thumb, but we shouldn't pretend that's actually how the world works. This piece summarizes the point quite nicely:

>Everyone knows that greens are good for your health and red meat is not. But everyone would laugh if I were to propose that red foods are dangerous and green ones healthy. I could prove my thesis making use of a few additional rules, such as postulating that some shades of red, tomatoes and apples for instance, should not be counted as red.

>The Nova classification system, which sorts foods into four categories depending on the degree of processing they undergo, uses similar logic. There is no scientific justification for the assumption that the number of processing steps is of any relevance for the health properties of foods. Making “ultra-processed” popcorn or chips is exceedingly simple. Making “minimally processed” natural yogurt requires some 20 processes.

>Heating is the process that affects foods the most, but heating is afforded no attention in Nova. It does not neatly fit into the processed or unprocessed scheme. In some cases it is essential for public health, in others it may induce carcinogens. And in a blatant example of the arbitrariness of the Nova classification, putting a loaf of bread into a bag moves it from the minimally processed to the ultra-processed category.

>The flawed, but intuitively easy to grasp, label of ultra-processed food is a handy justification for blaming food-related health problems on profit-hungry food companies. And it enables politicians to divert funding from serious research to meaningless eye-catching interventions.

>Petr Dejmek

>Emeritus professor of food engineering

>Lund University

>Lund, Sweden

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#426

Post by bartread »

twic wrote: post #348
bartread wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this as well: > The company expects the figure to reach about $330 million in 2025, roughly 10% higher than it was six years earlier despite a huge increase in the number of products offered. It’s not like they have any growth potential to speak of that would enable them to service that debt. It’s a bit hard to see who their target market is or, rather, it’s a bit hard to see that the market segment they’re aimin…

I think the company was a bet that if you make a good enough meat substitute, then meat eaters will switch to it (sometimes), and that's a huge total addressable market. I would say that bet has not come off. But that's hindsight - the whole point of startups is to take bets.

I think you're right: that was definitely the bet, but it really should have entered their heads that being more expensive than actual meat[0] would guarantee the bet wouldn't pay off.

[0] Again, in the UK: I'm not familiar enough with their pricing in other markets to know if that's the case globally. IMO you'd have to be out of your mind to imagine a meaty tasting meat substitute would succeed in the US if it was more expensive than actual meat so, if the high price holds in the US, it should be no surprise that they're failing.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#427

Post by mind-blight »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #362
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,…

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…

Can't agree enough. I just don't think that beyond meat is good. I'm a meat eater who grew up vegetarian and still enjoy eating vegetarian food. A well done black bean burger (my favorite blend is with quinoa) is delicious. I'd eat that over a regular burger plenty of times.

If I went full vegetarian again, I'd stick with the classics - they taste so much better.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#428

Post by anon84873628 »

rpdillon wrote: post #320
thoroughburro wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By “processes food hysteria stuff”, do you mean “the growing research consensus around ultra-processed foods”?

As a skeptic, I think that they have defined too broad of an umbrella in the research, and so they're sweeping up huge swaths of people's diet under one label and then claiming it's bad. Up thread, people are talking about using minced soy protein. I'm kind of surprised that itself is not ultra processed, given that bread flour is considered to be ultra processed.

Soy protein isolate is considered ultra processed just like whey. The problem is people taking a technical term then using it in casual discussion, especially for something as complicated and diverse as diet and nutrition.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#429

Post by platelminto »

itsoktocry wrote: post #335
bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a vegetarian? I'm not, and really enjoy a good black bean patty. But when I crave a juicy beef hamburger, I have one. Vegetarians might prefer to satisfy cravings with something closer to their childhood memories than a black bean patty.

Unless they have some rare condition that doesn't allow them to eat meat, they can satisfy the cravings by having the odd burger. It won't kill them. I honestly don't understand the vegetarian who constantly craves meat.

It will kill another living thing though. It's not that hard to understand - you know it tastes good but don't want to cause direct suffering.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#430

Post by anon84873628 »

mind-blight wrote: post #409
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.

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 healthi…

The problem of course is looking at foods in isolation vs as part of a diet.

You can always say something is fine "as part of a healthy diet."

Clearly the problem is when people eat too much of their diet from processed foods. Because they are high in calories, low in micronutrients, and designed to stimulate appetite so people overeat.

But to say that any processed food (like Beyond Burgers) is automatically bad because they are processed is simply and example of the naturalistic fallacy.

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