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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#511

Post by chickensong »

jfengel wrote: post #438
biztos wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just want to end animal cruelty, but you miss the taste of meat Does that actually describe a commercially relevant segment of the population? Intuitively, having known a lot of vegetarians, I'd expect the people whose primary concern is animal cruelty to be specifically turned off by realistic fake meat.

If you ask a bunch of meat eaters how they feel about animal cruelty, they'll get uncomfortable. Many will admit that they would like to avoid it but don't think it's practical. Look in particular at the kind who seek out organic, free range, and other (honestly, not very effective) ways to reduce suffering. I suspect the market research turned up a large contingent of such. Perhaps not sufficient to justify a whole…

> honestly, not very effective

Care to elaborate?

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#512

Post by zahlman »

woodpanel wrote: post #484

The Beyond Meat story for me is a boon since its IPO. I made a good fortune betting against the post-IPO rally. Let's not forget how, in the late 2010s, VC money successfully pushed the idea that Beyond Meat et al didn't just taste as good as what it mimmicks, but that it acutally tastes better. Then-Celebrety Chef David Chang even said "it melted my brain" (Impossbile Foods). Chain stores around the world fell over…

> I made a good fortune betting against the post-IPO rally.

How did you decide when the rally was over?

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#513

Post by zahlman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #504
zahlman wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. I have never understood the implicit premise here. I can get a 4 lb. bag of split yellow peas for $6 CAD locally without even trying to look for a sale; most of my supply has been purchased at about $4. By weight, it's on par with raw ground beef for protein content, and 4 lb. of that would cost several times as much.

> I can get a 4 lb. bag of split yellow peas for $6 CAD locally without even trying to look for a sale Not as tasty as meat or garden-fresh vegetables.

Says you. My split pea soup is awesome.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#514

Post by const_cast »

Saline9515 wrote: post #507
const_cast wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, mostly, hysteria. The problem is that we're just assuming processed foods are bad period, but even if you don't eat processed foods you can eat a very poor diet. Burgers aren't processed, fried chicken isn't processed. And, you don't need to process food to make it "addictive". People who think you need chemicals and additives to make addictive food are just stupid, frankly. Take whatever food, douse it in sal…

There is ongoing research linking depression to ultra processed food consumption: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/ultraprocessed-... Sugar derivatives such as glucose-fructose syrup are well-known to cause various problems, among which the fat-liver disease that is skyrocketing in the rich world. https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/abundance-of-fru...

These studies are legitimately worthless, and I'll explain why.

1. Ultra-processed foods contain a lot of hyper-palatable foods. You have to understand that UP foods is an absurdly broad category.

When you measure the harm of UP foods, you're not measure the harm of UP foods - you're measuring the harm of hyper-palatable foods, because naturally those are the foods people gravitate towards. Because they taste good and are easy to eat and overeat.

You also have to understand that UP foods are associated with poorer people, which get significantly worse medical care and just have overall worse lives. What you could be measuring is that poor people are more depressed - which, yeah duh.

The key problem here is that nutritional studies are almost always observation, NOT double-blind. Because following people for decades in a double-blind study where you control their diet is very, very, very hard and expensive.

If you just replaced all the UP food with burgers and fried chicken, would those people be better off? No. So you shouldn't be so confident you're measuring what you think you're measuring.

2. All sugar is bad, period. It's not HFCS that's causing liver disease, it's sugar in the absence of fiber. We know sugar causes liver disease.

If we want to decrease this, we must lean into Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners. They are better than sugar, period. Straight up, Aspartame is healthier than any sugar, including table sugar you put in your morning coffee.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#515

Post by kuschku »

anon84873628 wrote: post #508
kuschku wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it failed? I've been vegetarian since January 2011. Back then at restaurants I had to eat side dishes or go hungry, and while I spent months searching I couldn't find any kind of imitation meat that didn't make me wanna puke. But with the modern imitation meat, be it Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Nestlé's Garden Gourmet or Rügenwalder, that's not the case anymore. Food is also a part of the culture, and German c…

I don't think anyone disagrees that 1) vegan/vegetarianism is growing, 2) vegans/vegetarians are being served better than ever, 3) Beyond Meat and similar products will be part of the constellation of choices. The rest of the thread is full of people saying why vegetarians will mostly keep eating regular vegetarian food and meat eaters will mostly keep eating regular meat. And indeed what we haven't seen is the mass…

> It sounds like they found better PMF than Beyond with a more sustainable, incremental growth model.

Indeed, and I believe the flaw is that food products are a low-margin, zero-sum market with no potential for moats and limited growth opportunities.

It never made sense to start a typical VC funded startup in this space.

But it certainly makes sense for a food manufacturer to expand into the vegan market, increasing their market share and improving their margins.

> It also sounds like they might not be trying the same one-for-one raw ingredient strategy. Curryworst and packaged meals are already a value-added, prepared product with unique flavor profile that seems more amenable to substitution.

Ah, maybe that wasn't clear. I wasn't talking about prepared, pre-packaged meals. Just the same like for like replacement products beyond meat products.

e.g., 250g veggie minced meat: https://www.ruegenwalder.de/de/produkte/vegane-produkte/vega...

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#516

Post by FredPret »

stef25 wrote: post #370
FredPret wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whey protein is definitely among the better options, but I once did what you described, and then switched to eating a large amount of chicken breasts. I definitely feel a bit better, and have a much easier time building muscle. If you run the numbers, you can actually eat a shocking amout of protein (300g+ / day) from lean meat while maintaining a calorie deficit. And if you buy frozen chicken breasts from Costco, I…

> frozen chicken breasts How do you make that taste good though

They come pre-brined, so any form of cooking that ends at 165F makes them incredibly juicy and good, even directly from frozen. BBQ is best.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#517

Post by buu700 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #5

I posted before: I care more about the nutritional content being close to meat than the look and taste; specifically, similar macro-nutrient ratios and whatever micro-nutrients are rare outside of meat. I also care about it being cheap in theory, even if it's more expensive in practice because the company hasn't scaled up. But really, as long as it's not ridiculously expensive, and isn't missing some nutrient or bala…

My thoughts exactly. I don't want ultraprocessed junk food that more or less feels and tastes like meat. I want a whole food protein source that's comparably healthful to meat.

Products like Beyond and Impossible seem to be designed with the unspoken assumption that meat is junk food that meat-eaters simply lack the self-control to stop eating. Maybe that does represent a common relationship with meat, but for me it's just off-putting when I see things like canola oil in place of a saturated fat like coconut oil so they can market it as "healthier". (But again, all else being equal, I'll still prefer non-UPF.)

That's why I'm continually surprised at how little attention Meati seems to get. It's been my go-to protein for a little while now. It doesn't have high saturated fat (or high fat in general) like meat, but that's easy to fix with a little butter. What it does have is high-quality complete protein with high micronutrition, low carbs, and minimal processing. It's a form of mycelium that's fairly similar to lean chicken meat. Not quite as nice as a fatty steak, but it does the job with a lower mortality rate.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#518

Post by bluebarbet »

exe34 wrote: post #447
biztos wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just want to end animal cruelty, but you miss the taste of meat Does that actually describe a commercially relevant segment of the population? Intuitively, having known a lot of vegetarians, I'd expect the people whose primary concern is animal cruelty to be specifically turned off by realistic fake meat.

That's me. The first time I had a seitan dish at a chinese restaurant, I was certain they had given me chicken and asked them to check. The poor guy went and dug the empty tin out of the bin to show me.

Amusing. Seitan (which is - also amusingly IMO - just pure wheat gluten) is functionally identical in texture to reconstituted meat.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#519

Post by JumpCrisscross »

asdff wrote: post #461
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

When we look at the places that have experienced degrowth in this country such as the midwestern cities, it is hard to argue today that the effects were truly all that bad. They still have all the services, institutions, and plenty of the entertainment options you'd expect. Major hospitals and universities. They aren't full of derelict homes either, those have been all more or less razed by now. The biggest benefit i…

> When we look at the places that have experienced degrowth in this country such as the midwestern cities

Do they work without subsidies from the growing parts of the country?

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#520

Post by chasd00 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #319
cloudbonsai wrote: post #132

So the biggest problem here is that Beyond Meat has a huge debt due in just 2 years: That’s a problem given that $1 billion in convertible bonds come due in March 2027. Beyond Meat has no way to repay that debt, and the credit markets know it: The bonds currently trade at about 17 cents on the dollar. To put the "$1B" number into the context, Beyond Meat sold $300M worth of plant-based meats last year, and made a net…

The impossible to pay debt just means the company goes bankrupt and new owners can keep operating it without the debt. That they lose 45 cents from every dollar of sales is the killer.

> That they lose 45 cents from every dollar of sales is the killer.

Was it always that bad? If so, how did the business get past the spreadsheet model phase? There’s no way the typical corp “re-org” fixes that.

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