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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#601

Post by razakel »

IAmBroom wrote: post #590
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.

Every single vegetarian I have known admits they miss meat to some degree, especially bacon.

I spent a year vegan just to see if I could. What I really missed was cheese.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#602

Post by mixmastamyk »

mandmandam wrote: post #566
mixmastamyk wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 70s/80s want their insult back. You can buy any quality you want in the US, when willing to pay for it. But we still have to listen to complaints that the only choices available are Wonder, Lipton, and Budweiser. Not true—literally for decades now.

> You can buy any quality you want in the US, when willing to pay for it. I didn't say you can't buy quality bread though. I know it's possible to find nice bread. I said it's mostly inferior, and it is . The vast majority of bread in America is stuff that I would rather go hungry than eat. ... Thanks for proving my point about getting weirdly defensive.

If you don’t like styles of corporate bread, don’t buy them. But they work for those of limited means.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#603

Post by giantg2 »

anon84873628 wrote: post #434
giantg2 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some studies proving out that control for vegetables and sugar is all that is needed? I am skeptical that just controlling for those would eliminate the risks with other processing ingredients such as cured meats. Edit: why disagree?

Well lumping packaged cookies and cured meats together is already part of the problem. The former is bad in excess because of the high calories and poor lipid profile. The latter because of colon cancer risk. The problem with processed foods is not their individual construction per se, but how overall bad diets are easily enabled by them. As far as studies go, I can't give you one that directly controls. But look at…

The 30 plants per week stuff looks like it's mostly based off one citizen science study that acknowledges that it focused on healthy adults, had underrepresented groups, and it didn't directly tie the diet to health outcomes or longevity. It looks like it was focused on the diversity of the microbiome. Other studies have looked at various microbiome related factors, but it doesn't look like any directly study the 30 plants per week part. Various sources even acknowledge that salty, sugary, and fatty processed foods can also be responsible for decreased microbiome diversity and increased levels of bacteria associated with negative health outcomes. Most also stress the whole foods point. It doesn't appear that any control for the source of the plant point related to processed foods - eg was there a cohort that ate non-fermented pickles, sun chips, potato chips, fruit wines, etc to compare with whole food plant based diets.

So based on the studies around your 30 plants topics, even they make the point about choosing whole food or minimally processed sources.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#604

Post by const_cast »

graublau wrote: post #562
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…

> The problem is that we're just assuming processed foods are bad period Why on earth is that a problem? People only eating fresh food is absolutely fine. Any processing on top should be met with skepticism.

Because it detracts and discourages some very healthy processed foods while not addressing any actual issues.

Again, is eating burgers and fried chicken the solution? Those are not processed. So if you just tell people to not eat processed foods, you haven't helped them at all.

For many people, a healthy and achievable diet will include processed foods, such as high-fiber bread alternatives. A diet of only whole foods is not achievable for most people, so it's not good advice.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#605

Post by mandmandam »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #602
mandmandam wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can buy any quality you want in the US, when willing to pay for it. I didn't say you can't buy quality bread though. I know it's possible to find nice bread. I said it's mostly inferior, and it is . The vast majority of bread in America is stuff that I would rather go hungry than eat. ... Thanks for proving my point about getting weirdly defensive.

If you don’t like styles of corporate bread, don’t buy them. But they work for those of limited means.

It's bread.

Decent, non-toxic bread ought to be available even to people of "limited means". Even, I would assert, to people of no means at all. The US is the wealthiest nation of all time, and there is no excuse for there to be so many people hungry, much less poisoned. It's so wild that this needs to be said.

And, products that toxic shouldn't be sold at all; at least not without large warning labels in multiple languages.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#606

Post by fakedang »

cpfohl wrote: post #270
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.

I mean, so do cows and chickens. Moving a chemical process out of a living being and into a lab can make it safer: you’re doing it without the bacteria and viruses omnipresent in the natural world, and you know exactly what is going into the reaction… When you “cook” a piece of fish in salt and lime (a la Ceviche) you are also altering the protein structures).

> When you “cook” a piece of fish in salt and lime (a la Ceviche) you are also altering the protein structures).

When you're cooking a piece of fish, you're not changing its structure using heat and pressure so that globular plant cell structures are transformed into stuff resembling fibrous animal cell structures.

https://youtu.be/uTHCqjIspKU?si=pFqoQOuGbIPNnJox

Around the 1:30 mark.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#607

Post by fakedang »

const_cast wrote: post #442
mandmandam wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly pointless pedantry. We all know what they mean, and are to assume the best reading of what they're saying. Bread, the example they used, is a particularly stark example where Americans are subjected to stuff that is rightly banned in most of the rest of the world.

It's not pointless pedantry at all, because whole foods are ALSO treated with chemicals. When you grow a tomato, you use pesticides and herbicides. When you grow meat, you use drugs on the animals and then you also wash the meat in bleach to kill bacteria. Why are these chemicals less harmful than, say, citric acid used in "processed" minced garlic to preserve it?

> When you grow a tomato, you use pesticides and herbicides.

And didn't they teach you at school to soak all vegetables for a couple hours in water after buying them and before storing/using them? As for injected hormones, in my part of the world (Asia and Europe), we reject such produce if we're trying to eat healthy. My family literally grows pineapples in our backyard (which I bring to Europe) because industrial pineapples are injected with ripening stimulators.

> When you grow meat, you use drugs on the animals and then you also wash the meat in bleach to kill bacteria.

In most of the civilized world, we typically ensure humane conditions as much as possible even in industrial farming, so that chicken need not be drugged and bleach washed. Like basic hygiene and humanity such as animals not being made to live in their own shit.

> Why are these chemicals less harmful than, say, citric acid used in "processed" minced garlic to preserve it?

Again, in most of the civilized world, we don't take issue with preserving minced garlic with citric acid. In fact, I regularly preserve a lot of veggies and sometimes even fruit this way. But I do have an issue when some industrial company decides to add sodium benzoate to their pickle to preserve it for months on end.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#608

Post by coyotebob »

I've been vegan since 2014. I rarely eat those plant-base burgers, but do on occasion. One of the brands changed formulations and now doesn't even taste like a burger any longer. I bought pre-grilled Beyond burgers and they the better of the two.. For me, burgers are a treat. Most of the time I eat beans, fruit and vegetables.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#609

Post by fakedang »

ben_w wrote: post #222
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.

> 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…

Are you seriously comparing something used to trigger an infrequent immune response vs something that we take in on a daily basis to run our bodies? The latter being things that are transformed and transported to every part of the body.

> This is like saying "the main chemical in vaccines is just one atom from bleach!"

No, a better equivalent would be injecting a single PFAS atom in your drinking water. You don't know where it's going to end up, but you do know that it's going to cause some issues wherever it goes if accumulated in quantity.

> 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 "adding lots of salt".

Equating Beyond's process to cooking is such a disservice when they literally state they use heat and pressure to alter protein structures in globular plant molecules to transform them into stuff resembling fibrous animal molecules.

https://youtu.be/uTHCqjIspKU?si=pFqoQOuGbIPNnJox

Around the 1:30 mark.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#610

Post by Havoc »

They changed their recipe about a year back and now I regret it every time I buy one of their beyond burgers. Guessing they were going for smokey bbq vibe but it's just not pleasant
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