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Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

nytimes.com

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Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#111

Post by nemo44x »

georgefrick wrote: post #13

"Its stock has slumped nearly 83 percent in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33 percent this year, are now likely to show only minor growth." So they still showed growth, the stock just crashed; and the others in the segment who don't have to report numbers are doing better. Just sounds like a discounted stock to me.

Have you even looked at their costs?! They’re losing so much money and much more than ever before. They’re playing the growth game but they don’t have software margins. It’s trouble.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#113

Post by chrisdirkis »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #73
gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

I can't understand why some entrepreneur saw vegetarian food existing, and decided to make a startup about ultraprocessed vegetarian food. It's as if they thought ideology was more important than health or environmental benefits.

It seems fairly apparent to me that vegetarian != minimally-processed. Definitely a lot of "junk-food vegans" who eat lots of chips and other heavily processed food. Processed also != bad for the environment or for health.

Don't get me wrong -- I think there can totally be some questions around health and environmental impacts of vegetarian/vegan foods entering the market! But I think the mapping between "there are preservatives in it" and "it's bad" is, uhh, not necessarily strong.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#114

Post by bryan0 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

But I don’t want a veggie patty. I want a hamburger that doesn’t involve killing animals. Beyond/Impossible is close enough.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#115

Post by [deleted] »

freitasm wrote: post #77
gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

The thing is BM (and others) aren't trying to create vega/vegetarian meat. They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way, so it has to taste more like beef/pork than chickpeas or tofu if they want to get the main market. They are still not there.

[deleted]

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#117

Post by jjcm »

ioslipstream wrote: post #67

Beyond and Impossible are full of chemicals. Definitely not a healthy alternative to traditional veggie patties. I wouldn't even call them food really. It doesn't even really qualify as a veggie burger (it's pea protein isolate, which doesn't really count). Beyond that (no pun intended) it's got a lot of seed oil, which is awful for you.

Chemicals for those interested:

Beyond Meat: water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, rice protein, natural flavors, cocoa butter, mung bean protein, methylcellulose, potato starch, apple extract, pomegranate extract, salt, potassium chloride, vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, sunflower lecithin, beet juice extract

Impossible: Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Sunflower Oil, Coconut Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% Or Less Of: Methylcellulose, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Yeast Extract, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant), L-tryptophan, Soy Protein Isolate, Zinc Gluconate, Niacin, Thiamine Hydrochloride

Definitions of the less common ones:

Methylcellulose: A common fiber/laxative. Non toxic. Deemed safe by the FDA and EFSA.

Tocopherols: Vitamin E. Often used as a supplement. Naturally occurring in egg yolk and leafy vegetables.

L-Tryptophan: An amino acid. Often used as a supplement. Its presence in turkey is what thanksgiving celebrants often assert to be the reason of their "food coma"

The ingredient list overall is pretty tame, so not sure which the OP is calling out specifically. There definitely are high oil counts in these though.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#118

Post by bawolff »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #82
gwbas1c wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much what I and the other vegetarians in this thread said. She doesn't like eating things that taste like meat.

We're not going to have many vegetarians if only people who don't like meat become vegetarian.

Maybe, but it really shouldn't come as a surprise that there is a correlation between people who don't really like meat and people who choose to become vegitarian.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#119

Post by jahewson »

techno_tsar wrote: post #110
sokoloff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pretty hardcore meat-lover (we had sous-vide filets tonight at home), I think Impossible is close enough on the taste and feel side for a lot of dishes that use beef (including hamburgers). They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.

Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.

Of course any government that makes a staple food unaffordable is not going to last long.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#120

Post by Gare »

bgribble wrote: post #99

I try hard to avoid red meat for reasons but I do like a burger. I tried the Beyond when it was new and I was really impressed. I thought it tasted great and held together as a patty in a way that a lot of "traditional" bean and veg patties fail to do. Unfortunately after I had cooked a bunch of them I realized what the smell of uncooked Beyond reminded me of: wet cat food. Now I can't get that association out of my…

Why is wet cat food smell revolting to you? It's meat, after all.
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