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McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

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Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#201

Post by kalel83 »

teej wrote: post #199
bilalq wrote: post #196

Like others have mentioned, I don't see this being successful. Unlike Burger King and Wendy's, McDonald's uses beef tallow in their fries, making vegetarians avoid them. If the only appeal here is a subpar burger that you can't even get fries with, people are just gonna go elsewhere.

McDonalds hasn’t used beef tallow in their fries for 20+ years. [edit] this seems disputed. The ingredients list includes “natural beef flavor” which it says is wheat and milk derivatives. To clarify: old school McD fries were fried in beef tallow at the restaurant. Now it’s vegetable oil at the restaurant, but are par-fried at the processing plant in vegetable oil with some “natural beef flavoring”

As your edit conveys, they still do use Beef Tallow.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#203

Post by wasdfff »

ianai wrote: post #179
tashoecraft wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found so far, vegan cheese either melts and doesn't taste good or doesn't melt and tastes good. And by good I mean in comparison to mass produced cheese. It'll be awhile before there's a good, vegan alternative to homemade mozzarella. However, there doesn't need to be. The vast majority of cheesy/non-vegan food that's eaten is low quality ingredients.

It’s a taste thing which varies person to person. Andy’s vegan margarita pizza is my favorite and the cheese scratches all the boxes for me. I’ve had fine vegan mozzarellas various places though. Might be time to try again or just encourage people to try for themselves as tastes aren’t universal.

The vegan cheeses I’ve sampled tend to fall into this uncanny valley of cheese flavor. Like yeah, its sorta like cheap bag cheese, cheese with more sweaty feet undertaste that I couldn’t not picture once I made the mental connection. Usually doesn’t melt, I've taken a torch to some trying to get it to melt and just end up searing it.

Vegan burgers sometimes suffer from this when they lean away from the bean/tex mex route and try and tackle a hamburger. It ends up tasting like the grease is masking all the flavor, and it isn’t pleasant rendered fatty grease like in a burger but vegetable oil and a surprising amount of it. I don’t know if its the way its prepared or what, but imo its a tough prospect trying to ask $15 for a burger that tastes like oil soaked starch, hidden behind the aioli on the bun hoping you don’t notice. Impossible burgers fall into this grease pit area for my pallet, I’ve tried them pretty much anywhere I see them at least once and no matter how they try and hide the patty with the other components it still stands out like a sore thumb to me.

I’ll wait another 5 years and try again. Hopefully more food science development can iron out these kinks.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#204

Post by icanhackit »

werber wrote: post #27
maxerickson wrote: post #13

Will people forever speculate that they have real meat in them?

Vegans will be concerned about shared grill space, I know that was a big issue for friends for mine with Burger King's Impossible implentation

As an ethical vegan (reduce animal suffering but previously enjoyed eating meat) I don't care if it shares the same grill or goes into the same fryer. But I'm also unlikely to go somewhere where that'd happen - it's more likely if I'm pressed for options i.e. somewhere out of the city.

I'd give the McDonalds burger a go though - it's always interesting to see how far food tech can be pushed and how different it is from the real-deal. The key in my mind is synthetic collagen to give fake meat the bounce/snap/chew of real meat (FWIW I don't eat fake meat often, just interested in food tech in general).

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#205

Post by gpm »

ejolto wrote: post #189
gpm wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pesto and tomatoes on (circular) bread can be quite delicious... It's not the same food as "pizza" in my humble estimation, but it's still very good.

Pesto isn't vegan, it's got parmesan cheese in it.

True, I've had some pesto like substance on vegan pizzas served by very vegan friends, so I guess they have a good substitute for it.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#206

Post by eskaytwo »

ejolto wrote: post #189
gpm wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pesto and tomatoes on (circular) bread can be quite delicious... It's not the same food as "pizza" in my humble estimation, but it's still very good.

Pesto isn't vegan, it's got parmesan cheese in it.

Parmesan is easy to substitute for nutritional yeast. It’s the mozzarella substitutes that are trickier to make realistic/tasty.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#207

Post by fpgaminer »

sosborn wrote: post #173
stronglikedan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and comparably healthy Every plant-based meat I'm aware of has been processed to hell and back, so I'm dubious of the claims that they are healthier.

What inherent trait of "processing" makes a food unhealthy?

I was also dubious of the claim that "processed" foods are less healthy, but there does seem to be some evidence to support the claim at least along one vector:

> Processing may affect the natural resistant starch content of foods. [...] Whole grain wheat may contain as high as 14% resistant starch, while milled wheat flour may contain only 2%.

> The fermentation of resistant starch produces more butyrate than other types of dietary fibers.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch#Processing_ef...

> Butyrates are important as food for cells lining the mammalian colon (colonocytes). [...] Butyrate is extremely essential to host immune homeostasis.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyrate

Basically, resistant starch is extremely important to the health of your colon, and fairly important to your health in general. From what I hear, colon cancer is not terribly fun. Since processing greatly reduces the resistant starch content of certain goods it seems reasonable to claim that "processing" makes some foods less healthy.

Though like all things there is a lot of subtly here; I wouldn't be surprised if plant based burgers end up healthier on the whole despite the processing when compared to regular meat. But they are unlikely to be healthier than the equivalent in unprocessed veggies.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#208

Post by dkersten »

markdown wrote: post #141
elif wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of animal agriculture products is artificially lowered by direct subsidy, price controls, and indirectly lowered by the unaccounted ecological costs. It is largely a matter of policy rather than a reflection of market forces. On a level playing field, the cost competitiveness is there. For instance, in New Zealand, one of the largest dairy export markets, I can buy a vegan pizza for the same price. In fact,…

What is the appeal of a vegan pizza? Is it even pizza without cheese?

Most Italian pizza has rather little cheese. I remember watching something once where the chef of a fancy pizzeria said that the most important thing in pizza is the bread: it should taste great without any topping. Then the sauce and finally everything else.

I've had a great vegan pizza once and between bread, sauce and toppings, it tasted like great Italian-style pizza. Sure, a sprinkle of cheese would have made it better still, but the point is it tasted great and it tasted like pizza.

Sure, it doesn't make for a great American-style pizza, which is all about overloading on cheese (and having rather meh tasting bread typically...), but that's not all there is to pizza around the world.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#209

Post by golemotron »

bane wrote: post #166
Nbox9 wrote: post #58

I think it’ll be a big win when plant-based burgers are cheaper than animal based burgers. From a raw ingredients standpoint plant based food should almost always be cheaper than animal based food because the costs associated with farming plants is lower than the costs associated with farming animals. Hopefully, with McDonald’s scale and with their vertical integration they can make affordable, tasty, and comparably…

Lifelong meat eater here. I'm really happy about this news and hope it sticks over the long-run. These new plant-based burgers are basically zero penalty ways to eat more responsibly. They taste about as good as the normal "ok" burger from FastFoodJoint(TM), cost about the same, and are less worse for the planet and everybody on it. It's also more accepting for people who have various dietary restrictions and opens u…

> It's also more accepting for people who have various dietary restrictions

Except for those on a ketogenic diet.

Re: McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu

#210

Post by [deleted] »

ReptileMan wrote: post #140
bluntfang wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a plus side their customers will still be starving for protein afterwards. Why? Meat replacements are engineered to have similar nutritional value as the meat-based version. for example, BK: >A traditional Whopper has 660 calories, 40 grams of fat (12 of which are saturated) and 28 grams of protein. The Impossible Whopper clocks in at 630 calories, 34 grams of fat (11 saturated) and 25 grams of protein, so it's p…

Distribution of proteins is also important. Meat is complete protein.

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