Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 813 posts

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#231

Post by wil421 »

cr3ative wrote: post #170
michaelteter wrote: post #149

And we don't need fake meat. It's just something that the food industry can make and sell to us instead of us just eating stuff that grows in the earth. If you want something with a texture similar to meat, many mushrooms will do the job. If you want something reminiscent of ground beef, quinoa with seasoning will suffice. However, limiting yourself to vegetarian approaches of recreating meat dishes, then you are mis…

These products exist _because_ your claims about mushrooms and quinoa being acceptable (and somewhat available) just aren't true. There seems to be this army of people who say "compressed vegetables in a circle" are acceptable burger alternatives; they're really not. This market isn't for existing vegans/vegetarians in most cases, it's for people curious about going that way or cutting down their consumption.

I don’t need to replace meat with something fake. Western meatless diets try to replace meat with either way too processed of a food or a nasty mash of fake meat.

I’ve found I like vegetarian Indian way better than anything else. The dishes do not try to recreate some fake meat concoction.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#232

Post by KaiserPro »

jhanschoo wrote: post #173
hannob wrote: post #146

How strange, we massively subsidize meat production, we don't even consider letting meat producers pay for the externalities they cause, and then plant-based alternatives have a hard time competing. It's a real mystery.

I don't see it purely as a policy problem. Plant-based meats are primarily focused on the US market, and so outside the US these brands can't compete in price either for price-conscious consumers, lacking supply chains that employ cheap domestic labor.

> Plant-based meats are primarily focused on the US market,

[citation needed]

fake meat is well established in the EU. Quorn & linda mcartney, have been in the market for many years(20+). Quorn mince is cheaper than beef mince(in the UK) where beef production is subsidised.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#233

Post by theshrike79 »

jslql wrote: post #60
j-pb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in the E.U. we have billions of subsidies for milk and meat. Many countries like germany also have a tiered VAT system, where basic foods are taxed lower, there is a base line tax and some luxury items are taxed higher. Thanks to lobbying meat and cow-milk are taxed as basic foods, while vegan alternatives are taxed as luxury items.

Meat and milk are basic foods.

Traditional or basic?

Meat wasn't a staple food 100 years ago, it was too expensive for regular people. Same with milk, if you didn't own a cow, you just didn't drink it. You drank some sort of ale.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#235

Post by Yaggo »

When I started a vegan diet 20 years ago and asked for tofu in my local grocery store, they didn't even know the term (this happened in small town in Finland). Nowadays you can find a wide selection of various plant-based, meat-imitating products in every grocery store, even in small ones located in rural areas. Looks wildly successful to me, not a flop.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#236

Post by tomcam »

the-smug-one wrote: post #213
raspberry1337 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What looks reasonable to you might not look reasonable to someone else, like someone that strives to avoid seed oils and other industrial products and live above 90 years of age.

Haha, do you believe that olive oil isn't made on a large ("industrial") scale? Or lard, or tallow, for that matter. Man, this is just more FUD, scientists aren't arguing about this, shitty fitness influencers are. But hey, I do hope that you live to 90 or above, cool goal. I just hope you don't waste too much time listening to Joe Rogan. I'm not gonna waste more of my precious (and I guess to you very short) life on…

Username checks out

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#237

Post by theshrike79 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #128
scantis wrote: post #7

If any of the planet saving meat substitute promises are true, such a fake meat patty would cost a tenth of the beef equivalent and it would dominate the market. I read somewhere you would need 25 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of beef, ergo one could potentially produce 25 times the amount of substitute. Obviously that isn't true and such a patty is a specialized product of various highly processed plant matter. It is a…

Fake meat isn't just inferior to real meat. It's inferior to just plain old vegetables. It's a crazy product designed for a society with weird eating habits. They're not trying to cook the best vegetable dishes. They're not trying to cook dishes that use less meat. They're not trying to expand your palettes and reintroducing liver, sweetbreads or other weird cuts. All these "green" products convince you to not do the…

Fake meat isn't for vegans who want to eat meat-like products.

It's supposed to be a gateway product that will eventually entice hardcore meat eaters to first try fake meat and then maybe dare to try a non-fake meat vegan product.

The best vegan products aren't "meat thing but vegan", they're all just gateway stuff.

The best vegan food is stuff you couldn't do with meat at all. Just look at Indian or Thai/Vietnamese cuisine. The protein doesn't really matter, 99% of the taste is in the sauce.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#238

Post by auggierose »

yreg wrote: post #194
auggierose wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a gross misrepresentation. Ruegenwalder is not turning 100% plant based, in terms of sold products I would be surprised if they turned > 5% plant based, but I don't know the numbers there.

It seems that they don't plan to "turn 100% plant based", but rather built a new factory that is 100% plant based. The ≤5% estimate is just as inaccurate though. > “Over the full year [2021], we sold for the first time more of our vegan and vegetarian products than of the classic meat products. Last year, the ratio had been fifty-fifty,” the spokesperson added, without giving detailed figures. https://www.just-food.c…

> The ≤5% estimate is just as inaccurate though.

Well, render me extremely surprised! I am wondering if that is because the population as a whole goes vegan/vegetarian (which I doubt), or if they are one of the few producers offering a wide range for vegetarians, and so they get all the vegetarians as customers.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#239

Post by theshrike79 »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #215
dubcanada wrote: post #137

I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. I know it’s a bunch of stuff to make it look like meat, but it’s basically cow meat vs a burger containing 50 random items and chemicals that is worse or equal in nutritional content then cow. Like one impossible vs cow is 14g of fat vs 16g of fat. 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. They are not even that much better for you. Rather than trying to get…

Vegan food: taste, healthy, filling - pick 2

These are all three: https://www.beanit.fi/en/our-products/

It's just processed fava beans, nothing unhealthy.

Their tex-mex mince (not on the english pages for some reason) is superior to minced meat in my opinion. It keeps in the fridge for weeks (can't do that with raw meat) and the texture is pretty similar. Less fat, more protein.

Re: Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

#240

Post by pclmulqdq »

pastage wrote: post #197
kris_wayton wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers I can find do suggest high percentage growth in Europe, but growth on numbers that are small compared to the US. Something like ~$7B in sales in plant based meat in the US, and ~$3B in sales for Europe. So maybe a bit early to judge? Meaning, maybe there's a similar plateau for EU, but it hasn't gotten there yet?

Those numbers tracks with GDP per capita of the US and EU. I'm guessing it is going to be different if you look at certain segments of the market. Also in this case you probably need to look at tonnage per capita. You might also be right that it is too early to say, comments here can be up to a year ahead of statistics.

You should look at gdp, not per-capital gdp, for a comparison of markets. Europe and the US aren't far apart. I'm assuming the slower uptake in Europe is because of stricter food labeling laws and the fact that most of these companies are US-centric.
Post reply on HN