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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#231

Post by micromacrofoot »

aydyn wrote: post #130
submeta wrote: post #100

The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating meat or reduce their consumption drastically. Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. I have been eating plant based meat alternatives for four…

Beyond meat burgers taste like flavored plastic grounds, so until these plant based alternatives can close the taste gap its not going to go anywhere. And they have had years to make it taste better, so I suspect theres something fundamental that makes it very difficult. It is just too much to ask the public to buy worse tasting food at a higher price, all to feel morally better about yourself.

can't help but feel like including "plastic" here is just hysteria, I eat them regularly and it's certainly not accurate

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#232

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fn-mote wrote: post #166
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond Meat is industrial plant-based protein. The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. That means their market is is poor and lower middle-class folks—hence the distribution through fast food and mid-grade grocery channels. They’re not buying plant-based proteins. (The conscientious are already eating plants.) Beyond Meat is broken as a mass-market brand. It should be restructured as a niche play.…

> The wealthy and upper middle class can afford real plants. I don’t understand this take on what (is / should be) a premium brand. The whole dismissal doesn’t make sense to me. It’s marketed at well-off former meat eaters. The poor will live on rice and tofu or pinto beans just like they have for the last hundred plus years.

> don’t understand this take on what (is / should be) a premium brand

It’s not. The premium options for plant-based foods are vast, fresh and more expensive than BM.

Beyond Meat isn’t serving premium. It’s premium to the lowest-grade ground beef. But that’s like saying a basic economy seat is premium to Greyhound. Technically true. But misleading relativism.

> The poor will live on rice and tofu or pinto beans

Globally? Sure. In developed countries, of course not.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#233

Post by aziaziazi »

nly wrote: post #168
touwer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says a lot about the public

Food is one of the joys in life that people can enjoy no matter where they are on the socioeconomic spectrum. In the modern age, if you're poor, or just time poor, you can enjoy a tasty meal thanks to cheap food coming out of the modern food industry. Why would you pay more for a less enjoyable experience when tasty food might be one of the only joys in an otherwise mundane or hard-up existence? This is exactly why M…

Agree. As a side note McDonalds veggie nuggets are from behind meat and they rank equally to the chickens one one the taste and processing scales.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#234

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bluescrn wrote: post #164
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. Just not at the rate we consume it.

Everything comes down to world population, which has quadrupled in a century, making the previously-sustainable now unsustainable. But even many of the climate catastrophists can't get away from the mentality of 'we still need growth at any cost'. And 'growth' is most easily obtained by creating more consumers and more workers.

> 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.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#235

Post by thoroughburro »

mgraczyk wrote: post #157
makingstuffs wrote: post #129

The problem with Beyond Meat is that it is insanely expensive. I could buy a free range, organic and grass fed beef burger for the price of their ultra processed burger. Don’t get me wrong, as a vegetarian, I think they taste nice. They are just too damn expensive and not particularly healthy which goes against why I am a vegetarian. In Europe we have so many alternatives that are insanely cheaper and, as an Indian,…

Why do you believe it's not healthy? Because of the processes food hysteria stuff?

By “processes food hysteria stuff”, do you mean “the growing research consensus around ultra-processed foods”?

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#236

Post by JumpCrisscross »

onli wrote: post #136
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone really pretending these are healthier than a grass-fed beef patty? Or cooked vegetables? The health pitch on these products has always struck me as incredibly weird.

Yes. Meat consumption is not exactly healthy. It's absolutely plausible that replacing it with something like this is a net plus. That "grass-fed beef" is like a healthy standout is an unsubstantiated myth.

> It's absolutely plausible that replacing it with something like this is a net plus

Plausible. But both unproven and unlikely.

To the extent we’ve found anything out in nutrition, it’s that processing away from the kitchen is generally bad.

> That "grass-fed beef" is like a healthy standout is an unsubstantiated myth

Nope [1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8728510/

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#237

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rainforest wrote: post #153
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some UPFs (Pasta, wholemeal bread, baked beans, probiotic yoghurts, wheat biscuit cereals), are actually good for you But the less processed the better. And eating something else is probably better still.

Does it worry you at all that meat is ultimately made of whatever food the animal eats and processed into a litany of chemicals? I feel the UPF "debate" is just an appeal to nature, and calorie/nutrient density should be what we fixate on.

> Does it worry you at all that meat is ultimately made of whatever food the animal eats and processed into a litany of chemicals?

As much as the same can be said about plants.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#238

Post by Trasmatta »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #165
submeta wrote: post #100

The hidden message of the title: Plant based alternatives may not succeed. I don’t believe that. I rather see more and more friends and people avoid eating meat or reduce their consumption drastically. Many buy plant based alternatives to milk as well. Twenty years ago only a few people would ask for oat/soy milk when ordering a coffee. But these days many do. I have been eating plant based meat alternatives for four…

As a meat eater trying to casually reduce my meat consumption, I find myself buying more tofu, lentils and beans, rather than processed meat-like substitutes. I think that is the issue. People who want to eat meat will just eat actual meat, and people who don't want to eat meat will not feel compelled to eat a meat lookalike.

> People who want to eat meat will just eat actual meat, and people who don't want to eat meat will not feel compelled to eat a meat lookalike.

This is an extremely strong generalization that is obviously not true in many cases.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#240

Post by wizzwizz4 »

ayuhito wrote: post #201
birn559 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Processing by itself is not a bad thing. Everything is "chemicals" in some sense and what you mean in particular is not bad in general. European bread as of today is highly processed btw.. it's pretty rare to find a bakery that actually bakes starting with the ingredients. Most just bake pre-processed and pre-made stuff coming from a huge factory. Typical European/German bread is not terribly healthy to begin with.

“Chemicals” are overused as a term for sure, but there is a huge difference between what’s legal in America and Europe that brings a shred of truth to the previous statements. For example, common ingredients like potassium bromate or ADA are straight up banned in the EU for health concerns. Reading the ingredient list of American bread is plain shocking at times.

And there are a handful of chemicals banned in the US for health concerns that the EU is fine with.
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