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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

#261

Post by girvo »

nasmorn wrote: post #17
sho_hn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole I think this is wrong, and you're missing where the market is. From what I've read, the meat alternatives actually sell primarily to meat eaters who feel like they should occasionally substitute meat for health reasons or variety. Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.

I stopped eating 99% of the meat I used to eat. I didn't stop liking burgers. So has one of my daughters. Both our concerns are ethical. I would 100% eat bacon if it was vegan and tasted like actual bacon.

There are some vegan bacons where I am in Australia that, while they aren't bacon, are close enough in a BLT to leave me happy. But like a lot of these alternatives, the trick is you need to add the fat yourself: use a fair bit more olive oil than you would with actual bacon, and it rehydrates it and gets the taste and texture way closer :)

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

#262

Post by lelanthran »

lm28469 wrote: post #7

It really is not that complex to understand: You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes. The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less…

> you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body,

That's a false dichotomy there - you're making the assumption that there's only two types of people: 1) meat eaters, and 2) people who care about what they eat.

I can assure you, you are incorrect.

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

#263

Post by unity1001 »

In Europe, it seems to be the opposite.

https://heurafoods.com/

Not only they taste like the real thing or better, but they are multiplying in variety, number and availability.

The 'fake' versions of meat dishes starting to taste much better seems that they should start being called new, actual dishes instead of being considered clones.

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

#264

Post by girvo »

xeromal wrote: post #68
sho_hn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole I think this is wrong, and you're missing where the market is. From what I've read, the meat alternatives actually sell primarily to meat eaters who feel like they should occasionally substitute meat for health reasons or variety. Non-meat-eaters have already weaned themselves off meat taste-wise and are not-so-interested.

The problem is that these fake meats are worse for you than grass-raised beef.

Are they? I use Meet Co products a few nights a week in the various stir frys and pastas and such that I make, and got my blood test results in last week. And I am incredibly healthy at least by all the normal markers (and amusingly have too much iron saturation despite not supplementing it, which is weird, likely a genetic thing that they're screening me for now, that my vegan diet is probably keeping in check through coincidence).

Is there something I should read on this topic?

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

#265

Post by girvo »

icelancer wrote: post #218

Beyond Meat is a lot worse than Impossible Burger. They're losing to someone in their same vertical who has a superior product. Unless you are a strict vegan, in which case, you can't eat Impossible Burgers. [0] [0]: https://oopsvegan.com/en/blog/is-the-impossible-burger-vegan

Agreed. And as an aside, the Impossible Mince is pretty excellent, though too expensive for me to use regularly over the cheaper vegan mince alternatives.

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

#266

Post by coffeebeqn »

lelanthran wrote: post #262
lm28469 wrote: post #7

It really is not that complex to understand: You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes. The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less…

> you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, That's a false dichotomy there - you're making the assumption that there's only two types of people: 1) meat eaters, and 2) people who care about what they eat. I can assure you, you are incorrect.

I’ve heard of the nickname “beer and potato chips” vegan. There is no reason to think that your protein choice === the healthiness of your diet. I mostly eat chicken and veggies and fish. Not a very rare exception.

As for beyond meat - I find the taste and texture unsettling and a little too sweet. Kind of like it had beets in it. Impossible meats I eat about once a week

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

#267

Post by henrikschroder »

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, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat.

You are not the target group for these products!

The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's the value. That's the target.

This is about replacing the meat in gas station hot dogs and fast food burgers and food court lunches, and if these alternatives can be made good enough and cheap enough, we can reduce the total meat consumption in society to a fraction of what it is today, without having to ideologically convert people to vegetarianism.

These products are for all the people who don't think vegetarian products are incredible, but actually don't care whether or not their burger is made of cow or plants, as long as it tastes the same. But the traditional veggie burgers that you prefer don't cut it, so these products are a step further on the way to a product that will. They're not there yet, though.

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

#268

Post by cyphereal »

ouid wrote: post #164
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.…

"Vegetables " are not cheaper than meat. Grains are cheaper than meat. Most vegetables are very expensive per calorie compared to meat. Chickens in particular are very efficient at turning feed corn into usable protein. 3000 calories of fully cooked chicken costs $5 at costco.

Most westerners are not calorie starved. You can get cheap calories everywhere (e.g. calorie-bombs of expiring chicken covered in oil and salt, roasted and sold super cheap to get rid of them ASAP). Reductio ad absurdum - just eat palm oil. I would argue it's not a good metric.

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

#269

Post by blacksmith_tb »

orangepurple wrote: post #237
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.…

As a rule, the animals from which meat is derived do not eat vegetables. (...) livestock consume 6 billion tonnes of feed (dry matter) annually – including one third of global cereal production – of which 86% is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans [1] In particular, much of meat consumed by us is that of ruminants, which depend on eating foods which must be fermented internally to be assimilated,…

Livestock eat quite a bit of corn / maize, which we think of as both a vegetable (fresh) and a grain (dried). I took the original comment to be tongue in cheek though, and to just mean that eating plants is more efficient than eating plant eaters.

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

#270

Post by [deleted] »

noobermin wrote: post #96
lm28469 wrote: post #7

It really is not that complex to understand: You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes. The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less…

I guess I don't exist then. I want to eat less meat not because of mumbo jumbo health stuff but because the meat industry is just cruel to animals. I wish I had the fortitude to eat no meat, but my hope is fake meat will get to the point where I don't miss real meat anymore, so I support it. And sorry, impossible burger tastes better than most vegan varieties, which aren't really just "vegan" by the strict definition…

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