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Beyond Meat fights for survival

foodinstitute.com

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Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#341

Post by graublau »

hellcow wrote: post #315
evrimoztamur wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides ultra-processed foods 'hysteria,' basic ratios I consider here are: - protein to fat (which is roughly 1.4 in Beyond Meat (20g protein / 14g fat in 100g) versus 2.5-3.5 in beef (30±5g protein / 12.5±2.5g fat in 100g)) - protein to mass (20% vs ~30%) - micro-nutrients to mass (a very wide variety of minerals, vitamins, and other unknown nutrients present in beef) - carbohydrates (not present in substantial amo…

> 'we can do it and it may get more people to eat vegetarian.' That's a noble goal in and of itself. Every step to reduce environmental impact and animal cruelty has value. Beyond and Impossible were my "off-ramp" from eating meat every meal to exploring vegetarianism and veganism. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

You needed a product to help you do that? Were vegetables themselves unappealing?

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#342

Post by hombre_fatal »

jjani wrote: post #175
jurip wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheese uses lots and lots of milk. There are questions of ethics (the treatment of dairy cows is often less than stellar) and carbon footprint (cheese is worse than pork, for example.) I'd really love to see some good alternatives, too. I don't really expect to give up all cheese anytime soon, but having a substitute for at least some of it would be helpful.

> cheese is worse than pork, for example Such figures are usually "per gram of protein", in which case, sure. Thing is, it's very common for people to eat 200+ grams of pork in one meal, whereas e.g. grated cheese on a pasta dish is <10g. A big slice of cheese is 25-28g, and half the time it's significantly less than 100% actual cheese, with a good amount of filler. The only cheeses that one might eat 50g+ of in one…

You are definitely from a culture that doesn't guzzle cheese like Americans. So out of curiosity I went to your comment history and your previous comment was "Here in Korea".

Yeah, growing up in the US I ate more cheese than meat which is probably super common among US kids. I'd devour the whole bag of cheese sticks if I could. And you can look at restaurants like tex mex where the enchilada sits in a lake of cheese. Or go to Olive Garden and try to find someone who stopped at Anyways, I bet it can be hard to transition from this dairy-heavy lifestyle to a plant-based diet. I personally gave up the idea of a cheese substitute entirely except on vegan pizza where it's dominated by other ingredients. It's just not as good.

Since there is animal-free dairy milk (https://tryboredcow.com/) on the market I wonder when we'll see animal-free dairy cheese.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#343

Post by itsoktocry »

drewg123 wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

It’s always been awful IMO. Tastes like sawdust with a congealed vegetable oil binder and chemical flavorings that approximate meat. A straight up bean burger is better and far less processed.

Its way better than a bean burger IMHO. As a vegan, what I like most about Beyond burgers are that they are consistent, and pretty amazing at not being awful. If I'm in a random restaurant with a few token vegan options, the last thing I want to do is take a chance on some potentially terrible homemade bean or chickpea burger. If they have Beyond or Impossible, I know exactly what I'm getting.

Yes, you know exactly what you're getting: processed garbage.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#344

Post by kelipso »

scythmic_waves wrote: post #329
evrimoztamur wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides ultra-processed foods 'hysteria,' basic ratios I consider here are: - protein to fat (which is roughly 1.4 in Beyond Meat (20g protein / 14g fat in 100g) versus 2.5-3.5 in beef (30±5g protein / 12.5±2.5g fat in 100g)) - protein to mass (20% vs ~30%) - micro-nutrients to mass (a very wide variety of minerals, vitamins, and other unknown nutrients present in beef) - carbohydrates (not present in substantial amo…

Thanks for breaking that down. As someone doing weightlifting, this is the primary reason I don't bother with vegetarian meats. They actually taste pretty good IMO, but they don't offer nutritional benefits commensurate with animal meat. It's a shame, really. I'd gladly incorporate them if I could get a similar protein : calorie ratio.

Plus whatever chemicals (yes, I will keep using this word, thank you) they put in it for texture, flavor, preservation, etc.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#346

Post by HDThoreaun »

encom wrote: post #345
HDThoreaun wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oat milk is legitimately better than cow milk. Why would you need to be tricked into buying it? Just seems like an incredibly closed minded world view.

Oat milk is not milk.

So what? its better than milk

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#347

Post by hombre_fatal »

Pikamander2 wrote: post #143
socalgal2 wrote: post #70

My experience with Beyond (~4 years ago), was that it wasn't as good as Impossible. Impossible seemed like meat, Beyond seemed like nuts mashed into paste.

Yeah, I never understood the hype for Beyond's products. They must have just had great marketing or something because their meat barely tasted any better than any other frozen veggie burger. Impossible Foods was always more impressive, both from a taste and scientific perspective. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars into cutting-edge food science, including a new plant-based heme production process. That's…

Beyond has other products that are decent.

Impossible has better patties last I tried.

But Beyond Sausage is good (though expensive). And Beyond Steak chunks are great in tacos: just pop them in an air fryer. It's like $6.50/bag which is enough tacos for two people.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#348

Post by twic »

bartread wrote: post #221
cloudbonsai wrote: post #132

So the biggest problem here is that Beyond Meat has a huge debt due in just 2 years: That’s a problem given that $1 billion in convertible bonds come due in March 2027. Beyond Meat has no way to repay that debt, and the credit markets know it: The bonds currently trade at about 17 cents on the dollar. To put the "$1B" number into the context, Beyond Meat sold $300M worth of plant-based meats last year, and made a net…

And this as well: > The company expects the figure to reach about $330 million in 2025, roughly 10% higher than it was six years earlier despite a huge increase in the number of products offered. It’s not like they have any growth potential to speak of that would enable them to service that debt. It’s a bit hard to see who their target market is or, rather, it’s a bit hard to see that the market segment they’re aimin…

I think the company was a bet that if you make a good enough meat substitute, then meat eaters will switch to it (sometimes), and that's a huge total addressable market. I would say that bet has not come off. But that's hindsight - the whole point of startups is to take bets.

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#349

Post by aziaziazi »

r053bud wrote: post #336
aziaziazi wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they rank equally to the chickens one one the taste and processing scales. What does that even mean?

I wasn't clear by grouping a subjective and a (supposed) objective opinion. I mean:

- I'd give 6/10 to the regular nugget's taste, and 6/10 to the beyond meat (sorry for typo in precedent post).

- BM and regular are both highly processed food. 22 ingredients for the regular (not even counting "spices extracts"): https://www.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/sites/ch/nfl/pdf/2023_...

Re: Beyond Meat fights for survival

#350

Post by hombre_fatal »

intothemild wrote: post #131
mawadev wrote: post #127

Over here, beyond meat is simply more expensive than just buying meat. On top of that, it feels like you eat pure ultra processed product magic chemistry and thats not good. So who exactly is the target audience for that? I'd totally buy it, if it competes with meat prices by being cheaper and if there wasn't so much effort into trying to look like meat and taste like meat, which goes against the entire premise.

My vegetarian wife won't touch the stuff, or any meat substitute. It's too much like meat. I always believed these things are like nicotine patches/chewables/etc.

That's not the right way to look at it.

Just because I went vegan doesn't mean I hate the taste of meat. I love the taste of meat. I sometimes treat myself to products that taste like meat.

There is no "final stage veganism" for me where I hold my fingers together in the "X" shape towards anything that reminds me of animal-based foods. And a lot of people seem to think this caricature is realistic based on the amount of times people think they're trolling me on Twitter by posting an image of a sizzling steak.

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