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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

#361

Post by SgtBastard »

bdcravens wrote: post #147

Early in the pandemic, during my first trip to a grocery store, I saw that the meat aisle was bare - but for a meat substitute (was either Impossible or Beyond, can't recall). Even in the midst of a global health crisis no one wanted it.

I mean, people didn’t want hoard it. It’s as equally intuitive that there’s little overlap between people who eat meat alternatives and those who stockpiled staples and caused the shortages their stockpiling was supposed to protect them from.

Some of the worst displays of poor manners in the “civilised” world was of people fighting over piles of toilet paper.

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

#362

Post by frankzander »

Since the rise of Beyond and the whole hype of this lab-grown alternative products, something has really changed (at least here in Germany): There are a lot of good tasting meat-like products on the market and they improved very well over the last couple of years. They improved in texture (IMHO a completely underrated factor) and flavor. I mostly buy steaks and sausages for BBQ. Nowadays there are some differences in taste and texture but when I was beginning eating only vegetarian (20+ years) there was nearly nothing on the market and that, what was on the market, was disgusting.

But I have to admit ... the best products are products which don't want to be meat replacements. That are well flavored (with herbs and smoke) tofu products from one german company/brand. They are too expensive for day to day use like the most other meat replacements but if I want to spend my money on that than I buy the really good stuff.

Vegan/Vegetarian has, depending on the intention behind this decision, often a health related reason. Meat alternatives are often highly processed food which is not healthy at all. Proteins from peas, soy, mushrooms or whatever remind me more at dog food with hydrolyzed protein content for allergic dogs ;-)

The replacements may or may not taste good ... at the end they are not as healthy as self cooked food.

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

#363

Post by noduerme »

tpm wrote: post #335
RupertEisenhart wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This source says differently [0], at least for meat. Do you have any evidence or reasoning? [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444144/

That's mostly related to the curing salts and their reaction with heme iron. Curing salts are not used when processing vegetables; heme iron is not added either (I hope), so this should not apply in this case.

Impossible patties have heme iron added.

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/impossible-burger-vs-be...

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

#364

Post by nebopolis »

humaniania wrote: post #328
prepend wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier. I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm ani…

The water usage requirements and methane emissions present challenges to sustainability.

Water usage is heavily region dependent - grass fed beef from a region which does not depend on well irrigation essentially has net zero water usage. The cows eat grass and drink water, which they then piss out watering the grass. This is for sure a problem in an arid region dependent on aquifers to raise livestock, but for instance the midwest has plentiful rain (sometimes far too much in fact) and "water usage" isn't a meaningful limitation. Often times the water usage numbers quoted include all the rain that fell to grow the silage that the cows eat, which still ends up in the same aquifers and rivers eventually whether it passes through a cow or not. There are concerns if there is a poorly managed high point source concentration of manure which causes nutrient runoff into waterways, but that's a far different conversation.

Methane is a better example, but ironically factory farming has the answer there. Collecting manure in a waste pool and turning it into biogas turns it from a negative to a net positive.

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

#365

Post by oifjsidjf »

tptacek wrote: post #308
SoftTalker wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.

The idea that processing determines the healthfulness of a foodstuff is fallacious.

No post body was provided.

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

#366

Post by braingenious »

Willish42 wrote: post #347

This post is crowded with responses from people explaining why they hate Beyond meat FWIW, I've always liked Beyond Meat as a "good enough" substitution for a beef burger that's easy to prepare that is close in texture to a real burger - if you use a burger sauce and cheese like most recipes for non-vegans do, it tastes pretty close. I even liked it so much I'd order it at restaurants wherever available and bought a…

What is “burger sauce”?

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

#367

Post by ajmurmann »

SoftTalker wrote: post #298
colordrops wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you are being downvoted, but I know exactly what you mean. When I eat Impossible and especially Beyond burgers, my stomach feels slightly off. A bit of indigestion. I don't get this with typical veggie patties.

Beyond/Incredible meat is awful. There's no other description for it. This highly processed fake meat is not healthy. Just eat meat, or don't if you don't want to. There's no need for this fake garbage.

To each their own. I greatly enjoy the flavor of meat, but feel like a serial killer when I think about the animal suffering and to a lesser extend carbon emissions. While I also get a slightly odd feeling in my stomach from Impossible beef (doesn't happen with their cyber chicken), it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger without feeling like I just tortured a puppy.

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

#368

Post by [deleted] »

Willish42 wrote: post #342
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #278

If you know cars are problematic, the solution isn't to produce a bicycle that has a "car-like experience". The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful. I have at least 8 vegan dishes I can make that are just amazingly delicious . A mushroom risotto, veggie tajine, chana masala, ramen, moussaka, general tso's cauliflour, cuban b…

This is a really great perspective. Thank you for sharing! Regarding this part: > It took an unbelievable combination of luck and grit for one woman to introduce America to French cuisine, allowing home cooks to stretch past the bland, canned staples of the 1960's. I feel like this should be obvious but I'm ashamed to know I don't know who you're describing. Can you or somebody else happening to read this please elab…

[deleted]

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

#369

Post by mlindner »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101
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.…

I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint. But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger o…

There's a good chance that your gut microbiome forgot about meat which is why you have the problem.

It's a well known story I've heard of vegetarians going back to eating meat and then getting sick from the meat for some time. This is also why eating foods you're not used to can often make you sick even if they're fine. Your gut microbiome adapts to your diet, and if you suddenly change what you eat you can get indigestion.

From my understanding the beyond/etc "meat" acts like real meat to your body microbiome because it's so similiar.

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

#370

Post by tptacek »

oifjsidjf wrote: post #365
tptacek wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that processing determines the healthfulness of a foodstuff is fallacious.

Quoted post unavailable.

Cooking reduces availability of some nutrients and increases others.
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