Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by LBJsPNS » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #401

dfxm12 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US and I know it's a big country, so I can only speak for my little slice of the country, but we've always had vegetarian & vegan options at our restaurants, and only recently has plant based meat entered into the picture. Lots of food brought to the US from other places, like Mexico, China, India, Italy, etc. is already vegetarian or vegan, so we don't need to have fake sausage on a restaurant menu whe…

Mostly the same for Europe. Varies by country but lots of dishes don’t rely on meat. But you’re missing the point. The bulk of American sausages sold are fake as hell. If I’m eating fake meat, why not actually eat fake meat

"The bulk of American sausages sold are fake as hell"

What in the world are you talking about?

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

#422

Post by LBJsPNS » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #242

tduberne wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to say the same thing. Here i Germany the choice of vegan sausage and cold cuts is huge, even in small grocery shops. I know lot of people who eat meat regularly _and_ buy the vegan alternatives on a regular basis.

Which totally puzzles me. Nothing wrong with a vegetarian diet, but would I prefer processed food, vegan or otherwise, over unprocessed one?

Do you cook your food?

Congratulations, it's processed. Worrying about something as nonspecific as "processing" is much the same as worrying that it's made up of chemicals.

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

#423

Post by ChoGGi » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

I don't eat meat, nor do I have any inclination to eat fake meat.

I'm curious who thought people would rather eat more expensive fake meat compared to cheaper actual meat?

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

#424

Post by Gordonjcp » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

I think the only "fake meat" plant-based meat I've enjoyed was a Gr*ggs vegan sausage roll, which was genuinely a great flavour and texture.

A lot of the things like the "Impossible Burger" type stuff just tastes disgusting, horrible overprocessed crap.

Edit: The Ikea "veg balls" are actually pretty good too.

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

#425

Post by chengiz » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #229

lampe3 wrote: post #161

Can we add an "in the US" at the end? Since for EU countries this is not true. I'm living in sweden now and lived in germany and poland. Plant-based meat products are growing in numbers and the price of meat is going so high that its cheaper to buy the plant-based one. In Germany one producer of meat sausages want to turn 100% plant based[1]. I will not go into the whats better and not for you. Since this highly depe…

I'm from Germany, and I can confirm that the number of vegan alternatives to any imaginable animal product have increased sharply both in quantity and quality over the last years, to the point that you can get good vegan alternatives at discount supermarkets now. Even in the US, I wonder if what Bloomberg is calling a "flop" is a real flop or just some companies falling short of their over-ambitious forecasts (or the…

Re your second paragraph, you are exactly right. The title is clickbaity, to the point of using a disparaging term (fake) instead of a generally accepted one (lab grown). The article is meant to be shared by meat lovers, who were never the market. Entrepreneurs and early adopters did proselytize it - but that happens in every industry. Lab grown meat is everywhere in the US and people buy and eat it. It's just another choice that consumers have now. It is not a flop.

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

#426

Post by chairhairair » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #221

chimprich wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. If you listed the "ingredients" in a cow, you'd also have a list that was as long as the proverbial limb. Proteins, fats, sugars, enzymes, hormones, antibiotics (quite likely with factory farming), microorganisms... it's just our labelling laws that mean they get to be lumped together as "meat". They're still chemicals assembled by organic nanotech.…

The chemicals in every plant and animal are a long, complicated list. If, as you suggest, we elaborate them out, "mushroom," "fig," amd even "carrot" get really weird. The point of the ingredients list is to backtrack from the food in front of you to a list of known safe components. Like it or not, "cow" is one of those - humans have been eating cow meat for millions of years.

1. Humans have not been eating cows produced by modern methods for millions of years. Cow diet, genetics, and lifecycle is quite unnatural at this point. (This is the overwhelming bulk of cow consumption, of course your local micro farm produces cows more similar to ancient cows)

2. Humans haven’t been eating cow (or meat generally) on this scale ever before in history.

3. Even despite the above, we genuinely don’t know to what extent baseline human health is dependent on traditional diet. It’s not impossible that there exists a modern radical diet that greatly improves health and longevity without including any “natural” foods.

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

#427

Post by LBJsPNS » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #383

lampe3 wrote: post #161

Can we add an "in the US" at the end? Since for EU countries this is not true. I'm living in sweden now and lived in germany and poland. Plant-based meat products are growing in numbers and the price of meat is going so high that its cheaper to buy the plant-based one. In Germany one producer of meat sausages want to turn 100% plant based[1]. I will not go into the whats better and not for you. Since this highly depe…

I live in the US and I know it's a big country, so I can only speak for my little slice of the country, but we've always had vegetarian & vegan options at our restaurants, and only recently has plant based meat entered into the picture. Lots of food brought to the US from other places, like Mexico, China, India, Italy, etc. is already vegetarian or vegan, so we don't need to have fake sausage on a restaurant menu whe…

Always is a relative term. I can assure you that as recently as the 1990s there were large swaths of the U.S. where if you didn't consume meat at each meal you would essentially be branded a communist.

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

#428

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:21 PM UTC

myspy wrote: post #267

giantg2 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Getting something like that at a veggie butcher would be cool." Wouldn't it just be shipped in plastic and repacked in plastic?

They could ship a lot of them in less plastic to a vendor where you could get them in a paper bag.

How does that work if they use fake blood?

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

#429

Post by maury91 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:21 PM UTC

I'm not a fan of plant-based meat, this is most likely because of my culture ( I'm Sardinian ), we do have many meat based dishes and many plant based dishes, and honestly I don't see the need to cook the meat based ones with processed food that tries to replicate the taste and consistency of meat.

I believe that if you don't want to eat meat there's a world of recipes that do not involve meat and are made to elevate the delicate taste of veggies. I've grow up with eating whole foods, we cook everything from the base ingredients, sometimes we even make those base ingredients ( for example we have sheeps and cows and we make milk, and out of milk we make cheese ), personally for me pre-packaged food appears as the sub-optimal choice

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

#430

Post by themoonisachees » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

My perspective from France:

Fake meat has never been so available. There are several restaurants that serve it that are not your "we are explicitly vegan" restaurants, burger king served some, and all major supermarkets have it in stock in the freezers right next to normal meat. However, the price is still unattainable. A few days ago i bought patties to make burgers and meat was about 1 euro/100g and plant meat was about twice as expensive. For as long as it is more expensive, people are going to buy real meat, unless they're trying it (in terms of taste i think it's fine) or vegan.