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Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

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

#441

Post by gonehome »

brodouevencode wrote: post #434
gonehome wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends where you live, in SF, LA, Vegas, Austin, and Miami I have impossible burgers all of them time - even Mighty Taco in Buffalo has impossible meat and Buffalo is last to get anything (they “allowed” Uber ten years after everyone else). The high quality fake meat is great - really satisfies the want for a burger or hot dog since becoming vegetarian and makes a lot of dishes where something like ground beef is us…

Of course there are markets where it has been more readily adopted than others, but even in those markets it's not performing the same as it has in Europe or Asia.

Yeah, I was just sharing my own anecdote - I know lots of people that eat it and I’ve personally had it in lots of cities when traveling.

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

#442

Post by ido »

maury91 wrote: post #429

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…

I see this a lot here in Germany (I'm an immigrant) - people buying vegan sausage, vegan ham, etc. I prefer to just eat "normal" vegetarian food (I don't even like real ham!) but meat is so central to traditional German cuisine and people here want the kind of (what they consider) staple food that they're willing to eat fake meat.

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

#443

Post by Octabrain »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #156
dubcanada wrote: post #137

I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. I know it’s a bunch of stuff to make it look like meat, but it’s basically cow meat vs a burger containing 50 random items and chemicals that is worse or equal in nutritional content then cow. Like one impossible vs cow is 14g of fat vs 16g of fat. 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. They are not even that much better for you. Rather than trying to get…

I loved the beyond burger and I’m a meat eater but after experimenting with it I also stopped eating them. The laundry list of ingredients and the contradictory information from educational institutions with respected names publishing about the impact on my body for consuming these turned me off. It’s good to know we can create delicious plant burgers. It sucks to doubt if they are even better for us than the meat.

I eat them every now and then. Any remarkable source about the negative impacts of it on the body that you would be kind to share? Thank you in advance.

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

#444

Post by broast »

prepend wrote: post #308
litenboll wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. While I agree with your comment, this is very misleading unless you eat your steak raw and unsalted.

I expect people salt their impossible burgers too. I think it’s accurate and fair to list the direct ingredients rather than estimating what the nutrition content is after cooking. That gets pretty hard to follow as cooking varies substantially. For example, I might bake my broccoli with olive oil. Does that make it misleading to only show the fat content of broccoli and not the olive oil? There are many beef dishes…

No, the impossible burgers come well salted and seasoned to hide the fakeness. I don't salt mine.

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

#445

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

serial_dev wrote: post #337
Moldoteck wrote: post #29

Maybe unpopular opinion, but for me, best plant based patties are those that do not try to replicate meat taste. I much prefer patties made from actual plants&vegetables/mushrooms/chickpeas/beans like potato, carrot, some spices and so on. They have like actual 'natural' flavor, almost like something homemade. Those that add a ton of additives often taste awful, even beyond/moving mountains...

I was a vegetarian for years, and I totally agree. People always recommended me these awful veggie/vegan alternatives to meat, and they were all disgusting. Fake bacon, fake meat, fake sausage, fake ham, baloney, all ended up being stomach turning. Interestingly, only people who recommended me these still ate meat, never vegetarians. The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different chees…

> The thing is that there are many alternatives (falafel, all kinds of different cheese, beans, etc) that are delicious but not trying to replicate meat taste

And not a one of them is available at a common fast food joint, but I can get an Impossible Whopper anywhere there is a Burger King, which is a lot of places. This is enormously convenient for me when I have to go on a road trip.

> I don't get the point of eating fake meats, just eat veggies, learn to cook, and enjoy

Cooking is a time investment and many of these dishes are pretty heavy on the time investment.

How about this: I'll eat what I want and you eat what you want, ok?

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

#446

Post by broast »

dubcanada wrote: post #137

I’d feel better if the ingredients list wasn’t as long as my arm. I know it’s a bunch of stuff to make it look like meat, but it’s basically cow meat vs a burger containing 50 random items and chemicals that is worse or equal in nutritional content then cow. Like one impossible vs cow is 14g of fat vs 16g of fat. 370mg of sodium vs 90mg of sodium. They are not even that much better for you. Rather than trying to get…

In my experience, usually the ingredients in fake burger meat are mostly recognizable nutritious plants, at least in the stuff I buy.

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

#447

Post by lawlorino »

themoonisachees wrote: post #430

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…

Similar story here in Finland, real meat is just so much cheaper than the fake veggie stuff. My theory was this was supply chains (being physically far away from the rest of Europe) and a relatively small market size, but interesting you have the same price discrepancy in France which I guess has neither of these issues.

Just speculating here but do you think it is because of the strong food culture and links to identity in France?

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

#448

Post by telchar »

avhception wrote: post #51
Moldoteck wrote: post #29

Maybe unpopular opinion, but for me, best plant based patties are those that do not try to replicate meat taste. I much prefer patties made from actual plants&vegetables/mushrooms/chickpeas/beans like potato, carrot, some spices and so on. They have like actual 'natural' flavor, almost like something homemade. Those that add a ton of additives often taste awful, even beyond/moving mountains...

I'm a meat-eater, but those "classic" plant-based patties often taste perfectly fine. Not like meat at all, but they don't have to, that's okay. It's not like I only eat meat. But the new breed of patties that claim to be meat taste really awful, definitely. They sometimes smell really weird, too.

I find ground beef smells worse than any of the plant-based alternatives, personally. Give me the impossible or beyond burgers any day over a real burger if we're judging by smell or mouth-feel. In taste, I'd say they're equal. The planty patties lose out and mouth-feel, usually, but some of them are ok in taste, and usually smell good. The planty patties tend to crumble and fall apart which makes them hard to eat as burgers.

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

#449

Post by notacoward »

legitster wrote: post #19

It's the cost. We are meat-eaters and have been trying lots of plant-based products. I was never sold as them being health products, but I liked the (presumed) environmental benefits. Plus, I could make a single meal for me and my Vegan friends. Plant-based meats were supposed to be cheaper. But it never happened. So now we've mostly moved back to normal meat products. (It doesn't help that my vegan friends never sto…

That's an important part of the answer (if not the answer) and should have been highlighted in OP. We've had a bit of inflation lately. Food in particular has become more expensive. Maybe this doesn't affect the average HNer much, but it absolutely does affect a lot of others. At the margins, which is where markets are made, quite a lot of people who might have bought plant-based meats won't at these prices.

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

#450

Post by robjan »

vgatherps wrote: post #402
robjan wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Hong Kong. Recently Impossible, Beyond and (our local equivalent) OmniFoods have been introduced to almost all restaurant menus. It's died down a bit, but still quite popular. And this is the place with the highest meat consumption per capita in the world.

I live in Hong Kong and can only remember one time I saw a fake meat on a restaurant menu, and it was at an extremely western health-focused restaurant of a large gym chain (nood food). It's definitely not "almost all" restaurant menus.

I think it depends on the restaurant, I'm definitely not the kind of person who goes to nood food, Mana or the other upper-middle class restaurants where plant based is in their branding.

We have restaurants which are quick, cheap eats (Cha Chaan Tengs and other fast food) and restaurants where you can sit down an talk for a bit. The latter is what I am referring to. Saying that, even CCT chains like Cafe de Coral and MX are starting to introduce these options and these lower end restaurants are the companies that OmniFoods have been targeting with their partnerships. They are also on the permanent menus of McCafe and KFC these days.

I've also noticed that Park n Shop and Wellcome now have dedicated plant based option freezers.

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