Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

plantbasednews.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 623 posts

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#501

Post by cmiles8 »

For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never really existed.

Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick.

More broadly, as others have highlighted, the result is mostly over-processed lab goo that most health conscious people would avoid. There are plenty of good sources of protein without the need for magic shakes either.

Net here is a business trying to solve problems that aren’t really problems. The stock being down 98.9% is a reflection of that cold reality.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#502

Post by array_key_first »

Intermernet wrote: post #306
carlmr wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it has way more sodium than ground beef you'd buy at a grocerty store We're not comparing fairly here. A finished hamburger patty is not pure ground beef. Did you ever make a hamburger patty yourself? You add salt and spices at a minimum. A more fair comparison would be looking at store-bought hamburger patties. That's the same category of food. I just compared Beyond (0.75g salt per 100g) and block house American B…

You can make an awesome burger pattie with beef, onion, garlic, a touch of finely chopped jalapeno and some herbs and spices etc. You don't need to add salt.

You absolutely need salt for a good burger, and just about any meat. Almost anything, really. Salt is not optional. Beef tastes less like beef without salt.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#503

Post by BJones12 »

ComposedPattern wrote: post #494
hbn wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils.

The "dawn of man" was perhaps 100,000 years ago. Humans, in some regions, have been raising cattle for maybe 10% of that time. And for almost all of that 10%, beef was a luxury good eaten only on occasion except by the very rich. It was certainly not a staple food. Common people, when they ate meat, were much more likely to eat fish, sheep, and goats. Cattle were mostly raised for milk and as draught animals. There i…

You seem to think that the only way to eat a cow is to raise it. Humans have been hunting before a long time. Before cattle were domesticated, they were wild, and were hunted and eaten. So were other ruminants with similar meat flavors.

So yes, cattle (and their ancestors, and their relatives) have been human food since the dawn of man.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#504

Post by array_key_first »

FlamingMoe wrote: post #497
array_key_first wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamburger patties are processed, I don't know who y'all are kidding. At the end of the day, red meat is bad for you. Processed red meat is in the same category as carcinogen as Alcohol and Tobacco. To put into perspective, diet coke is two categories lower. And it doesn't get much more artificial than that. Bacon is basically cigarettes in meat form, and hamburgers are just heart disease in a bun. Believe it or not,…

Same IARC group does not equal same risk. Group 1 just means the evidence is strong, not that the danger is equivalent. Smoking increases lung cancer risk by 2,000-3,000%. Daily processed meat increases colorectal cancer risk from around 4.5% to 5%. calling bacon "cigarettes in meat form" is wildly misleading.

Yes, I know that, my point is we know, almost definitely, that processed red meat causes cancer.

For many processes ingredients, like aspartame, we don't know. We're pretty sure it doesn't cause cancer. But from the way people talk about aspartame versus pastrami, you wouldn't know that.

And I stand by what I said about bacon. It's health detriments are much much worse than just colorectal risk - it heightens your risk of almost all cancers, similar to tobacco, due to inflammation and free radicals. And that's not even touching on heart disease, which is the more realistic concern.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#505

Post by elsjaako »

cmiles8 wrote: post #501

For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never really existed. Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick. More broadly, as others have highlighted, the re…

You can like the taste of meat but think it's unethical to kill animals for food. It's not necessarily a "problem", but it is something a reasonable person might want, and so there can be a market for it.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#506

Post by array_key_first »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #491
array_key_first wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hamburger patties are processed, I don't know who y'all are kidding. At the end of the day, red meat is bad for you. Processed red meat is in the same category as carcinogen as Alcohol and Tobacco. To put into perspective, diet coke is two categories lower. And it doesn't get much more artificial than that. Bacon is basically cigarettes in meat form, and hamburgers are just heart disease in a bun. Believe it or not,…

Hamburgers are pretty lean. The meat is “processed” by mixing fatty cuts with lean cuts. So it ends up leaner than what the fat cut would have been.

And preservatives, and antimicrobial washes.

Hamburger patties are not very lean at all. 15% saturated fat is not lean. Lean is chicken breast or game deer.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#507

Post by lithocarpus »

chabska wrote: post #220
lithocarpus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond Burger ingredients: Yellow Pea Protein, Avocado Oil, Natural Flavors, Brown Rice Protein, Red Lentil Protein, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Pea Starch, Potassium Lactate (to preserve freshness), Faba Bean Protein, Apple Extract, Pomegranate Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Spice, Vinegar, Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet). Except for Vinegar, every one of these is an industrially processed/extracte…

> humans never ate until within the last ~50 years Humans have been eating some of these for thousands of years. I know "extract" is a scary big scientific word, but most of the time it's just immersing the grain in hot water, strain it to remove the pulp, then boiling the liquid to concentrate it. You can separate the starch and protein from any bean or grain in your kitchen with some basic kitchen equipment and hot…

That could be mostly true of some things like the starches, but with the caveat that the industrial processes used today aren't always the same as what was done traditionally or what I might do in my kitchen, and often involve new/synthetic/potentially toxic compounds.

Pea starch might be the most benign of all of these. I'm not making an argument that pea starch is bad either, just that it's not quite the same as peas, and isn't quite the same as home-made pea starch, and we don't really know if this is a problem.

For example, with pea starch, they use defoaming agents like siloxanes, as well as sulfur dioxide, sodium hydroxide, and others. And, because it's a concentrate of just part of the plant, you might get a heavier dose of pesticides or heavy metals depending on what part of the plant these bind with. (Sure, if you eat equal portions of each part of the plant, extracted, this factor would balance out.)

There's a spectrum of course with these things. Some things like refined oils might be far more harmful than the extracted starches based on the chemistry I've looked into. I'm not particularly afraid of pea starch but I just don't buy or eat processed food generally unless I'm in a pinch.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#508

Post by 5A704C1N »

cmiles8 wrote: post #501

For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never really existed. Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick. More broadly, as others have highlighted, the re…

There is nothing that says we are "designed" to consume animal protein.

Beyond, Impossible, and the like have suffered from misinformation and an industry-funded, influencer-laden social media smear campaign to paint these alternative products as highly-processed franken-foods.

They are a good alternative for health and environmentally-conscious folks, solve real sustainability challenges, and aren't terrible for you in moderation.

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#509

Post by nxpnsv »

hbn wrote: post #425
lambda wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a weird comment. Why do you think that "ethical vegans" like the "taste of plants" any more than anyone else? The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals, not because you don't like the taste. Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers. Sure, they're not perfect from a health food point of view, but they're lower in sodium and saturated fat tha…

> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils.

There are a lot of health conscious vegetarians who still like the taste of beyond burger. How is this so weird?

Re: Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line

#510

Post by elsjaako »

542354234235 wrote: post #385
Jensson wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average American eat around 60 pounds a year, typically you eat less than a full pound when you eat so yeah they probably eat more than once per week. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa Given the $112 subsidies per year above, that would add $2 per pound of beef, that would slightly raise the price not balloon it to 30-40 as poster claimed. So he was bullshitting.

Average includes vegans, and I'm pretty sure they eat it less than once per week. It’s just how much meat divided by population. The previous comment shows that the consumption is not anywhere close to equally distributed.

The subsidies are also paid by vegans. Both the average meat consumption and average subsidy can be multiplied by the total population to get the total.
Post reply on HN