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

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

#511

Post by lithocarpus » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

KPGv2 wrote: post #231

lithocarpus wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean there is a financial incentive to use byproducts of industrial processes that would otherwise be wasted, as food ingredients, and as there is no requirement to rigorously show that new ingredients are safe to consume in the US, this happens all the time and makes up a big portion of the average modern US diet.

But the list of allegedly questionable foods above are all foods we already eat, just with some things removed (e.g., avocado oil is just avocado with the flesh removed; pea protein is peas with the carbs removed). It is not obvious to me how you would conclude these are unhealthy.

Study Finds 82 Percent of Avocado Oil Rancid or Mixed With Other Oils

https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avo...

"In three cases, bottles labeled as “pure” or “extra virgin” avocado oil contained near 100 percent soybean oil"

You don't necessarily know what you are getting when you buy a processed ingredient, and there are huge financial incentives to not sell a top quality product when you can substitute other things or use cheaper processes to make it.

Some portion of avocado oil sold today is refined with hexane, heated during the refining process, and likely heavily oxidized before consumption. (This is evidenced by the above paper, oxidized = rancid, and it's not a binary either/or there is a spectrum of how oxidized/rancid a fat can be.)

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

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Post by hbcondo714 » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

$BYND is also filing their 10-K Annual Report late[1]:

the Company requires additional time to complete a review and analysis related to its inventory balances, including amounts recorded for the provision of excess and obsolete inventory

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000165521026...

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

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Post by lithocarpus » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

missingdays wrote: post #289

lithocarpus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying they're healthier simply because we've historically eaten them. But there are many reasons to believe natural/traditional foods may be safer and healthier than new industrial foods. To name a few: 1) There's reason to believe our bodies may be more adapted to eating natural or traditional foods, having eaten them for hundreds of thousands of years rather than one or two generations. 2) Many highly proc…

> There's reason to believe our bodies may be more adapted to eating natural or traditional foods By this logic, you shouldn't eat modern meat, as its very different from the one our ancestors were eating. Modern meat is mostly fat

I agree it's probably healthier to eat wild meat or homegrown meat grown on healthy pasture than it is to eat feedlot meat grown on whatever they feed them there. There are lots of differences between them.

Not particularly because it has more fat though. While it's true that wild deer for example especially in warmer climates can have very little fat, there are plenty of animals that were traditionally eaten all over the world that have much higher proportions of fat. Fish, geese and ducks and many kinds of birds, whales and seals and lots of aquatic mammals, bears, etc.

I'm not trying to argue in favor of industrial beef at all I'm just trying to say that natural animal fat isn't necessarily unhealthy. (I really want to know actually if it is, because I do eat a lot of it, and have for much of my life. As far as I can tell I'm very healthy but I'm always open to learning. I have not yet found any compelling evidence for natural animal fat being bad.)

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

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Post by lithocarpus » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

KPGv2 wrote: post #227

lithocarpus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying they're healthier simply because we've historically eaten them. But there are many reasons to believe natural/traditional foods may be safer and healthier than new industrial foods. To name a few: 1) There's reason to believe our bodies may be more adapted to eating natural or traditional foods, having eaten them for hundreds of thousands of years rather than one or two generations. 2) Many highly proc…

> There's reason to believe our bodies may be more adapted to eating natural or traditional foods, having eaten them for hundreds of thousands of years rather than one or two generations. This is an argument that no white people should be eating pineapples, mangos, bananas, kiwifruit, etc. Hell, probably not even apples.

No it is not.

Different kinds of fruits from around the world may well have more in common with each other than categorically new synthetic compounds which are found in processed food.

Pretty much all people ate real foods - plants, animals, and fungus, and ferments of these, all over the world. There are categorical chemical differences between this stuff and much modern food.

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

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Post by lithocarpus » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #261

lithocarpus wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potato != extracted potato starch Peas != extracted pea protein They're not the same thing. I do agree that wild meat is probably a lot healthier than modern industrially farmed meat. Just as wild plants are probably often a lot healthier than modern monocropped plants grown with synthetic fertilizers rather than healthy soil.

It doesn't actually say 'extracted' though, are we sure 'protein' actually implies that (i.e. separated it from other elements) vs. just being marketing copy to make 'yellow pea' et al. more exciting to certain people? ( Protein, grr. Meat replacement, protein, grr, yeah. ) Not to mention all cooking really is is a bunch of refinement, extraction, chemical reaction, and heating processes anyway. I refine & extract &…

FWIW pea protein as used in beyond burger is extracted from peas in an industrial process - it isolates the protein from the rest of the pea.

Your point on cooking is fair. And, I'd still argue that modern processes introduce new types of chemistry that didn't exist in human food until very recently.

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

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Post by lithocarpus » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

KPGv2 wrote: post #225

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…

> every one of these is an industrially processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never ate until within the last ~50 years what absurd scaremongering! Do you know how yellow pea protein, for example, is "refined"? You take dried peas and grind them into powder. Pop in a centrifuge to separate protein from starch. Not exactly pumped full of "toxins"! > Avocado Oil You literally press avocado flesh. It's been…

Study Finds 82 Percent of Avocado Oil Rancid or Mixed With Other Oils

https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avo...

"In three cases, bottles labeled as “pure” or “extra virgin” avocado oil contained near 100 percent soybean oil"

You don't necessarily know what you are getting when you buy a processed ingredient, and there are huge financial incentives to not sell a top quality product when you can substitute other things or use cheaper processes to make it.

Some portion of avocado oil sold today is refined with hexane, heated during the refining process, and likely heavily oxidized before consumption. (This is evidenced by the above paper, oxidized = rancid, and it's not a binary either/or there is a spectrum of how oxidized/rancid a fat can be.)

If I see "avocado oil" as an ingredient, sure it could be simply pressed avocado flesh. But it could also be a rancid hexane-refined oil potentially cut with other stuff, and I'd bet that's more likely because it's probably a lot cheaper for the manufacturer.

I don't know as much about how the starches and proteins are extracted, I'd bet it's more benign, but there are added chemicals - even if they are considered safe, it's still not quite the same as eating actual peas and rice.

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

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Post by JohnMakin » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

lambda wrote: post #132

Grimblewald wrote: post #11

I always wondered who their demographic was. The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial agriculture). Health-conscious folks would take one look at the ingredient list and bail because of the heavy processing and industrial fillers. You've got bodybuilders a…

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…

This is a way weirder comment than the one you're replying to

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

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Post by tstrimple » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

ramon156 wrote: post #216

gusennan wrote: post #195

Vegetarian here. I like Beyond products, such as their chorizo, and eat them all the time. I don’t eat animals not because I’m trying to “eat healthy”, but because I’m trying to opt out participating in a system that is brutally cruel to sentient beings.

I'm in a similar boat and have to give up cheese since it's part of the chain. It's a bummer, I'm pretty addicted to it, and plant-based cheese is just nothing compared to a good young cheese I tell myself that in the long-term the pros outweigh the con, if you value being on the right side of morality

My wife developed lactose and gluten intolerance both right around the same time. Dealing with gluten free alternatives has been annoying, but manageable. Milks and butters I can easily sub in recipes to good results. I no longer use dairy butter or milk in any of my cooking. The vegan cheese stuff has been so gross that she's basically dropped it altogether. The texture and taste are so wrong and they basically don't melt. I'm sure it'll be "solved" eventually but a cheeseless pizza is better than a pizza with vegan cheese at this point in time.

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

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Post by bequanna » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #12

That's too bad. I don't expect fake-meats to be healthy, or cheap, but I like that they can be made without killing animals and without raising them in inhumane conditions. I had really hoped that people would say, "Well, if it tastes close enough, then how about I go for the cruelty-free version." And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance is just too m…

I’m completely against factory farming, confinement barns, etc and always avoid meat produced this way.

But I do wonder what you mean when you say “cruelty” in the context of cattle.

Having lived in/around rural livestock production most of my life, I can tell you that most cattle operations I am familiar with take excellent care of the their animals. Minimizing stress is absolutely a top goal for them.

Pork, on the other hand, is almost always produced in a horrifying, cruel way. Confinement barns are terrible in every sense of the word. Pigs are treated without respect from cradle to grave.

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

#520

Post by shafyy » Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #496

shafyy wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there is a big enough market for plant-based meat alternatives. At least in the European countries I have lived, if you go into a grocery store, you will see a large aisle that sells this stuff. Many big companies likes Nestlé are in this market. They sure as hell are not doing it for ethical reasons, they are making money. Just because Beyond as a company is doing bad doesn't mean the whole category of pro…

I'm vegetarian and used to live in EU. Strong +1 to this, many more meat alternatives than in Canada/US, and the options taste better whilst being overall healthier. The amount of fat and salt in the products in NA is sad to see.

> The amount of fat and salt in the products in NA is sad to see

That's true for many products across the board, not only vegan ones though.