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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

#551
post #504
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be very compelling if your body only needed calories to survive. Meat is the most efficient way to deliver proteins and essential amino acids. You should also dig into the concept of bioavailability.

This is debunked. Tofu is incredibly protein dense - on par or surpassing chicken breast. Without looking it up and subjectively, tofu also seems to be digested very easily. There’s also seitan and the beans. Nuts also exist but have fat/protein ratios that tend toward uncomfortably high. (If what your eating has macros that approach the fat content in nuts to other nutrients that’s pretty high and should be noted.)

Pea protein is also a complete protein. I've honestly never heard of protein being a problem for vegans.

The bigger issue is vitamins, in particular B12. But that's easily fixed with a daily multivitamin.

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

#552
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.…

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

#553
post #433

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…

From a French perspective, American cuisine is bland and unimpressive. Clamping down on meat is not enough, you need to also get around cooking everything in oil, and added sugar (basically, everything about your cuisine).

Hey, Spanish here! If at least it were good oil... ;)

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

#554

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.

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.

Go organic, with inflation the premium on organics isn't barely there now.

It's a better quality of product and doesn't send their cows to feedlots.

I've seen industrial farming and it's not pretty, but more than anything it products a pretty crappy product now compared to organic.

You eat a lot less as the quality leaves you satisfied.

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

#555
post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets If everyone were to switch to a vegan diet, global agriculture land use would be reduced by 75%.

Water and pesticide usage is way more problematic than land usage.

We can safely assume there is a relationship between land-use and total water and pesticide usage.

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

#557

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.

Meat substitutes are almost always sold out at my local grocery store. Last week beyond was entirely sold out and I managed to get the last 2 packs of Nestlé's Incredible? Impossible? Whatever it's called, yesterday veggie bacon and salami were sold out, I got like meat's last like gyros pack, and had to get a separate like meat like chicken pack to somehow substitute the missing like gyros pack. Oh and I got Rügenwalder's last Leberwurst.

Sometimes I cycle another 2½km to the the next grocery store, because they usually have more like meat and vivera products, but often they're sold out there as well and I've got to try another day.

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

#558
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.…

> IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach.

It's a better approach if it's economically viable. And there are doubts it ever will be, see e.g. https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-sca...

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

#559
post #504
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be very compelling if your body only needed calories to survive. Meat is the most efficient way to deliver proteins and essential amino acids. You should also dig into the concept of bioavailability.

This is debunked. Tofu is incredibly protein dense - on par or surpassing chicken breast. Without looking it up and subjectively, tofu also seems to be digested very easily. There’s also seitan and the beans. Nuts also exist but have fat/protein ratios that tend toward uncomfortably high. (If what your eating has macros that approach the fat content in nuts to other nutrients that’s pretty high and should be noted.)

Tofu is not digested easily, it has a lot of ingredients our omnivore stomachs cannot digest, so the bacteria gets to it. It's made out of soy beans, so yes, it will cause gas and bloating.

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

#560
There are better alternatives[1] than Beyond Meat at least here in Switzerland. There are several competitors that create much better tasting non-meat products without any of the additives that Beyond Meat uses, locally made and sustainable.

Beyond Meat spent an enormous amount of money to have their foot everywhere but if your product is mediocre a better products will take your place.

Also very interesting is that different countries have different priorities when it comes to such food items. The planted CEO stated that it was quite difficult to enter Germany because price was a much bigger factor than taste.

[1] https://en.eatplanted.com/

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