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

Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 813 posts

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

#591

Post by rustyboy »

Swizec wrote: post #479
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…

Fake meat feels similar to my Slovenian eyes. There's a whole world of recipes that just don't include meat and are delicious. It wasn't until I moved to the USA that I even realized those are "vegetarian" ... to me they're just regular foods and recipes. Lots of cottage cheese hearty meals with high protein content. It helps that traditional (100+ years ago) Slovenian culture was that you rarely eat meat because mea…

Someone already pointed out the obvious, meat tastes good, but has some ethical baggage. Ala - fake meat.

But I think as you're pointing out, people around the world have made amazing dishes for centuries that are completely vegetarian why not eat those instead? And why there's no satisfying answer is because - It's not an either or. Do both is a perfectly valid answer.

I've been vegan for 13 years and my partner of 7 years is an omnivore. When I make dishes they like, we both eat vegan for the night. When we want a burger (and we're to lazy to make black bean patties) we use the fake meat. It's just another option to keep around that's incredibly convenient.

In my experience, these tend to be the "middle-ground", between vegan/vegetarians and omnivores. When Thanksgiving comes around it stresses my family to no end that there's no "core" (aka meat) for me. It is unfathomable to them that eating 5 veggie sides is enough. Conversely for those who choose not to eat meat without many vegetarian friends/restaurants tend to use these to bridge the gap. But you're right, once you're comfortable with stocking veggie alternatives ahead of time, knowing what dishes exist, and used to plant-centric thinking, all of which takes a lot of time, these don't make as much sense.

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

#592

Post by eloff »

kup0 wrote: post #481

This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake m…

I’m a simple man. I prefer the taste of meat, and the protein quality, but some of these products are pretty good. If they were substantially cheaper than meat - which would be possible from a fundamental principles analysis - then I’d buy them. There is no way I’m paying a premium for these products.

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

#593

Post by comte7092 »

slothtrop wrote: post #577
nightski wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's not true. Most cattle is grass fed for the majority of it's life at which point they will have them eat at feed lots to fatten up. Second, feed lots can use things like by-products of sugar production (molasses, beet pulp pellets, etc...) for feed. These are not human consumable and require no extra food to be grown. I've worked with a company that does over half a billion in revenue on this alone. There…

> Well that's not true. Most cattle is grass fed for the majority of it's life at which point they will have them eat at feed lots to fatten up. In the West, or globally? Because commercial agriculture here relies on corn/grain feed most of their life.

You may want to check your sources, because that’s not how commercial at works in the west.

Cattle are indeed raised on grass for the majority of their life, however they are fed grain to make weight for slaughter. In a sense, both positions are incorrect, because the image of cows grazing on grass most of their lives with little grain at the end is a very skewed picture (without grain the lifecycle would be substantially longer), but it is also the case that all cows do start off on grass.

The whole narrative that cows are “good for the environment” because they eat grass is fairly absurd though. The amount of land they require alone in the US is absolutely massive, and you can just take a look at the many fights over western water rights to see that even the impact of grass feeding is substantial.

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

#594

Post by pcthrowaway »

browningstreet wrote: post #580
kup0 wrote: post #481

This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake m…

In every taste test I've watched, Beyond never scores as high as Impossible. Impossible just seems to be doing better because it tastes better.

I personally like Beyond better. I know I'm not alone.

Impossible is still great though

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

#596

Post by comte7092 »

base698 wrote: post #563
unity1001 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is the most environmentally friendly option Its not. You need 30 kg of grain or other edible product to make just 1 kg of meat. We are literally turning more food to less food. An unrelated statistic showed that if the world has increased its meat consumption just a little bit more, we would run out of food. The conversion rate is that bad. ... Context: https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/blogs/hidden-driver-fa…

By protein content it's a bit better for beef. 1kg of corn has 32g protein. 1kg of beef has 260g of protein.

The point was that you need 30 kg of corn to make 1 kg of beef.

Therefore 32g * 30 = 960g of corn protein to create 260g of beef protein.

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

#597

Post by Wistar »

COGlory wrote: post #506
kup0 wrote: post #481

This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake m…

The fundamental problem is that everyone has a different reason for wanting plant-based meat/fake meat. So by any particular metric, they have failed. Some people want fake meat to be a 1:1 meat substitute because they love meat but can't eat it (allergies, cardiovascular, etc). Some people want cheaper meat because quality meat you can trust has grown too expensive. Some people want more vegan/vegetarian options bec…

And some people, such as my spouse, much prefer the flavor of Impossible burger over actual ground beef.

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

#598

Post by adamsmith143 »

COGlory wrote: post #506
kup0 wrote: post #481

This editorialized link title and the article's headline itself doesn't really match the article's content (as is increasingly common it seems). Sure, Beyond Meat has had lower sales- but soon after they mention that retail sales of Impossible meat products increased 50% in 2022- with an odd "but the CEO left so they're in trouble" assessment which seems a bit bonkers. Then the author seems to say that because fake m…

The fundamental problem is that everyone has a different reason for wanting plant-based meat/fake meat. So by any particular metric, they have failed. Some people want fake meat to be a 1:1 meat substitute because they love meat but can't eat it (allergies, cardiovascular, etc). Some people want cheaper meat because quality meat you can trust has grown too expensive. Some people want more vegan/vegetarian options bec…

>Some people want fake meat to be a 1:1 meat substitute because they love meat but can't eat it (allergies, cardiovascular, etc).

Seems kind of absurd. Presumably a 1:1 meat substitute would be chemically identical to "real" meat and the allergies and health effects associated with it would be identical.

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

#599

Post by nozzlegear »

When I first became vegetarian four or five years ago, the plant-based meat stuff helped me transition off of real meat more easily than I think I could've done without it. I grew up on the traditional meat-and-potatoes diet that a lot of rural midwestern people did in my area. My father raised and butchered cows through most of my childhood/teenage life, so having ground beef or steak every night was the norm. We always had a freezer full of meat ready to be cooked for a meal.

Because of that I sadly didn't have much taste for most vegetables. Even after I decided to stop eating meat, I would've refused to eat something like a salad because I never developed a taste for most leafy greens.

These days most of my meals do not include plant-based meat, but if I'm out at a restaurant or if I want fast food I'll grab an impossible burger or something like it. I just love that the option is available for me.

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

#600

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN