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Beyond Meat S-1

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Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#71

Post by Pfhreak »

bluntfang wrote: post #48
Pfhreak wrote: post #3

I've gone vegetarian, except for a single grass fed animal I bought from a local farmer. (I live in a city, it was easier than I thought it would be to connect with a farmer out in the rural part of my state.) The transition was way, way easier than I thought it was going to be. I didn't guilt myself when I made mistakes, just stopped eating meat unless I was sure the provenance of it was sustainable and free from cr…

>free from cruelty. Do you mind if I ask what your requirements for this are? At the end of the day, isn't ending life cruel, no matter the means?

I'm the first one to admit that the line is fuzzy.

I read this story [1] by Glenn Greenwald (of Snowden interview fame), and I realized that I was not ok with gestation crates for pigs, or the practices espoused by the industrial farming of any animal.

I do not object to raising animals and eating them, but I do object to essentially keeping them in brutal, squalid conditions. Animals should have access to the outdoors, be allowed to pursue their own social connections, have enough space to stretch and exercise, have feed that's natural and high quality, and generally exist in a comfortable way.

Totally acknowledge that's my own definition. It's an arbitrary line in the sand to say, "Killing an animal is ok, causing suffering to an animal before killing it is not".

I just... read the article and couldn't stomach letting any of my money flow to companies that would think that sort of behavior was ok.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05/factory-farms-fbi-missin...

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#72

Post by wavefunction »

slimsag wrote: post #51
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #41

>Have committed to $22MM of protein I've never understood this convention and it always causes my brain to short-circuit when trying to read it. Is that $22 Million Monies, or $22 MegaMillions I'm assuming that the shorthand is supposed to be read as: $22 Million So then I spend the next 5 minutes stuck in a feedback loop of what the hell am I supposed to be thinking.

M is a stand-in for the Roman numeral Φ, or 'mille' which is the Latin word for 'thousand'. So MM is thousand thousand's, or million. The reason it was adopted in finance was because M means thousand, except in English where we adopted M to mean million. Of course metric units where M = million makes more sense today, though. It's a legacy thing that stuck around.

Greek numeral Phi ?

I can't find a Roman use from quick searching, and the Greeks represented 500,000 with it.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#73

Post by jordanpg »

daeken wrote: post #39
PerfectElement wrote: post #27

I've been vegan for 15 years, and I've tried all sorts of veggie burgers and mock meats available. Some of them are good, but pretty easy to tell they are not meat. When I first had the Beyond Burger last year (just plain with 2 thin slices of bread) it brought back a very strong memory of how meat used to taste. I wonder if most meat eaters would be able to tell it's not meat on a blind test. I'm curious to try the…

As a meat eater, I've had mixed results with Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger. With real meat, it's pretty hard to mess up a burger; if it's anywhere from medium rare to medium well, it's still going to be a pretty tasty burger. The current burger substitutes require a much more narrow window before they just don't taste very good. That said, I'm extremely bullish on these; they're already great and they're on…

Good points about ease of cooking and error.

So much of short-term adoption of these is tied to marketing and time, but their long-term success strikes me as a foregone conclusion.

In marketing, they will need to get past a latent psychological hurdle and in time, waiting for the crotchety older folks who insist, no matter what, on a "real burger." Both things are related to the living generations who have grown up with "real burgers."

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#74

Post by codezero »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #64

Anecdotally seems like impossible burger has been more commercially successful

There's definitely a bit of an arms race going on, and it's unfortunate. I find both products to be very different, and we could stand to have some diversity in the area of alternative meat products.

Off the top of my head, in terms of commercial availability I've seen them at:

Beyond: - Safeway (both meat patties, and frozen boxed crumbles) - Del Taco - Carls Jr. - Veggie Grill

Impossible: - Umami Burger - White Castle - Smaller retail locations - pilot w/ Burger King

Beyond also has a lot of products, from sausages, crumbles, and different flavors of meat.

I think Impossible is highly focused on reproducing ground beef.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#75

Post by tgb29 »

So great to see all these recent IPOs coming from tech investments and innovation. California is making the Stock Market for everyone much stronger.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#76

Post by ergothus »

alimhaq wrote: post #45

This is probably an unpopular opinion here but I don't think these meat substitutes are sustainable for long term health in humans...our bodies are clearly designed to consume meat (especially apparent when you compare our bodies to those of our mostly herbivore relatives) and by extension we need these nutrients to thrive (not just survive, mind you). I understand the incentive for people to go vegan but people shou…

Lots of things are contrary to my evolutionary makeup. My job (I sit on my butt - plenty of articles of late about THAT), my house (we've seen lots about the perils of modern houses in regards to sunlight, particulates, etc), my diet (beyond vegetarianism - modern diets are NOT paleo or any other "whole grains & meats") - pretty much all of it.

Now you make a very good point that these decisions aren't free - there are lots of concerns to care about and you are 100% correct. But saying there are impacts does not mean (1) that we shouldn't consider the change and (2) that NOT doing the change is somehow free of impacts.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#77

Post by telesilla »

Pfhreak wrote: post #3

I've gone vegetarian, except for a single grass fed animal I bought from a local farmer. (I live in a city, it was easier than I thought it would be to connect with a farmer out in the rural part of my state.) The transition was way, way easier than I thought it was going to be. I didn't guilt myself when I made mistakes, just stopped eating meat unless I was sure the provenance of it was sustainable and free from cr…

I'm with you. I haven't eaten red meat or birds for going on 25 years now and though I do enjoy a good salmon burger, I honestly prefer a beyond burger when I can find one (trying to cut down on the fish, for health and over-fishing reasons).

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#78

Post by ceejayoz »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #19
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't found Impossible in my area yet, but this is a big concern for me - trying it out and not knowing if I screwed it up or if it's just not my thing regardless of preparation.

I think it depends on how you view meat. If you look at both of them as benign foods where taste is the only important aspect, you may like beef more. But if other factors like ethical treatment of animals or greenhouse gas emissions matter to you, these burger substitutes offer a lot without the same negatives.

I think you're misunderstanding my comment.

If I made a creme brulee recipe without having ever tasted it done correctly by someone else, I wouldn't know if the texture/taste was correct.

I have the same fear with the Impossible burgers - I want one cooked the way the company intended, so I know what it's supposed to taste like. Otherwise, my first impression of it might just be due to me over/undercooking it.

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#79

Post by tlholaday »

alimhaq wrote: post #45

This is probably an unpopular opinion here but I don't think these meat substitutes are sustainable for long term health in humans...our bodies are clearly designed to consume meat (especially apparent when you compare our bodies to those of our mostly herbivore relatives) and by extension we need these nutrients to thrive (not just survive, mind you). I understand the incentive for people to go vegan but people shou…

> ... our bodies are clearly designed ...

Grant for the sake of discussion that your body is the work of a designer. The designer's design for childbirth is clearly abysmal: fifty thousand American women yearly suffer severe maternal morbidity. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10/607782992/for-every-woman-who.... A designer who flunks childbirth should not be trusted with carnivory.

You contradict your first sentence with your second, when you refer to "evolutionary makeup." Do you have a robust definition of "evolutionary makeup" ?

Re: Beyond Meat S-1

#80

Post by Pfhreak »

rayiner wrote: post #22
somethoughts wrote: post #11

I've always thought two things: - Subway should have leaned into their use of soy in their deli meat [1] and came in from the high end with it being the more expensive, high end, healthier, better for the environment product - There should be high end burger chain which give you an eighth of a pound real meat burger patty for taste reasons and an eighth of a pound vegetarian patty for health and environment reasons.…

> If everyone switched to such a solution, we could could our greenhouse gas emissions from burger production in half. We'd be eating less tasty burgers for no real reason. Even eliminating meat farming entirely would only reduce the average American's GHG emissions by about 3%: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/cows-global-warmi... .

3% is a big deal. This isn't a problem with a single big lever that suddenly solves 60% of the problem. We're going to be looking for opportunities to reduce by 1% here, 0.5% there.
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