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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

#751

Post by Spivak »

walthamstow wrote: post #512
Fiahil wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's not sugar, mon ami, it's high fructose corn syrup

I don’t get why hfcs gets so much hate. I bake with it all the time and use it when formulating my recipes on purpose. In an alternate universe it would be the premium and cane sugar would be the substitute. There has to be something there because people without access to it make invert syrup as a substitute.

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

#752

Post by Marsymars »

noodlenotes wrote: post #494
henrikschroder wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. You are not the target group for these products! The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper , we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's t…

As a meat-eater, these products have been great as an option for sharing a meal with my vegetarian friends. I don't really know good vegetarian recipes, but I know how to cook a burger.

I mostly don't eat meat now, but actually started for this reason alone - I wanted to level up my vegetarian cooking skills, so gave myself a challenge of not eating/cooking any meat for a month.

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

#753

Post by happythebob »

gwbas1c wrote: 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.…

Thank you for sharing your personal anecdotes and opinions. However true they may be, I'm kinda concerned that this sort of post is at the top of a highly commented Hacker News thread.

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

#754

Post by maccard »

parkingrift wrote: post #701
pea wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering this the other day when eating a saag paneer curry instead of my normal meat-based order: why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options which can be treated similarly to how we treat meat in cooking. Paneer is not 'trying to be chicken', but it can be put in a curry or fried, so can serve a similar purpose -- but is distinctly delicious in…

>why would anyone go through the motions to have fake chicken when you have multitudes of vegetarian options Because meat tastes better, and I want it. If I can have that taste without an animal involved then it’s all the better. If not then I’ll continue eating meat. Vegetarians and vegans just don’t seem to understand this. Food is all about personal preference but the extreme majority of people eat and enjoy meat.…

Vegetarian here, you're wrong. Boil a chicken breast and eat it and tell me it tastes better. If you handed me a plate of boiled peas and a spoon I'd probably hand them back to you too.

Good _food_ tastes good. Most times you eat it's complemented with sauces, marinades, etc. Cooking vegetarian requires the same effort. People who slather a Midwestern meatloaf in ketchup likely wouldn't even notice if it was vegetarian unless you told them.

> If people felt vegetarian options were as delicious as meat we wouldn’t be having these discussions.

Meat is a luxury and a status symbol. Eating meat every day is something my parents did because they could afford to because their parents _couldnt_. I'm not going to sit here and tell you a bone in rib eye with a pan sauce isn't delicious - it is, but so is a paneer masala, or huevos rancheros.

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

#755

Post by [deleted] »

crimsoneer wrote: post #668
boppo1 wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. Habitual meat eater here. I will never ever trust these products to be right for my body the way meat is. Humans haven’t nailed it in the past with heavily processed foods, why would it suddenly work now? I understand…

This seems like a bonkers thing to claim. You're suggesting that if someone gave you two burgers that tasted identical, one that was real meat and costs £5, and the other that was fake and costs £2, if they were other than that TOTALLY IDENTICAL (other than the fake one being better for the planet), you'd still feel the need to eat the real one? For some sense of perceived...offence?

[deleted]

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

#756

Post by uxp100 »

olyjohn wrote: post #371
bpye wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Beyond Meat is 'okay' in a burger when it's got all the other flavours going on, but I was recently playing around with using it in other dishes like meatballs and wasn't nearly as happy with it. It has a weird aftertaste that I can't quite identify, and whilst not awful, isn't terribly pleasant.

I bought a pound of the "ground beef" to try it out. Pretty sure it was Beyond beef, but I'll be goddamned if it didn't smell and taste like cat food when I opened up the package. It was fucking revolting, and totally ruined the dish I was making. There must be some special way to prepare it to make it taste good. There's no way I'll take this stuff and make burger patties out of it just like I would regular ground b…

Cooking it. That’s the way to make it taste fine. I wouldn’t eat it straight out of the package.

Raw ground beef is much more pleasant, though bland.

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

#757

Post by lupire »

kodah wrote: post #312
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m vegan, converted about four years ago so I ate meat for decades. I ate impossible burgers for a while after Burger King got them, because there is some nostalgia/novelty in going to a fast food joint. But I’ve realized that this weird food product leaves some kind of odd taste in my stomach, and not just from Burger King. I’m pretty over these fake beef burgers now, and would way rather have a black bean burger o…

My partner is a vegetarian and she doesn't eat the fake-meat patties, however, she does get these: https://www.morningstarfarms.com/en_US/products/chikn/mornin... They're really good with no awful side effects or tastes. I like some vegetarian options, but honestly, most of it either tastes nasty or has poor texture.

Protein covered in bread and oil is tasty, but it's not a meat substitute, nutritionally.

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

#758

Post by JohnDoe124 »

gwbas1c wrote: 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.…

>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."

So much, this, I have been vegetarian my whole life and quite honestly the idea of eating something that tastes like meat is almost as unappealing as the idea of eating meat. I get that it helps people give up, but it's not for me.

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