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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

#811

Post by phreeza »

Terretta wrote: post #796
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.…

Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not. The idea of a lettuce tomato onion burger stack on a bun is that there's a taste and texture contrast between the stack of vegetables and something that's not another stack of vegetables but mashed. (Doesn't mean it has to be Beyond or Impossible, see last para.) I suspect displacement happened because folks p…

I agree, another good meat alternative that has sufficient contrast in taste for me is fried Halloumi cheese.

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

#812

Post by mindslight »

logicallee wrote: post #593
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.…

I'm not a vegetarian. I recently bought packaged sliced baloney for a sandwich, as well as sliced sharp cheddar. The baloney I accidentally bought was fake baloney. (No meat.) I didn't notice until I was making my sandwich. It tasted absolutely disgusting, like chemicals. I am not a picky eater and I think it is the only disgusting food item I've ever bought in a grocery store. As I tried to finish eating it, I kept…

> how can my grocery store sell something that tastes so disgusting?

Earnestly answering your question, it's because every person perceives taste differently (eg to some people, cilantro tastes like soap!). The complexity of vegan substitutes is high, because they're trying to simulate a completely different flavor. So likely you're just sensitized to whatever happens to be in that particular product. If you tried a different fake baloney, you'd likely have a completely different experience (not saying a good experience necessarily, depending on your expectations, but at least different).

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

#813

Post by HDThoreaun »

dustedcodes wrote: post #482

I married a Vegetarian and I converted to a mostly Vegetarian diet myself and I have made a very real realisation over the last 10 years: The one group that really hates Vegans more than meat eaters are Vegetarians. Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder. It's so hard to find a Vegetarian pizza nowadays with real cheese. It's either meaty or fully Vegan. Same for burgers. Vegetarians don't want to ea…

> They want a Vegetarian burger, made of a bean patty, mushroom or some other vegetables which is not some form of dystopian processed food.

Speak for yourself. Vegetarians are not a monolith, and I know many that eat beyond/impossible as a staple of their diet.

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

#814

Post by JeremyNT »

dathinab wrote: post #304

One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead. IMHO this is the wrong approach and hardly ever works well or relies on luxury products like beyond meat(1). The best vegetarian food I had eaten was such which was designed as vegetarian food, not as a dish with meat and then modified to somehow work. Pretty much the only times I ended up w…

> One thing I'm seeing all the time is people approaching vegetarian food by removing the meat and adding something else instead.

As somebody who does not really eat meat but is very concerned about protein targets, this isn't quite so simple. Various meats (chicken, some fish) can be extremely cheap extremely high protein foods. When you don't have these to work with you need to think a lot more about your options.

I often "replace" a meat protein option with seitan, tofu, or tempeh just to hit my goals. These things aren't engineered in a lab the same way that Beyond etc have been, but they are processed/made and fill the "chunk of protein" requirement in a way that whole plants struggle with.

If you don't toss in a "chunk of protein," you need to be incredibly careful working in proteins. Anything with a low protein/calorie ratio becomes difficult to work in. Cheap staples like pasta and rice are even questionable because their protein ratios are relatively low, and then you find yourself eating only beans...

This is easier for vegetarians who eat cheese and eggs, of course. Nutritionally these things act more like meat and you can use them as such.

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

#815

Post by kuschku »

dustedcodes wrote: post #738
jdcaron wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegans are and were as happy as vegetarians to eat non-processed vegetables patties. I could push this point further by stating that a high percentage of vegans are turned off by the meatiness of those fake meat products. Those who pushed or asked for the product are companies and clients with an environmentalist motivation. It also appears that the product is easier to manage for restaurants which is also a reason w…

In London (UK) Veganism is a REAL problem to Vegetarians. I am not saying that it is the Vegan people's fault, but simply that currently Veganism is the lowest common denominator between Vegans and Vegetarians and 7/10 restaurants have mostly replaced their Vegetarian options with Vegan options and Vegetarians are getting really pissed off.

Vegetarian here (though often I end up going many days without eggs or dairy), I don't have any beef with Vegans.

I'm fine with eating vegan options as well, I only use eggs and dairy products at home because I can't replace everything yet. I'm currently looking at some new egg replacement products, which would allow me to get far closer to the ideal, 100% vegan, diet.

That said, I actually like Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Nestlé's Garden Gourmet's Incredible Burger, Rügenwalder's products, etc. When I started living vegetarian in 2011, all the replacement products were shit and I ended up just making all food from scratch instead.

I'm genuinely happy that all these options exist nowadays, while I don't use them every day, they've become a staple of our diet by now, as they make adapting omnivore recipes much easier. I can always adapt it further later.

And I know some vegetarians who get "meat cravings" every few months, which these products help with – they allow fulfilling the craving without resorting to actual butchered animal flesh.

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

#816

Post by hombre_fatal »

willsmith72 wrote: post #582
ghostpepper wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you see as the benefit of reducing red meat to once a month? There was a widely-publicized article recently questioning some "well-established" science that had, previously for decades, linked red meat to higher rates of heart disease, etc.

Not a vege, but that study doesn't really say say as much the article made it out. The core thesis was essentially: "Eating red meat at most causes increases in risks of cancer and similar by 15%. If people replace calories that could come from vegetables with red meat, that risk gets worse because they're eating less vegetables" So yeah, eating red meat isn't that bad, but if it reduces your vegetable intake signifi…

Same with sugar. For most people, Sugar is either pushing you over your calorie threshold or it’s displacing healthier food you could have eaten instead which is reason enough to reduce it.

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

#817

Post by retrac »

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.…

My conclusion is that we are not the target audience for fake burgers, because we are not missing what it's presumably giving some people. I'm pretty sure these patties are meant to assuage meat cravings in psychologically-obligate carnivores. Because otherwise, you're right. Almost all meat substitute dishes are missing the point; just cook vegetarian cuisine from the start. There are all manners of unhealthy deep fried deliciousness with plants, that don't involve heavily processing the plants to look and vaguely taste meaty first. And most of them, frankly, taste better than fake meat. But if you're in burger withdrawal, no onion rings or curry will help. Only meat, or perhaps, fake-meat, will sate that desire.

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

#818

Post by HDThoreaun »

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #688
linsomniac wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're putting "feel" in quotes, voting with your pocketbook is a legitimate way of signalling to large industrial polluters to do something, right?

Because it is a gimmick to make you feel like you're doing something, for the sole purpose of getting money from your pocket into theirs. You're not doing anything. The dr. feelgood insect and vegetarian "meat" products are heavily processed, requiring extra energy, fuel, and manpower.

> You're not doing anything.

Eating plant based meat instead of meat directly causes less animals to be factory farmed as demand is reduced. That reduces suffering, seems like something to me

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

#819

Post by parthdesai »

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.…

> Because meat tastes better, and I want it

Sorry, as a person who eats both, meat doesn't "just taste better". If by vegetables, you're referring to standard meat and 3 veg that western countries were used to, then yeah meat tastes way better. But if you're trying Indian/Thai, etc, vegetables can taste as good as meat, and in some cases, even better.

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

#820

Post by heather45879 »

talldan wrote: post #748
heather45879 wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the best approach is not making “fake” anything—black bean burgers and other home-made options not only taste way better, but they are not highly processed. The more stages in processing a food undergoes, the worse it is for people. It’s really that simple. People are trying to over-science food in my opinion. Sticking to good, wholesome ingredients is the way to go. Support local farmers not some large con…

> black bean burgers and other home-made options not only taste way better A lot of people making this kind of point, but it's subjective and you have no idea if you're in a majority or not in your preferences.

If you have a home-made option that is built-to-taste, how can anything else be better? It’s tailor made for each individual. Hence “… and other home-made options.”

Whereas, a factory made thing is mass-produced and has to target the lowest-common-denominator.

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