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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

#821

Post by TylerE »

tsimionescu wrote: post #449
TylerE wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really needs rebranding. We already eat plenty but of insects… we just call em things like crustaceans, shrimp, and crayfish.

I also had this thought once, but then looked it up, and found that it is completely wrong. It's basically like saying "we already eat plenty of fish... We just call em things like beef, pork, and bird meat". Except that fish are much more closely related to mammals than crustaceans are to insects (same phylum, different class). Here is an example of an animal that is as closely related to a cow as a grasshopper is t…

Not true as of about 10 years ago. The taxonomy changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancrustacea

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

#822

Post by russianGuy83829 »

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…

(Conspiracy hat on) I wonder if Big Meat is deliberately pushing veganism to dissuade vegetarianism similar to how Big Oil pushed for “carbon footprint”.

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

#823

Post by parkingrift »

maccard wrote: post #754
parkingrift wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 vegetari…

> Vegetarian here, you're wrong.

Legitimately laughing out loud at this response. You're sitting there at your keyboard telling other people that their food preferences are wrong? Seriously? No one is going to take you seriously if you can't acknowledge the basic premise that food preferences are personal opinions.

"Food is all about personal preference"

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

#825

Post by hombre_fatal »

pea wrote: post #601
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…

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…

Because our culinary repertoire and tastes are cultural.

People know how to pan fry up some chicken/beef, this their fake analogs too, but not how to make saag paneer curry. Or some pan fried chicken is what they crave while they’ve never had these foods you consider superior.

Our relationship with food is very weird and delicate. It’s more of an identity trait than a rational choice we make daily. We like our comforts.

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

#826

Post by parkingrift »

parthdesai wrote: post #819
parkingrift wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The number of people chiming in on this article proclaiming food preferences as "wrong" or "correct" is truly astounding. No, my preferences aren't wrong. No, yours aren't wrong either. Food preferences are personal.

The only thing "wrong" here is all the people chiming in to tell others that their differing preferences are incorrect.

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

#827

Post by briandear »

Cannabat wrote: post #584
rlt wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they were suggesting that. More something along the lines of "you're likely to be killing animals either way, so just accept that nature is cruel and don't feel guilty about it". There's a wide spectrum of how much you're willing to do to avoid causing suffering: - Nothing, eat meat from the worst factory farms without second thought - Only eat meat from local, ethical, sustainable, etc farmers. - Only…

Most humans can live deeply fulfilling and joyful lives without causing as much suffering as they do now. They don't need to feel guilty about what they are doing now so much as strive to cause less suffering. Maybe you must eat factory farmed meat, fine, it's not for me to say. But that's not most people. Most people can do with reducing their meat intake, and it isn't hard. It's not like you are in the wilderness h…

Curious about deer: if deer aren’t hunted, they overpopulate and starve. It would be cruel not to hunt them. Wild pigs are another significant environmental nuisance. They reproduce rapidly and cause massive destruction wherever they go. Seems like managing those populations without eating the meet is worse ethically.

The idea that killing animals is more cruel than not is to ignore ecology.

Factory farms and industrial meat is certainly another story. But I wanted to point out that cruelty is not so black and white. It’s similar to the cat people that feed strays — makes them feel good, but it makes the problem worse which is more cruel than simply not feeding the strays.

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

#828

Post by therealjumbo »

Cannabat wrote: post #413
agentgumshoe wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how many animals die in the process of scaled agriculture and displacement that occurs to create these replacement goods. But they're not the big fluffy animals we anthropomorphise, so it's easy to accept.

It sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture. What do you think the animals humans like to eat, eat? A heck of a lot of grain and other plants. "Animal agriculture" includes the fluffy animals (with whom we may empathize - they ain't robots) and the massive farms that grow their feed. Animal agriculture incidentally kills and displaces far more other…

I think they are simply pointing out that you must kill other animals in order to live. There's no way around it.

If your interested in killing the least amount of animals, why not go hunting and fishing, that almost assuredly kills fewer than industrialized agriculture. I've replaced almoat all beef all year round in our family with deer venison kept year round in a chest freezer.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think that veganism or vegetarianism for most people is very emotional action. Most of the pop media around it focuses on the cuteness of the animal not on the total number of animals killed. and it's ignoring that like in hunting or ethical farming, the animals have a very full happy life.

As a hunter it's interesting seeing this article on HN and seeing no mention of hunting. Also not a bad thing, it's not part of the culture here, but it's interesting to see that bias in the HN culture.

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

#829

Post by jacobr1 »

ada1981 wrote: post #598
rlt wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they were suggesting that. More something along the lines of "you're likely to be killing animals either way, so just accept that nature is cruel and don't feel guilty about it". There's a wide spectrum of how much you're willing to do to avoid causing suffering: - Nothing, eat meat from the worst factory farms without second thought - Only eat meat from local, ethical, sustainable, etc farmers. - Only…

What is the “humane” way to kill? Is the humane way to kill an animal the same way one would humanely kill a toddler without consent of the parents or child? If not why not, when we consider animal have at least the intelligence, will to live, social connections and capacity for suffering as children?

Two factors: 1) Humanely raised 2) Efficiently killed (done quickly with limited/no pain).

One can argue the cruelty of eating animals regardless - but there very much is a difference between tightly caged factory farming, pumping animals with medicine constantly because the conditions keep them sick all the time, and raising animals in a healthy environment.

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

#830

Post by fairity »

Will it eventually be possible to use technology to make plant-based meat taste identical to real meat? Yes.

Will it be cheaper to manufacture this future plant-based meat than real meat? Very likely yes.

Then, it seems obvious that eventually everyone eating meat will switch to plant-based meat.

The real question is if BYND will survive this technology shift. Whoever does will have at least tens of billions in revenue (and be worth some multiple of that) given that the current size of the meat industry is $1.3t (1% market share = $13b). At a $800m market cap, the stock seems cheap.

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