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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

#861

Post by RC_ITR »

Zpalmtree wrote: post #434
RC_ITR wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things. This is such a wild thing to say without any proof. SA, for example uses way more petrol than the EU, largely because of direct subsidies that keep the price low [0] Now, notice how my example…

1) He was talking about beef not other products 2) What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?

>What does it matter how they give it? $38B is still only $100 per person. Are you saying they give more than $38B?

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how supply and demand work. The money is not given directly to people so making it per Capita is an intellectually dishonest red herring.

$38bn creates an unknown amount of incremental supply of beef (since it is given to farmers). It does not lower aggregate beef prices by $38bn, it increases the effort dedicated to beef production by $38bn (even then, that's still a 25% subsidy relative to the entire market, you can't just make things per Capita to make them seem like a small number without context).

The increased supply form that new effort then interacts with demand. Both of those curves have slopes, so the interaction is much more complex than you're making it out to be.

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

#862

Post by throwaway290 »

rsynnott wrote: post #638
walthamstow wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very surprised to read this, because my understanding (from the UK) is that US chicken and egg farms have a horrendous salmonella problem stemming from high numbers of chickens per sqft and low regulation on things like clean bedding. This is the reason US eggs are washed, removing their natural antibac coating, and therefore need refridgeration whereas UK/EU eggs are not and do not. I remember reading a lot abou…

They're claiming that it's safer to eat _cooked_ meat than _raw_ vegetables in the US, I'm assuming. I'm not sure if this is true (it's certainly possible if wastewater from animal farming is poorly controlled there), but it's not really comparing like for like.

Comparing what people eat / mainstream parts of recipes. Most people don't eat raw meat but eat raw veg...

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

#863

Post by steve_adams_86 »

pmarreck wrote: post #333
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not positive but I have a feeling it’s the methylcellulose. In my own home experimentation, none of the ingredients seem to cause issues except for that. It seems fairly benign, but it can’t be digested and it isn’t clear to me if we have gut flora which can break it down efficiently. I enjoy throwing together little experiments in a similar vein to beyond meat or impossible burger products, but it feels too much…

> They are still pretty trashy This is a qualitative/irrational assessment and not a quantitative/rational one, especially considering that fat consumption got a wrongfully-deserved bad rap for decades thanks to unethical lobbying by the sugar industry.

For years I’ve spent a lot of time (probably more than I should) crawling through research about exactly this, which is precisely why I use the term trashy. Relatively speaking I suppose it’s better than many other options, which is relevant to some people. In the broader scope, this is still junk food.

I’d argue (based on the best dietary research the world has produced) that saturated fats do deserve a bad rap, and most refined fats are also worth minimizing in a diet. Are all fats bad? Not at all, we should eat them. We’d die without them. Are saturated fats and refined plant fats worth including in our diet? Arguably no, not at all. Incidental consumption of them is more than enough and intentional consumption becomes problematic quite quickly.

I’m not aware of any outcomes-based studies spanning the globe which indicate that a high fat diet serves most people well as far as long term quality and quantity of life. On the other hand, there are several, and more all the time, showing the opposite.

The valid “fat is actually okay!” data almost exclusively comes from whole-food based studies. However, those which position saturated fats as safe or healthy are typically of poor designs. One example off the top of my head is one which put vegetarians on an extremely high coconut oil diet and meat eaters on a lean meat diet. The results? Eating meat is better for your cholesterol! Surprise?

I couldn’t make this stuff up. In fact, someone likely paid people a lot of money to make it up. The irony is that it uses the truth (saturated fat raises blood lipids) to indicate that this truth is actually false. If saturated fat was bad, wouldn’t the intersection of meat eaters and vegetarians look different? It must be okay. Makes a great headline!

I agree that the sugar lobbying is absurd and harmful to society, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to believe there isn’t a massive and busy lobby behind fats as well. Why wouldn’t there be? Look at how many studies around animal products and fat are funded by associates of the food processing industry.

And yet the best studies we have clearly have no commercial agenda behind them, they typically took years or decades of work, yet they’re hastily discounted by all kinds of people.

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

#864

Post by xtian »

LinXitoW wrote: post #561
xtian wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what end?

Well, carbon sequestration, for example. Or habitat restoration. Or more suburbs, or whatever. It's not just land use, it's every single vector of comparison, like water use, energy use, human labor (ab)use, habitat destruction, etc.

We could cut down on oxygen use by not breathing too. Ultimately you have to ground these abstract vectors of comparison in some fundamental purpose. For me, the only possible ground is humanity.

If humanity is the ground of your analysis, meat consumption will fail to present itself as the decisive factor for any vector of comparison. The decisive factor will generally be the elevation of capital or oligarchic social ends over general social interest.

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

#865

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

Loughla wrote: post #842
unethical_ban wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you eat your burgers dry?

Pickles, lettuce, tomato, a whole fried egg. All of these are options that don't include sugar. There are options outside of ketchup (corn syrup) and mayo (probably corn syrup). Except the pickles. I bet those have sugar. But I'll fight anyone who eats hamburgers without pickles.

Or you could just use good ketchup/mayo/mustard that's not doused in corn syrup. Those do exist.

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

#866

Post by elurg »

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 really don't understand why people want to simulate the taste of meat. It seems like a completely uninteresting problem to solve, plant foods are already perfectly fine.

The availability of "perfect substitutes" for meat wouldn't affect my food choices at all and this is likely true for a lot of people.

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

#867

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

a4a4a4a4 wrote: post #569
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #278

If you know cars are problematic, the solution isn't to produce a bicycle that has a "car-like experience". The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful. I have at least 8 vegan dishes I can make that are just amazingly delicious . A mushroom risotto, veggie tajine, chana masala, ramen, moussaka, general tso's cauliflour, cuban b…

> The solution is to make non-car transportation more available, more useful, cheaper, etc, and slowly make car use itself more painful. I disagree with the last part on a philosophical level. Society should push forward, and that doesn't mean we need to take convenient things and make them less convenient, so that alternatives seem more attractive in comparison. We need to make the alternatives better in-and-of them…

There is nothing harder to change in this world than culture. Sometimes you can't just make the alternatives better. Sometimes they already are better, and still nothing changes. People are stubborn, interests are entrenched. Sometimes you have to force society to change. It's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world.

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

#868

Post by scrumbledober »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #101
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 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…

I have celiac and often feel the same way about gluten free foods. Please stop trying to feed me gluten free versions of things that rely on gluten to be good. Just give me a rice bowl or tacos on corn tortillas. With Veganism/Vegetarianism it makes even less sense to me. Not eating gluten is not a choice for me, but Vegans and Vegetarians chose this lifestyle because they don't want to eat meat, why make fake things that resemble meat?

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

#869

Post by throwaway290 »

walthamstow wrote: post #517
throwaway290 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. Safety also matters, US meat industry is really strictly controlled and paradoxically it's safer to eat meat than veggies, especially fresh like a salad. It'd be tough to solve, this. No one would vote to remove meat controls but comparable controls over pesticide/soil/cleanness would be unpopular too as they'd increase prices and make veg tougher to sell.

I'm very surprised to read this, because my understanding (from the UK) is that US chicken and egg farms have a horrendous salmonella problem stemming from high numbers of chickens per sqft and low regulation on things like clean bedding. This is the reason US eggs are washed, removing their natural antibac coating, and therefore need refridgeration whereas UK/EU eggs are not and do not. I remember reading a lot abou…

You are saying USDA controls may not be so successful at this which could be true but then in veg there seem to be just no controls of similar extent (different from "have controlls but they don't quite work). Some comment on HN mentioned every single dead animal in US meat industry is inspected and signed for, imagine like this but with each carrot

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

#870

Post by mathstuf »

I'm vegetarian and I get asked how I like these "meat replacement" things often enough. The thing is that I just…don't like burgers, steaks, etc. so these are basically of zero interest to me (e.g., every veggie burger I've had I would consider to be better than every beef burger I've ever had; there was one kind of steak I liked growing up and it being mostly pre-marinated juices was most of what I liked about it). These products are not, IMO, for vegetarians for vegans but more for meat eaters looking to reduce their (actual) meat consumption.
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