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

I buy ethically raised %100 pasture raised ground beef at ~$6/lbs from whole foods, and a 1 lb packet of "beyond burger" is even more expensive than that at $11/lbs (!) at the same shop. There is barely any profit margin in beef, while beyond burger does have relatively healthy one at that price looking at the ingredient list and price. I can also buy a quarter cow for $8/lbs locally raised similarly. %100 pasture raised is how you think it is, eating grass in some field for %100 of it's life, protected from predators, which is pretty much the type of life it would have in the wild with less stress. Not to mention it's better nutritionally than the standard %75 pasture raised / %25 grain finished beef you buy at a costco.

If water weight is the case, you can dehydrate the meat already? Beyond / impossible burger is shipped wet, and most unprocessed raw plant food is shipped wet too.

> I think you'd need to have sources that prove that specifically crops grown for human consumption

I think you don't understand the issue.

Vegetarians (and vegans) don't kill less animals, they simply don't eat them (or at least that's what they say...)

> The point is that all those things could still be coming from crops

The point is that eating meat, unless you are from the US, does not mean you're killing billions of animals for fun.

American domestic cats kill billion of birds and other small animals every year.

Why are vegetarians obsessed only with non vegetarian people and not with domestic cats, which they love?

Because it's a religious fight, not an ethical one.

They want to blame someone and found this.

Anyway: scientific method implies that if you say "vegetarians kill less animals" you should prove it with numbers, as humans their activities kill billion of animals every year all over the World.

Vegetarians are not outside of the human realm, they live in societies as we all do and the major source of animal killing and suffering is not eating some meat, that's only selection bias at work.

It would be the same as saying: plants produce oxygen, if you only eat plants you're robbing our planet of breathable air, you should replant every plant you eat.

But every normal well functioning human knows that it's stupid to divide people into good and bad.

That's exactly what vegetarians do.

If you believe in veganism, it's OK, religions are allowed in our societies.

If you believe "vegan facts" from a vegan website is the truth, I don't know what to say to you, you can't fight made up beliefs, I got the Pope in front of my house, I know you can't beat blind faith.

But, the claim has always been that vegetarians don't kill less animals, not that they kill more. Which is arguably true. You won't find vegans in poor countries, you'll find denutrished children starving to death, they'd eat some meat if they could, just to survive. Veganism is a first World problem and as many other first World problems it's completely disconnected from reality.

When you'll eat an entire plant of wheat from roots to the top, we can talk about eating only vegetables.

Until that day you are only wasting resources, as any of us western humans do so well.

On average each year every American eats 3 chickens. Are you sure vegetarians on average don't cause the death of 3 birds each year? Can you prove it? Can you prove the industry you rely on for food is more ethical and kills less animals?

If your objection is "but I don't eat chicken so I kill 3 chickens less than the average" remember that other people could reply "I don't eat vegetables as much as you, so the damages produced by the agriculture industry are much more on you than on me"

Waiting for the data, please refrain if you wanna answer with more propaganda.

> I'll see your citations, and raise you:

> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351135/ Sodium intake, life expectancy, and all-cause mortality

Good overview of the poor design of that study and many others that make statements that very much go against the plurality of high quality evidence:

"While calling for a controlled trial to provide “robust evidence” to support the current global policies, Mente et al. lend their support to an “ecological analysis” of global statistics by Messerli et al. [78]. There are many inherent limitations of such analyses. Messerli et al. [78] correlate sodium and outcomes by country, not by individual. The study design is unable to remove unmeasured confounding (ecological fallacy), a well-known methodological concern that the authors acknowledge and then promptly dismiss. Many countries do not have data on sodium intake and, when available, it is often of poor quality. When comparing “high income” countries (in World Bank Income Class 1), the authors aggregate data from the USA, UK and Canada, Trinidad & Tobago, and Equatorial Guinea. The distribution of wealth in these countries and the ensuing disparities in individual health will have huge effects on life expectancy due to factors other than sodium intake, none of which are accounted for. In addition, Messerli et al. ignore the hard evidence from previous human trials. Yet, Messerli et al. claim their results “argue against dietary sodium intake being a culprit of curtailing life span or being a risk factor for premature death”.

from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13668-021-00383-z