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I'm willing to bet that this is for two reasons: 1. It's expensive because people with more money are more likely to be vegetarian. 2. We don't pay for the tru
by muninn_ 10y ago
I'm willing to bet that this is for two reasons:
1. It's expensive because people with more money are more likely to be vegetarian.
2. We don't pay for the true cost of meat, i.e. green house gas emissions, water usage, transportation costs, etc....
- nine_k 10y agoHow is water and transportation not paid for?
- rflrob 10y agoIn a lot of the Western US, water usage is based on decades-old interstate compacts, where future water rights are based on a use-it-or-lose-it system. I'm not necessarily in favor of the extreme unregulated end of the free market either, but the system as it stands seems to me to be a market distortion that incentivizes people towards heavy water-usage activities (ranching, raising of water-heavy feed crops like alfalfa), rather than what a purely free market would apportion. See, for example, https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/wasting-water-out-west-use-it-or-lose-it https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/w...
- tekklloneer 10y agoMassive government subsidies and tax breaks. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it, but it does make the playing field unfair.
- arcticbull 10y agoWhat isn't paid for is the cost of feed. Corn is the major foodstuff of both birds and, sadly, commercial cows. Corn is subsidized to below the cost of production by the US government. Transportation is not paid for, really, because the highways are maintained without usage fees.
- mrspeaker 10y agoI'm a vegetarian and I buy fake meats ('cause I miss meat). My theory about why they are relatively expensive is that vegetarianism is seen as "healthy" and people think that healthy things need to cost more than non-healthy things. Kind of "If it's cheap, it can't be healthy". And that's a win-win for the companies producing it, and why I think there has recently been a surge in startups making fake meat!
- ceras 10y agoJust to add to this, there's also #3: lack of scale. IIRC Beyond Meat has also stated that with comparable scale they could match the price of similar beef products. Marketing speak or not, I'm inclined to believe it since it's clearly a niche market right now, and vegan products like Just Mayo that have achieved scale like Just Mayo are very cheap -- enough to convince low-end, mass market establishments like 7-11 to default to it. More evidence: price of tofu is more comparable to meat in places with more Asian and international cuisines. E.g. tofu is cheaper here in at my Manhattan Whole Foods than in my southern hometown's supermarkets, despite most foods being more expensive. Even cheaper in Asian supermarkets.