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Beyond Meat and KFC partner to test fried plant-based ‘chicken’

331 points by _bxg1 7y ago

_bxg1 7y ago
I think it's fascinating how all these fast-food chains are jumping on artificial meat. It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper and less gross at the same time, and it might help them cut down on calories and improve their health image. I wonder what impact it'll have on climate change when McDonalds stops buying real beef.
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  Funny thing that I heard recently. McDonalds is the greats buyer of chicken in the US. Quite surprising, considering they don't even have that much chicken in their menu.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Pretty sure their nuggets are a huge seller
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      They are, but they don't contain much chicken meat. 40% of the filler is meat and the rest is "other"[0] (fat, tissue, spicule, etc). Including the breading the majority of the weight of a chicken nugget isn't chicken meat. Contrast this with Chick-Fil-A's nuggets, which are 100% chicken breast meat (with thinner breading to boot). [0] https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugget/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugge...
      - jghn 7y ago
        What animal do you suppose "fat, tissue, spicule, etc" comes from? They could still be driving a huge amount of chickens purchased merely from that
      - pkaye 7y ago
        McDonalds changed it to use white boneless chicken a few years back.
        Someone1234 7y ago
        That was a misleading marketing push. Here is their exact wording: > Our tender, juicy Chicken McNuggets are made with 100% white meat chicken and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Made WITH not made OF. Meaning all the meat within a McDonalds nugget is 100% white chicken meat, not that ALL of a McDonald's nugget is 100% chicken. It is designed to be misread/misunderstood. McNuggets still don't contain 100% chicken or even close, and the fact that 100% of the meat they do contain is "white meat chicken" isn't a significant change. Go taste a whole-chicken nugget (like Chick-Fil-A's) next to a McDonalds nugget. Heck go look inside them, at the filler. It is night and day.
        pkaye 7y ago
        I find the Chick-Fil-A stuff tends to have way to much sodium. I just can't tolerate that saltiness.
        Someone1234 7y ago
        They do have roughly 30% more salt (122.5mg/per nugget of sodium vs. 85mg/per nugget at McDonalds).
        kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Chick-Fil-A comes with a side order of bigotry so I'll pass.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
  - blang 7y ago
    Looks like 9 menu items: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-sandwiches.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-san...
  - barkingcat 7y ago
    Nothing about the scale of McDonalds should suprise you. It is one of the top agrifood supply chain businesses on the planet.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      This is one of the big points of the Food Inc documentary. It doesn't matter if you eat at McDonalds or not— if you eat anything they serve (beef, chicken, potatoes, whatever), you're eating food made to their specifications, as they're the single biggest buyer of all of that stuff.
  - papito 7y ago
    Also, they are the largest consumer of apples.
- thomasfromcdnjs 7y ago
  I worked at KFC for several years in Australia, the chicken was quite fresh.
  - tehlike 7y ago
    All of the fastfood chains based in united states have much better quality abroad.
    - ashelmire 7y ago
      That's definitely not true. McDonald's and Burger King were both markedly worse in my experience. A shame in-n-out isn't abroad, and haven't found a Taco Bell or Wendy's yet. Not that I would really go out of my way to eat fast food overseas now that I'm an adult... I don't even eat these things in the US. There's wide variability within the US anyway. I've noticed that affluent suburbs tend to have great fast food, while urban and rural environments have awful fast food.
      - Cederfjard 7y ago
        I mean, where are you comparing to? Anecdotally, in Sweden, I have a friend who used to work for a huge slaughterhouse/meat distributor (pardon me if there is a better term). According to him, the beef that was sold to McDonalds was only high quality. This was around ten years ago, mind you.
      - shrewduser 7y ago
        depends where you were abroad, i would rank most above USA and a few slightly below.
      - tehlike 7y ago
        I should have said almost.
    - xiii1408 7y ago
      I agree this is generally true, but it definitely depends on the country you're talking about. Many other first-world countries (thinking of EU, etc.) have much stricter rules about food additives, etc. So the bread, for example, tastes significantly less cardboard-ey.
- taurath 7y ago
  Also they've been completely left out of the vegetarian market other than for snacks.
  - yters 7y ago
    French fries and soda are vegetarian.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Depends what they've been fried in and how picky you are.
    - _bxg1 7y ago
      There was a lawsuit a few years back when vegetarians discovered that McDonald's was flavoring their fries with beef juice. I do think they've since stopped the practice.
      - likeabbas 7y ago
        I'm still fucking mad about that. Frying in beef juice made them taste so much better.
        Djvacto 7y ago
        Well, no one wins since they no longer use beef tallow, but do add beef flavoring to the spuds. So we can't eat them and people who liked the tallow-fried ones don't enjoy them as much (?)
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        The “natural beef flavor” doesn't, AFAIK, have beef in it (except insofar as hydrolyzed milk protein, originating as it does in a cow, is “beef”.) The construction “natural X flavor” in an ingredient list means “flavorings that can legally be described as natural which are intended to simulate X”.
- goda90 7y ago
  They probably see a coming PR storm of anti-meat sentiment as our environment and collective health goes down the drain. And going a more veggie heavy route just doesn't work well for fast food except in the form of heavily processed stuff like meat substitutes.
- tempsolution 7y ago
  You will be surprised how much less healthy cheap plant based food can be than meat... Now you get human pesticides (the ones sprayed on plants), GMO and plant pesticides (the one plants have developed against mammals) on top of the low quality crap that was previously called meat.
  - Drakim 7y ago
    Meat can be full of antibiotics so I disagree with your assertion that plants have all these extras that meat somehow avoids.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Also, these animals eat plants with even lower quality standards.
  - msla 7y ago
    GMO isn't a problem. Anyone who says it is is trying to sell you something.
- koolba 7y ago
  > Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper and less gross at the same time, and it might help them cut down on calories and improve their health image. Which is “less gross” is highly objective. > I wonder what impact it'll have on climate change when McDonalds stops buying real beef. Would be a nice longbet, “McDonald’s will stop selling beef burgers by 20XY”. I’d be on the “no” side of that bet.
  - VectorLock 7y ago
    For what values of XY?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Those aren't variables, it's a common-era year in Base 36, so in base 10, that's A.D. 94,534. At least, I think that's about when it's likely to happen.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    They will eventually stop selling beef burgers made from real cows. Lab grown meat will replace them. I don't know enough about the current state of lab grown meat to give an estimate for XY, but it seems inevitable to me.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Ground meat is almost certainly the lowest bar for substituting. I'd argue the artificial meat is already pretty close (although probably at a higher cost, at least at the low end). There are probably gourmet burgers that are still better--though high-end meat cuts are at least somewhat of a waste in a burger. Somewhat amusingly, I first had an Impossible Burger not knowing that it was not real "meat." I didn't find out until a few months later. It tasted like a perfectly good burger to me. [ADDED: Lab-grown is apparently more accurately used to specifically refer to food made from animal cells. I guess "plant-based" meat is the more common term with "meat" distinguishing from traditional vegi-burgers in the grocery freezer.]
- xiii1408 7y ago
  I think you're absolutely right! And they even have been offering vegetarian options in other countries for some time. One of my friends from India was quite surprised when he moved to the US that McDonald's doesn't have many vegetarian options like it does in India.
- maximente 7y ago
  the economic argument has always been the strongest in my eyes, and it's unstoppable. animals are a huge liability health wise, pollution wise, environment wise, activism wise, logistic wise, etc. most companies don't care about all that stuff at the surface level, but it all translates into dollar signs, which they do care about. as soon as the economic-taste-weirdness function reaches a certain point, i'll expect you'll see these cheap fast food options convert more and more fractions of their products (right now many use fillers already) to fake meat, eventually replacing it entirely alongside offering reduced prices for these products, while leaving meat generally as a higher priced option signaling disposable income (sort of like Argentinian beef or w/e is today)
  - roenxi 7y ago
    You were probably thinking it, but you didn't explicitly mention the No. 1 cost - raising the cattle. An animal that large is probably both delicate and expensive as it grows to maturity. Could conceivably cut out all the work of growing bones, feeding/watering, animal healthcare, breeding & transport with labgrown meat. And the fixed cost of maintaining farmland. The cost saving potential is huge. Not even considering the benefits of being able to quickly adjust production to what can be sold, as opposed to waiting however long it takes for a calf to grow up.
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    I'm not sure the environmental arguments support entirely eliminating cattle agriculture. Factory farming with cows kept indoors and fed purpose grown feed, certainly. But there's a lot of scrubland out there that doesn't have enough water for agriculture but which can still support grazing. That can't support anything like our current beef consumption but it could support a fair amount
    - icebraining 7y ago
      > a lot of scrubland out there that doesn't have enough water for agriculture That's for the solar panels!
- mc32 7y ago
  Another advantage could be less susceptibility as a host for bacterial and other undesirable growth. Fewer recalls means willing consumers. On the other hand I’d like to see studies on the healthiness of consuming these products long term. Intuitively they’d seem healthier, but I’d like to see that proven given their synthetic nature.
- ukyrgf 7y ago
  I just hope it isn't half-assed and they don't give up. I've noticed the newer Burger King commercials say the meatless Whopper is only available for a limited time.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    "meatless Whopper is only available for a limited time" "limited time is mostly marketing trying to create a buzz. If people buy it, they will continue to offer it. Simple as that. Otherwise it really was limited.
- shados 7y ago
  The impossible whooper was inevitable and brilliant. As you mentioned, the meats served were often already low quality, with fillers, and it was arguable if it was even meat. Some fast food chains served "100% beef", but it didn't taste very different from the other crap. So the bar is low. Replacing questionable meat with hype pseudo-meat is a straight win all around. I'm as carnivore as they come, but if I have to hit a Burger King, I'm just going to get an impossible whooper: if i'm going to be getting a shitty burger either way, I'll take the one that didn't require all the logistics around cows. This KFC one is just the next step. Replace all the questionable meat with pseudo-meat that is (hopefully) more sustainable, and leave the "real" stuff in caviar territory where people actually care.
  - phonypc 7y ago
    Fast food chains almost universally serve all-and-nothing-but beef patties, and always have. I don't understand the confusion over this. You can immediately tell from the texture.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      > I don't understand the confusion over this. Propaganda by people trying to sell the same thing as "healthier" has convinced a lot of people that it is true. It helps that the idea of a large corporation selling sawdust as meat is incredibly believable though.
  - mackey 7y ago
    I agree with others, get with the times. I am pretty sure all the major national fast food burgers are 100% beef, no fillers, no preservatives. I don't eat a ton of fast food anymore, and when I do its usually McDonalds, but I have always enjoyed the Whopper. I had one a few months ago at an airport and tried the Impossible Whopper last week. It's close, but the beef version is still better in my opinion.
    - shados 7y ago
      Fair enough, I shouldn't have put the "with filler" part. I still stand by the "low quality" (or at least very mediocre flavor) bit though, which still makes the point stand. When I have a whooper most of the taste is the sauce/bun/toppings with the patty only being responsible for a small portion of the taste, which makes it perfect for a substitute. I've had impossible whoopers a few time, and while eating the whole thing, it's basically the exact same taste. If I eat a piece of the patty with nothing else then there's a noticeable difference though.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Can you make a clearer, better-cited case for "low cost chains serve meat that could barely even be called meat"? KFC serves (primarily) whole muscle chicken†, and the general US appetite for "dark meat" chicken is so low that we've been accused of "dumping" it on other countries and messing up their markets --- KFC seems to have no trouble sourcing its inputs effectively. KFC's suppliers include all the major chicken producers; the same firms that put chicken breasts on the shelves at grocery stores. KFC's biggest competitor is going antibiotic-free this year; at least one of KFC's suppliers already has. That's a step past supermarket chicken. I'm not saying Tyson chicken is good; it's CAFO meat, which is not great for the environment or for flavor. But it's not "barely meat"; it's meat that basically sets the standard for meat quality in one of the meat-eatingest countries in the world, and has set that standard for over 50 years. † Don't get me started on how irresponsible the public interest campaign against transglutaminase franken-meat is.
  - acollins1331 7y ago
    It's been setting the standard for shitty meat though. Try a Tyson breast and one from a local farm and you don't even need to taste it to know it's different.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I've invested money in a local butcher in Chicago and source pretty much all of my protein from another one closer to me. I'm familiar with the locavore argument and agree that the quality is higher. There are still higher levels of quality to be reached by sourcing heritage birds, and you can optimize for flavor even more by sourcing game birds. Where do you draw the line? I'd rather eat a local farm chicken than a Tyson breast, just like I'd rather eat a dry-aged ribeye than a wet-packed eye of round. That doesn't make the eye of round somehow inedible or "barely meat".
      - acollins1331 7y ago
        The term "barely meat" as used in the parent was definitely talking about the ground beef you get at fast food restaraunts. Which has been shown in lots of cases to contain additives, notably taco bell etc. You brought up chicken because it's harder to call it barely meat, but fast food chicken is still shittier.
- nightski 7y ago
  Watch when it has zero impact on climate change because the extensive ingredient list on the beyond meat burger which requires a huge supply chain shipping products all around the country along with a complicated manufacturing process requiring energy ends up having a similar environmental impact to simple animal farming.
  - xvector 7y ago
    Even if the environmental impact is nil, I'm fine with the reduction in suffering imposed on tens of billions of animals a year. The scale of suffering created by the meat industry is unfathomable so I think this is a step in the right direction regardless.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Here's just one thing our ag industry does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_u0jxi_v-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_u0jxi_v-w (male chick maceration). Nice video to enjoy with your factory farmed eggs.
      - whenchamenia 7y ago
        Your local want ads will have home raised eggs at below store prices in most areas. I suggest supporting your local farmers and ranchers as the best offset against factory farms.
      - triceratops 7y ago
        That'll soon be a thing of the past. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/06/by-2020--male-chicks-could-avoid-death-by-grinder/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    The supply chain on meat is pretty extensive. Modern animal farming is basically an industrial process that happens to use flesh-and-blood as host organisms for meat.
- kyrra 7y ago
  > ... can be both cheaper ... Impossible Burger patties are actually more expensive. For example, Burger King: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meatless-fast-food-burgers-probably-arent-any-healthier-but-theyre-definitely-more-expensive-2019-06-12 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meatless-fast-food-burgers... > The meatless burger is $5.99, around a dollar more than the regular Whopper with meat.
  - xvector 7y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US heavily subsidize meat costs?
    - devmunchies 7y ago
      yes. and corn and soy production is also subsidized which is fed to livestock.
  - jghn 7y ago
    Unless I missed it in TFA, it doesn't say that the raw materials (the meat) are more expensive but rather that the product is more expensive. If a fast food chain can charge more for cheaper materials, that's a double win for them.
    - jakob223 7y ago
      I imagine that that difference is going mostly to recoup R&D costs at e.g. Impossible right now, who is making the patties.
      - JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
        for now I expect you're correct. But in the long run it should ideally have really nice margins. Once Beyond and Impossible get a version that is as close as it needs to be, they can start focusing on supply chain and stuff like that.
        7y ago
- drivers99 7y ago
  > Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper Definitely not the case at the moment. Last week I went to Del Taco and tried their Beyond Taco. It was $2.49 each compared to the meat one which was $1.49. If I recall correctly, you can switch to an Incredible burger patty at Red Robin for $3 extra.
  - devmunchies 7y ago
    it actually is cheaper. its just the govt subsidizes meat and livestock feed so real meat is artificially cheaper.
  - papito 7y ago
    The one for $1.49 probably didn't have much more meat than the other one. Sorry! Sorry.... Had to do it....
- behringer 7y ago
  Plant based meats is what the chains have been wanting to do all along. Plant is cheap, doesn't matter how disgusting it is at the processing plant, because they make it look like meat anyway. And now the public has decided that plant based meats are healthy(?!?) and not loaded with salt and void of real nutrition.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    I'm sorry, is there some kind of simulated nutrition I'm not aware of? Say, something that can legally be labeled as protein which is not, in fact, protein?
    - behringer 7y ago
      I guess people are only offended by heavily processed foods when those foods aren't veggie burgers with large advertising budgets.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        You made a distinction between 'real nutrition' and what these foods are. Processing is irrelevant. Food has nutritional qualities regardless of how it became what it is. So I'm asking you to explain your reasoning that these foods do not have 'real nutrition'.
        behringer 7y ago
        https://health.usnews.com/wellness/food/articles/2017-05-11/how-does-getting-nutrients-from-fortification-compare-to-whole-food https://health.usnews.com/wellness/food/articles/2017-05-11/...
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        ...are you incapable of explaining your reasoning yourself in less than, what is this, 5 pages of ad-filled text? I find it very difficult to take someone seriously who responds in this fashion.
- tempsy 7y ago
  Why do you think plant-based meats are lower calories than regular meat? IIRC they are pretty similar as far as calories go. There's no evidence plant-based burgers are healthier. Why would eating something super processed and filled with carbs be better than eating meat?
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    1. Because I don't eat meat outside of fish. This is both a lifestyle choice and a health thing: I don't have a gall bladder and my digestive track is much happier if I stay away from greasy foods, especially animal fats. I'll occasionally get an upset stomach from fish or fried eggs still, but it isn't an everyday thing. 2. While they do have carbs, they also have protein. And a bunch of other stuff the burgers don't have. Oh, and less fat in most cases. I'm guessing many are lower in calories, but I'm not sure about these particular products. 3. Not all of them are super processed. I've literally made different sorts at home, though I'm just as likely to buy a soy option. (obviously not Beyond Meat or Impossible Burgers. I actually am not impressed with these options). 4. They are an easy meal.
    - mackey 7y ago
      The OP that the person was responding to used the phrase "Plant-based meat" which to me at least sounds specific to these type of imitation meat burgers like impossible/Beyond Meat, not just a normal veggie burger. In terms of Impossible/Beyond Meat, health seems kind of a wash.
  - devmunchies 7y ago
    > filled with carbs And that's bad? After working on my property cutting down weeds and dead trees carbs are super healthy. Carbs are only not healthy if you live a sedentary lifestyle. Carbs are our main short-term fuel source. And yes i do intermittent fasting.
    - lysp 7y ago
      > And that's bad? Yes, because carbs are a non-essential nutrient. Protein and fats are both required. Most non-meat products are low on protein and high in either fat or carbs. Very few products actually replace the nutrients of meat.
- devinhelton 7y ago
  It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. Consumer advocates in the past few years have actually done a pretty good job at pressuring the top fast food chains to not dilute their beef with additives. McD's, Burger King, and Wendy's all advertise their hamburger patties as being nothing but 100% USDA inspected ground beef, salt, and pepper. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html https://menu.wendys.com/en_US/product/daves-double/ https://menu.wendys.com/en_US/product/daves-double/ https://www.bk.com/food-quality/our-burgers https://www.bk.com/food-quality/our-burgers https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-your-questions/burgers.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-y... It's all the other stuff (the bun, the fries, etc. ) that have preservatives, fillers, and shady additives. (When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. Tasty, nutritious and very filling). This "impossible burger" trend basically reverses the work of consumer advocates. The one element of fast food that is actually an all-natural, nutritionally complex whole food is replaced with a patty that is nothing but processed food and additives -- https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018937494-What-are-the-ingredients- https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374... The fast food restaurant will likely save money -- but because of how fashionable vegetarianism has become, instead of being condemned, they will be actually praised as being eco and health conscious.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    > When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. o_O > how fashionable vegetarianism has become I don’t think it’s a question of fashion. However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. Whether it’s in 50 or 500 years’ time, one day our descendants will look back at us and wonder: “they ate corpses?!”
    - devinhelton 7y ago
      However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. I disagree entirely, but there is no need to relitigate this debate here. If by any chance you have never read the pro-meat argument, the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is a pretty good primer.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  > low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. I wish this urban legend would die. Fast-food beef and chicken at major chains is no different in quality from what you buy at the supermarket. A McDonald's burger is 100% ground beef and salt, no "additives" or "fillers". And Taco Bell ground beef is ~90% beef, because the rest is ~10% spices (cumin, etc.) because... that's what taco meat is supposed to be, like when you make it at home. Spreading rumors that it's somehow worse doesn't help anybody. I get that it's entertaining to believe -- but it's simply false.
  - megaman821 7y ago
    You seem to be in the know. What on earth is in a Jack In The Box taco?
    - navigatesol 7y ago
      It's not really about being in the know, it's common sense. Could McDonald's survive if they were selling garbage meat? I mean,it's possible. But why not just serve 100% ground beef exactly like you say you do, and charge consumers accordingly and make billions of dollars over many decades.
      - tomcatfish 7y ago
        > Could McDonald's survive if they were selling garbage meat? It seems like they could, since it appears many commenters here think so (there is no PR cost to serving bad meat if everyone thinks you are)
  - grillvogel 7y ago
    last i checked, soy, oats, etc were not spices
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      I don't see any oats, and the soy is soy lecithin, which is an emulsifier for the beef and fat. https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/05/tacobell-beef-ingredients-revealed https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/05/tacobell-beef-ingredien...
- papreclip 7y ago
  It makes sense the same way it makes sense for KFC to replace honey with "honey sauce", (main ingredient corn syrup). I personally have no interest in eating plant-based substitutes for my food.
- dgzl 7y ago
  More like they don't want groups of people to exclude KFC from their choices simply because there isn't a vegetarian option.
- beloch 7y ago
  The verdict is not yet in on whether Beyond Meat's products are actually healthier for you than real meat. Beyond Meat certainly makes this claim, but there exists debate[1]. [1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/beyond-meat-burger-beef-health-risks-1.5220777 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/beyond-meat-burger-beef-hea...
- megaremote 7y ago
  It is not just that, growth in fast food has been stagnant for a while now. Anything new they are looking to adopt in a hope to change that. And they will all jump in in case that new thing does have a big growth effect.
- webninja 7y ago
  Meat has been highly produced because the gov’t of Nixon’s era and today’s era has been buying up tons of bushels of grain(1). The gov’t bought grain to help support & subsidize farmers and ranchers. Grain is convenient to offload as cattle feed. Cheap cattle feed encourages raising cattle. Cow farts contribute over 40% of the world’s methane(2). Methane contributes 34 times more towards global warming per unit than carbon dioxide. Thus if we want to tackle climate change, we should rethink our Cold War era grain subsidies and ultimately reduce our dependence on cattle. Sources: (1) Freakonomics Radio Podcast (2) Earth and Space Science Honors course
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    > Cow farts contribute over 40% of the world’s methane. Methane contributes 34 times more towards global warming per unit than carbon dioxide. How many total units of methane are there vs. total units of CO2? Otherwise, I can’t make a value judgement about the impact of cows on global warming.
    - webninja 7y ago
      I used to link to the EPA but I learned this week that they might be a captured agency(1). They used to have a website section devoted to methane, it’s sources, and it’s contribution but it’s either been taken down or I simply can’t find it. However, Bill Gates writes in his blog that Agriculture contributes towards 24% of the world’s climate change and that “Cattle are a huge source of methane; in fact, if they were a country, they would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases!”(2). His blog post that I link to below is admittedly a secondary source but I think he does a pretty good job at showing the big picture. Sources: (1)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture (2)https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima... If you go on to find a good (hopefully primary) source, please reply with it here!
- prawn 7y ago
  I don't normally eat KFC but visited the "original" "restaurant" in Kentucky a few weeks ago. We thought the chicken was very decent and comparable with any southern-style smaller restaurants we hit in the South.
m0zg 7y ago
I've tried Beyond Meat sausages a couple of weeks ago. They suck compared to the real thing and cost twice as much. I don't know what all the hoopla is about. They're edible, but that's about the highest compliment I can offer at this time. Back to the drawing board, BM.
- jasonvorhe 7y ago
  I always hated Curry Wurst but Beyond Meat sausages are awesome. Tastes are different. Surprise surprise.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Well yeah, if you hate real sausage, then maybe a fake one will taste better for you. Most people do like the real thing, though.
autokad 7y ago
I believe thinking of it only as a 'meat substitution' might be missing a larger trend in that a new segment is being created.
- yters 7y ago
  I think they should not call it meat anything. They should just create a new thing, so people can appreciate it for what it is, rather than expect meat and get an uncanny valley effect.
  - dymk 7y ago
    Nobody is confused when they buy this product that it’s animal based meat. The packaging is very clear about what it is. It’s called meat because it tastes and feels like meat. It’s a perfectly cromulent word to use because it describes what the product is.
    - VectorLock 7y ago
      When you give it a name that alludes to it being meat you're setting the product up for failure because people will ofcourse compare it to meat and since its not meat they will judge it as "worse."
      - Djvacto 7y ago
        So, what could we call Turkey Burgers?
        uncletaco 7y ago
        Better question: What do we call veggie burgers that predate impossible and beyond meat?
      - Dirlewanger 7y ago
        I imagine it's easier to compare it to a burger than it is to spend marketing dollars on a new plant-based sandwich. I also imagine that because it's comparable to a burger, you're not alienating those who are on the margin that still like meat, but are open to trying a plant-based "burger".
szatkus 7y ago
Is there any plans to expand Beyond Meat, well, beyond USA?
- SECProto 7y ago
  Beyond Meat is fairly widely available in Canada. A&W sells a beyond meat burger, and patties are available in several national grocery chains.
  - barkingcat 7y ago
    Also Tim Hortons is offering Beyond patties in many of their breakfast sandwiches.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      And, in the weirdest product add-on in a while, beyond meat burgers, because when I think of Tim Horton's I think of imitation burgers. They don't even sell real burgers.
      - Raphmedia 7y ago
        They had chicken burgers before and there's those burger breakfast sandwiches
- Chazprime 7y ago
  You can buy breakfast sandwiches with it at Tim Horton’s now in Canada.
- ent 7y ago
  Just bought some in Finland.
  - stevekemp 7y ago
    I've not tried any yet, but I have a couple of friends who have been reviewing various meat-alternatives here in Helsinki, and reviews seem largely positive.
thomasfromcdnjs 7y ago
I think it is a rather toxic movement that we are continuing to label things that which they are not. "fried plant-based ‘chicken’" it makes no sense at all A lot of it is egged on by the vegan/vegetarians and is the definition of false advertising. I saw "vegan" mince in the meat section the other day. I feel sorry for the elderly or learning impaired who might be accidentally buying soy substitutes when their bodies are craving meat.
- hodder 7y ago
  I have never met anyone confused by what beyond meat is offering and find the complaint that it is false advertising is ridiculous.
  - yters 7y ago
    I'm a confused person. I thought 'beyond meat' sold lab grown meat, not vegetables that taste like meat.
    - stri8ed 7y ago
      The ingredients are listed on the product.
      - yters 7y ago
        Ah, exactly what I want as a consumer. Believing I'm purchasing one thing when reading the product name, and finding out it is something else entirely when reading the ingredients list (which I rarely do).
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        A quick Google search for "beyond meat" reveals lots of photos of their packaging. Every single one of them has large, all-caps, bright green "PLANT BASED" on the front of the package. They're not hiding anything, and anyone confused by it probably has themselves to blame. For example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074YGZ77H/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074YGZ77H/
impalallama 7y ago
I tried a few different varieties of chick'n nuggets, 90% of the taste is just breading and whatever the sauce so its really not a difficult as you'd imagine to have a substitute
- goda90 7y ago
  Nuggets, patties, and sausages are going to be the first things to reach "perfect" when it comes to replacing meat because so much of their identity is in the processing and other ingredients involved. It'll be the things like a fried chicken breast sandwich that will be a lot harder to replaces because the natural meat structure matters a lot more.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    The A&W beyond meat burger stands up as well as it does for the same reasons - all the other sauces they add hides the weirdness, and you just taste burger.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Exactly. We buy meatless ones from the grocery store to eat at home and it's really not all that different when the "real thing" has been shaped from a paste.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Lol at whoever felt the need to downvote a personal anecdote
- moftz 7y ago
  Exactly, chicken doesn't taste like anything anyway.
- nostromo 7y ago
  The problem with existing meat substitutes is that they are high in processed carbohydrates and low in protein. The taste has been fairly ok for a while. It's the nutritional value that's the problem.
esotericn 7y ago
Here in Sweden, pretty much every fast food outlet has a vegan option. It's honestly great, if nothing else simply because it makes it easier to be vegan - a huge blocker is often the fact that whilst you're on a road trip or similar your options may well be "eat chips or a cold premade sandwich" otherwise. Though (as I posted in the other thread) I wish it were easier to source decent food on the go.
- r00fus 7y ago
  A year ago my wife started eating a whole lot less meat (she has experienced a lot less allergies due to this) and this year when we went to France, it was clear that "veggie/vegan" options at restaurants are often missing (we ate mostly at friend/family houses, so it was mainly an annoyance). McD at CDG had only one non-meat item that wasn't a snack and that was their egg wrap. Even the salads had some kind of cold cuts in there.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Mmm. In the UK McD has like, some sort of weird vegetable pattie nonsense going on. Reminds me of old school dinners.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      I ordered one of those once, and got chicken.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    Yes France is terrible for vegetarians (apart from major city centres obviously). Trad French cuisine is very fixated on protein+jus+carb, and the French are not as open to other cuisines (maybe because theirs is very good?)
raws 7y ago
Those plant based protein patties often have too much salt but I just checked and the beyond meat seems reasonable with 390mg sodium and 300mg potassium all while using pea protein which has a pdcaas of 0.78. Quite impressive. If they can achieve the same with the chicken patties it'll be good!
vzidex 7y ago
As someone who recently transitioned to a >=95% vegetarian diet (I still consume dairy and eggs), the growing number of fast food places offering plant-based options has been a godsend, but lacking for variety - you can only eat so many plant-based burgers. I'm excited to have a mainstream meat-free "chicken" option, because most "chicken"s that I've tried at more niche restaurants have been really good!
telesilla 7y ago
I'm preparing a large dinner for an organisation at the moment and decided that we'd make the menu vegan/vegetarian (we use a wonderful Italian caterer, so flavour isn't going to be missed). When I mentioned it to some omnivore colleagues, they asked why and I shrugged and said "the Amazon is burning". They shrugged back and said, makes sense. It's not many years since I would have expected complaints at not catering a meat option. I feel progress is being made.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Is their collective indifference indicative of actual indifference to meat or that they don't deem this a battle worth fighting?
- fromthestart 7y ago
  >we use a wonderful Italian caterer, so flavour isn't going to be missed A non meat dish is still going to taste like a non-meat dish. Perhaps your colleagues were just being polite and avoiding treading into politically charged territory after you brought up the Amazon. Personally I'm a picky eater and vegan/vegetarian dishes simply do not compare to meat. I'm sure others feel similarly. Though for one meal I suppose it isn't a huge deal - but acting like it's just as good simply isn't true for the majority of people - that's your personal taste.
  - telesilla 7y ago
    I honestly don't understand why it's such a big deal that so many people insist meat must be part of a meal? To the degree that in Argentina they say "si no hay carne, no hay comida" (if there is no meat, it is not a meal). It feels like if I insisted on having bread at every table sitting. Clearly, it can be seen as just a habit and not a requirement?
    - inscionent 7y ago
      Every experience I've had with "no meat, no meal" has also been associated with a heavy dose but "I'm a man". YMMV
berbec 7y ago
Kentucky Fried Cauliflower
- phil248 7y ago
  Given the amazing things I've seen done with cauliflower in recent years, I'd try that in a heartbeat!
anonymouswacker 7y ago
I was a vegetarian, vegan, then back to vegetarian, then flexitarian, and now predominately carnivore -- over the course of 15 years. The me from 2 years ago would be overjoyed about this "progress", from an ethical standpoint and from believing that meat is bad for you. Present me sees this as what it is: another unhealthy product in an already oversaturated marketplace to dupe suckers.
- phil248 7y ago
  I have a hard time understanding how a proponent of vegetarianism, presuming you are one, could be so dismissive of a technological advancement that will almost certainly lead to reduced meat consumption.
  - anonymouswacker 7y ago
    I am as health and environmentally conscious now as I ever was, only aware that vegetarian & vegan diets in America are atrociously unhealthy. Offering cheap, low quality, fake food is not a technological advancement. And I am not sure meat consumption is the problem. Factory farming and industrialized agriculture are the big issues: the greed of the majority of the food supply causes death, destruction, and misery on beings regardless if you are eating kale or cow. Eat pasture-raised & local if you care about the environment and your own health...
    - SeanBoocock 7y ago
      > only aware that vegetarian & vegan diets in America are atrociously unhealthy That is in contradiction to every major health organization in the US and abroad. Well balanced vegan and vegetarian diets are healthy and appropriate for every stage of life. If you care about the environment and want to make food choices that minimize your impact, don't eat animal products, especially beef.
      - anonymouswacker 7y ago
        Yes... but large organizations (“major”) are bureaucratic, political organizations predominately funded by, not healthy consumers or scientists, but governments and food/pharma/tech industries. Follow the money, check the biases, and see that the existence of the organization would be jeopardized by biting the hand that feeds it...
wil421 7y ago
Why do American (and presumably westerners) vegetarians want to replace meat? I hated vegan and vegetarian food for song long until I ate meat free Indian food. It was always the meat replacements like veggie patties and tofurkey type products that turned me away. Indian food doesn’t have some weird mystery replacement I find on almost every vegan or veggie dish. I had a conversation with and Indian colleague who lives in the states and she agreed a lot of veggie/vegan food is just plain weird.
- litzer 7y ago
  I’m a meat eater and want to replace meat. It’s not just vegetarians. The factory farming of animals doesn’t sit well ethically with me, but meat has been a staple of my diet my entire life. If there were a viable plant based alternative that’s indistinguishable, factory farming can die out. It’s not ready yet, and phase 1 was the really weird stuff. I think Beyond Meat is like phase 2 of “pretty close”. In the near future, you won’t be able to tell the difference
- maximente 7y ago
  KFC isn't rolling out thai/indian curries, garlic chinese broccoli, or cheese gorditas any time soon so in this context it seems odd to somehow demonize fake meat while suggesting foreign cuisines are superior. what's the point? most of the interest i'm guessing is coming from what was previously thought to be "unthinkable": that is, fast food chains whose core business revolves around animal flesh introducing something else that isn't animal flesh. there are tons of consequences for this outside of American vegetarians wanting to replace meat or whatever.
  - wil421 7y ago
    Personally I’d rather just eat the sides at KFC than have fake over processed chicken. I just don’t get the need for fake meat. Everyone seems to be against over processed foods and fake meats seem more processed than anything else.
    - detaro 7y ago
Kaveren 7y ago
I can't understand how people enjoy this fake food. It just can't match the original taste. This sort of food is extremely unhealthy, and vegans will never be able to get the protein they need to survive. We should not encourage the appeasing of certain niche markets, the radicals must be made to realize that normal KFC is just a fact of life.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > vegans will never be able to get the protein they need to survive There are millions of vegans around the world who can "survive" without meat: they just get their protein from other places.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    They're dependent on technological intervention to get the required supplements. It isn't a natural way for humans to persist.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      They may occasionally need certain vitamins that are rare in plants, but it's inaccurate to classify vegans as unable to satisfy their protein requirements. (And FWIW, there are natural vegetarian cultures that have survived without supplements.)
      - esyir 7y ago
        Vegetarians are fine, but vegans are at particular risk. I assume that's why op mentioned them to begin with.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        They mentioned protein in particular, which isn't really that big of a deal (as opposed to certain other nutrients like Vitamin B-12, which can often be a problem).
bad_user 7y ago
I think the fake meat movement will go the way of Margarine. Initially it's celebrated as a feat of engineering and as the healthy alternative to meat. After about 10 to 20 years however, we'll see cancer and heart disease rates going up. And then the billions of dollars spent in health care will pile up, but nobody will readily admit it, because the fuck up will be even bigger than with Margarine. After all, Margarine is still on the shelves of super markets everywhere, maybe with slightly less trans fats, but it's still there, still advertised as the healthier alternative to butter. Let that sink in for a moment.
- bigtech 7y ago
  Do you have some reason to believe that meat is healthier, or is this speculation?
  - bad_user 7y ago
    The number one reason is that we've eaten red meat for millions of years, literally. Given fake meat is new and I'm not seeing it in stores nearby yet, I'm going to assume a fair comparison will take another decade, after the studies and the meta analysis show up. Until then the burden of proof is not on me ;-)
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      As opposed to plants?
      - bad_user 7y ago
        Thinking that eating fake meat is like eating plants is ... similar to thinking that crack cocaine has similar effects with coca leaves. I expect more from HN :-)
        wes-k 7y ago
        And you’re thinking fast food meat is similar to what we ate for millions of years ... ?
hbarka 7y ago
What does the Paleo community think of Beyond Meat? I think they would highly object to the canola oil in Beyond Beef, which is not considered a good vegetable oil.
- slig 7y ago
  Well, it's processed food, so there's no reason to believe they'd consider it as "Paleo" in any way or form.
rblion 7y ago
Was just thinking about this today after trying the Impossible Whopper at BK last week, amazing timing.
magwa101 7y ago
beyond hype
hugofloss 7y ago
We've been eating plant-based meats at home for a while now, but I'm contemplating going back to meats after reading various packaging. I'm seeing a lot of food additives which I don't want my kids to take in. I'm all up for plant-based foods, but it should be healthier than the meat alternative.
- Djvacto 7y ago
  Have you considered making some basic meat substitutes at home? We make Seitan a lot, and you can do a lot of cool stuff with Tofu. You can also make stuff like falafel or bean patties/meatballs. I'd recommend checking out Miyoko's recipe for stuff like unribs, if you want some fancier Seitan-based recipes.
wayanon 7y ago
Fast food is as much about salt and flavourings as it is about the actual stuff in the patty/nugget. I look forward to meat becoming an anachronism.
losvedir 7y ago
It's odd. Most of my friends are aboard the "eat real food, not too much, mostly plants" train, and generally avoid highly processed stuff in favor of simple ingredients. But they make an exception for this weird industrial concoction. I, personally, don't like it because my wife has allergy issues with legumes, and they're putting soy and pea protein in _everything_ now (e.g. was surprised to see it in some random almond milk the other day). I know it's a niche concern and it's on us to watch out for, but it's annoying and sort of surprising where it all is now. I like meat. I don't eat it in large quantities or too often, and I don't think I'll ever go for this product. If I want meat, I'll have it like we've evolved to have it over millenia. YMMV.
controlweather 7y ago
I literally love the taste of beyond and impossible. I pay whatever fee there is for them. Meat is so absolutely disgusting from fast food. I eat only fresh salmon once a week as my only meat. These fake meats take all my money! I’m a deplorable PNW farm boy. 29 male and this stuff makes real meat takes bad.
dikdikvandik 7y ago
Wonder how storing and transporting artificial meat compares to the real thing. Unrelated - anyone wanna invest in my new startup? We're gonna cross DNA from a spider with a chicken to produce 8 legged chickens to disrupt the chicken market. Hopefully we don't get spiders with wings.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Not to get off topic but the History Channel's three-part mini-series The Food That Made America is fascinating. You get to see where we were, what changed, as well as what hasn't changed. I found the bit about Heinz more or less inventing the assembly line to be fascinating.
mactyler 7y ago
I'm so excited for this!

331 points by _bxg1 7y ago

I think it's fascinating how all these fast-food chains are jumping on artificial meat. It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper and less gross at the same time, and it might help them cut down on calories and improve their health image. I wonder what impact it'll have on climate change when McDonalds stops buying real beef.

RealityVoid 7y ago
Funny thing that I heard recently. McDonalds is the greats buyer of chicken in the US. Quite surprising, considering they don't even have that much chicken in their menu.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Pretty sure their nuggets are a huge seller
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    They are, but they don't contain much chicken meat. 40% of the filler is meat and the rest is "other"[0] (fat, tissue, spicule, etc). Including the breading the majority of the weight of a chicken nugget isn't chicken meat. Contrast this with Chick-Fil-A's nuggets, which are 100% chicken breast meat (with thinner breading to boot). [0] https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugget/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugge...
    - jghn 7y ago
      What animal do you suppose "fat, tissue, spicule, etc" comes from? They could still be driving a huge amount of chickens purchased merely from that
    - pkaye 7y ago
      McDonalds changed it to use white boneless chicken a few years back.
      - Someone1234 7y ago
        That was a misleading marketing push. Here is their exact wording: > Our tender, juicy Chicken McNuggets are made with 100% white meat chicken and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Made WITH not made OF. Meaning all the meat within a McDonalds nugget is 100% white chicken meat, not that ALL of a McDonald's nugget is 100% chicken. It is designed to be misread/misunderstood. McNuggets still don't contain 100% chicken or even close, and the fact that 100% of the meat they do contain is "white meat chicken" isn't a significant change. Go taste a whole-chicken nugget (like Chick-Fil-A's) next to a McDonalds nugget. Heck go look inside them, at the filler. It is night and day.
        pkaye 7y ago
        I find the Chick-Fil-A stuff tends to have way to much sodium. I just can't tolerate that saltiness.
        Someone1234 7y ago
        They do have roughly 30% more salt (122.5mg/per nugget of sodium vs. 85mg/per nugget at McDonalds).
        kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Chick-Fil-A comes with a side order of bigotry so I'll pass.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
- blang 7y ago
  Looks like 9 menu items: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-sandwiches.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-san...
- barkingcat 7y ago
  Nothing about the scale of McDonalds should suprise you. It is one of the top agrifood supply chain businesses on the planet.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    This is one of the big points of the Food Inc documentary. It doesn't matter if you eat at McDonalds or not— if you eat anything they serve (beef, chicken, potatoes, whatever), you're eating food made to their specifications, as they're the single biggest buyer of all of that stuff.
- papito 7y ago
  Also, they are the largest consumer of apples.
thomasfromcdnjs 7y ago
I worked at KFC for several years in Australia, the chicken was quite fresh.
- tehlike 7y ago
  All of the fastfood chains based in united states have much better quality abroad.
  - ashelmire 7y ago
    That's definitely not true. McDonald's and Burger King were both markedly worse in my experience. A shame in-n-out isn't abroad, and haven't found a Taco Bell or Wendy's yet. Not that I would really go out of my way to eat fast food overseas now that I'm an adult... I don't even eat these things in the US. There's wide variability within the US anyway. I've noticed that affluent suburbs tend to have great fast food, while urban and rural environments have awful fast food.
    - Cederfjard 7y ago
      I mean, where are you comparing to? Anecdotally, in Sweden, I have a friend who used to work for a huge slaughterhouse/meat distributor (pardon me if there is a better term). According to him, the beef that was sold to McDonalds was only high quality. This was around ten years ago, mind you.
    - shrewduser 7y ago
      depends where you were abroad, i would rank most above USA and a few slightly below.
    - tehlike 7y ago
      I should have said almost.
  - xiii1408 7y ago
    I agree this is generally true, but it definitely depends on the country you're talking about. Many other first-world countries (thinking of EU, etc.) have much stricter rules about food additives, etc. So the bread, for example, tastes significantly less cardboard-ey.
taurath 7y ago
Also they've been completely left out of the vegetarian market other than for snacks.
- yters 7y ago
  French fries and soda are vegetarian.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Depends what they've been fried in and how picky you are.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    There was a lawsuit a few years back when vegetarians discovered that McDonald's was flavoring their fries with beef juice. I do think they've since stopped the practice.
    - likeabbas 7y ago
      I'm still fucking mad about that. Frying in beef juice made them taste so much better.
      - Djvacto 7y ago
        Well, no one wins since they no longer use beef tallow, but do add beef flavoring to the spuds. So we can't eat them and people who liked the tallow-fried ones don't enjoy them as much (?)
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        The “natural beef flavor” doesn't, AFAIK, have beef in it (except insofar as hydrolyzed milk protein, originating as it does in a cow, is “beef”.) The construction “natural X flavor” in an ingredient list means “flavorings that can legally be described as natural which are intended to simulate X”.
goda90 7y ago
They probably see a coming PR storm of anti-meat sentiment as our environment and collective health goes down the drain. And going a more veggie heavy route just doesn't work well for fast food except in the form of heavily processed stuff like meat substitutes.
tempsolution 7y ago
You will be surprised how much less healthy cheap plant based food can be than meat... Now you get human pesticides (the ones sprayed on plants), GMO and plant pesticides (the one plants have developed against mammals) on top of the low quality crap that was previously called meat.
- Drakim 7y ago
  Meat can be full of antibiotics so I disagree with your assertion that plants have all these extras that meat somehow avoids.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Also, these animals eat plants with even lower quality standards.
- msla 7y ago
  GMO isn't a problem. Anyone who says it is is trying to sell you something.
koolba 7y ago
> Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper and less gross at the same time, and it might help them cut down on calories and improve their health image. Which is “less gross” is highly objective. > I wonder what impact it'll have on climate change when McDonalds stops buying real beef. Would be a nice longbet, “McDonald’s will stop selling beef burgers by 20XY”. I’d be on the “no” side of that bet.
- VectorLock 7y ago
  For what values of XY?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Those aren't variables, it's a common-era year in Base 36, so in base 10, that's A.D. 94,534. At least, I think that's about when it's likely to happen.
- adrianN 7y ago
  They will eventually stop selling beef burgers made from real cows. Lab grown meat will replace them. I don't know enough about the current state of lab grown meat to give an estimate for XY, but it seems inevitable to me.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Ground meat is almost certainly the lowest bar for substituting. I'd argue the artificial meat is already pretty close (although probably at a higher cost, at least at the low end). There are probably gourmet burgers that are still better--though high-end meat cuts are at least somewhat of a waste in a burger. Somewhat amusingly, I first had an Impossible Burger not knowing that it was not real "meat." I didn't find out until a few months later. It tasted like a perfectly good burger to me. [ADDED: Lab-grown is apparently more accurately used to specifically refer to food made from animal cells. I guess "plant-based" meat is the more common term with "meat" distinguishing from traditional vegi-burgers in the grocery freezer.]
xiii1408 7y ago
I think you're absolutely right! And they even have been offering vegetarian options in other countries for some time. One of my friends from India was quite surprised when he moved to the US that McDonald's doesn't have many vegetarian options like it does in India.
maximente 7y ago
the economic argument has always been the strongest in my eyes, and it's unstoppable. animals are a huge liability health wise, pollution wise, environment wise, activism wise, logistic wise, etc. most companies don't care about all that stuff at the surface level, but it all translates into dollar signs, which they do care about. as soon as the economic-taste-weirdness function reaches a certain point, i'll expect you'll see these cheap fast food options convert more and more fractions of their products (right now many use fillers already) to fake meat, eventually replacing it entirely alongside offering reduced prices for these products, while leaving meat generally as a higher priced option signaling disposable income (sort of like Argentinian beef or w/e is today)
- roenxi 7y ago
  You were probably thinking it, but you didn't explicitly mention the No. 1 cost - raising the cattle. An animal that large is probably both delicate and expensive as it grows to maturity. Could conceivably cut out all the work of growing bones, feeding/watering, animal healthcare, breeding & transport with labgrown meat. And the fixed cost of maintaining farmland. The cost saving potential is huge. Not even considering the benefits of being able to quickly adjust production to what can be sold, as opposed to waiting however long it takes for a calf to grow up.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  I'm not sure the environmental arguments support entirely eliminating cattle agriculture. Factory farming with cows kept indoors and fed purpose grown feed, certainly. But there's a lot of scrubland out there that doesn't have enough water for agriculture but which can still support grazing. That can't support anything like our current beef consumption but it could support a fair amount
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > a lot of scrubland out there that doesn't have enough water for agriculture That's for the solar panels!
mc32 7y ago
Another advantage could be less susceptibility as a host for bacterial and other undesirable growth. Fewer recalls means willing consumers. On the other hand I’d like to see studies on the healthiness of consuming these products long term. Intuitively they’d seem healthier, but I’d like to see that proven given their synthetic nature.
ukyrgf 7y ago
I just hope it isn't half-assed and they don't give up. I've noticed the newer Burger King commercials say the meatless Whopper is only available for a limited time.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "meatless Whopper is only available for a limited time" "limited time is mostly marketing trying to create a buzz. If people buy it, they will continue to offer it. Simple as that. Otherwise it really was limited.
shados 7y ago
The impossible whooper was inevitable and brilliant. As you mentioned, the meats served were often already low quality, with fillers, and it was arguable if it was even meat. Some fast food chains served "100% beef", but it didn't taste very different from the other crap. So the bar is low. Replacing questionable meat with hype pseudo-meat is a straight win all around. I'm as carnivore as they come, but if I have to hit a Burger King, I'm just going to get an impossible whooper: if i'm going to be getting a shitty burger either way, I'll take the one that didn't require all the logistics around cows. This KFC one is just the next step. Replace all the questionable meat with pseudo-meat that is (hopefully) more sustainable, and leave the "real" stuff in caviar territory where people actually care.
- phonypc 7y ago
  Fast food chains almost universally serve all-and-nothing-but beef patties, and always have. I don't understand the confusion over this. You can immediately tell from the texture.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    > I don't understand the confusion over this. Propaganda by people trying to sell the same thing as "healthier" has convinced a lot of people that it is true. It helps that the idea of a large corporation selling sawdust as meat is incredibly believable though.
- mackey 7y ago
  I agree with others, get with the times. I am pretty sure all the major national fast food burgers are 100% beef, no fillers, no preservatives. I don't eat a ton of fast food anymore, and when I do its usually McDonalds, but I have always enjoyed the Whopper. I had one a few months ago at an airport and tried the Impossible Whopper last week. It's close, but the beef version is still better in my opinion.
  - shados 7y ago
    Fair enough, I shouldn't have put the "with filler" part. I still stand by the "low quality" (or at least very mediocre flavor) bit though, which still makes the point stand. When I have a whooper most of the taste is the sauce/bun/toppings with the patty only being responsible for a small portion of the taste, which makes it perfect for a substitute. I've had impossible whoopers a few time, and while eating the whole thing, it's basically the exact same taste. If I eat a piece of the patty with nothing else then there's a noticeable difference though.
tptacek 7y ago
Can you make a clearer, better-cited case for "low cost chains serve meat that could barely even be called meat"? KFC serves (primarily) whole muscle chicken†, and the general US appetite for "dark meat" chicken is so low that we've been accused of "dumping" it on other countries and messing up their markets --- KFC seems to have no trouble sourcing its inputs effectively. KFC's suppliers include all the major chicken producers; the same firms that put chicken breasts on the shelves at grocery stores. KFC's biggest competitor is going antibiotic-free this year; at least one of KFC's suppliers already has. That's a step past supermarket chicken. I'm not saying Tyson chicken is good; it's CAFO meat, which is not great for the environment or for flavor. But it's not "barely meat"; it's meat that basically sets the standard for meat quality in one of the meat-eatingest countries in the world, and has set that standard for over 50 years. † Don't get me started on how irresponsible the public interest campaign against transglutaminase franken-meat is.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  It's been setting the standard for shitty meat though. Try a Tyson breast and one from a local farm and you don't even need to taste it to know it's different.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I've invested money in a local butcher in Chicago and source pretty much all of my protein from another one closer to me. I'm familiar with the locavore argument and agree that the quality is higher. There are still higher levels of quality to be reached by sourcing heritage birds, and you can optimize for flavor even more by sourcing game birds. Where do you draw the line? I'd rather eat a local farm chicken than a Tyson breast, just like I'd rather eat a dry-aged ribeye than a wet-packed eye of round. That doesn't make the eye of round somehow inedible or "barely meat".
    - acollins1331 7y ago
      The term "barely meat" as used in the parent was definitely talking about the ground beef you get at fast food restaraunts. Which has been shown in lots of cases to contain additives, notably taco bell etc. You brought up chicken because it's harder to call it barely meat, but fast food chicken is still shittier.
nightski 7y ago
Watch when it has zero impact on climate change because the extensive ingredient list on the beyond meat burger which requires a huge supply chain shipping products all around the country along with a complicated manufacturing process requiring energy ends up having a similar environmental impact to simple animal farming.
- xvector 7y ago
  Even if the environmental impact is nil, I'm fine with the reduction in suffering imposed on tens of billions of animals a year. The scale of suffering created by the meat industry is unfathomable so I think this is a step in the right direction regardless.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Here's just one thing our ag industry does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_u0jxi_v-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_u0jxi_v-w (male chick maceration). Nice video to enjoy with your factory farmed eggs.
    - whenchamenia 7y ago
      Your local want ads will have home raised eggs at below store prices in most areas. I suggest supporting your local farmers and ranchers as the best offset against factory farms.
    - triceratops 7y ago
      That'll soon be a thing of the past. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/06/by-2020--male-chicks-could-avoid-death-by-grinder/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...
- roywiggins 7y ago
  The supply chain on meat is pretty extensive. Modern animal farming is basically an industrial process that happens to use flesh-and-blood as host organisms for meat.
kyrra 7y ago
> ... can be both cheaper ... Impossible Burger patties are actually more expensive. For example, Burger King: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meatless-fast-food-burgers-probably-arent-any-healthier-but-theyre-definitely-more-expensive-2019-06-12 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meatless-fast-food-burgers... > The meatless burger is $5.99, around a dollar more than the regular Whopper with meat.
- xvector 7y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the US heavily subsidize meat costs?
  - devmunchies 7y ago
    yes. and corn and soy production is also subsidized which is fed to livestock.
- jghn 7y ago
  Unless I missed it in TFA, it doesn't say that the raw materials (the meat) are more expensive but rather that the product is more expensive. If a fast food chain can charge more for cheaper materials, that's a double win for them.
  - jakob223 7y ago
    I imagine that that difference is going mostly to recoup R&D costs at e.g. Impossible right now, who is making the patties.
    - JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
      for now I expect you're correct. But in the long run it should ideally have really nice margins. Once Beyond and Impossible get a version that is as close as it needs to be, they can start focusing on supply chain and stuff like that.
      - 7y ago
drivers99 7y ago
> Plant-based meat, on the other hand, can be both cheaper Definitely not the case at the moment. Last week I went to Del Taco and tried their Beyond Taco. It was $2.49 each compared to the meat one which was $1.49. If I recall correctly, you can switch to an Incredible burger patty at Red Robin for $3 extra.
- devmunchies 7y ago
  it actually is cheaper. its just the govt subsidizes meat and livestock feed so real meat is artificially cheaper.
- papito 7y ago
  The one for $1.49 probably didn't have much more meat than the other one. Sorry! Sorry.... Had to do it....
behringer 7y ago
Plant based meats is what the chains have been wanting to do all along. Plant is cheap, doesn't matter how disgusting it is at the processing plant, because they make it look like meat anyway. And now the public has decided that plant based meats are healthy(?!?) and not loaded with salt and void of real nutrition.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  I'm sorry, is there some kind of simulated nutrition I'm not aware of? Say, something that can legally be labeled as protein which is not, in fact, protein?
  - behringer 7y ago
    I guess people are only offended by heavily processed foods when those foods aren't veggie burgers with large advertising budgets.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      You made a distinction between 'real nutrition' and what these foods are. Processing is irrelevant. Food has nutritional qualities regardless of how it became what it is. So I'm asking you to explain your reasoning that these foods do not have 'real nutrition'.
      - behringer 7y ago
        https://health.usnews.com/wellness/food/articles/2017-05-11/how-does-getting-nutrients-from-fortification-compare-to-whole-food https://health.usnews.com/wellness/food/articles/2017-05-11/...
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        ...are you incapable of explaining your reasoning yourself in less than, what is this, 5 pages of ad-filled text? I find it very difficult to take someone seriously who responds in this fashion.
tempsy 7y ago
Why do you think plant-based meats are lower calories than regular meat? IIRC they are pretty similar as far as calories go. There's no evidence plant-based burgers are healthier. Why would eating something super processed and filled with carbs be better than eating meat?
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  1. Because I don't eat meat outside of fish. This is both a lifestyle choice and a health thing: I don't have a gall bladder and my digestive track is much happier if I stay away from greasy foods, especially animal fats. I'll occasionally get an upset stomach from fish or fried eggs still, but it isn't an everyday thing. 2. While they do have carbs, they also have protein. And a bunch of other stuff the burgers don't have. Oh, and less fat in most cases. I'm guessing many are lower in calories, but I'm not sure about these particular products. 3. Not all of them are super processed. I've literally made different sorts at home, though I'm just as likely to buy a soy option. (obviously not Beyond Meat or Impossible Burgers. I actually am not impressed with these options). 4. They are an easy meal.
  - mackey 7y ago
    The OP that the person was responding to used the phrase "Plant-based meat" which to me at least sounds specific to these type of imitation meat burgers like impossible/Beyond Meat, not just a normal veggie burger. In terms of Impossible/Beyond Meat, health seems kind of a wash.
- devmunchies 7y ago
  > filled with carbs And that's bad? After working on my property cutting down weeds and dead trees carbs are super healthy. Carbs are only not healthy if you live a sedentary lifestyle. Carbs are our main short-term fuel source. And yes i do intermittent fasting.
  - lysp 7y ago
    > And that's bad? Yes, because carbs are a non-essential nutrient. Protein and fats are both required. Most non-meat products are low on protein and high in either fat or carbs. Very few products actually replace the nutrients of meat.
devinhelton 7y ago
It makes perfect sense: meat is expensive and difficult to work with, so low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. Consumer advocates in the past few years have actually done a pretty good job at pressuring the top fast food chains to not dilute their beef with additives. McD's, Burger King, and Wendy's all advertise their hamburger patties as being nothing but 100% USDA inspected ground beef, salt, and pepper. https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/hamburger.html https://menu.wendys.com/en_US/product/daves-double/ https://menu.wendys.com/en_US/product/daves-double/ https://www.bk.com/food-quality/our-burgers https://www.bk.com/food-quality/our-burgers https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-your-questions/burgers.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/our-food-y... It's all the other stuff (the bun, the fries, etc. ) that have preservatives, fillers, and shady additives. (When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. Tasty, nutritious and very filling). This "impossible burger" trend basically reverses the work of consumer advocates. The one element of fast food that is actually an all-natural, nutritionally complex whole food is replaced with a patty that is nothing but processed food and additives -- https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018937494-What-are-the-ingredients- https://faq.impossiblefoods.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600189374... The fast food restaurant will likely save money -- but because of how fashionable vegetarianism has become, instead of being condemned, they will be actually praised as being eco and health conscious.
- namdnay 7y ago
  > When traveling, I sometimes just buy a bunch of MdD's patties a la carte. o_O > how fashionable vegetarianism has become I don’t think it’s a question of fashion. However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. Whether it’s in 50 or 500 years’ time, one day our descendants will look back at us and wonder: “they ate corpses?!”
  - devinhelton 7y ago
    However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad. I disagree entirely, but there is no need to relitigate this debate here. If by any chance you have never read the pro-meat argument, the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is a pretty good primer.
crazygringo 7y ago
> low-cost chains like these have been serving really disgustingly low-quality meat for quite some time now; in some cases it could barely even be called meat. I wish this urban legend would die. Fast-food beef and chicken at major chains is no different in quality from what you buy at the supermarket. A McDonald's burger is 100% ground beef and salt, no "additives" or "fillers". And Taco Bell ground beef is ~90% beef, because the rest is ~10% spices (cumin, etc.) because... that's what taco meat is supposed to be, like when you make it at home. Spreading rumors that it's somehow worse doesn't help anybody. I get that it's entertaining to believe -- but it's simply false.
- megaman821 7y ago
  You seem to be in the know. What on earth is in a Jack In The Box taco?
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    It's not really about being in the know, it's common sense. Could McDonald's survive if they were selling garbage meat? I mean,it's possible. But why not just serve 100% ground beef exactly like you say you do, and charge consumers accordingly and make billions of dollars over many decades.
    - tomcatfish 7y ago
      > Could McDonald's survive if they were selling garbage meat? It seems like they could, since it appears many commenters here think so (there is no PR cost to serving bad meat if everyone thinks you are)
- grillvogel 7y ago
  last i checked, soy, oats, etc were not spices
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I don't see any oats, and the soy is soy lecithin, which is an emulsifier for the beef and fat. https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/05/tacobell-beef-ingredients-revealed https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/05/tacobell-beef-ingredien...
papreclip 7y ago
It makes sense the same way it makes sense for KFC to replace honey with "honey sauce", (main ingredient corn syrup). I personally have no interest in eating plant-based substitutes for my food.
dgzl 7y ago
More like they don't want groups of people to exclude KFC from their choices simply because there isn't a vegetarian option.
beloch 7y ago
The verdict is not yet in on whether Beyond Meat's products are actually healthier for you than real meat. Beyond Meat certainly makes this claim, but there exists debate[1]. [1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/beyond-meat-burger-beef-health-risks-1.5220777 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/beyond-meat-burger-beef-hea...
megaremote 7y ago
It is not just that, growth in fast food has been stagnant for a while now. Anything new they are looking to adopt in a hope to change that. And they will all jump in in case that new thing does have a big growth effect.
webninja 7y ago
Meat has been highly produced because the gov’t of Nixon’s era and today’s era has been buying up tons of bushels of grain(1). The gov’t bought grain to help support & subsidize farmers and ranchers. Grain is convenient to offload as cattle feed. Cheap cattle feed encourages raising cattle. Cow farts contribute over 40% of the world’s methane(2). Methane contributes 34 times more towards global warming per unit than carbon dioxide. Thus if we want to tackle climate change, we should rethink our Cold War era grain subsidies and ultimately reduce our dependence on cattle. Sources: (1) Freakonomics Radio Podcast (2) Earth and Space Science Honors course
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  > Cow farts contribute over 40% of the world’s methane. Methane contributes 34 times more towards global warming per unit than carbon dioxide. How many total units of methane are there vs. total units of CO2? Otherwise, I can’t make a value judgement about the impact of cows on global warming.
  - webninja 7y ago
    I used to link to the EPA but I learned this week that they might be a captured agency(1). They used to have a website section devoted to methane, it’s sources, and it’s contribution but it’s either been taken down or I simply can’t find it. However, Bill Gates writes in his blog that Agriculture contributes towards 24% of the world’s climate change and that “Cattle are a huge source of methane; in fact, if they were a country, they would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases!”(2). His blog post that I link to below is admittedly a secondary source but I think he does a pretty good job at showing the big picture. Sources: (1)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture (2)https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima... If you go on to find a good (hopefully primary) source, please reply with it here!
prawn 7y ago
I don't normally eat KFC but visited the "original" "restaurant" in Kentucky a few weeks ago. We thought the chicken was very decent and comparable with any southern-style smaller restaurants we hit in the South.

m0zg 7y ago

I've tried Beyond Meat sausages a couple of weeks ago. They suck compared to the real thing and cost twice as much. I don't know what all the hoopla is about. They're edible, but that's about the highest compliment I can offer at this time. Back to the drawing board, BM.

jasonvorhe 7y ago
I always hated Curry Wurst but Beyond Meat sausages are awesome. Tastes are different. Surprise surprise.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Well yeah, if you hate real sausage, then maybe a fake one will taste better for you. Most people do like the real thing, though.

autokad 7y ago

I believe thinking of it only as a 'meat substitution' might be missing a larger trend in that a new segment is being created.

yters 7y ago
I think they should not call it meat anything. They should just create a new thing, so people can appreciate it for what it is, rather than expect meat and get an uncanny valley effect.
- dymk 7y ago
  Nobody is confused when they buy this product that it’s animal based meat. The packaging is very clear about what it is. It’s called meat because it tastes and feels like meat. It’s a perfectly cromulent word to use because it describes what the product is.
  - VectorLock 7y ago
    When you give it a name that alludes to it being meat you're setting the product up for failure because people will ofcourse compare it to meat and since its not meat they will judge it as "worse."
    - Djvacto 7y ago
      So, what could we call Turkey Burgers?
      - uncletaco 7y ago
        Better question: What do we call veggie burgers that predate impossible and beyond meat?
    - Dirlewanger 7y ago
      I imagine it's easier to compare it to a burger than it is to spend marketing dollars on a new plant-based sandwich. I also imagine that because it's comparable to a burger, you're not alienating those who are on the margin that still like meat, but are open to trying a plant-based "burger".

szatkus 7y ago

Is there any plans to expand Beyond Meat, well, beyond USA?

SECProto 7y ago
Beyond Meat is fairly widely available in Canada. A&W sells a beyond meat burger, and patties are available in several national grocery chains.
- barkingcat 7y ago
  Also Tim Hortons is offering Beyond patties in many of their breakfast sandwiches.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    And, in the weirdest product add-on in a while, beyond meat burgers, because when I think of Tim Horton's I think of imitation burgers. They don't even sell real burgers.
    - Raphmedia 7y ago
      They had chicken burgers before and there's those burger breakfast sandwiches
Chazprime 7y ago
You can buy breakfast sandwiches with it at Tim Horton’s now in Canada.
ent 7y ago
Just bought some in Finland.
- stevekemp 7y ago
  I've not tried any yet, but I have a couple of friends who have been reviewing various meat-alternatives here in Helsinki, and reviews seem largely positive.

thomasfromcdnjs 7y ago

I think it is a rather toxic movement that we are continuing to label things that which they are not. "fried plant-based ‘chicken’" it makes no sense at all A lot of it is egged on by the vegan/vegetarians and is the definition of false advertising. I saw "vegan" mince in the meat section the other day. I feel sorry for the elderly or learning impaired who might be accidentally buying soy substitutes when their bodies are craving meat.

hodder 7y ago
I have never met anyone confused by what beyond meat is offering and find the complaint that it is false advertising is ridiculous.
- yters 7y ago
  I'm a confused person. I thought 'beyond meat' sold lab grown meat, not vegetables that taste like meat.
  - stri8ed 7y ago
    The ingredients are listed on the product.
    - yters 7y ago
      Ah, exactly what I want as a consumer. Believing I'm purchasing one thing when reading the product name, and finding out it is something else entirely when reading the ingredients list (which I rarely do).
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        A quick Google search for "beyond meat" reveals lots of photos of their packaging. Every single one of them has large, all-caps, bright green "PLANT BASED" on the front of the package. They're not hiding anything, and anyone confused by it probably has themselves to blame. For example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074YGZ77H/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074YGZ77H/

impalallama 7y ago

I tried a few different varieties of chick'n nuggets, 90% of the taste is just breading and whatever the sauce so its really not a difficult as you'd imagine to have a substitute

goda90 7y ago
Nuggets, patties, and sausages are going to be the first things to reach "perfect" when it comes to replacing meat because so much of their identity is in the processing and other ingredients involved. It'll be the things like a fried chicken breast sandwich that will be a lot harder to replaces because the natural meat structure matters a lot more.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  The A&W beyond meat burger stands up as well as it does for the same reasons - all the other sauces they add hides the weirdness, and you just taste burger.
_bxg1 7y ago
Exactly. We buy meatless ones from the grocery store to eat at home and it's really not all that different when the "real thing" has been shaped from a paste.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Lol at whoever felt the need to downvote a personal anecdote
moftz 7y ago
Exactly, chicken doesn't taste like anything anyway.
nostromo 7y ago
The problem with existing meat substitutes is that they are high in processed carbohydrates and low in protein. The taste has been fairly ok for a while. It's the nutritional value that's the problem.

esotericn 7y ago

Here in Sweden, pretty much every fast food outlet has a vegan option. It's honestly great, if nothing else simply because it makes it easier to be vegan - a huge blocker is often the fact that whilst you're on a road trip or similar your options may well be "eat chips or a cold premade sandwich" otherwise. Though (as I posted in the other thread) I wish it were easier to source decent food on the go.

r00fus 7y ago
A year ago my wife started eating a whole lot less meat (she has experienced a lot less allergies due to this) and this year when we went to France, it was clear that "veggie/vegan" options at restaurants are often missing (we ate mostly at friend/family houses, so it was mainly an annoyance). McD at CDG had only one non-meat item that wasn't a snack and that was their egg wrap. Even the salads had some kind of cold cuts in there.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Mmm. In the UK McD has like, some sort of weird vegetable pattie nonsense going on. Reminds me of old school dinners.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    I ordered one of those once, and got chicken.
- namdnay 7y ago
  Yes France is terrible for vegetarians (apart from major city centres obviously). Trad French cuisine is very fixated on protein+jus+carb, and the French are not as open to other cuisines (maybe because theirs is very good?)

raws 7y ago

Those plant based protein patties often have too much salt but I just checked and the beyond meat seems reasonable with 390mg sodium and 300mg potassium all while using pea protein which has a pdcaas of 0.78. Quite impressive. If they can achieve the same with the chicken patties it'll be good!

vzidex 7y ago

As someone who recently transitioned to a >=95% vegetarian diet (I still consume dairy and eggs), the growing number of fast food places offering plant-based options has been a godsend, but lacking for variety - you can only eat so many plant-based burgers. I'm excited to have a mainstream meat-free "chicken" option, because most "chicken"s that I've tried at more niche restaurants have been really good!

telesilla 7y ago

I'm preparing a large dinner for an organisation at the moment and decided that we'd make the menu vegan/vegetarian (we use a wonderful Italian caterer, so flavour isn't going to be missed). When I mentioned it to some omnivore colleagues, they asked why and I shrugged and said "the Amazon is burning". They shrugged back and said, makes sense. It's not many years since I would have expected complaints at not catering a meat option. I feel progress is being made.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Is their collective indifference indicative of actual indifference to meat or that they don't deem this a battle worth fighting?
fromthestart 7y ago
>we use a wonderful Italian caterer, so flavour isn't going to be missed A non meat dish is still going to taste like a non-meat dish. Perhaps your colleagues were just being polite and avoiding treading into politically charged territory after you brought up the Amazon. Personally I'm a picky eater and vegan/vegetarian dishes simply do not compare to meat. I'm sure others feel similarly. Though for one meal I suppose it isn't a huge deal - but acting like it's just as good simply isn't true for the majority of people - that's your personal taste.
- telesilla 7y ago
  I honestly don't understand why it's such a big deal that so many people insist meat must be part of a meal? To the degree that in Argentina they say "si no hay carne, no hay comida" (if there is no meat, it is not a meal). It feels like if I insisted on having bread at every table sitting. Clearly, it can be seen as just a habit and not a requirement?
  - inscionent 7y ago
    Every experience I've had with "no meat, no meal" has also been associated with a heavy dose but "I'm a man". YMMV

berbec 7y ago

Kentucky Fried Cauliflower

phil248 7y ago
Given the amazing things I've seen done with cauliflower in recent years, I'd try that in a heartbeat!

anonymouswacker 7y ago

I was a vegetarian, vegan, then back to vegetarian, then flexitarian, and now predominately carnivore -- over the course of 15 years. The me from 2 years ago would be overjoyed about this "progress", from an ethical standpoint and from believing that meat is bad for you. Present me sees this as what it is: another unhealthy product in an already oversaturated marketplace to dupe suckers.

phil248 7y ago
I have a hard time understanding how a proponent of vegetarianism, presuming you are one, could be so dismissive of a technological advancement that will almost certainly lead to reduced meat consumption.
- anonymouswacker 7y ago
  I am as health and environmentally conscious now as I ever was, only aware that vegetarian & vegan diets in America are atrociously unhealthy. Offering cheap, low quality, fake food is not a technological advancement. And I am not sure meat consumption is the problem. Factory farming and industrialized agriculture are the big issues: the greed of the majority of the food supply causes death, destruction, and misery on beings regardless if you are eating kale or cow. Eat pasture-raised & local if you care about the environment and your own health...
  - SeanBoocock 7y ago
    > only aware that vegetarian & vegan diets in America are atrociously unhealthy That is in contradiction to every major health organization in the US and abroad. Well balanced vegan and vegetarian diets are healthy and appropriate for every stage of life. If you care about the environment and want to make food choices that minimize your impact, don't eat animal products, especially beef.
    - anonymouswacker 7y ago
      Yes... but large organizations (“major”) are bureaucratic, political organizations predominately funded by, not healthy consumers or scientists, but governments and food/pharma/tech industries. Follow the money, check the biases, and see that the existence of the organization would be jeopardized by biting the hand that feeds it...

wil421 7y ago

Why do American (and presumably westerners) vegetarians want to replace meat? I hated vegan and vegetarian food for song long until I ate meat free Indian food. It was always the meat replacements like veggie patties and tofurkey type products that turned me away. Indian food doesn’t have some weird mystery replacement I find on almost every vegan or veggie dish. I had a conversation with and Indian colleague who lives in the states and she agreed a lot of veggie/vegan food is just plain weird.

litzer 7y ago
I’m a meat eater and want to replace meat. It’s not just vegetarians. The factory farming of animals doesn’t sit well ethically with me, but meat has been a staple of my diet my entire life. If there were a viable plant based alternative that’s indistinguishable, factory farming can die out. It’s not ready yet, and phase 1 was the really weird stuff. I think Beyond Meat is like phase 2 of “pretty close”. In the near future, you won’t be able to tell the difference
maximente 7y ago
KFC isn't rolling out thai/indian curries, garlic chinese broccoli, or cheese gorditas any time soon so in this context it seems odd to somehow demonize fake meat while suggesting foreign cuisines are superior. what's the point? most of the interest i'm guessing is coming from what was previously thought to be "unthinkable": that is, fast food chains whose core business revolves around animal flesh introducing something else that isn't animal flesh. there are tons of consequences for this outside of American vegetarians wanting to replace meat or whatever.
- wil421 7y ago
  Personally I’d rather just eat the sides at KFC than have fake over processed chicken. I just don’t get the need for fake meat. Everyone seems to be against over processed foods and fake meats seem more processed than anything else.
  - detaro 7y ago

Kaveren 7y ago

I can't understand how people enjoy this fake food. It just can't match the original taste. This sort of food is extremely unhealthy, and vegans will never be able to get the protein they need to survive. We should not encourage the appeasing of certain niche markets, the radicals must be made to realize that normal KFC is just a fact of life.

saagarjha 7y ago
> vegans will never be able to get the protein they need to survive There are millions of vegans around the world who can "survive" without meat: they just get their protein from other places.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  They're dependent on technological intervention to get the required supplements. It isn't a natural way for humans to persist.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    They may occasionally need certain vitamins that are rare in plants, but it's inaccurate to classify vegans as unable to satisfy their protein requirements. (And FWIW, there are natural vegetarian cultures that have survived without supplements.)
    - esyir 7y ago
      Vegetarians are fine, but vegans are at particular risk. I assume that's why op mentioned them to begin with.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        They mentioned protein in particular, which isn't really that big of a deal (as opposed to certain other nutrients like Vitamin B-12, which can often be a problem).

bad_user 7y ago

I think the fake meat movement will go the way of Margarine. Initially it's celebrated as a feat of engineering and as the healthy alternative to meat. After about 10 to 20 years however, we'll see cancer and heart disease rates going up. And then the billions of dollars spent in health care will pile up, but nobody will readily admit it, because the fuck up will be even bigger than with Margarine. After all, Margarine is still on the shelves of super markets everywhere, maybe with slightly less trans fats, but it's still there, still advertised as the healthier alternative to butter. Let that sink in for a moment.

bigtech 7y ago
Do you have some reason to believe that meat is healthier, or is this speculation?
- bad_user 7y ago
  The number one reason is that we've eaten red meat for millions of years, literally. Given fake meat is new and I'm not seeing it in stores nearby yet, I'm going to assume a fair comparison will take another decade, after the studies and the meta analysis show up. Until then the burden of proof is not on me ;-)
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    As opposed to plants?
    - bad_user 7y ago
      Thinking that eating fake meat is like eating plants is ... similar to thinking that crack cocaine has similar effects with coca leaves. I expect more from HN :-)
      - wes-k 7y ago
        And you’re thinking fast food meat is similar to what we ate for millions of years ... ?

hbarka 7y ago

What does the Paleo community think of Beyond Meat? I think they would highly object to the canola oil in Beyond Beef, which is not considered a good vegetable oil.

slig 7y ago
Well, it's processed food, so there's no reason to believe they'd consider it as "Paleo" in any way or form.

rblion 7y ago

Was just thinking about this today after trying the Impossible Whopper at BK last week, amazing timing.

magwa101 7y ago

beyond hype

hugofloss 7y ago

We've been eating plant-based meats at home for a while now, but I'm contemplating going back to meats after reading various packaging. I'm seeing a lot of food additives which I don't want my kids to take in. I'm all up for plant-based foods, but it should be healthier than the meat alternative.

Djvacto 7y ago
Have you considered making some basic meat substitutes at home? We make Seitan a lot, and you can do a lot of cool stuff with Tofu. You can also make stuff like falafel or bean patties/meatballs. I'd recommend checking out Miyoko's recipe for stuff like unribs, if you want some fancier Seitan-based recipes.

wayanon 7y ago

Fast food is as much about salt and flavourings as it is about the actual stuff in the patty/nugget. I look forward to meat becoming an anachronism.

losvedir 7y ago

It's odd. Most of my friends are aboard the "eat real food, not too much, mostly plants" train, and generally avoid highly processed stuff in favor of simple ingredients. But they make an exception for this weird industrial concoction. I, personally, don't like it because my wife has allergy issues with legumes, and they're putting soy and pea protein in _everything_ now (e.g. was surprised to see it in some random almond milk the other day). I know it's a niche concern and it's on us to watch out for, but it's annoying and sort of surprising where it all is now. I like meat. I don't eat it in large quantities or too often, and I don't think I'll ever go for this product. If I want meat, I'll have it like we've evolved to have it over millenia. YMMV.

controlweather 7y ago

I literally love the taste of beyond and impossible. I pay whatever fee there is for them. Meat is so absolutely disgusting from fast food. I eat only fresh salmon once a week as my only meat. These fake meats take all my money! I’m a deplorable PNW farm boy. 29 male and this stuff makes real meat takes bad.

dikdikvandik 7y ago

Wonder how storing and transporting artificial meat compares to the real thing. Unrelated - anyone wanna invest in my new startup? We're gonna cross DNA from a spider with a chicken to produce 8 legged chickens to disrupt the chicken market. Hopefully we don't get spiders with wings.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Not to get off topic but the History Channel's three-part mini-series The Food That Made America is fascinating. You get to see where we were, what changed, as well as what hasn't changed. I found the bit about Heinz more or less inventing the assembly line to be fascinating.

mactyler 7y ago

I'm so excited for this!