4 ms·

Genuinely curious; is eating something processed like this better than eating regular unprocessed ground meat?

Rebelgecko 5y ago
Last time I did a comparison, in terms of things that I personally want to consume less of (sodium, calories), real meat still wins
acomjean 5y ago
They're supper processed. I recommend stacking a beef burger with a "impossible/ beyond or other veggie burger". This cuts your beef consumption in half and I actually prefer it to plain burgers now.
bonniemuffin 5y ago
This is my main concern with fake meats. The taste and texture are fine, the price point is acceptable, and I like the idea of not harming animals for my dinner, but I find it hard to believe that something with 20 highly-processed ingredients is healthy for me to eat. I thought I was supposed to be avoiding processed foods.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
Meat is plant material that was processed inside the body of an animal. So they're both processed food. If you want a healthy unprocessed burger, might I suggest trying a delicious homemade black-bean burger.
Gatsky 5y ago
We don't know the answer to this of course. Presumably they did some animal studies to show that huge doses of their product don't obviously damage a mouse. Generally there is a 30+ year lag time to work out if some lifestyle change is detrimental. Look at smoking, soft-drinks... even more difficult with food products. We err on the side of recklessness by letting these products loose with minimal testing. Personally I think that the cellular meat products, where they grow actual animal muscle cells in the lab, including seafood, are going to be the real killer product in this space. They have the advantage of true biocompatibility with us, less cringe factor and avoid the need for excessive processing to mimic the real thing. I also think that cellular meat will be cheaper and less resource intensive than plant based products in the end.
Spooky23 5y ago
No, and that’s why the fake meat companies are very careful from not mentioning anything about health benefits, and instead stress carbon nonsense and naturalness of ingredients. Impossible is legume flour and coconut oil. Legume flour is rough on the gut, and coconut oil is 90% saturated fat, way more than butter. Beyond is soy and coconut. If you have a moral or other objection to meat, go vegetarian or start eating vegetarian meals. It’s healthier and you’ll eat better. Fake meat has all of the health downsides of lousy meat, has inferior taste, and a questionable story around environmental nonsense.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  But who eats burgers for health reasons?
- wyager 5y ago
  > Fake meat has all of the health downsides of lousy meat Even cheap meat still has a great nutritional profile compared to vegetables. In fact, meat consumption is quite (economically) progressive because expensive cuts subsidize nutritionally similar cheap cuts.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Absolutely. Venture capital isn’t investing in fake meat because of some love of the earth. It’s a vertical integration play for fast food. Any shift of the demand curve hurts beef producers a lot, and they don’t have the economies of scale that a factory has. If successful, they’ll be making 50 points of margin on a tray of mush.
- mosselman 5y ago
  If you are planning on eating an amount of burgers where their nutritional value matters, you should have a critical look at your diet.
irjustin 5y ago
You should try it just to test it yourself. I get a different burger maybe once or twice a quarter to see how they stack up. Some of them I wouldn't know it was veg if someone else ordered it for me. Legitimately that good. I've also had some terrible ones too, not sure if it was due to the prep work vs the 'meat' itself. For now the price is always 25% higher which keeps me away from being a regular, but I expect that to continue to come down. Consider me a believer, so - grain of salt.
- jiofih 5y ago
  I think the question is regarding nutrition / health, not taste.
- The_rationalist 5y ago
  Did you saw their pack of ten burgers? $1.60 per burger, it's dirt cheap! https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/06/17/cheaper-burgers-lift-beyond-meat-stock.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/06/17/cheaper-burgers-li...
  - v0x 5y ago
    Price per patty is a strange metric. I get that they're prepackaged in patty form but the competing "traditional" product is ground beef which is typically sold in price per pound. Ground beef is readily available at sub-$3/lb. Plant-based ones like Beyond are over $6/lb. So Beyond is more than twice the price of ground beef. It gets even worse if you compare it against what I imagine is the most popular meat sold today, chicken breast; that's $1.75/lb in value stores like Sam's Club but is often on sale for less, around $1.50/lb if you pay attention to weekly ads[0]. So in that respect, Beyond meat can be more than four times as expensive! That may not mean a whole lot to many on this site who are earning six figures but for everyday folks it's a large consideration. [0] https://circulars-prod.cpnscdn.com/pdf-cache/Randalls/21_14_SOU_WC_RT/stores/01066.pdf https://circulars-prod.cpnscdn.com/pdf-cache/Randalls/21_14_...
- hanniabu 5y ago
  My main concern is how the insects are raised. My main thought with this is that if they're using any type of chemicals that it would travel down the food chain to us.
wyager 5y ago
Nutrition "science" cannot yet make accurate predictions here, but from my perspective there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that no single artificial product yet captures the nutritional profile of real beef.
- creato 5y ago
  That's probably true. It's probably also true that there are nutritional pros and cons to both. If we could engineer the "ideal" meat for nutrition, it probably wouldn't be exactly the same as real beef.
- psychometry 5y ago
  That nutritional profile also includes increased risk of GI tract cancers among other serious conditions, so I'm not sure what the argument you're trying to make is.
  - wyager 5y ago
    There is no compelling evidence that eating unprocessed beef carries any significant cancer risk. This claim is obvious a-priori bullshit if you know much about human metabolism. Plain old meat is very rapidly metabolized almost entirely into peptides and absorbed; there is little room for it to cause GI problems. Hence why there are a lot of people with plant-related digestive issues (e.g. celiac) but very few people with beef intolerance, outside of freak allergies like alpha-gal (lone star tick syndrome).
    - psychometry 5y ago
      What are you, some sort of beef industry lobbyist? This is a widely accepted fact among the medical community and supported by reams of evidence. Metabolism has almost nothing to do with this. The link between environmental exposure (red meat, smoking, etc.) and cancer has to do with DNA damage and inflammation. https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2021/03/17/bacon-salami-and-sausages-how-does-processed-meat-cause-cancer-and-how-much-matters/ https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2021/03/17/bacon-sa... The rest of your comment is clearly irrelevant to the topic at hand.
jtdev 5y ago
Simple answer: No, this stuff is not good for you… get ready to shit your pants if you consume this lab goo on a regular basis.
- purephase 5y ago
  I eat these on a regular basis and never experience this. This person is full of shit (literally apparently).
swader999 5y ago
Better nutrition? I'd be surprised.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  Though from googling it also seems that they're not substantially worse.

Last time I did a comparison, in terms of things that I personally want to consume less of (sodium, calories), real meat still wins

acomjean 5y ago

They're supper processed. I recommend stacking a beef burger with a "impossible/ beyond or other veggie burger". This cuts your beef consumption in half and I actually prefer it to plain burgers now.

bonniemuffin 5y ago

This is my main concern with fake meats. The taste and texture are fine, the price point is acceptable, and I like the idea of not harming animals for my dinner, but I find it hard to believe that something with 20 highly-processed ingredients is healthy for me to eat. I thought I was supposed to be avoiding processed foods.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

Meat is plant material that was processed inside the body of an animal. So they're both processed food. If you want a healthy unprocessed burger, might I suggest trying a delicious homemade black-bean burger.

Gatsky 5y ago

We don't know the answer to this of course. Presumably they did some animal studies to show that huge doses of their product don't obviously damage a mouse. Generally there is a 30+ year lag time to work out if some lifestyle change is detrimental. Look at smoking, soft-drinks... even more difficult with food products. We err on the side of recklessness by letting these products loose with minimal testing. Personally I think that the cellular meat products, where they grow actual animal muscle cells in the lab, including seafood, are going to be the real killer product in this space. They have the advantage of true biocompatibility with us, less cringe factor and avoid the need for excessive processing to mimic the real thing. I also think that cellular meat will be cheaper and less resource intensive than plant based products in the end.

Spooky23 5y ago

No, and that’s why the fake meat companies are very careful from not mentioning anything about health benefits, and instead stress carbon nonsense and naturalness of ingredients. Impossible is legume flour and coconut oil. Legume flour is rough on the gut, and coconut oil is 90% saturated fat, way more than butter. Beyond is soy and coconut. If you have a moral or other objection to meat, go vegetarian or start eating vegetarian meals. It’s healthier and you’ll eat better. Fake meat has all of the health downsides of lousy meat, has inferior taste, and a questionable story around environmental nonsense.

toper-centage 5y ago
But who eats burgers for health reasons?
wyager 5y ago
> Fake meat has all of the health downsides of lousy meat Even cheap meat still has a great nutritional profile compared to vegetables. In fact, meat consumption is quite (economically) progressive because expensive cuts subsidize nutritionally similar cheap cuts.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Absolutely. Venture capital isn’t investing in fake meat because of some love of the earth. It’s a vertical integration play for fast food. Any shift of the demand curve hurts beef producers a lot, and they don’t have the economies of scale that a factory has. If successful, they’ll be making 50 points of margin on a tray of mush.
mosselman 5y ago
If you are planning on eating an amount of burgers where their nutritional value matters, you should have a critical look at your diet.

irjustin 5y ago

You should try it just to test it yourself. I get a different burger maybe once or twice a quarter to see how they stack up. Some of them I wouldn't know it was veg if someone else ordered it for me. Legitimately that good. I've also had some terrible ones too, not sure if it was due to the prep work vs the 'meat' itself. For now the price is always 25% higher which keeps me away from being a regular, but I expect that to continue to come down. Consider me a believer, so - grain of salt.

jiofih 5y ago
I think the question is regarding nutrition / health, not taste.
The_rationalist 5y ago
Did you saw their pack of ten burgers? $1.60 per burger, it's dirt cheap! https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/06/17/cheaper-burgers-lift-beyond-meat-stock.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/06/17/cheaper-burgers-li...
- v0x 5y ago
  Price per patty is a strange metric. I get that they're prepackaged in patty form but the competing "traditional" product is ground beef which is typically sold in price per pound. Ground beef is readily available at sub-$3/lb. Plant-based ones like Beyond are over $6/lb. So Beyond is more than twice the price of ground beef. It gets even worse if you compare it against what I imagine is the most popular meat sold today, chicken breast; that's $1.75/lb in value stores like Sam's Club but is often on sale for less, around $1.50/lb if you pay attention to weekly ads[0]. So in that respect, Beyond meat can be more than four times as expensive! That may not mean a whole lot to many on this site who are earning six figures but for everyday folks it's a large consideration. [0] https://circulars-prod.cpnscdn.com/pdf-cache/Randalls/21_14_SOU_WC_RT/stores/01066.pdf https://circulars-prod.cpnscdn.com/pdf-cache/Randalls/21_14_...
hanniabu 5y ago
My main concern is how the insects are raised. My main thought with this is that if they're using any type of chemicals that it would travel down the food chain to us.

wyager 5y ago

Nutrition "science" cannot yet make accurate predictions here, but from my perspective there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that no single artificial product yet captures the nutritional profile of real beef.

creato 5y ago
That's probably true. It's probably also true that there are nutritional pros and cons to both. If we could engineer the "ideal" meat for nutrition, it probably wouldn't be exactly the same as real beef.
psychometry 5y ago
That nutritional profile also includes increased risk of GI tract cancers among other serious conditions, so I'm not sure what the argument you're trying to make is.
- wyager 5y ago
  There is no compelling evidence that eating unprocessed beef carries any significant cancer risk. This claim is obvious a-priori bullshit if you know much about human metabolism. Plain old meat is very rapidly metabolized almost entirely into peptides and absorbed; there is little room for it to cause GI problems. Hence why there are a lot of people with plant-related digestive issues (e.g. celiac) but very few people with beef intolerance, outside of freak allergies like alpha-gal (lone star tick syndrome).
  - psychometry 5y ago
    What are you, some sort of beef industry lobbyist? This is a widely accepted fact among the medical community and supported by reams of evidence. Metabolism has almost nothing to do with this. The link between environmental exposure (red meat, smoking, etc.) and cancer has to do with DNA damage and inflammation. https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2021/03/17/bacon-salami-and-sausages-how-does-processed-meat-cause-cancer-and-how-much-matters/ https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2021/03/17/bacon-sa... The rest of your comment is clearly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

jtdev 5y ago

Simple answer: No, this stuff is not good for you… get ready to shit your pants if you consume this lab goo on a regular basis.

purephase 5y ago
I eat these on a regular basis and never experience this. This person is full of shit (literally apparently).

swader999 5y ago

Better nutrition? I'd be surprised.

seoaeu 5y ago
Though from googling it also seems that they're not substantially worse.