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Meatless meat is nothing new

Ambolia 4y ago
I don't understand how can those companies afford to put those fake meat sections on all supermarkets across the globe. At least in my european country all supermarkets seem to have this section and from what I've been told most of the products just end up being thrown away because nobody is buying them. I assume they expect to lose a lot of money now but then to make it big at some point in the future. But those companies seem to be global multinationals and rely on global supply chains to create their products. And if the future requires decarbonization and reducing energy consumption, wouldn't that mean that complex global supply chains will be drastically reduced, and food production will move back to a more local level?
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  You can be 100% sure aldi, or lidl wouldn't put it out there if it wasn't massively profitable. The margins on these products are probably big so even if it doesn't sell well in one region, other regions make up for it.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Also, there are items that may not themselves generate lots of profit but do attract customers who spend a lot as well. Like if you have the plant based meats, I can probably pick up the plant based milks, and the produce, and maybe some snacks, etc.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    tbf the selection of artificial meats tends to be very limited in Aldi or Lidl. But that's largely for a different reason: in the more upmarket supermarkets which devote large displays to "meatless meat", it tends to be priced at equal or higher prices than the "premium" processed meat it competes with, even when it's just sausages made of vegetables, not lab-grown stuff with tricky textures. They're not pitching it at those prices because it doesn't sell...
    - deleted 4y ago
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- cinntaile 4y ago
  > And if the future requires decarbonization and reducing energy consumption, wouldn't that mean that complex global supply chains will be drastically reduced, and food production will move back to a more local level? Food production won't move back to a more local level, you lose the economies of scale. You get more expensive products and more pollution, not exactly what we want.
- dataduck 4y ago
  It's possible that the supermarkets did some market research that misled them about how popular these products would be, but there is another option. Supermarkets can arrange all sorts of deals with suppliers. In some cases, the supplier will pay the supermarket to stock a new product, hoping that high margin sales or even just market penetration make it worth it.
- bartvk 4y ago
  > from what I've been told most of the products just end up being thrown away because nobody is buying them Who told you, and why do you consider them a reliable indicator, for what you imply are all supermarkets across the globe?
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    thats certainly a false claim. no supermarket would be in business if they were throwing everything away.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      Not necessarily, supermarkets have a built in expectation of some loss to spoilage already. A lot of those fake meat products have a pretty long shelf life since they are highly processed/frozen products and tend to be marketed in a very small footprint within the store. They are also priced to counter any spoilage expectation. So low stock requirements, small footprint, and consumer expectation that it’s an expensive product doesn’t really make that a false claim. They also could be considered a loss leader to attract vegan and vegetarians to buy the other vegetarian friendly foods they sell.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        > expectation of some loss to spoilage already. some is the key word here. You can bet that anyone who's managing a supermarket is optimizing to reduce this kind of loss.
        kcplate 4y ago
        Sure…and also incorporating what they can’t optimize into the price for the item.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- vaylian 4y ago
  > most of the products just end up being thrown away because nobody is buying them There's also a problem with discovery: If the meat alternative section is directly adjacent to the real meat, vegetarians and vegans are a lot less likely to discover it.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    This just isn't true. It is actually really common to have this section near the meats. Vegetarian meats are usually (but not always) either kept chilled or frozen, so it simply gets put somewhere around dairy and meat. For refrigerated sections, it is usually but not always in its own section. For the freezers, it is just kept in a section with space. Of course, there are exceptions and sometimes it is just mixed in with regular product. Vegan cheese with the cheeses and ground "meat" with the other ground meat. Most vegetarians and vegans I know seek the stuff out and learn where to look for it - including myself (not quite vegetarian, but a pescetarian that leans very heavily towards veggie)
- xvilka 4y ago
  Looking at Beyond Meat you are probably right - their shares are in tatters, they are bleeding money without any prospects to break even. Maybe only second generation of meatless companies will make it.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  This is a tangent, but so much of the supermarket nowadays is junk. Go to the protein section, and there is literally no product that is just protein, everything has added artificial sweetener or some lab concoction with god knows what. Go to the frozen food section. 80% junk. Ice cream, frozen potato chips, frozen pizzas. Oh look, some frozen fruit in the corner. Go to the cereals section. 80% junk. If you look really hard, you can find some wholegrain cereal without added sugar. Is this the equivalent of when social media companies optimize heavily around taking advantage of dopamine spikes in their customers, instead of doing things in their customer's actual best interests? Speaking to an older relative, things were not like this in the mid 20th century. How much cheaper would food be if the healthy staples could be bought in bulk, and our supply chains and packaging were optimized around that?
  - binbashthefash 4y ago
    You should try tofu
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    You can buy almost pure protein in some supermarkets - look for powdered egg whites which are like 99% protein.
  - watwut 4y ago
    I never seen frozen fruit, but frozen vegetables are super common.
    - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      Frozen fruit is usually in its own section and isn't often mixed in with the vegetables. I'm more used to seeing it near desserts. It is, believe it or not, super common. I promise it is common, though: I could find it in pretty much every grocery store I visited in the US (Including aldi) and can find it in most stores here in Norway as well. Some folks seek out frozen peaches and frozen mixed fruit for fruit salad as well - at least they did where I grew up in the Midwest.
    - virgildotcodes 4y ago
- fzfaa 4y ago
  I can't help but wonder if it's some evil organisation like the UN or the WEF subsidising these sections... or even blackmailing supermarkets to have them.
- matsemann 4y ago
  A vegetable being transported all around the world, still has a drastically smaller footprint than meat from a farm next door.
- binbashthefash 4y ago
  Lmao no, go to an Albert heijn or Jumbo.
mariusmg 4y ago
Why does plant based meat costs more than actual meat ?
- sweetheart 4y ago
  Subsidies. Meat is INCREDIBLY well subsidized (at least in the US). Most or all animal agriculture is. It’s maddening when people use the myth that “veganism is classist because it’s much more expensive” to justify their penchant for animal abuse because they couldn’t be more wrong.
- virgildotcodes 4y ago
  For now I think it's primarily down to economies of scale, not to mention the subsidies supporting the meat industry and its feed crops. For an example data point on subsidies, this article mention that subsidization reduces the cost of a Big Mac from $13 to $5, and the cost of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to $5. https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/ https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
- twelvechairs 4y ago
  Actual meat doesn't need so much marketing
- el_oni 4y ago
  Probably the economies of scale that come from factory farming of animals. Vs the lower volume production of plant based meats. The fact that its a dietary choice typically made by those who are more affluent and they are willing to pay for it.
- G4BB3R 4y ago
  No government subsidies and low production volume
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Any plant based meat must start with the extraction of proteins from some plant product. Most vegetable products have a content of protein so low that the cost per protein mass is higher than for the cheaper kinds of meat, e.g. chicken meat. The main exceptions, which can provide cheap-enough proteins, are various cereals and legumes. While the proteins from plants are cheaper than those from meat, the difference is not huge. Where I live, in Europe, the ratio between price and protein content for wheat floor is only 3 times less than for chicken breast, while for lentils is only 2 times less than for chicken breast. For other cereals or legumes, the costs are even higher. So, to remain cheaper than meat, the cost of protein extraction and of its further processing to make its taste and texture similar to meat must not increase the cost more than 2 or 3 times. This is not at all easy, because even bread is usually at least 2 times more expensive than the wheat floor used for it, and bread requires much simpler processing than artificial meat. Protein extraction is simpler for the gluten of wheat, because gluten is insoluble in water, while starch is made of loosely-attached grains that can be washed away. Even so, extracting the proteins from wheat requires a lot of water and time. Extracting the proteins from other plants is more complex and it may require the addition of various salts or solvents to the plant source, to create conditions where the proteins can be separated from the substances they are mixed with, and whatever is added must then be removed in another step of the process. So besides the cost of the plant source, extracting the proteins has additional costs for water, chemicals and energy. Similar additional costs are needed for transforming the proteins to have a meat-like texture and taste. The cost of the plant source of the proteins ends being a very small fraction of the cost. Then there is, as the other commentators have mentioned, the inefficiency of small-scale production. The result is that I have not seen yet not only any meat substitute that is not many times more expensive than meat, but not even any kind of raw protein extracts from plants that are not many times more expensive than meat. The only way that I have seen in which is possible to make a meat substitute that is cheaper than real meat (in Europe, i.e. where soy is too expensive as a protein source) is too make at home gluten from wheat floor (i.e. not accounting costs for water, energy and work time). Any kind of commercial product would be more expensive than real meat.
ricardobayes 4y ago
Personally, I can't wait to taste it. There has been a lot of hype surrounding lab-grown meat replacements, but I think it's going to be a good few years until the legal framework, and economies of scale will be there.
- ulfw 4y ago
  What do legal framework and economies of scale have to do with you tasting it? I have and frankly it doesn't taste like meat. Sadly.
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    What I mean by that is that I will only do so if it will be available as a ready product in my local supermarket. But they are not FDA-approved at this time, let alone available anywhere in the EU.
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    How did you get your hands on lab-grown meat? Isn't it still in prototype stage?
jp0d 4y ago
The article is behind a paywall so not really sure what's it exactly about. New or not, they're definitely gaining popularity down here in Australia. I'm seeing more and more of those on the supermarket shelves. I treat them as processed food and occasionally have some just to understand where exactly they stand. Some of them are good but mostly utter rubbish.
- gregoryl 4y ago
  Which ones have you tried, and which category do they fall into?
  - jp0d 4y ago
    The ones at Woolies/Coles etc are usually shit. I remember having Impossible burger once at Grill'd and it was quite good. The stuff from Ikea are usually good even though they don't taste like meat.
- Bancakes 4y ago
  Unpaywalled version https://web.archive.org/web/20220814083831/https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/meatless-meat-is-nothing-new https://web.archive.org/web/20220814083831/https://www.econo...
  - FinanceAnon 4y ago
    Or disable javascript in the browser
  - jp0d 4y ago
    Thank you.
voxadam 4y ago
As a lapsed vegetarian I've always seen mushrooms as the original meatless meat. Praise be glutamates.
- ThalesX 4y ago
  As a meat eater, I love mushrooms and I think they are so much better as a healthy food than those weird Beyond meats. I also love vegan patties made with various kind of nuts, beans and veggies. I don’t get this appeal of turning goos and veggies into ‘meat’. Just make them their own thing. You don’t rly have to compete with meat.
  - virgildotcodes 4y ago
    Eh, as a vegan I prefer Beyond burgers to mushroom burgers or those healthier vegan patties made out of various veggies/beans. I'm a meat eater at heart, and the junky meat and cheese substitutes really scratch an itch that the healthier options can't. Given the huge year over year rise in consumption of these substitutes it seems like a lot of people similarly are more down to have the occasional Impossible or Beyond burger from a fast food chain than the old school veggie/bean patties.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    "I don’t get this appeal of turning goos and veggies into ‘meat’. Just make them their own thing. You don’t rly have to compete with meat." So, people are supposed to go without the comfort food of childhood completely and are supposed to never get some of the textures of these products? I'm not personally a fan of the beyond meat most of the time, but I do use other fake meat from time to time (Quorn, for example, or ground meat made from soy). I can make bean burgers - and do, usually chickpeas and brown rice - but if I'm buying, I'm buying stuff with a nice chewy texture that I can't quite get at home. I make some childhood comfort food, too, and sometimes it just gives and easy protein. And I don't look at it as a competition. I don't care that it tastes of meat and I wouldn't really know anyway - it has been too long. I care that it tastes good enough and has a good texture. Making it taste (or 'bleed') like meat isn't a gimmick for me, but for meat eaters.
tcfhgj 4y ago
But various ecological crisis are becoming more and more obvious to everyone. Anyone who cares about the environment including ecosystem breakdown and climate change will go meatless one way or another.
- trention 4y ago
  >Anyone who cares about the environment including ecosystem breakdown and climate change will go meatless one way or another. I "care about the environment" and I will not "go meatless". I have stopped eating beef entirely and have switched to chicken and fish, with the occasional pork steak. 1 pound of beef has the carbon footprint of ~8 pounds of chicken. Especially in the States, the best thing to do is switch your meats.
  - sweetheart 4y ago
    How do you arrive at the conclusion that the best thing to do in the US is switch your meats? Every form from animal protein is going to be less efficient than plant protein and result in more emissions [1]. There are some amazing Kurzgesagt videos exposing how and why that is true [2]. So since we know that eating animals is not required to be healthy at any stage of life [3] (assuming basic access to required nutrients and what not which is very easy in developed countries) how did you arrive to conclusion that eating chicken is better than eating lentils, beans, etc? I don’t think what you’re saying is based in fact. I’d love if you tried to prove me wrong though. 1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore 2. https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs 3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
    - trention 4y ago
      >how did you arrive to conclusion that eating chicken is better than eating lentils, beans, etc I haven't made such a claim (here "better" would be solely in terms of emissions). What was implied was that the delta of the emissions from switching from beef to chicken/fish is (far) larger than the delta from switching from them to veganism (it's important to note that per grams of protein, dairy is comparable in emmissions to non-beef meats - so really veganism (or veganism + eggs) is required). Also, this claim "we know that eating animals is not required to be healthy at any stage of life" is most likely false at the margin.
ains 4y ago
https://archive.ph/Xyez1 https://archive.ph/Xyez1
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frankzander 4y ago
In Germany the Rügenwalder brand was, at least for me, always associated with sausages. Since they changed to also produce meatless vegan products, they become almost omnipresent in every supermarket with vegan and vegetarian products. I personally like them and, in my opinion, the initial change of the direction was brave. My personal perception is, that Rügenwalder and LikeMeat (with some exceptions) do a great job. I think, the target customer isn't always the established vegan who also has sympathies for PETA work but the interested and health aware consumer who wants to reduce the overall meat consumption or the meat lover who is open to just try it out (because of interest). I'm aware that this products are always creatures of food laboratories ... well done but somewhat artificial. But if you got an invitation to some BBQ event and don't have your own DIY sausages at hand, this products are convenient (yes I know peppers, zucchini and other vegetables are just fine to put it on a grill and taste good but the BBQ master must have some experience with it and it's sometimes a bit of a struggle to be well fed with that only ... for a man). By the way ... I think the marketing of this traditional meat based sausage company Rugenwalder is just interesting. I think this model can also work for established fast-fashion brands which want to change to sustainable, fair paying product model ... not to change the world but to make it right and because the market wants it so
JodieBenitez 4y ago
"Meatless meat". That doesn't make any sense. I enjoy quality meat. I'm all for consuming much less meat. In fact, that's already what I do day to day. I enjoy vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, cereals, everything. I can have delicious meals without meat, no need to disguise these as meat, they're fine as-is. And maybe once a week I'll have a delicious piece of cow from my local butcher. But eating some fake industrially processed junk ? No, thanks, not even once.
- pelagicAustral 4y ago
  I feel the same about these products, if I slice a steak that’s what I’m getting. A one ingredient meal. These products have a different vibe, a lab-like vibe. I do enjoy other vegan products like bean-based burgers and the like. In fact I like those a lot.
- frankzander 4y ago
  Maybe you should see this from a marketing POV. If you want to sell "Proteins easy to fry" you will probably fail. But if you sell "Vegan Steak" with the texture and like taste of a steak out of meat, you will have your customers. So the alternatives have no established name and naming it "meat" will make sense. And yes ... it's processed and no I think it's not healthy for day to day consumption (like coke) but once a week or month ... why not? Smoking (even passive) so most probably more dangerous ;)
  - JodieBenitez 4y ago
    Why not ? There are certainly a lot of reasons. But I'd like to pin this as a missed opportunity. Missed opportunity to educate taste, missed opportunity to have more "agro" and less "industry", missed opportunity to consume locally, missed opportunity to discover new varieties and so on...
- wortelefant 4y ago
  the "meat" in "meatless meat" describes a texture and taste profile, not an ingredient. It is easier to communicate than, say, "chewy but soft, fibrous proteins which taste is usually determined by umami and maillard reaction flavors". There is a large community around new recipes for this taste profile, e.g. https://seitansociety.com/ https://seitansociety.com/ . compared to the logistics (animal farming and slaughter pipelines), artificial inseminations, medical interventions (antibiotics), storage and food safety concerns around meat, plus the incredible daily amount of animal suffering caused by this consumption, I don't see meat as a "natural" product. all the steps in the "production" process can introduce factors that can degrade the quality and be risky to health (e.g. not cooled at appropriate temperature, antibiotics treatments to animals etc), while with plant proteins, you have far less processing steps between field and table. to vegans and people concerned with reducing global warming, the benefits outweigh the different composition by far.
OJFord 4y ago
The genius of the modern ones is in marketing. Beyond & Impossible are somehow seen as meat competitors, not Quorn & Linda whatsit (I can't even recall the name! Says something itself) competitors. Which of course they are, but somehow the latter are seen as 'for vegetarians/vegans', bought I assume mostly by people who are cooking meat but also have vegetarians coming and have no idea what to do. While somehow the former has the same meat-eating cooks going 'cor I want to try one of those new ...'.
- LeonardoTolstoy 4y ago
  Linda McCartney I assume is what you are referring to. Oddly easy to remember for me once I found out that it is, indeed, made by Paul McCartney's wife.
  - itsthejb 4y ago
    His late wife… she was however a pretty significant figure in modern vegetarianism
Lev1a 4y ago
Earlier this year I tried some of Burger King's plant-based (vegetarian) alternatives and I'd rate them as "meh". They looked and felt like flatter, drier versions of the regular patties and the flavor wasn't bad but it also lacked something that you just can't really get without real meat. Also IMHO products and companies should be banned from advertising using terms that are directly opposed to the product, like "Meatless Meat", "Fischstäbchen ohne Fisch" ("fish sticks without fish", a slogan by "iglo" for what's essentially just breaded veggie sticks). Just honestly call those products what they are, "meat alternatives", "meat replacements", "vegetarian/vegan alternatives", etc. These would all be perfectly fine and in time people will get the idea. And I say this all as someone who really likes meat and is curious about trying things like insect-based protein in the future but also really likes purely vegetarian or even vegan dishes.
- danielheath 4y ago
  How is "Meatless Meat" directly opposed but "meat alternative" is not?
goethes_kind 4y ago
Funny how context changes everything. Aren't you supposed to avoid highly processed foods?

I don't understand how can those companies afford to put those fake meat sections on all supermarkets across the globe. At least in my european country all supermarkets seem to have this section and from what I've been told most of the products just end up being thrown away because nobody is buying them. I assume they expect to lose a lot of money now but then to make it big at some point in the future. But those companies seem to be global multinationals and rely on global supply chains to create their products. And if the future requires decarbonization and reducing energy consumption, wouldn't that mean that complex global supply chains will be drastically reduced, and food production will move back to a more local level?

ricardobayes 4y ago
You can be 100% sure aldi, or lidl wouldn't put it out there if it wasn't massively profitable. The margins on these products are probably big so even if it doesn't sell well in one region, other regions make up for it.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Also, there are items that may not themselves generate lots of profit but do attract customers who spend a lot as well. Like if you have the plant based meats, I can probably pick up the plant based milks, and the produce, and maybe some snacks, etc.
- notahacker 4y ago
  tbf the selection of artificial meats tends to be very limited in Aldi or Lidl. But that's largely for a different reason: in the more upmarket supermarkets which devote large displays to "meatless meat", it tends to be priced at equal or higher prices than the "premium" processed meat it competes with, even when it's just sausages made of vegetables, not lab-grown stuff with tricky textures. They're not pitching it at those prices because it doesn't sell...
  - deleted 4y ago
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cinntaile 4y ago
> And if the future requires decarbonization and reducing energy consumption, wouldn't that mean that complex global supply chains will be drastically reduced, and food production will move back to a more local level? Food production won't move back to a more local level, you lose the economies of scale. You get more expensive products and more pollution, not exactly what we want.
dataduck 4y ago
It's possible that the supermarkets did some market research that misled them about how popular these products would be, but there is another option. Supermarkets can arrange all sorts of deals with suppliers. In some cases, the supplier will pay the supermarket to stock a new product, hoping that high margin sales or even just market penetration make it worth it.
bartvk 4y ago
> from what I've been told most of the products just end up being thrown away because nobody is buying them Who told you, and why do you consider them a reliable indicator, for what you imply are all supermarkets across the globe?
- ekianjo 4y ago
  thats certainly a false claim. no supermarket would be in business if they were throwing everything away.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Not necessarily, supermarkets have a built in expectation of some loss to spoilage already. A lot of those fake meat products have a pretty long shelf life since they are highly processed/frozen products and tend to be marketed in a very small footprint within the store. They are also priced to counter any spoilage expectation. So low stock requirements, small footprint, and consumer expectation that it’s an expensive product doesn’t really make that a false claim. They also could be considered a loss leader to attract vegan and vegetarians to buy the other vegetarian friendly foods they sell.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      > expectation of some loss to spoilage already. some is the key word here. You can bet that anyone who's managing a supermarket is optimizing to reduce this kind of loss.
      - kcplate 4y ago
        Sure…and also incorporating what they can’t optimize into the price for the item.
- deleted 4y ago
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vaylian 4y ago
> most of the products just end up being thrown away because nobody is buying them There's also a problem with discovery: If the meat alternative section is directly adjacent to the real meat, vegetarians and vegans are a lot less likely to discover it.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  This just isn't true. It is actually really common to have this section near the meats. Vegetarian meats are usually (but not always) either kept chilled or frozen, so it simply gets put somewhere around dairy and meat. For refrigerated sections, it is usually but not always in its own section. For the freezers, it is just kept in a section with space. Of course, there are exceptions and sometimes it is just mixed in with regular product. Vegan cheese with the cheeses and ground "meat" with the other ground meat. Most vegetarians and vegans I know seek the stuff out and learn where to look for it - including myself (not quite vegetarian, but a pescetarian that leans very heavily towards veggie)
xvilka 4y ago
Looking at Beyond Meat you are probably right - their shares are in tatters, they are bleeding money without any prospects to break even. Maybe only second generation of meatless companies will make it.
hackerlight 4y ago
This is a tangent, but so much of the supermarket nowadays is junk. Go to the protein section, and there is literally no product that is just protein, everything has added artificial sweetener or some lab concoction with god knows what. Go to the frozen food section. 80% junk. Ice cream, frozen potato chips, frozen pizzas. Oh look, some frozen fruit in the corner. Go to the cereals section. 80% junk. If you look really hard, you can find some wholegrain cereal without added sugar. Is this the equivalent of when social media companies optimize heavily around taking advantage of dopamine spikes in their customers, instead of doing things in their customer's actual best interests? Speaking to an older relative, things were not like this in the mid 20th century. How much cheaper would food be if the healthy staples could be bought in bulk, and our supply chains and packaging were optimized around that?
- binbashthefash 4y ago
  You should try tofu
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  You can buy almost pure protein in some supermarkets - look for powdered egg whites which are like 99% protein.
- watwut 4y ago
  I never seen frozen fruit, but frozen vegetables are super common.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    Frozen fruit is usually in its own section and isn't often mixed in with the vegetables. I'm more used to seeing it near desserts. It is, believe it or not, super common. I promise it is common, though: I could find it in pretty much every grocery store I visited in the US (Including aldi) and can find it in most stores here in Norway as well. Some folks seek out frozen peaches and frozen mixed fruit for fruit salad as well - at least they did where I grew up in the Midwest.
  - virgildotcodes 4y ago
fzfaa 4y ago
I can't help but wonder if it's some evil organisation like the UN or the WEF subsidising these sections... or even blackmailing supermarkets to have them.
matsemann 4y ago
A vegetable being transported all around the world, still has a drastically smaller footprint than meat from a farm next door.
binbashthefash 4y ago
Lmao no, go to an Albert heijn or Jumbo.

mariusmg 4y ago

Why does plant based meat costs more than actual meat ?

sweetheart 4y ago
Subsidies. Meat is INCREDIBLY well subsidized (at least in the US). Most or all animal agriculture is. It’s maddening when people use the myth that “veganism is classist because it’s much more expensive” to justify their penchant for animal abuse because they couldn’t be more wrong.
virgildotcodes 4y ago
For now I think it's primarily down to economies of scale, not to mention the subsidies supporting the meat industry and its feed crops. For an example data point on subsidies, this article mention that subsidization reduces the cost of a Big Mac from $13 to $5, and the cost of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to $5. https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/ https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
twelvechairs 4y ago
Actual meat doesn't need so much marketing
el_oni 4y ago
Probably the economies of scale that come from factory farming of animals. Vs the lower volume production of plant based meats. The fact that its a dietary choice typically made by those who are more affluent and they are willing to pay for it.
G4BB3R 4y ago
No government subsidies and low production volume
adrian_b 4y ago
Any plant based meat must start with the extraction of proteins from some plant product. Most vegetable products have a content of protein so low that the cost per protein mass is higher than for the cheaper kinds of meat, e.g. chicken meat. The main exceptions, which can provide cheap-enough proteins, are various cereals and legumes. While the proteins from plants are cheaper than those from meat, the difference is not huge. Where I live, in Europe, the ratio between price and protein content for wheat floor is only 3 times less than for chicken breast, while for lentils is only 2 times less than for chicken breast. For other cereals or legumes, the costs are even higher. So, to remain cheaper than meat, the cost of protein extraction and of its further processing to make its taste and texture similar to meat must not increase the cost more than 2 or 3 times. This is not at all easy, because even bread is usually at least 2 times more expensive than the wheat floor used for it, and bread requires much simpler processing than artificial meat. Protein extraction is simpler for the gluten of wheat, because gluten is insoluble in water, while starch is made of loosely-attached grains that can be washed away. Even so, extracting the proteins from wheat requires a lot of water and time. Extracting the proteins from other plants is more complex and it may require the addition of various salts or solvents to the plant source, to create conditions where the proteins can be separated from the substances they are mixed with, and whatever is added must then be removed in another step of the process. So besides the cost of the plant source, extracting the proteins has additional costs for water, chemicals and energy. Similar additional costs are needed for transforming the proteins to have a meat-like texture and taste. The cost of the plant source of the proteins ends being a very small fraction of the cost. Then there is, as the other commentators have mentioned, the inefficiency of small-scale production. The result is that I have not seen yet not only any meat substitute that is not many times more expensive than meat, but not even any kind of raw protein extracts from plants that are not many times more expensive than meat. The only way that I have seen in which is possible to make a meat substitute that is cheaper than real meat (in Europe, i.e. where soy is too expensive as a protein source) is too make at home gluten from wheat floor (i.e. not accounting costs for water, energy and work time). Any kind of commercial product would be more expensive than real meat.

ricardobayes 4y ago

Personally, I can't wait to taste it. There has been a lot of hype surrounding lab-grown meat replacements, but I think it's going to be a good few years until the legal framework, and economies of scale will be there.

ulfw 4y ago
What do legal framework and economies of scale have to do with you tasting it? I have and frankly it doesn't taste like meat. Sadly.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  What I mean by that is that I will only do so if it will be available as a ready product in my local supermarket. But they are not FDA-approved at this time, let alone available anywhere in the EU.
- h0l0cube 4y ago
  How did you get your hands on lab-grown meat? Isn't it still in prototype stage?

jp0d 4y ago

The article is behind a paywall so not really sure what's it exactly about. New or not, they're definitely gaining popularity down here in Australia. I'm seeing more and more of those on the supermarket shelves. I treat them as processed food and occasionally have some just to understand where exactly they stand. Some of them are good but mostly utter rubbish.

gregoryl 4y ago
Which ones have you tried, and which category do they fall into?
- jp0d 4y ago
  The ones at Woolies/Coles etc are usually shit. I remember having Impossible burger once at Grill'd and it was quite good. The stuff from Ikea are usually good even though they don't taste like meat.
Bancakes 4y ago
Unpaywalled version https://web.archive.org/web/20220814083831/https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/meatless-meat-is-nothing-new https://web.archive.org/web/20220814083831/https://www.econo...
- FinanceAnon 4y ago
  Or disable javascript in the browser
- jp0d 4y ago
  Thank you.

voxadam 4y ago

As a lapsed vegetarian I've always seen mushrooms as the original meatless meat. Praise be glutamates.

ThalesX 4y ago
As a meat eater, I love mushrooms and I think they are so much better as a healthy food than those weird Beyond meats. I also love vegan patties made with various kind of nuts, beans and veggies. I don’t get this appeal of turning goos and veggies into ‘meat’. Just make them their own thing. You don’t rly have to compete with meat.
- virgildotcodes 4y ago
  Eh, as a vegan I prefer Beyond burgers to mushroom burgers or those healthier vegan patties made out of various veggies/beans. I'm a meat eater at heart, and the junky meat and cheese substitutes really scratch an itch that the healthier options can't. Given the huge year over year rise in consumption of these substitutes it seems like a lot of people similarly are more down to have the occasional Impossible or Beyond burger from a fast food chain than the old school veggie/bean patties.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  "I don’t get this appeal of turning goos and veggies into ‘meat’. Just make them their own thing. You don’t rly have to compete with meat." So, people are supposed to go without the comfort food of childhood completely and are supposed to never get some of the textures of these products? I'm not personally a fan of the beyond meat most of the time, but I do use other fake meat from time to time (Quorn, for example, or ground meat made from soy). I can make bean burgers - and do, usually chickpeas and brown rice - but if I'm buying, I'm buying stuff with a nice chewy texture that I can't quite get at home. I make some childhood comfort food, too, and sometimes it just gives and easy protein. And I don't look at it as a competition. I don't care that it tastes of meat and I wouldn't really know anyway - it has been too long. I care that it tastes good enough and has a good texture. Making it taste (or 'bleed') like meat isn't a gimmick for me, but for meat eaters.

tcfhgj 4y ago

But various ecological crisis are becoming more and more obvious to everyone. Anyone who cares about the environment including ecosystem breakdown and climate change will go meatless one way or another.

trention 4y ago
>Anyone who cares about the environment including ecosystem breakdown and climate change will go meatless one way or another. I "care about the environment" and I will not "go meatless". I have stopped eating beef entirely and have switched to chicken and fish, with the occasional pork steak. 1 pound of beef has the carbon footprint of ~8 pounds of chicken. Especially in the States, the best thing to do is switch your meats.
- sweetheart 4y ago
  How do you arrive at the conclusion that the best thing to do in the US is switch your meats? Every form from animal protein is going to be less efficient than plant protein and result in more emissions [1]. There are some amazing Kurzgesagt videos exposing how and why that is true [2]. So since we know that eating animals is not required to be healthy at any stage of life [3] (assuming basic access to required nutrients and what not which is very easy in developed countries) how did you arrive to conclusion that eating chicken is better than eating lentils, beans, etc? I don’t think what you’re saying is based in fact. I’d love if you tried to prove me wrong though. 1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore 2. https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs 3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
  - trention 4y ago
    >how did you arrive to conclusion that eating chicken is better than eating lentils, beans, etc I haven't made such a claim (here "better" would be solely in terms of emissions). What was implied was that the delta of the emissions from switching from beef to chicken/fish is (far) larger than the delta from switching from them to veganism (it's important to note that per grams of protein, dairy is comparable in emmissions to non-beef meats - so really veganism (or veganism + eggs) is required). Also, this claim "we know that eating animals is not required to be healthy at any stage of life" is most likely false at the margin.

ains 4y ago

https://archive.ph/Xyez1 https://archive.ph/Xyez1

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

frankzander 4y ago

In Germany the Rügenwalder brand was, at least for me, always associated with sausages. Since they changed to also produce meatless vegan products, they become almost omnipresent in every supermarket with vegan and vegetarian products. I personally like them and, in my opinion, the initial change of the direction was brave. My personal perception is, that Rügenwalder and LikeMeat (with some exceptions) do a great job. I think, the target customer isn't always the established vegan who also has sympathies for PETA work but the interested and health aware consumer who wants to reduce the overall meat consumption or the meat lover who is open to just try it out (because of interest). I'm aware that this products are always creatures of food laboratories ... well done but somewhat artificial. But if you got an invitation to some BBQ event and don't have your own DIY sausages at hand, this products are convenient (yes I know peppers, zucchini and other vegetables are just fine to put it on a grill and taste good but the BBQ master must have some experience with it and it's sometimes a bit of a struggle to be well fed with that only ... for a man). By the way ... I think the marketing of this traditional meat based sausage company Rugenwalder is just interesting. I think this model can also work for established fast-fashion brands which want to change to sustainable, fair paying product model ... not to change the world but to make it right and because the market wants it so

JodieBenitez 4y ago

"Meatless meat". That doesn't make any sense. I enjoy quality meat. I'm all for consuming much less meat. In fact, that's already what I do day to day. I enjoy vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, cereals, everything. I can have delicious meals without meat, no need to disguise these as meat, they're fine as-is. And maybe once a week I'll have a delicious piece of cow from my local butcher. But eating some fake industrially processed junk ? No, thanks, not even once.

pelagicAustral 4y ago
I feel the same about these products, if I slice a steak that’s what I’m getting. A one ingredient meal. These products have a different vibe, a lab-like vibe. I do enjoy other vegan products like bean-based burgers and the like. In fact I like those a lot.
frankzander 4y ago
Maybe you should see this from a marketing POV. If you want to sell "Proteins easy to fry" you will probably fail. But if you sell "Vegan Steak" with the texture and like taste of a steak out of meat, you will have your customers. So the alternatives have no established name and naming it "meat" will make sense. And yes ... it's processed and no I think it's not healthy for day to day consumption (like coke) but once a week or month ... why not? Smoking (even passive) so most probably more dangerous ;)
- JodieBenitez 4y ago
  Why not ? There are certainly a lot of reasons. But I'd like to pin this as a missed opportunity. Missed opportunity to educate taste, missed opportunity to have more "agro" and less "industry", missed opportunity to consume locally, missed opportunity to discover new varieties and so on...
wortelefant 4y ago
the "meat" in "meatless meat" describes a texture and taste profile, not an ingredient. It is easier to communicate than, say, "chewy but soft, fibrous proteins which taste is usually determined by umami and maillard reaction flavors". There is a large community around new recipes for this taste profile, e.g. https://seitansociety.com/ https://seitansociety.com/ . compared to the logistics (animal farming and slaughter pipelines), artificial inseminations, medical interventions (antibiotics), storage and food safety concerns around meat, plus the incredible daily amount of animal suffering caused by this consumption, I don't see meat as a "natural" product. all the steps in the "production" process can introduce factors that can degrade the quality and be risky to health (e.g. not cooled at appropriate temperature, antibiotics treatments to animals etc), while with plant proteins, you have far less processing steps between field and table. to vegans and people concerned with reducing global warming, the benefits outweigh the different composition by far.

OJFord 4y ago

The genius of the modern ones is in marketing. Beyond & Impossible are somehow seen as meat competitors, not Quorn & Linda whatsit (I can't even recall the name! Says something itself) competitors. Which of course they are, but somehow the latter are seen as 'for vegetarians/vegans', bought I assume mostly by people who are cooking meat but also have vegetarians coming and have no idea what to do. While somehow the former has the same meat-eating cooks going 'cor I want to try one of those new ...'.

LeonardoTolstoy 4y ago
Linda McCartney I assume is what you are referring to. Oddly easy to remember for me once I found out that it is, indeed, made by Paul McCartney's wife.
- itsthejb 4y ago
  His late wife… she was however a pretty significant figure in modern vegetarianism

Lev1a 4y ago

Earlier this year I tried some of Burger King's plant-based (vegetarian) alternatives and I'd rate them as "meh". They looked and felt like flatter, drier versions of the regular patties and the flavor wasn't bad but it also lacked something that you just can't really get without real meat. Also IMHO products and companies should be banned from advertising using terms that are directly opposed to the product, like "Meatless Meat", "Fischstäbchen ohne Fisch" ("fish sticks without fish", a slogan by "iglo" for what's essentially just breaded veggie sticks). Just honestly call those products what they are, "meat alternatives", "meat replacements", "vegetarian/vegan alternatives", etc. These would all be perfectly fine and in time people will get the idea. And I say this all as someone who really likes meat and is curious about trying things like insect-based protein in the future but also really likes purely vegetarian or even vegan dishes.

danielheath 4y ago
How is "Meatless Meat" directly opposed but "meat alternative" is not?

goethes_kind 4y ago

Funny how context changes everything. Aren't you supposed to avoid highly processed foods?