5 ms·

> meat that tastes as good as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring Interestingly, it seems that every time I see an Impossible burger on a menu, it's

> meat that tastes as good as real meat while being cheaper is very alluring Interestingly, it seems that every time I see an Impossible burger on a menu, it's not cheaper. Often it's more expensive, but usually roughly the same price. I'm not sure why this is, but it seems like it's probably holding folks back from eating it regularly.

typest 4y ago
I am really not that knowledgeable about this space, but I would imagine it's because A) there are a lot of subsidies for the meat industry, and B) there are a lot of economies of scale present in the meat industry that do not yet exist in alternative meat industries. Of course, it makes sense that when introducing a new product like this to the market, it is potentially going to be more expensive than existing products. It seems like, in theory, one should be able to make it much cheaper just because producing meat by way of animals is just very wasteful from an energy perspective. However, I have no clue what is required to synthesize such compounds without the use of animals, so I don't know how far away we are from being able to do this.
- oezi 4y ago
  It just takes time to tilt the economies of scale. For soy milk it took 10 years from niche appearance in supermarkets to being cheaper than real milk.
  - antifa 4y ago
    I checked Kroger's website, which had some strange problems. You can't sort by lowest price and there are approximately 2.5k results for "milk". The "dietary preferences" filter does not include "lactose intolerant" or anything equivalent for milk alternatives, despite all milk alternatives being in the search results. The only one that looked genuinely useful (but not for me) was "Gluten free". That being said, I did a price check and found that soy milk was not cheaper than regular milk. Kroger milk is $3.29 for 1gal and soymilk is $2.59 for 0.5gal. https://i.imgur.com/6motDcj.png https://i.imgur.com/6motDcj.png
    - oezi 4y ago
      I am in Germany so I checked ALDI: 1 Liter of 3.5 Fat Milk = 0.99 EUR 1 Liter of unsweetened soy drink = 0.95 EUR
SuperQue 4y ago
I needed to source food for an event with 500 people. Burger meat was 0.80€ person for 125g, not organic/bio. But good quality from a German butcher. I got Beyond burgers for the veg option. Best price I could get wholesale was 2.00€ per person.
- adaml_623 4y ago
  I feel the very fact that we need to refer to a brand name for the meat replacement is a clear indicator of how immature the market is.
- rhdunn 4y ago
  You don't need to use a meat replacement for burgers. You can have various style burgers that I've seen for ~£2.25-£2.85 for 4, e.g.: - Bean (often spicy) - Halloumi - Parsnip & Carrot Nut - Plantlife Crunchy Vegetable Crispbake If you do want to use a meat substitute, I've found the following have comparable prices to the meat based versions at ~£2.00 for 2: - Linda McCartney's Burgers - Richmond Vegan Meat Free Other meat replacement brands (Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Fried Jackfruit, etc.) are dearer at ~£4.00-£4.50 for 2. I'm not sure how the wholesale prices compare, I just checked the prices on Waitrose's website. I've had several of these.
- sillystuff 4y ago
  > I got Beyond burgers for the veg option. As someone who doesn't eat meat, I prefer not to have fake meat. I'll often just pass on eating anything if fake meat is the only non-meat option. A stir fry with rice or veggie fajitas (could be just peppers and onions) with Mexican tortillas possibly with a side of beans would be much preferable, and cost nearly nothing. Adjust for regional tastes. Easy to justify when it is something that can be a main dish for the non-meat eaters and a side dish for the meat eaters. But, if people are serving themselves, the non-meat item should be earlier on the table / separated from the meat, so meat eaters do not contaminate it with meat (common). Fake meat is a nice option for meat eaters who are trying to reduce their consumption of meat for $reason(s), but still crave meat. But, for folks like me who do not eat meat nor have any inclination to do so, it is kinda weird.
rgblambda 4y ago
Maybe it's for the same reason cinema ticket prices are the same for every movie. Price is a (often inaccurate) signal of quality. By lowering the price you are saying this product is inferior. On the other hand it could be because if restaurants have a similar product at a lower price, then customers might go for the cheaper option, thus reducing overall profits.
bootlooped 4y ago
I think demand is a big part of it. Vegetarians and vegans are willing to endure a lot of costs, financial and otherwise, to adhere to a special diet.
DangitBobby 4y ago
It's more expensive because the cost of meat is heavily, heavily subsidized by the government (at least in the US). The actual cost to produce meat is much higher than Impossible or Beyond [1]. > The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today. 1. https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/ https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/
- SamReidHughes 4y ago
  $38 billion is $100 per person. People eat a lot more than 4 pounds of meat per year, so this doesn’t compute, or it’s singling out some category of hamburger meat, while ignoring all others. Average meat consumption per person is 260 pounds, which would come out to about 40 cents per pound in subsidy.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    They gave the cost of two beef products before and after subsidies. There are a bunch of other types of meat that presumably are not as expensive per pound. According to this article, less than 1/3 of Americans' meat consumption is beef [1]. I don't know what the factors are, but there might be some reason in particular ground beef ends up taking a large share of the subsidies. I know what steak at the grocery store is quite expensive compared to ground beef, so maybe ground beef is targeted so lower income people can afford it while steak is not. Who knows. It would take more than napkin math to convince me that they're lying. 1. https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/ https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/
    - SamReidHughes 4y ago
      The source of this ridiculous $30->$5 number is linked from the article: https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi... And it is given without a citation, and the document's authors are Directors/R&D/Tech Lead people at Samsung, VMWare, and Google. And: "This paper was created in an open classroom environment as part of a program within the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology" So it's just laundered fake research. The source of such a figure is surely going to be some reasoning like this, plus inflation, which cites the vast majority of "subsidy" being "healthcare costs": https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells-a-big-mac-were-out-7/ https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells... But without looking at the source, napkin math tells you at the very least the number is way out of whack, and at best it'd have been cherry-picked for the purpose of deception.
unity1001 4y ago
> Often it's more expensive, but usually roughly the same price. I'm not sure why this is Because the scale of meat alternatives did not reach the scale of being cheaper yet...

typest 4y ago

I am really not that knowledgeable about this space, but I would imagine it's because A) there are a lot of subsidies for the meat industry, and B) there are a lot of economies of scale present in the meat industry that do not yet exist in alternative meat industries. Of course, it makes sense that when introducing a new product like this to the market, it is potentially going to be more expensive than existing products. It seems like, in theory, one should be able to make it much cheaper just because producing meat by way of animals is just very wasteful from an energy perspective. However, I have no clue what is required to synthesize such compounds without the use of animals, so I don't know how far away we are from being able to do this.

oezi 4y ago
It just takes time to tilt the economies of scale. For soy milk it took 10 years from niche appearance in supermarkets to being cheaper than real milk.
- antifa 4y ago
  I checked Kroger's website, which had some strange problems. You can't sort by lowest price and there are approximately 2.5k results for "milk". The "dietary preferences" filter does not include "lactose intolerant" or anything equivalent for milk alternatives, despite all milk alternatives being in the search results. The only one that looked genuinely useful (but not for me) was "Gluten free". That being said, I did a price check and found that soy milk was not cheaper than regular milk. Kroger milk is $3.29 for 1gal and soymilk is $2.59 for 0.5gal. https://i.imgur.com/6motDcj.png https://i.imgur.com/6motDcj.png
  - oezi 4y ago
    I am in Germany so I checked ALDI: 1 Liter of 3.5 Fat Milk = 0.99 EUR 1 Liter of unsweetened soy drink = 0.95 EUR

SuperQue 4y ago

I needed to source food for an event with 500 people. Burger meat was 0.80€ person for 125g, not organic/bio. But good quality from a German butcher. I got Beyond burgers for the veg option. Best price I could get wholesale was 2.00€ per person.

adaml_623 4y ago
I feel the very fact that we need to refer to a brand name for the meat replacement is a clear indicator of how immature the market is.
rhdunn 4y ago
You don't need to use a meat replacement for burgers. You can have various style burgers that I've seen for ~£2.25-£2.85 for 4, e.g.: - Bean (often spicy) - Halloumi - Parsnip & Carrot Nut - Plantlife Crunchy Vegetable Crispbake If you do want to use a meat substitute, I've found the following have comparable prices to the meat based versions at ~£2.00 for 2: - Linda McCartney's Burgers - Richmond Vegan Meat Free Other meat replacement brands (Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Fried Jackfruit, etc.) are dearer at ~£4.00-£4.50 for 2. I'm not sure how the wholesale prices compare, I just checked the prices on Waitrose's website. I've had several of these.
sillystuff 4y ago
> I got Beyond burgers for the veg option. As someone who doesn't eat meat, I prefer not to have fake meat. I'll often just pass on eating anything if fake meat is the only non-meat option. A stir fry with rice or veggie fajitas (could be just peppers and onions) with Mexican tortillas possibly with a side of beans would be much preferable, and cost nearly nothing. Adjust for regional tastes. Easy to justify when it is something that can be a main dish for the non-meat eaters and a side dish for the meat eaters. But, if people are serving themselves, the non-meat item should be earlier on the table / separated from the meat, so meat eaters do not contaminate it with meat (common). Fake meat is a nice option for meat eaters who are trying to reduce their consumption of meat for $reason(s), but still crave meat. But, for folks like me who do not eat meat nor have any inclination to do so, it is kinda weird.

rgblambda 4y ago

Maybe it's for the same reason cinema ticket prices are the same for every movie. Price is a (often inaccurate) signal of quality. By lowering the price you are saying this product is inferior. On the other hand it could be because if restaurants have a similar product at a lower price, then customers might go for the cheaper option, thus reducing overall profits.

bootlooped 4y ago

I think demand is a big part of it. Vegetarians and vegans are willing to endure a lot of costs, financial and otherwise, to adhere to a special diet.

DangitBobby 4y ago

It's more expensive because the cost of meat is heavily, heavily subsidized by the government (at least in the US). The actual cost to produce meat is much higher than Impossible or Beyond [1]. > The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today. 1. https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/ https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/

SamReidHughes 4y ago
$38 billion is $100 per person. People eat a lot more than 4 pounds of meat per year, so this doesn’t compute, or it’s singling out some category of hamburger meat, while ignoring all others. Average meat consumption per person is 260 pounds, which would come out to about 40 cents per pound in subsidy.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  They gave the cost of two beef products before and after subsidies. There are a bunch of other types of meat that presumably are not as expensive per pound. According to this article, less than 1/3 of Americans' meat consumption is beef [1]. I don't know what the factors are, but there might be some reason in particular ground beef ends up taking a large share of the subsidies. I know what steak at the grocery store is quite expensive compared to ground beef, so maybe ground beef is targeted so lower income people can afford it while steak is not. Who knows. It would take more than napkin math to convince me that they're lying. 1. https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/ https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us/
  - SamReidHughes 4y ago
    The source of this ridiculous $30->$5 number is linked from the article: https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi... And it is given without a citation, and the document's authors are Directors/R&D/Tech Lead people at Samsung, VMWare, and Google. And: "This paper was created in an open classroom environment as part of a program within the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology" So it's just laundered fake research. The source of such a figure is surely going to be some reasoning like this, plus inflation, which cites the vast majority of "subsidy" being "healthcare costs": https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells-a-big-mac-were-out-7/ https://meatonomics.com/2013/08/15/each-time-mcdonalds-sells... But without looking at the source, napkin math tells you at the very least the number is way out of whack, and at best it'd have been cherry-picked for the purpose of deception.

unity1001 4y ago

> Often it's more expensive, but usually roughly the same price. I'm not sure why this is Because the scale of meat alternatives did not reach the scale of being cheaper yet...