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The thing is BM (and others) aren't trying to create vega/vegetarian meat. They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way, so it has to taste more like beef/

The thing is BM (and others) aren't trying to create vega/vegetarian meat. They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way, so it has to taste more like beef/pork than chickpeas or tofu if they want to get the main market. They are still not there.

sokoloff 4y ago
As a pretty hardcore meat-lover (we had sous-vide filets tonight at home), I think Impossible is close enough on the taste and feel side for a lot of dishes that use beef (including hamburgers). They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.
- Gare 4y ago
  Same experience as you. Quite tasty for a burger, but not affordable at 3x the price of a beef burger patty.
  - zingar 4y ago
    I’m surprised by this… they’re possibly 20% more expensive in the grocery store here in the UK, but not 3x. More like on the order of what you’d pay for a meat product that was particularly high quality.
    - Gare 4y ago
      Yeah, I'm in Croatia. Our wages are way lower than yours. Local beef is adjusted for that, imported veggie patties are not.
- techno_tsar 4y ago
  Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    Of course any government that makes a staple food unaffordable is not going to last long.
  - sbierwagen 4y ago
    >Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. This is, of course, true, but as a business proposition it's a bit daunting. When you're competing with industrial agriculture, you're competing with a technology stack that's tens of thousands of years old, spans the globe, and employs literal billions of people. It's not quite the same as accepting a couple years of unprofitability when scaling up a social network. What if it takes centuries?
    - sdenton4 4y ago
      And yet... "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." https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20federal%20government,the%20%245%20we%20see%20today https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:....
      - kens 4y ago
        Those numbers don't make sense. If you follow the chain of references, they seem to be made up. (Why do I say the numbers don't make sense? a) That subsidy works out to about 35 cents per person per day. How could that possibly reduce the price of a pound of hamburger by a factor of 6? b) In other countries, a Big Mac costs at most $6.71. The $13 figure seems to be nonsense.)
        dwohnitmok 4y ago
        I agree the reference is weak and there is most likely a large amount of conjecture behind that number, but the numbers don't a priori not make sense. Subsidies can have both > 1 multiplier impacts and non-linear impacts. For example, subsidies allow for artificial economies of scale to kick in that can then bring the price down significantly. However, were those subsidies to dry up, then certain thresholds may no longer be met and you may see again a non-unitary and non-linear rise in price. Indeed this is the main theoretical reason why a society would be interested in subsidies: they can get back more benefit than what they pay for in the form of the subsidy.
- silisili 4y ago
  Agreed. The first time I had an Impossible burger, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just the weird name the hotel bar in SF I was at gave its burgers. Loved it, they made a great burger. I had no idea it was nonmeat until weeks later when I learned what Impossible was. Now, if I'd known to look out for it, I'm sure I could have picked and found out. But since I wasn't looking for a difference, I didn't notice one. And that's coming from someone who eats a ton of (real) burgers.
- loeg 4y ago
  Yeah, price is the problem. If it costs more than ground beef, what's the point?
  - dsabanin 4y ago
    The point was always to cause less death and suffering, these days for many it’s also about ecology, but it was never about saving a buck.
    - loeg 4y ago
      You’re not going to get meat eaters to eat your plant burger with that attitude alone.
      - HDThoreaun 4y ago
        It's why I eat beyond, so they got at least one.
- esparrohack 4y ago
  There’s levels to the hamburgers. That’s the issue here, veggie folks think meat tastes gross and everyone who eats it is evil and carnivores think vegetables taste gross and vegans are just NPC henchmen for the Illuminati Hilarity ensues. Thus, beyond burger.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  I don't understand how you can say this. The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all. The texture is wrong, the feel chewing it is wrong, the taste is wrong unless you slather it with enough condiments that you can't taste it anyway. It is exactly the sort of highly processed industrially-created food that health experts tell us to avoid.
  - zingar 4y ago
    I’ve seen huge improvement, from what felt like a lump of shredded beetroot and corn 18 months ago and made me swear off veggie patties, to being a patty that will permanently replace beef burgers in my diet (not a huge component anyway, maybe 1 /2 a month). In general I’d rather eat vegetarian than fake chicken or sausages, but beyond meat’s current product makes me feel optimistic about a future without methane emissions.
  - dsabanin 4y ago
    I had seen a family of 8 people by accident grab our order of impossible burgers from BK by accident and consuming them, while we were waiting for our order. When we figured out what happened and tried to explain to them that they just ate meatless burgers, they couldn’t understand what we’re talking about. It was believable enough for them, I guess.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all. To you. Which is legit -- if it's not to your taste, that's fair. But to a lot of people, it really is close enough -- which is equally legit.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mc32 4y ago
Non-animal protein has two main traditions that are quite different: on the one hand you have the tradition that since antiquity has avoided animal protein and don't try to imitate texture or flavor (say South India) and the other tradition which does not completely avoid animal protein and often complements animal protein with plant analogues ("temple food" with origin in China) These offerings sometimes try to come as close as possible to animal and fish protein in texture look and taste. It's the difference between your veggie burger and your impossible burger. One is not trying to be anything but itself the other one is attempting to pass for the other. Sometimes it seems these BM and IF, etc., are trying to simultaneously cater to both customers at once. That will likely not work as they are different customers.
prepend 4y ago
> They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier. I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm animals.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  How is factory farming not 100x more sustainable than pasture raised organic beef?
- aidenn0 4y ago
  It's probably sustainable for everyone to eat a large fraction of a pound of meat per week. The average American eats over 4lbs. of meat per week. This is not sustainable.
  - ChadNYC 4y ago
    And developing countries with rapidly growing middle classes are catching up with the west very quickly.
- ChadNYC 4y ago
  This is a bit old, but it thoroughly examines why the livestock industry is not sustainable. https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
  - User23 4y ago
    I think it’s fair to say that an industry that’s lasted ten thousand years[1] is sustainable. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle
    - RupertEisenhart 4y ago
lupire 4y ago
Beef/pork is just pre-made by the aninal. People who eat well-prepared chickpeas and tofu enjoy it.

sokoloff 4y ago

As a pretty hardcore meat-lover (we had sous-vide filets tonight at home), I think Impossible is close enough on the taste and feel side for a lot of dishes that use beef (including hamburgers). They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.

Gare 4y ago
Same experience as you. Quite tasty for a burger, but not affordable at 3x the price of a beef burger patty.
- zingar 4y ago
  I’m surprised by this… they’re possibly 20% more expensive in the grocery store here in the UK, but not 3x. More like on the order of what you’d pay for a meat product that was particularly high quality.
  - Gare 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm in Croatia. Our wages are way lower than yours. Local beef is adjusted for that, imported veggie patties are not.
techno_tsar 4y ago
Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.
- jahewson 4y ago
  Of course any government that makes a staple food unaffordable is not going to last long.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  >Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. This is, of course, true, but as a business proposition it's a bit daunting. When you're competing with industrial agriculture, you're competing with a technology stack that's tens of thousands of years old, spans the globe, and employs literal billions of people. It's not quite the same as accepting a couple years of unprofitability when scaling up a social network. What if it takes centuries?
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    And yet... "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." https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20federal%20government,the%20%245%20we%20see%20today https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/#:....
    - kens 4y ago
      Those numbers don't make sense. If you follow the chain of references, they seem to be made up. (Why do I say the numbers don't make sense? a) That subsidy works out to about 35 cents per person per day. How could that possibly reduce the price of a pound of hamburger by a factor of 6? b) In other countries, a Big Mac costs at most $6.71. The $13 figure seems to be nonsense.)
      - dwohnitmok 4y ago
        I agree the reference is weak and there is most likely a large amount of conjecture behind that number, but the numbers don't a priori not make sense. Subsidies can have both > 1 multiplier impacts and non-linear impacts. For example, subsidies allow for artificial economies of scale to kick in that can then bring the price down significantly. However, were those subsidies to dry up, then certain thresholds may no longer be met and you may see again a non-unitary and non-linear rise in price. Indeed this is the main theoretical reason why a society would be interested in subsidies: they can get back more benefit than what they pay for in the form of the subsidy.
silisili 4y ago
Agreed. The first time I had an Impossible burger, I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just the weird name the hotel bar in SF I was at gave its burgers. Loved it, they made a great burger. I had no idea it was nonmeat until weeks later when I learned what Impossible was. Now, if I'd known to look out for it, I'm sure I could have picked and found out. But since I wasn't looking for a difference, I didn't notice one. And that's coming from someone who eats a ton of (real) burgers.
loeg 4y ago
Yeah, price is the problem. If it costs more than ground beef, what's the point?
- dsabanin 4y ago
  The point was always to cause less death and suffering, these days for many it’s also about ecology, but it was never about saving a buck.
  - loeg 4y ago
    You’re not going to get meat eaters to eat your plant burger with that attitude alone.
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      It's why I eat beyond, so they got at least one.
esparrohack 4y ago
There’s levels to the hamburgers. That’s the issue here, veggie folks think meat tastes gross and everyone who eats it is evil and carnivores think vegetables taste gross and vegans are just NPC henchmen for the Illuminati Hilarity ensues. Thus, beyond burger.
SoftTalker 4y ago
I don't understand how you can say this. The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all. The texture is wrong, the feel chewing it is wrong, the taste is wrong unless you slather it with enough condiments that you can't taste it anyway. It is exactly the sort of highly processed industrially-created food that health experts tell us to avoid.
- zingar 4y ago
  I’ve seen huge improvement, from what felt like a lump of shredded beetroot and corn 18 months ago and made me swear off veggie patties, to being a patty that will permanently replace beef burgers in my diet (not a huge component anyway, maybe 1 /2 a month). In general I’d rather eat vegetarian than fake chicken or sausages, but beyond meat’s current product makes me feel optimistic about a future without methane emissions.
- dsabanin 4y ago
  I had seen a family of 8 people by accident grab our order of impossible burgers from BK by accident and consuming them, while we were waiting for our order. When we figured out what happened and tried to explain to them that they just ate meatless burgers, they couldn’t understand what we’re talking about. It was believable enough for them, I guess.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > The Beyond/Incredible meat is not close enough. It's not even close at all. To you. Which is legit -- if it's not to your taste, that's fair. But to a lot of people, it really is close enough -- which is equally legit.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mc32 4y ago

Non-animal protein has two main traditions that are quite different: on the one hand you have the tradition that since antiquity has avoided animal protein and don't try to imitate texture or flavor (say South India) and the other tradition which does not completely avoid animal protein and often complements animal protein with plant analogues ("temple food" with origin in China) These offerings sometimes try to come as close as possible to animal and fish protein in texture look and taste. It's the difference between your veggie burger and your impossible burger. One is not trying to be anything but itself the other one is attempting to pass for the other. Sometimes it seems these BM and IF, etc., are trying to simultaneously cater to both customers at once. That will likely not work as they are different customers.

prepend 4y ago

> They are trying to make meat in a sustainable way I mean, isn’t meat sustainable? As it’s renewable. Factory farming isn’t sustainable, but there’s plenty of pasture raised organic beef ranchers who grow meat in a sustainable way. If the goal is sustainability, then there are other ways that are likely healthier. I thought the benefit was for ethical vegetarians who like the taste of beef but don’t want to harm animals.

BoorishBears 4y ago
How is factory farming not 100x more sustainable than pasture raised organic beef?
aidenn0 4y ago
It's probably sustainable for everyone to eat a large fraction of a pound of meat per week. The average American eats over 4lbs. of meat per week. This is not sustainable.
- ChadNYC 4y ago
  And developing countries with rapidly growing middle classes are catching up with the west very quickly.
ChadNYC 4y ago
This is a bit old, but it thoroughly examines why the livestock industry is not sustainable. https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
- User23 4y ago
  I think it’s fair to say that an industry that’s lasted ten thousand years[1] is sustainable. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle
  - RupertEisenhart 4y ago

lupire 4y ago

Beef/pork is just pre-made by the aninal. People who eat well-prepared chickpeas and tofu enjoy it.