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> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. You are not the target group for these products! The whole point of these pr

> The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. You are not the target group for these products! The whole point of these products is to replace meat for habitual meat eaters. If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. That's the value. That's the target. This is about replacing the meat in gas station hot dogs and fast food burgers and food court lunches, and if these alternatives can be made good enough and cheap enough, we can reduce the total meat consumption in society to a fraction of what it is today, without having to ideologically convert people to vegetarianism. These products are for all the people who don't think vegetarian products are incredible, but actually don't care whether or not their burger is made of cow or plants, as long as it tastes the same. But the traditional veggie burgers that you prefer don't cut it, so these products are a step further on the way to a product that will. They're not there yet, though.

randomdata 4y ago
Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process (maybe lab grown meat will get us there someday). Human grade food is more expensive, often considerably so. Animals essentially get the leftovers that we can't eat so they are afforded a huge price advantage and it is not clear how that is to be overcome sustainably. Circumstances – widespread disease, for example – could see the price of meat exceed these products for periods of time. At which point these products could become contenders on factors of price, but as soon as the market starts to shift the price of meat will fall on the decrease in demand, and you're back to square one. Especially as meat has lag time to market so the price will fall further than you might expect before meat producers are able to pull back on production. There is nothing to keep people eating these products if there is nothing to differentiate them in the market. The real value proposition is that it is different. A new food option to choose from. If it can be made great, where it is craved as much as meat, then they might have something. Until then, I can see why they are struggling.
- clomond 4y ago
  You are missing the core technology point that drives the underlying thesis here - ‘every manufactured good, gets cheaper per unit as you make more and more of it’. Whether this is from the lab, a recipe of plant inputs, or some other currently unknown thing - if you are able to develop and commercialize a product around a ‘specific technology’, you can drive the cost of that down through experience and scale. Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue). By taking a technology with a much higher theoretical efficiency, and then scaling that up - creates the classic technology disruption scenario. ->‘It’s the cheaper version of X commodity, why wouldn’t I choose that?’
  - boppo1 4y ago
    > Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue). This really is such a cool take on it that it bums me out to say… >why wouldn’t I choose that? …because I just[0] don’t wanna eat fake meat. [0] On a very deep, perhaps primal level. I can feel it rooted so far in my brain it’s hard to convey. Rather eat peanut butter at every meal.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. That would be pertinent if they were eating the same foods, but they don't eat the same foods. They eat the stuff we won't eat, produced largely either as a byproduct of the production of the foods we do eat or produced on lands that cannot support the foods we eat. The more efficient we get in producing plants to eat, the more efficient byproducts there are for animals to eat, so you get a continuous relationship of meat becoming cheaper as other foods become cheaper. Economies of scale can only get you so far when the raw material inputs are your main cost centre. The industry will have to move towards using those 'waste' products in order to be competitive, but at that point you're essentially just replicating animal processes and you're up against a 'machine' doing the same that has had millions of years to develop itself.
judge2020 4y ago
Which is why OP complains about "One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus".
- henrikschroder 4y ago
  Yes, true, and I sympathize with that complaint.
Firstmate 4y ago
> You are not the target group for these products! It's not a choice for me. When I go to _restaurants_, they are replacing their only vegetarian options with these impossible/beyond meats, and they're charging $2 more while they're at it. These goals and target markets sound great on paper, but feels like the exact opposite in practice. The goal for reducing waste is great, but why are vegetarians paying that cost when they go out.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Probably because the beyond/impossible offerings sell more and they're only willing to put a limited number of vegetarian items on the menu so the others are crowded out.
  - dack 4y ago
    yeah, it's purely a business decision, but it sucks.
  - joshspankit 4y ago
    That has to be temporary and due to novelty. I’ve never understood the “pretend meat” category. Lots of vegetarian food tastes amazing and is good for you. It doesn’t have to pretend. It’s like over-boiling broccoli and covering it in cheese sauce: easier for broccoli-haters to eat, but totally missing the point.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      Some of us actually like the meat taste, and this is orthogonal to the ethics of it.
      - joshspankit 4y ago
        Yes, but what’s the altruistic benefit in marketing fake meat to you?
        4y ago
friend_and_foe 4y ago
So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat and actively seek it out? And they're catering to them by... replacing existing vegetarian options? They must not have read your comment. Sounds like a bad market fit. The number of people who eat meat and don't care if their meat is made of meat has got to be in the 7 figure range worldwide. The number of people that don't eat meat and want their vegetables to taste like meat is probably larger, though still miniscule. It's failing because there's no market for it.
- fsloth 4y ago
  It's not as impossible as you make it sound IMO, I would guess it's more a matter of pricing. If plantburgers and plantdogs where considerable cheaper than meatburgers and hotdogs I would guess people would follow the money and shift to consuming the plant based alternative if they were otherwise close enough.
  - donkeyd 4y ago
    I'm a meat eater and I really prefer no meat over fake meat. A good vegetable curry, ratatouille, stew, pasta or a portobello mushroom burger really beats all of the fake meat substitutes for me. If meat becomes too expensive, I'll just cut it out completely... Until lab grown meat becomes a viable alternative. All these fake meat substitutes are just awful, to me.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Well, we're running that experiment right now with soaring meat prices and it looks like you're wrong. Turns out if you make one type of meat more expensive then people just switch to a different kind of meat. If you make all meat more expensive, people buy cheaper cuts and get creative with how they prepare it. My bet is that if you make it prohibitively expensive then people will get creative about sourcing their meat instead so rather than go to the grocery store they'll put in a group order direct from CSA or a small independent meat producer and just store a years supply in a deep freeze. It turns out a lot of people just prefer eating meat over other options regardless of price. I'm not really surprised.
novok 4y ago
The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat, and if you go by bio availability of the nutrients, a fraction of the same nutritional value as actual meat. And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land. So either way, it wont work that well in it's current state.
- yyt554 4y ago
  > The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat That's only because we are "subsidising" meat production cost through immense animal suffering. Once you have regulations that make the animals we keep in captivity have a somewhat good life, then meat price goes through the roof and those alternatives are the only reasonable option for the non-rich. > And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land. And where do you think the animal food is grown? Instead of feeding it to animals, make veggy dishes out of it. It's true that some land can't be reasonably used for growing and harvesting crops, and keeping animals there which turn this into high quality protein is the best option, but that's only for certain regions on the planet.
  - novok 4y ago
    I buy ethically raised %100 pasture raised ground beef at ~$6/lbs from whole foods, and a 1 lb packet of "beyond burger" is even more expensive than that at $11/lbs (!) at the same shop. There is barely any profit margin in beef, while beyond burger does have relatively healthy one at that price looking at the ingredient list and price. I can also buy a quarter cow for $8/lbs locally raised similarly. %100 pasture raised is how you think it is, eating grass in some field for %100 of it's life, protected from predators, which is pretty much the type of life it would have in the wild with less stress. Not to mention it's better nutritionally than the standard %75 pasture raised / %25 grain finished beef you buy at a costco.
- drewm1980 4y ago
  Impossible burgers take an order of magnitude less land to produce than beef. They're not made of vegetables. Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease. Putting soy in a veggie burger results in way more nutrition than putting soy in a cow.
noodlenotes 4y ago
As a meat-eater, these products have been great as an option for sharing a meal with my vegetarian friends. I don't really know good vegetarian recipes, but I know how to cook a burger.
- Marsymars 4y ago
  I mostly don't eat meat now, but actually started for this reason alone - I wanted to level up my vegetarian cooking skills, so gave myself a challenge of not eating/cooking any meat for a month.
alkonaut 4y ago
I'm definitely a habitual meat eater. I don't have a vegetarian bone in my body. Yet I'd prefer a vegetarian burger to have beans and carrots, to having one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste. That is, while I'm happy to eat a perfect meat substitute, I'm also don't have a problem with vegetables and I'd rather have a totally-not-meat burger than a not-quite-meat burger.
- scrollaway 4y ago
  > one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste. I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley? I love meat but eat it rarely. And I like burgers, even the cheap McDonald’s stuff. But burger patties are basically entirely their own texture, which is only loosely related to beef meat. Now a burger with lightly cooked and well seasoned, real fresh ground beef? It’s a different product altogether. But it’s also less popular and I don’t think it’s what beyond meat tries to replace.
  - alkonaut 4y ago
    > I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley? Yeah what they need to imitate faithfully is the fastfood variety. I'm sure that's slightly easier than imitating the "proper" thing. What they have now is the not-quite-a-fastfood-thing even.
boppo1 4y ago
> If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. Habitual meat eater here. I will never ever trust these products to be right for my body the way meat is. Humans haven’t nailed it in the past with heavily processed foods, why would it suddenly work now? I understand the noble dream, I really do. But the fact is, unless I find myself in near poverty or poverty and (no added sugar) peanut butter is unavailable, imitation meat will never be a go-to for me. Hell, not to mention the disgust I’d feel eating it while knowing my betters are certainly dining on the real thing.
- corobo 4y ago
  It's not like meat is free from controversy, to play devil's advocate a little. We had beef that turned out to be horse for a moment in the UK. Not to mention mad cow disease and similar issues. What risks are you thinking of with plant based or lab grown? If anything it seems the lab environment would catch anything significant before it got out of the building. I'm not arguing with you, honestly curious. I've not thought about this much.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    The concern is that lab grown food will have similar health risks to ultra processed foods — which are correlated with a number of illnesses. You’re asking people to trust a process (food science) that we’ve spent the last decade finding out has poisoned us for generations.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - hnfong 4y ago
      "Last decade" is too generous. HFCS wasn't last decade. Trans-fats wasn't last decade. We've known they were bad more than a decade ago. Many more decades ago they marketed these artificial food alternatives without any evidence of long term health effects, and the process of "proving" them bad took many years (funny how the onus lies on the potential victims), and only recently we've been able to mostly contain the damage of HFCS and trans fats. It seems every once a while this process restarts again. Americans sure love to play with their food. (I'm not American)
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> while being cheaper There's the kicker; the "meat replacement" industry is not in it for the good of humanity or whatever, they're in it for the money. They know there's a demographic of people who feel guilty and who are willing to pay extra to soothe their conscience. I'm going to sound like a gatekeeper here, but Real Vegetarians know how to cook without something that looks or tastes like meat. Meat replacement patties are just... uninspired and lazy conscience comforting food products. IMO and such. I wouldn't object to better stimulus from up above, that is, make vegetable options more available, diverse, and affordable. Frozen is fine.
- henrikschroder 4y ago
  > Real Vegetarians Yes, and how's that ideological conversion going? If you truly want to lower global meat consumption, fake meat is the only realistic way of achieving that.

randomdata 4y ago

Cheaper doesn't seem feasible, at least not without essentially duplicating the meat production process (maybe lab grown meat will get us there someday). Human grade food is more expensive, often considerably so. Animals essentially get the leftovers that we can't eat so they are afforded a huge price advantage and it is not clear how that is to be overcome sustainably. Circumstances – widespread disease, for example – could see the price of meat exceed these products for periods of time. At which point these products could become contenders on factors of price, but as soon as the market starts to shift the price of meat will fall on the decrease in demand, and you're back to square one. Especially as meat has lag time to market so the price will fall further than you might expect before meat producers are able to pull back on production. There is nothing to keep people eating these products if there is nothing to differentiate them in the market. The real value proposition is that it is different. A new food option to choose from. If it can be made great, where it is craved as much as meat, then they might have something. Until then, I can see why they are struggling.

clomond 4y ago
You are missing the core technology point that drives the underlying thesis here - ‘every manufactured good, gets cheaper per unit as you make more and more of it’. Whether this is from the lab, a recipe of plant inputs, or some other currently unknown thing - if you are able to develop and commercialize a product around a ‘specific technology’, you can drive the cost of that down through experience and scale. Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue). By taking a technology with a much higher theoretical efficiency, and then scaling that up - creates the classic technology disruption scenario. ->‘It’s the cheaper version of X commodity, why wouldn’t I choose that?’
- boppo1 4y ago
  > Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. We have automated the crap out of the food processing system. There are no material efficiencies left to be had. Compare that to options which are on paper thermodynamically superior (I.e. not supporting the life of an animal to only use their muscle tissue). This really is such a cool take on it that it bums me out to say… >why wouldn’t I choose that? …because I just[0] don’t wanna eat fake meat. [0] On a very deep, perhaps primal level. I can feel it rooted so far in my brain it’s hard to convey. Rather eat peanut butter at every meal.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > Animals are a VERY thermodynamically inefficient way of converting plants to ‘high quality proteins’. That would be pertinent if they were eating the same foods, but they don't eat the same foods. They eat the stuff we won't eat, produced largely either as a byproduct of the production of the foods we do eat or produced on lands that cannot support the foods we eat. The more efficient we get in producing plants to eat, the more efficient byproducts there are for animals to eat, so you get a continuous relationship of meat becoming cheaper as other foods become cheaper. Economies of scale can only get you so far when the raw material inputs are your main cost centre. The industry will have to move towards using those 'waste' products in order to be competitive, but at that point you're essentially just replicating animal processes and you're up against a 'machine' doing the same that has had millions of years to develop itself.

judge2020 4y ago

Which is why OP complains about "One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus".

henrikschroder 4y ago
Yes, true, and I sympathize with that complaint.

Firstmate 4y ago

> You are not the target group for these products! It's not a choice for me. When I go to _restaurants_, they are replacing their only vegetarian options with these impossible/beyond meats, and they're charging $2 more while they're at it. These goals and target markets sound great on paper, but feels like the exact opposite in practice. The goal for reducing waste is great, but why are vegetarians paying that cost when they go out.

HDThoreaun 4y ago
Probably because the beyond/impossible offerings sell more and they're only willing to put a limited number of vegetarian items on the menu so the others are crowded out.
- dack 4y ago
  yeah, it's purely a business decision, but it sucks.
- joshspankit 4y ago
  That has to be temporary and due to novelty. I’ve never understood the “pretend meat” category. Lots of vegetarian food tastes amazing and is good for you. It doesn’t have to pretend. It’s like over-boiling broccoli and covering it in cheese sauce: easier for broccoli-haters to eat, but totally missing the point.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Some of us actually like the meat taste, and this is orthogonal to the ethics of it.
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      Yes, but what’s the altruistic benefit in marketing fake meat to you?
      - 4y ago

friend_and_foe 4y ago

So the target market for these products is people that want to eat real meat and actively seek it out? And they're catering to them by... replacing existing vegetarian options? They must not have read your comment. Sounds like a bad market fit. The number of people who eat meat and don't care if their meat is made of meat has got to be in the 7 figure range worldwide. The number of people that don't eat meat and want their vegetables to taste like meat is probably larger, though still miniscule. It's failing because there's no market for it.

fsloth 4y ago
It's not as impossible as you make it sound IMO, I would guess it's more a matter of pricing. If plantburgers and plantdogs where considerable cheaper than meatburgers and hotdogs I would guess people would follow the money and shift to consuming the plant based alternative if they were otherwise close enough.
- donkeyd 4y ago
  I'm a meat eater and I really prefer no meat over fake meat. A good vegetable curry, ratatouille, stew, pasta or a portobello mushroom burger really beats all of the fake meat substitutes for me. If meat becomes too expensive, I'll just cut it out completely... Until lab grown meat becomes a viable alternative. All these fake meat substitutes are just awful, to me.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Well, we're running that experiment right now with soaring meat prices and it looks like you're wrong. Turns out if you make one type of meat more expensive then people just switch to a different kind of meat. If you make all meat more expensive, people buy cheaper cuts and get creative with how they prepare it. My bet is that if you make it prohibitively expensive then people will get creative about sourcing their meat instead so rather than go to the grocery store they'll put in a group order direct from CSA or a small independent meat producer and just store a years supply in a deep freeze. It turns out a lot of people just prefer eating meat over other options regardless of price. I'm not really surprised.

novok 4y ago

The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat, and if you go by bio availability of the nutrients, a fraction of the same nutritional value as actual meat. And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land. So either way, it wont work that well in it's current state.

yyt554 4y ago
> The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat That's only because we are "subsidising" meat production cost through immense animal suffering. Once you have regulations that make the animals we keep in captivity have a somewhat good life, then meat price goes through the roof and those alternatives are the only reasonable option for the non-rich. > And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land. And where do you think the animal food is grown? Instead of feeding it to animals, make veggy dishes out of it. It's true that some land can't be reasonably used for growing and harvesting crops, and keeping animals there which turn this into high quality protein is the best option, but that's only for certain regions on the planet.
- novok 4y ago
  I buy ethically raised %100 pasture raised ground beef at ~$6/lbs from whole foods, and a 1 lb packet of "beyond burger" is even more expensive than that at $11/lbs (!) at the same shop. There is barely any profit margin in beef, while beyond burger does have relatively healthy one at that price looking at the ingredient list and price. I can also buy a quarter cow for $8/lbs locally raised similarly. %100 pasture raised is how you think it is, eating grass in some field for %100 of it's life, protected from predators, which is pretty much the type of life it would have in the wild with less stress. Not to mention it's better nutritionally than the standard %75 pasture raised / %25 grain finished beef you buy at a costco.
drewm1980 4y ago
Impossible burgers take an order of magnitude less land to produce than beef. They're not made of vegetables. Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease. Putting soy in a veggie burger results in way more nutrition than putting soy in a cow.

noodlenotes 4y ago

As a meat-eater, these products have been great as an option for sharing a meal with my vegetarian friends. I don't really know good vegetarian recipes, but I know how to cook a burger.

Marsymars 4y ago
I mostly don't eat meat now, but actually started for this reason alone - I wanted to level up my vegetarian cooking skills, so gave myself a challenge of not eating/cooking any meat for a month.

alkonaut 4y ago

I'm definitely a habitual meat eater. I don't have a vegetarian bone in my body. Yet I'd prefer a vegetarian burger to have beans and carrots, to having one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste. That is, while I'm happy to eat a perfect meat substitute, I'm also don't have a problem with vegetables and I'd rather have a totally-not-meat burger than a not-quite-meat burger.

scrollaway 4y ago
> one with an uncanny valley meat texture and meat taste. I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley? I love meat but eat it rarely. And I like burgers, even the cheap McDonald’s stuff. But burger patties are basically entirely their own texture, which is only loosely related to beef meat. Now a burger with lightly cooked and well seasoned, real fresh ground beef? It’s a different product altogether. But it’s also less popular and I don’t think it’s what beyond meat tries to replace.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  > I mean, honestly, aren’t most cheap burger meat patties in that uncanny valley? Yeah what they need to imitate faithfully is the fastfood variety. I'm sure that's slightly easier than imitating the "proper" thing. What they have now is the not-quite-a-fastfood-thing even.

boppo1 4y ago

> If the companies can get their products to taste about the same as meat, and have about the same nutritional value, while being cheaper, we can eliminate enormous amounts of habitual meat consumption. Habitual meat eater here. I will never ever trust these products to be right for my body the way meat is. Humans haven’t nailed it in the past with heavily processed foods, why would it suddenly work now? I understand the noble dream, I really do. But the fact is, unless I find myself in near poverty or poverty and (no added sugar) peanut butter is unavailable, imitation meat will never be a go-to for me. Hell, not to mention the disgust I’d feel eating it while knowing my betters are certainly dining on the real thing.

corobo 4y ago
It's not like meat is free from controversy, to play devil's advocate a little. We had beef that turned out to be horse for a moment in the UK. Not to mention mad cow disease and similar issues. What risks are you thinking of with plant based or lab grown? If anything it seems the lab environment would catch anything significant before it got out of the building. I'm not arguing with you, honestly curious. I've not thought about this much.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  The concern is that lab grown food will have similar health risks to ultra processed foods — which are correlated with a number of illnesses. You’re asking people to trust a process (food science) that we’ve spent the last decade finding out has poisoned us for generations.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - hnfong 4y ago
    "Last decade" is too generous. HFCS wasn't last decade. Trans-fats wasn't last decade. We've known they were bad more than a decade ago. Many more decades ago they marketed these artificial food alternatives without any evidence of long term health effects, and the process of "proving" them bad took many years (funny how the onus lies on the potential victims), and only recently we've been able to mostly contain the damage of HFCS and trans fats. It seems every once a while this process restarts again. Americans sure love to play with their food. (I'm not American)

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

> while being cheaper There's the kicker; the "meat replacement" industry is not in it for the good of humanity or whatever, they're in it for the money. They know there's a demographic of people who feel guilty and who are willing to pay extra to soothe their conscience. I'm going to sound like a gatekeeper here, but Real Vegetarians know how to cook without something that looks or tastes like meat. Meat replacement patties are just... uninspired and lazy conscience comforting food products. IMO and such. I wouldn't object to better stimulus from up above, that is, make vegetable options more available, diverse, and affordable. Frozen is fine.

henrikschroder 4y ago
> Real Vegetarians Yes, and how's that ideological conversion going? If you truly want to lower global meat consumption, fake meat is the only realistic way of achieving that.